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It is in the breaking news sidebar!
Posted on 07/17/2003 12:12:00 PM PDT by Sweet_Sunflower29
fter a year of turmoil that saw two of its biggest stars defect to Princeton University, Harvard's celebrated Afro-American studies department will be refocused and expanded to include an African language program and a new major in African studies, the chairman of the department, Henry Louis Gates Jr., said yesterday.
Professor Gates, who at one point was so unhappy about the acrimony between his department and the Harvard president, Lawrence H. Summers, that he too weighed offers to leave, said he had appointed five new faculty members, including two African scholars, one a critic of African literature and one a linguist.
His recruits also include a linguistic anthropologist who is one of the country's leading experts on hip-hop. Hip-hop had figured in the turmoil in Professor Gates's department, with Cornel West, one of the stars to leave Harvard, complaining that Mr. Summers had, among other things, been critical of his recording of a hip-hop CD entitled "Sketches of My Culture."
"Given the reports of the contretemps between Cornel West and Larry Summers, some people might find this an ironic outcome," Professor Gates said.
Professor Gates described Mr. Summers as "nothing but supportive" of his efforts to rebuild the department, including his recruiting the hip-hop expert Marcyliena Morgan from the University of California at Los Angeles. Ms. Morgan has already installed her hip-hop archives at Harvard.
Harvard is by no means the first university to merge African and African-American studies in one department, and to offer a major in African studies. But for the university to take such a step is a recognition that the African-American experience in the United States must be understood in relationship to Africa and the diaspora, several scholars said yesterday.
"This is where we're going these days in African-American studies," said John Thornton, an African historian who will join the African-American studies department at Boston University this fall. "It's been a trend intellectually. In the past 15 years, more and more people who are doing African-American history are increasingly interested in the African equation. On the other side, there are more Africanists who are recognizing that there is an American side to what they do."
A year ago Professor Gates was considering jumping to Princeton after the departures of his close friends and colleagues K. Anthony Appiah, the African philosopher, and Dr. West, the black-studies scholar whose fiery lectures packed Harvard auditoriums.
While Professor Appiah had gone to Princeton for personal reasons, Dr. West left after publicly feuding with Mr. Summers over the quality of Dr. West's scholarship and the university administration's commitment to affirmative action. Mr. Summers had declined to comment on the feud or Dr. West's reports of their conversations about his scholarship and his activities outside Harvard.
"People were worried about the administration's commitment to the department," said Professor Gates, a scholar of African and African-American literature, referring to those faculty members who remained. "Several schools were trying to recruit our faculty. Many of us weren't sure we could rebuild. They didn't know if we could come back without Anthony and Cornel."
Now, a year later, he said, he and his colleagues have rebuilt the department. In keeping with the new focus, the department has been renamed African and African-American studies.
"It's not as if any of us thinks we can replace a Cornel or an Anthony," said Evelynn M. Hammonds, a prominent scholar of race and the history of science, who is joining the department from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Those are huge losses."
But Professor Hammonds said she was not worried about the administration's commitment to the department. "Summers is on his learning curve," she said.
Mr. Summers praised Professor Gates's appointments and the new focus on African studies. "We as a university are now going to be taking on African studies in the way we take on Asian studies or Latin American studies or have traditionally taken on European studies," he said in a telephone interview. "We've also been successful in recruiting a number of first-rate people in issues ranging from the history of science to African literature."
The two African scholars Professor Gates has recruited are Abiola Irele, a critic of African literature in French from Ohio State University, and John Mugane, an African linguist from Ohio University. Professor Mugane will direct the new African language program at Harvard.
Africa has 2,089 languages, Professor Mugane said. "Think of them as 2,089 treasures, 2,089 priceless pieces of culture," he said. "My challenge is to make Harvard the best place to learn these African languages."
"It's part of the global challenge," Professor Mugane added. "We have to be able to talk to each other."
With the new appointments, the African and African-American studies department has 25 faculty members. As an associate professor, Ms. Morgan will teach classes on hip-hop and linguistics and be the director of the hip-hop archives, which includes T-shirts, videotapes of the early hip-hop artists practicing their art in basements in the Bronx and an extensive collection of CD's by rappers like Tupac Shakur and Public Enemy.
"While I'm not especially a fan of hip-hop — perhaps I'm too old — there can be no doubt that it is one of the most important cultural phenomenons in the second half of the 20th century," said Professor Gates, who is 52. "We would be remiss if we did not treat it accordingly."
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at Harvard
I'm not sure where the bottom is but we must be near it.
You mean to tell me that Harvard doesn't yet have a separate major in Hip-Hop? And they dare to call themselves a leading university?
If someone were to start a real African Studies department that devoted itself to language, cultural studies, religious studies, economics, politics, geology and geography, that would be of benefit. Unfortunately, the curricula don't reflect that.
You're going for a PhD? Must be one of those Piled Higher & Deeper degrees! (BS=BS); (MS=More of the Same); (PhD=Piled Higher & Deeper)
Can you imagine the outrage, especially from ultra left-wing but tenured academics, if a university started a "European Studies" department/program and the key requirement for admission, completion, or teaching was to have white skin? The only purpose/use of an African studies program is to perpetuate black racism. This would be the case even if the university taught the truth and not just the racist ramblings of black faculty who couldn't get jobs in real departments because they were either too dumb or would have to work too hard to get them.
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