In Black America; Black Studies Program with Dr. Edmund T. Gordon

From the University of Texas at Austin, KUT Radio, this is in Black America. There are some people who are not in favor initially of the possibility, some people in the Black community who are not in favor initially of the possibility of the department because they were afraid that that would mean that we would lose the center. But when the administration made it clear that they are willing to consider creating both the center or having to keep in the center and having a department alongside it, the center to do kind of programming kind of things and to format research and for folks who are involved in the department, the department of the department of the department does, then those folks will want to win over. Dr. Edmund T. Gordon, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies, University of Texas at Austin.

In February 2010, UT Austin created a new academic department dedicated to the study of the intellectual, political, artistic, and social experiences of people of African descent throughout Africa and the African diaspora, including the United States and an affiliate institute that would focus on urban policy. The University established an Afro-American Studies Program in 1969 and in 2007, renamed what had become the Center for African and African American Studies for the former directed John L. Warfield. The Warfield Center will continue to operate. It will oversee programs, lectures, faculty, and student research, community collaboration and other culture and educational opportunities on campus. I'm John L. Hanson Jr. and welcome to another edition of in Black America. On this week's program, the Black Studies Suite at the University of Texas at Austin with Dr. Edmund T. Gordon in Black America. I also think it's very important that we be seen as a place where if you want to study

or you want to be a scholar associated with a department that has a major impact outside of academia that this is the place to be. Many of our faculty members are already committed to the basic Black Studies notion that we should be doing the kind of work, scholarly work necessary to have an impact on Black communities, a positive impact on Black communities. But if you take into account the fact that we'll have the Institute for Critical Urban Policy operating beside us, we're in a perfect position to have a really large impact on policy. Now only here in the state of Texas, but outside the country. The first African American Studies Program was founded as a response to student protests at San Francisco State University, Merit College in Oakland, California, and Cornell University. With the support of the Black Student Union and many students from other racial groups, Nathan Hare, a sociologist who had written an exposé on the Black Middle Class while teaching at Howard University, compelled San Francisco State Administration in 1968 to create the

first African American Studies Department in the country. One year later, James E. Turner, a doctoral student, was appointed the head of the African Studies and Research Center at Cornell University. In February 2010, 61 years after allowing African American students on campus, UT Austin created an academic department devoted to Black Studies. The new African and African Diaspora Studies Department will be devoted to studying the experience of people of African descent throughout Africa and the African Diaspora, including this country. In this endeavor, it will work in counseling with the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies and the Institute for Critical Urban Policy. Recently in Black America spoke with Department Chair Dr. Edmund T. Gordon. You know, when you arrived here in 74, it actually was not the Center for African and African American Studies. It was the Center for African and Afro-American Studies, a big difference, right? That had to be changed.

But back in 1969, the university had created one of the first ethnic studies programs in the country, actually, headed by Bullock, Henry Bullock, who subsequently passed. And then by 1973, they decided to separate out the Center for Afro-American Studies, African and Afro-American Studies from the Center for Mexican American Studies. And in 1973, that's when John Warfield came in and took that over and made it more or less what it is. Then in the mid-1980s, the Center came under some attack because, as you probably know, since you were here during that time, the Center for African and Afro-American Studies was a very political organization, very much involved in the university, Warfield. At the head of it had students and some of the faculty members deeply involved in things like the Black Citizens' Task Force. It started some of the first citizens' review of the police, et cetera, et cetera. And so the university was involved in that through the Center, which is now called the Warfield

Center. And there were some folks at UT who didn't like that. There was a, say, this way, a reactionary dean of liberal arts, who's still actually on campus, who decided that Warfield was way too much involved in the community. The Center was way too much involved in the community. And so they took them out of that position and put somebody else in. And then a few years later, they brought in Sheila Walker as the director of that Center. It became the Center for African and Afro-American Studies at that point. That was the early 90s. And then in 2002, only Jones and I took over the Center after John passed. John Warfield passed in the late, no, I didn't know about it. I think it was 2006 or 2007, right. We decided that we would name, try the name of the Center after him. So by 2007, I believe it became the John L. Warfield Center for African and African-American Studies.

During that whole time, there was a feeling among some folks that was good to have a Center, but that the Center was limited in terms of its power and its abilities. And one of the things that should happen is that it should have some kind of departmental status. And frankly, by 2007 and 2008, many of us thought that that was just pie in the sky. But one of the people who brought up that possibility, again, was brother Greg Vincent, when he became the Vice President for the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement. And he began to talk about the possibility of actually the need for having the Center get some kind of departmental status. That brought the conversation up again. And at that time, we were also have been greatly expanding the number of faculty members who were associated and affiliated with both the University, but also the Center. And we had a real critical mass of folks who were doing black studies here, both African

and African-American and African diasporic studies. And became clear to the University that a couple of things, one that we had the quality and the quantity of faculty members that really could sustain a department on campus already. And also that the kind of the growth of that intellectual community was hampered by the fact that all these faculty members that were bringing to campus had to be hired through other departments. They couldn't be hired directly in the Center. And so with the kind of the new conversation that Greg brought on to the scene in terms of the need for department and then convincing the Dean of Liberal Arts at the time, Randy Deal, that in order to be able to bring in quality, especially senior faculty members, we probably needed a department. We got into conversations with the Provost and the President and Lohan Mahole. They agreed that this would be a reasonable thing to do. And so the idea of creating a department was born out of that. So it's been a 40 year, 30 year process, but we're finally here.

Now you were asking about the, one of the possible, there were some people who were not in favor initially of the possibility, some people in the black community were not in favor initially of the possibility of the department because they were afraid that that would mean that we'd lose the center. But when the administration made it clear that they're willing to consider creating both a center or having, keeping the center and having a department alongside it, the center to do kind of programming, kind of things and to format research and for folks who were involved in the department and the department to carry on what a department does, then those folks were one over. And then we had during the time when I was the director of the center, we had tried to begin exploring the possibilities of having a policy aspect of what we were doing and reached out to the black legislative caucus and other folks who were engaged in policy making.

The idea being that there was a burgeoning black intellectual community at the University of Texas that was interested in having impact on the future of the state and the future of the country and that many of the ideas we were working on could perhaps be the basis for the creation of policy. That didn't come into fruition in the early stages. But in conversations between the president, some folks in legislature, president of university, some folks in legislature and us, the idea of having a policy institute which could take the intellectual work that was being constructed on campus and you know, great engage more policy oriented research and then create kind of policy suggestions was brought up again. And in fact, the president then decided that he would support the creation of a policy oriented unit that would stand beside the Warfield Center and the new Department of African and African diaspora studies.

And so the institute for critical urban policy was created. And so that's how we got from nothing back in 1969 to the first, we're pretty much the first in the country to have both a center, a department and a policy institute to stand side by side be articulated on the same campus. It's really unheard of. We're speaking with Dr. Edmund T. Gordon, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of African and African diaspora studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Gordon, you mentioned that some of the professors, when they were hired in other departments, being tenured or having a long stay in academia, why not what you do and what they do could be integrated in the university as a whole, why is it difficult for, I guess, universities particularly here at UT to see what you all do is important and should be a part of the integral educational process here at the university.

Well, as you know, it's been a long-term struggle. We just got through with the 60th anniversary of the integration of the University of Texas. So first it was a struggle to get black bodies into the university. And we're still struggling. The university has come a long, long way since sweat first got in here and the other five folks who first entered campus in 1950. But still yet, we still less than 5% of the undergraduate student body at the University of Texas is black, less than 3% of the graduate population is black, and again less than 5% of the faculty population is black. So we got a long way. This is a state that has somewhere between 11 and 12% black population and to have its flagship institutions in a situation where you don't have black bodies represented in those same kind of personalities is not good. So that's one thing, the struggle to have black bodies on campus. But there's another struggle as well, it means something to have black people on campus. But the kinds of ideas that emanate from the kinds of experiences that black people have

in this country, from the history of those experiences, et cetera, it gives us a different take on all kinds. And there's been an ongoing struggle ever since we first got here to have those kinds of experiences and knowledge is represented as well. So it's one thing to do anthropology, it's another thing to do to be an African-American and be doing anthropological work with black folks wherever they may be, kind of perspective is different than what you get as different, what we bring to the table is different. It's been very difficult over the years to convince Anglo-scholars that there's a validity to having different kind of perspectives on the kind of scholarship that gets done. And particularly, there's a black perspective that's important to capture, and that there's developed over the last years since the boys and Carter G. Woodson, et cetera, a particular kind of scholarship that emanates from the black intellectual community that is important to have represented.

Why is that difficult? Because scholars are interesting people. We all believe that our perspective on things is objectively the scientific and the correct perspective. We all like the kinds of methodological and intellectuals and scholarly takes that we or the folks who are closest to us have. And I think a lot of Anglo-scholars are just not thought that the black experience and black studies as a discipline was really valid. So it's taken some time for us to be able to elbow our way, both into the university and at the table. And to convince people that this is a legitimate perspective on things, and it's something that any type of university in the country needs to have represented. And it's been more difficult here in the south and southwest than to say in other places. So in the black studies has been amply represented for a number of years in many of the top universities in both the west and the northeast. So it's time that the south and southwest get with it. Good on board.

When we look at the undergraduate program and its students, are the students continuing a learning process which began while they were in high school, or are they coming here to start a learning process of their culture and heritage? Well I think most students, unless they get at home or unless they've gone to a very special high school, have really no experience with black studies and the kinds of black history and the kinds of things that we're promoting in terms of the black studies as a discipline. As you know, there are all these battles over the curriculum at the state level. And really in the most recent years, instead of being more inclusive, they're getting less inclusive the kinds of experiences that we think are important. So most folks arrive on the scene with very little knowledge of the kinds of things that we're trying to push for, very little knowledge of their own history, very little knowledge, scholarly knowledge of how black communities operate, very little kind of critical

knowledge or pretty perspectives on the place of black people in US and world society. And so we're finding we're having to do a lot of basic education. And it's not just the black kids, it's of all kids because black students are more likely to get that kind of education and say white kids are. And so white kids really have many of them have no clue at all. So it can be an eye-opening experience for folks. The other thing that we're trying very hard to do is show how it is that a black studies education can be foundational for any of the other kinds of things that one wants to do in the future, either intellectually or academically. If you want to go into graduate school or something like that, having learning the kinds of critical skills, learning about black studies, from a black studies perspective, we think it really can be really foundational for any of the kinds of scholarly professions that

one might want to go into. But we also think it's important for folks who want to go into other kinds of professions or activities. So for example, you want to do law school, we feel like the kinds of critical reasoning that we teach, the kinds of writing skills that we teach, analytical skills, et cetera, are foundational for that. If you want to go into business, we feel like we have faculty members who are teaching about black business and black advertising, et cetera, so we think it can be foundational for that. Black psychology, we've got folks who are doing black psychologists can be foundational for that. So what we think is that on the one hand, we have a content which is both unique and also important that most people do not come to college with. But we also feel like while we're teaching that content, we're also teaching the kinds of skills that can really be foundational for anything else that you want to do as you

move on in life. And I'm glad you said that because I don't think that thought has been articulated because when one thinks of African or African diaspora studies, they think of the third world and thought processes that go into study, that region is that's it. It doesn't prepare you to do anything else. I'm glad you articulated that. You also have a Master's in Doctorial program. Tell us about that. Right. Well, we do not have a Doctorial program yet, but we're working on it. We just got our Master's program approved by the coordinating board. So it went up all through the UT system and then passed the regions to the coordinating board. And this, just this, this January, that was approved. So we're going to have our opening Master's group come in in the fall of tooth, this coming fall, fall of 2011. It will be the first Master's program in black studies in the state of Texas. And there are very few others in the south or the southwest.

And we're going to start with a small class, but we're hoping to be able to over time increase the numbers of folks that we bring in and be able to offer that graduate degree for folks who who want to have a terminal Master's degree. And maybe you're an education, you're doing ethnic studies or black studies. This is something you need for that or you're going into advertising. This is something that you can use with that. Or it can be used as a basis for going out for a PhD in some other discipline. We're also in the process of bringing our proposal for our PhD program, our doctoral program, through the various stages it has to go through. It's about a year and a half process in which it has to go through the university structures and then the Texas, University of Texas system structures. And I think it's got to go past the regions and then on to the coordinating board. To we're involved in that, we will be the first department in the state of Texas in the south and in the southwest to have a PhD program in black studies when we get that approved.

So we're quite excited about that. It'll be a really landmark. There are other places like Harvard and Yale and Michigan, et cetera, that have these kinds of programs, but nothing in the south or southwest. And so we're quite excited about the possibilities of getting that going. How is the center and the department dealing with those fundamental financial woes? Well, the idea to create the department and to create the institute for critical room policy where ideas that came up and came to fruition and were approved before the economic crisis hit. So that's one thing. We were fortunate enough to have those underway and have budget approval for these things before the crisis hit. Now that the crisis is upon us, we are being affected as many of your listeners will probably know. The ethnic studies centers at the campus of the University of Texas at Austin are threatened with rather large budget cuts earlier this year.

The first proposed cut for the center for African African studies was I think 41%, I believe now it's at 38%. Those kinds of cuts really will eviscerate most of the programming of the center and those are being negotiated now with the dean of liberal arts. Now we understand that the president has said that he will try to protect the center for African African American studies, the Warfield Center, and the center for Mexican American studies as much as possible from cuts, although they will not be totally protected because everybody is going to have to take some cuts, unfortunately. But so it's serious business. We plan to take a cut in the department as well next year. We're now trying to figure out how big a cut that's going to have to be. It's not clear yet what the legislature is going to do in relation to higher education. So we're waiting to see what that's going to look like. But these cuts will are having impact on what we can do and our future. Unfortunately, we were put into play before this all happened, as I said before.

And so the notion that these things won't come into existence is pretty much off the table. I think the university has a commitment to them and they will continue on. We've also been fortunate enough to get some outside funding for, particularly for the department. Joe Jumeil very generously gave us a million dollar endowment and much of what we're able to do with the department is based on that endowment as well. So there's outside money that's coming in and we're beginning to work very hard on trying to attract money other than the monies that can be generated through the state or through the university in order to be able to do the things that we need to do. The Institute for Critical Urban Policy will be there's a basic budget for that, but much of the budget in the future will be based on monies that are solicited from outside donations from research projects from foundations, et cetera, et cetera. So it's a rough time.

We will take some cuts, unfortunately. They will particularly negatively affect the center for the Warfield Center, but we're hoping to be able to weather this with trying to generate some of our own funds. Looking at America as we see it today, particularly Black America and some of our urban centers, how are you all articulating and addressing some of those concerns and some of solutions that could take place, particularly in my hometown Detroit, is it has been devastated? Yeah. Well, a lot of Black America has been devastated in this particular recession. As you well know, it's hit Black people harder than anybody else except for maybe Latinos, but in terms of unemployment rates and foreclosures on our houses, et cetera, the whole country has been suffering, but Black people in particular have taken the brunt of the heat in terms of that. So there's definitely is a need for folks to sit down and figure out what's going on

and how best to strategize to address these situations. The Institute for Critical Urban Policy exists right now in name only, but currently in the final hours of a search for a director, hopefully we'll hear from that person by next week and have a director in place later on in the month. Once we get a director in place, we'll be able to actually start formulating some programs and get going, but I think the prospects are quite good. We already have a number of faculty members who are associated with the new department who do the kind of work that can be used as the basis of the creation of policies. So those folks are in place already. And there's already a budding relationship between those of us on campus and the Black Legislative Caucus in here in Texas, and so we see a lot of synergies possible there in terms of helping them to come up with policies and suggestions for policies that will directly affect the Black population in the state of Texas, which needs some assistance and some

good ideas. So we're hoping to work with other legislative tours and also with the Black Caucus on the national level in order to be able to affect things there. So while we don't have anything in place yet because we're just now getting that up and going, we see that as being a very exciting prospect. It's very exciting for those of us who do research because it offers a way for us to turn that research into something that actually has an impact. And that's been a basis for Black studies from the very beginning. Other Black studies is not about the creation of knowledge for knowledge, say it's about the creation of knowledge to make absolute social change and particularly for social change in favor of Black folks who need a change. We need a change. So we see this as a real opportunity to facilitate that kind of thing. It's quite exciting, but it's just getting off the ground. Dr. Gordon, before we run out of time, you all have brought State Senator, former mayor

or candidate in Houston, a semester Turner of the campus, Spike Lee had a reason. State Representative Turner, excuse me, and you also had Spike Lee. How does these individuals come into campus and talk to the students playing the overall effectiveness of the program? Well, this has been something that the Warfield Center had been involved in for a number of years is bringing folks from around the country who have interesting things to say and who are Black and who can talk about the Black experience and can contribute to it to campus. You know, we had one of the things is it gives students a way to see the possibilities in terms of what they can aspire to. But even more than that, as I said before, we've got what we consider to be a vibrant intellectual community and having folks come in with different kinds of experiences, different kinds of ideas and have them interact with us is, you know, something that we really crave because it just enriches the kinds of work and the kind of thinking that we can do.

We were particularly interested in having Representative Turner on campus because we recognize that, you know, recent political and economic changes in the state are going to have a large impact on Black people in general. Dr. Edmund T. Gordon, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies, the University of Texas at Austin. If you have questions, comments or suggestions asked to future in Black America programs, email us at lowercasejhanssonhans.org at kut.org. Also let us know what radio station you heard us over. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or the University of Texas at Austin. You can hear previous programs online at kut.org. Until you have the opportunity again for a Texas co-producer, Michael Lee and David Alvarez, I'm John L. Hanson Jr. Thank you for joining us today. Please join us again next week. CD copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America

CDs, KUT Radio, one university station, Austin, Texas, 78712. This has been a production of KUT Radio.