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Princeton is putting additional effort behind promoting its African-American studies curriculum and is getting closer to offering an undergraduate major in the subject.
“Last week, the faculty at the Ivy League school voted to departmentalize the Center for African American Studies (CAAS), which has granted undergraduate and graduate certificates since 2006,” reports Diverse Education.
While the Princeton Board of Trustees still has to approve the vote, the faculty vote comes nearly three years after an external review of the center led by Dr. Deborah McDowell, the Alice Griffin Professor of English and director of the Carter G. Woodson Center at the University of Virginia, recommended that the center be converted into a department and that the university should start offering a major.
“When we formed as a center, it was in the documents that we would reconsider and take up the issue of departmentalization five years out,” said Dr. Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., the William S. Tod Professor of Religion and African American Studies and the chair of the Center for African American Studies at Princeton. “One of the most important aspects of this moment is that Princeton has made African-American studies an essential part of the education of its students. It’s been a long time coming, but we are here.”
The CAAS has been growing. It currently has 15 professors, with four of them holding full-time teaching appointments in the center. And the CAAS is looking to expand even further.
“We are hiring still,” said Glaude. “People have talked about the departures, but we’ve been able to put together a young cohort of scholars. It’s not about the superstars; it’s about the work. And it’s exciting the see the work happening here.”
Princeton has been able to attract well-known Black scholars over the years, such as Drs. Cornel West, Nell Painter, Albert J. Raboteau, and Melissa Harris-Perry.
However Princeton has been slow to make African-American studies a major, unlike other higher-learning institutions. Harvard, Yale, the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell have offered an undergraduate major in African-American studies for years.
The fact that Princeton has not offered an African-American Studies major has led to student protests in the past. But finally it seems this will be moving ahead.
“It makes all the sense in the world to me that we do this now under these circumstances,” Glaude said.
