Since 1980, Tufts has offered a minor called Africa in the New World, but for reasons lost to time, the private university north of Boston did not join other schools in the 1960s and 1970s in creating a major in what was usually called Black studies. A faculty-student committee’s recommendation in 1972 to do so went unimplemented.
African-American students began petitioning the Tufts administration anew in 2009 for an Africana studies major, later holding campus rallies. Momentum toward a resolution to the student protests built with the arrival the next year of a new dean of arts and sciences, Dr. Joanne Berger-Sweeney, an African-American who compiled a strong record on diversity at Wellesley College.
“Student advocacy played a role,” Berger-Sweeney says, “but I would also say that I came to Tufts feeling issues related to diversity and diversification of faculty are just very important to the future and relevancy of the academy.”
The new major is just one of a number of diversity initiatives at Tufts. Africana studies will fall under a new academic program on race and ethnicity. A Center for the Study of Race and Democracy also is being launched this fall.
In the School of Arts and Sciences, the hiring of minority faculty has made a leap, as has the recruitment of underrepresented students at the medical school, which has begun providing grants to minority faculty to seed their research projects.
The administration also has boosted its diversity. In addition to Berger-Sweeney, Dr. John Barker was named dean of students last year, and, in late March, Dr. David R. Harris from Cornell University was tapped as the new provost, beginning July 1. Barker and Harris are African-American.
Several panels have been formed to enhance the campus climate, including a university-wide one led by President Tony Monaco, who arrived last year.
