PHILADELPHIA—Twenty-five years after he founded the nation’s first doctoral program in African-American Studies, Dr. Molefi Kete Asante will once again take helm of Temple University’s Department of African-American Studies, which has been operating since last July without a permanent chair from among its faculty.
It will be Asante’s second time running the department, which he chaired from 1984 until 1997. Allegations that he plagiarized the work of a former colleague in the department forced him to step down. At the time, Asante vehemently denied the allegations that were leveled against him by Dr. Ella Forbes.
But after a two-year investigation, Temple’s former president, Peter J. Liacouras, rejected a faculty committee’s unanimous recommendation that the university discipline Asante for what they called “grave misconduct.”
The plagiarism allegations did little to damage Asante’s international reputation as one of the country’s foremost authorities on Black studies. His groundbreaking scholarship produced a loyal following both in and outside of the academy, and is one of the many reasons why dozens of graduate students turn down admission offers elsewhere and flock to Temple each year to study with him.
“He is one of the pillars of African-American studies,” says Drew Brown, a second–year doctoral student at Temple. “With him as the head, if nothing else, it adds to the notoriety and credibility of our department. People come to Temple just for Molefi Asante.”
Dr. Teresa Soufas, the dean of the College of Liberal Arts appointed Asante to the position after the African-American studies faculty recommended him for the job. When the department’s former chair, Nathaniel Norment Jr., retired last July, Soufas angered faculty, graduate students and alumni when she placed the department in receivership and appointed her vice dean, Dr. Jayne Drake, as the interim chair to run the department’s day-to-day operations, which include overseeing its seven full-time faculty members.
