This fall, Temple University pledged to put a million dollars toward antiracist education and programming in the wake of this summer’s Black Lives Matter protests.
“Racism continues to operate in every facet of the lives of Black people today – in education, employment, healthcare, policing … ,” said Dr. Valerie Harrison, senior advisor for equity, diversity and inclusion at Temple. “There are countless opportunities to really effect change. So, what we did is we asked ourselves, how will we allocate our resources and focus? How do we leverage our strengths? What areas are we really best equipped to impact?”
The funds will also partly go toward a new center for antiracism research and an expansion of the Africology and African American studies department, hiring four new faculty.
Africology and African American studies department chair, Dr. Molefi Kete Asante, sees the university’s investment as a “down payment on a long-term commitment to the idea that African American studies [program] is not only a legitimate field of research and teaching but a necessary one for a society such as ours.”
His department was the first to grant doctoral degrees in its field, with famous graduates like Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, the author of How to Be an Antiracist. But since the 1990s, the department shrunk from 14 to eight faculty members. As a result, it hasn’t been able to offer students majoring in Africology and African American studies a full curriculum.
For years, Asante has been waiting to rebuild – and a million dollars won’t do it, he said – but it’s a positive step. By next fall, the department hopes to hire scholars focused on Afrofuturism and post-coloniality, African civilizations, African womanism as well as African American social and historical experiences.
