In the last few days, the graduate students in the Department of African American Studies (AAS) at Temple University have dispatched a carefully written letter to thousands of faculty across the nation in an effort to publicize what they call “a crisis.”
Indeed, there is a crisis in this department, at this university. And now, sadly, both of my alma maters—Florida A&M University (hazing) and now Temple University—are embroiled in crisis. These emergencies have emerged in the midst of joyous anniversaries: 125 years of existence this year at FAMU and 25 years of the doctoral program in AAS at Temple in 2013.
As Temple is about to celebrate the 25-year anniversary of the nation’s first African-American Studies doctoral program, its AAS department is reeling without a permanent chair, without plans to hire a permanent chair. This state of affairs has left the “department in a state of uncertainty,” to use the students’ words.
The longtime chair of the department, Nathaniel Norment, retired in July. The faculty voted in the spring for Kariamu Welsh to succeed him, beginning this fall. This choice was rejected by the dean of the College of Liberal Arts, a rejection we all know rarely happens in academe. But it happens, and it is within the purview of a dean’s powers.
Hearing about this distressed me. One thing AAS academics lament about pretty regularly is the way deans tend to micromanage AAS departments in ways they do not do other “mainstream” departments.
Based on what happened next, my mild distress quickly transformed into extreme uneasiness. You would think, the dean would appoint a faculty member in the department to serve as interim chair for the 2012-2013 academic year, and then conduct a national search for a chair. That is the usual procedure in other departments. But not African American Studies.
The department was placed in receivership, and a White vice dean was appointed as acting chair. The vice dean’s race was not the problem. The vice dean having been a long-time administrator was not the central problem.
