Word: afro
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...time-consuming, but promising, process of searching for prospective teachers. He notes improvements in the department's relations with the remainder of the University. But he cannot deny that certain negative feelings have persisted among some of the department's students and faculty members. The executive committee on Afro-American studies created by Rosovsky in the fall of 1979, remains a symbol of administration dominance for those who believe it has tried to deprive the department of the right to govern its own affairs. The committee chaired by C. Clyde Ferguson, professor of Law, was given responsibility for making most...
Huggins denies that there is any overtly political approach to the teaching of Afro-American studies at Harvard, although he recognizes the influence of political factors on the national level in shaping an understanding of Afro-American history and experience. "Most conventional academic disciplines have a built-in leaning toward power. Most scholars like to study the powerful as opposed to the powerless. They like to study the consequential as opposed to the inconsequential," he says, adding. "Blacks become important to study when they become so consequential that you can't ignore them...
...effect, Huggins draws a distinction between a particular ideological orientation and the sort of bias that each academic field naturally develops. "Afro-American studies as a field is by its very nature inclined towards a very different perspective," he notes, adding. "You're asking about people that aren't likely to be looked at from the perspective of other departments. The Afro-American Studies Department will be naturally involved in subject matter that's centrally important to Afro-American life--poverty, distribution, questions of race and class, ethnic and cultural identity." Black militancy and other changes in political power have...
...subsided, the Harvard community looked to Bok to provide some solutions. In his sixth "open letter" during the past two years, issued in late February, Bok focused on the issue of race relations, "reaffirming" the University's commitment to affirmative action in hiring, diversity among the student body, the Afro-American Studies Department and the proposed "foundation"--"if there is genuine interest" in such a project...
...more pressure," one professor predicts. Another, who asked not to be identified, suggests that fears of a similar incident might have made the Psych and Soc Rel Department more sympathetic to Langer in its considerations this winter. And just months after Skocpol's complaint, Josephine Wright, assistant professor of Afro-American Studies, filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission charging the University with discrimination on the basis of sex and race in denying her a one-year contract extension. But Faculty remain nearly unanimous in agreeing that the threat of external suits--like the complaint filed this fall...