Black Studies: A Painful Birth

SPURRED by last year's dramatic upsurge of black student unrest, hundreds of U.S. colleges and universities have begun to offer new courses in black studies. Halfway through the academic year, the infant programs are suffering sharp birth pains. Conceived in haste, they are often beset by politics, strapped for funds, and short on qualified teachers. Many of them amount to little more than a quick reshuffling of existing courses offered by various departments, and black students sense condescension. Says Brown University Senior Phil Williams of his school's new black studies program: "It's an insult to black people." Above all, on practically every campus the new black studies programs are caught in a conflict over one basic issue: Should black studies stress academics or action? Should the work take place primarily inside the classroom or out in the community?

The story of two institutions that have taken opposite tacks suggests that neither approach offers a guarantee of success. At Harvard, which has emphasized the classroom, many black students feel that the Afro-American studies department is not revolutionary enough, and are thinking of quitting the university. At San Francisco State College, which stresses action, the administration fears that the black studies department is too revolutionary, and is threatening to disband it.

Intellectual Respectability. When Harvard's Afro-American studies program was formed in the midst of last spring's tumultuous student strike, faculty members repeatedly demanded that the courses be "intellectually respectable." That standard, for the most part, was met. The courses carry impressive titles that sound much like the other listings in the Harvard catalogue: The Concept and History of Slavery; Africa in World Politics; History of African Art; and the usual "colloquium" conducted for "concentrators" (i.e., majors) in the department.

In recruiting professors for the program, Harvard chose men who are uniformly competent and in some cases outstanding. The introductory course in black civilization, for example, is being taught by Dr. Ephraim Isaac, a lecturer from Ethiopia who speaks seven languages fluently and holds a number of degrees, including a recent Ph.D. from Harvard. Fred Clifton, another visiting lecturer who teaches a course about Boston's Negro community, is the kind of man blacks more often have in mind when they discuss the "qualifications" that professors in Afro-American studies ought to have. Clifton has only a B.A. degree, but in addition to previous teaching experience (philosophy and sociology at the State University of New York at Buffalo), he has had practical experience as educational coordinator of Baltimore's Model Cities program.

Liberationist Mentality. The department is directed by Dr. Ewart Guinier, 59, who has degrees from City College of New York, Columbia University and New York University, and came to Harvard after planning ghetto programs at Columbia's Urban Center. Though Guinier agrees that community action must be part of Harvard's approach to Afro-American studies, initial progress in that direction has obviously not satisfied militant black students; last fall they took matters into their own hands by thrice occupying University Hall to protest the institution's allegedly racist employment policies.

Black students argue that the goal of Harvard's Afro-American studies should be to build up the black liberationist mentality and teach specific skills that can aid the cause. "The only reason a black majors in Afro-American studies," says Mark Smith, one of six students on the university's 13-member standing committee, "is because he feels it will best enable him to work for his people when he gets out of college." Smith's stark rhetorical question: "Does Harvard, which we regard as part of the oppressor, have the ability to teach black people how to destroy it? I doubt it."

So do many other Harvard blacks, who have begun to wonder whether any program, no matter how "action-oriented," can build a liberationist mentality in black students who are living in what they regard as a hostile white environment. Some of them are considering transferring to all-black colleges. The five Harvard whites majoring in black studies also feel unwanted. "The blacks think that we're spying on them or something," says Sophomore Jim Collins, who gives good marks to most of his courses but adds that his experience in the introductory "colloquium" has been grim because it was so disorganized. "I might as well have read a few books on the side and not have taken the course," he says.

New Outlook. "The major pitfall of black studies programs as they exist across the country today," says Dr. Nathan Hare, who organized San Francisco State College's program, "is the absence of a revolutionary perspective." The department at San Francisco State has one, though College President Samuel I. Hayakawa failed to renew Hare's contract at the end of last year after a feud.

The department emphasizes Malcolm X more than Margaret Mead, and studies are coordinated with work in the community. A class in black geography, for example, is surveying San Francisco to find out where black people live and what their housing conditions are like; the students hope to publish their findings at the end of the semester. A class on black involvement in scientific development is checking into community health needs and attitudes toward available health care. Students in black journalism are following the treatment of news by the local media and writing stories for Black Fire, a Black Panther-style campus newspaper.

Few students feel that the department has ironed out all of its academic problems, but many seem to believe that a good beginning has been made. William Dickson, a black junior who hopes to start law school at Stanford next year, credits the black economics courses with giving him "a whole new outlook" on what he can do to help in the ghetto where he lives. Other students have serious complaints. Bill Insley, a white graduate student, signed up for a black psychology course but dropped it because he wasn't learning any psychology. He complains that the instructor failed to assign a single psychology text and lectured more on politics than anything else. When the instructor announced that students would be required to work either for the Black Panthers' breakfast program or the black student newspaper --neither of which Insley considered pertinent to the study of psychology --he quit.

Disturbed by reports that militant members of the Black Students Union are gaining control of the still-chair-manless department and using it as a training ground for revolution, Dean of Undergraduate Studies Urban Whitaker has been trying unsuccessfully since September to arrange a group meeting with the black faculty. Unless the faculty meets with him by next Monday, Whitaker has implied, he will stop signing their pay vouchers.

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