Photo: Getty Images
As colleges across the country consolidate or eliminate standalone Black Studies programs and degrees, scholars and students are defending the field and its role in higher education.
At the University of Texas at Austin, the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies (AAADS) was recently folded into the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, ABC News reported.
The restructuring came after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed SB 17 in 2023, a law that prohibits public universities from maintaining DEI offices and restricts certain race-, gender- and sexual orientation-based practices.
UT Austin said it considered factors including department size, student-to-faculty ratios and resource allocation when restructuring its academic departments.
Danielle Clealand, a UT Austin professor who studies Black politics, said faculty and students were in “shock” over the change.
Aidan Keys, a doctoral student in AAADS, said she believed politics played a role.
“It hurts really bad. I really don’t like that I don’t have a department anymore,” Keys told ABC News. "We were the largest Black Studies department in the nation, so it was devastating."
Dr. Shaun Harper, a University of Southern California professor specializing in racial equity, said reducing Black Studies and other ethnic studies programs could affect students of all backgrounds.
“If we have millions of college-educated white Americans who go into the world not knowing anything about any other population besides white people, they are going to make lots of costly, very embarrassing mistakes,” Harper told ABC News.
At Indiana University Bloomington, AAADS is no longer offered as a standalone degree. Students can instead pursue Interdisciplinary Studies with AAADS as a subfield.
The change followed an Indiana policy requiring degree programs to meet minimum graduation numbers. Jakobi Williams, chair of the AAADS department, said the program graduates about seven to 10 students annually across its degree offerings.
BIN reported last month that more than a dozen universities have scaled back Black Studies programs in recent years.
Williams said he is working to restore the standalone degree.
“We’re not going anywhere. We won’t be erased,” he told ABC News.
The Black Information Network is your source for Black News! Get the latest news 24/7 on The Black Information Network. Listen now on the iHeartRadio app or click HERE to tune in live.