A proposal to upgrade the Afro-American Studies Interdepartmental Program into the Department of African American Studies is in its final stages of review.
It is essential that those reviewing the proposal not only pass it, but pass it as soon as possible and with the promise of sufficient support so that the new department can find firm footing from day one.
The push by the Afro-American Studies program for approval as a full-fledged department dates back to at least 2009. In that year, an internal review found that the program lacked a competitive edge for resources and faculty members, a problem that would be mitigated if the program became an official department.
Upon approval from the Academic Senate and the Executive Vice Chancellor, the department will likely be given the green light by the end of the academic year, said Janice Reiff, chair of the Academic Senate.
In the case of African American studies, UCLA falls far behind many other higher education leaders. Schools such as Harvard, Yale and UC Berkeley have all housed respected African American Studies departments for decades.
UCLA students interested in African American studies currently do not have sufficient access to resources or a core faculty focused solely on the field. The interdepartmental program operates from a borrowed space in Bunche Hall that lacks basic necessities like a conference room or mailboxes for its professors.
These basic needs must be met by the university in their support of a rich, diverse academic culture. The first step in this effort is to approve the program’s departmentalization bid.
UCLA has a history of postponing approval of independent departments for other interdisciplinary programs similar to Afro-American Studies.
In 1993, the university responded to vocal student protests advocating for a Chicana/o Studies Department by creating the César Chávez Center to act as a quasi-department for more than a decade.
The Chicana/o Studies program only gained full departmental status in 2005, and in turn, the funding and resources to promote a vigorous curriculum and more effectively fill out their faculty.
It is unlikely the bid by the Afro-American Studies program will undergo the same kind of decade-long delay.
Even so, administrators must act with due haste to see that the next class of Bruins to step on campus will find a new department that, as Robin Kelley, the interim chair of the Interdepartmental Program for Afro-American Studies, recently wrote in this newspaper, will help “transform university culture so it reflects a far richer reality.”