30 years and counting

The 30th anniversary of the African American studies degree
program is cause for celebration, say faculty in the
interdisciplinary program, despite the current struggle with a
diminished budget and declining enrollment.

Brenda Stevenson, a history professor and the new director of
the program, said the anniversary is a “triumphant
moment” for the program.

“Some universities have lost their (African American
studies) programs, or have diminished in significance. UCLA was one
of the first in the country. It has always been one of the finest,
and it still is,” she said, adding that they have survived
political changes and several budget crises.

The degree program was founded in the 1974-1975 academic year as
a separate entity from the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African
American Studies. The Bunche Center was created as a response to
rallies and protests in the late 1960s, and renamed last year after
the first black valedictorian at UCLA and Nobel Peace Prize
winner.

African American studies offers about 12 courses per quarter,
many of which are cross-listed. There are approximately 67 students
in the major and a similar number enrolled in the minor, but the
number of students who take related courses is difficult to track
because of the courses’ cross-listing, said Dr. Lisbeth
Gant-Britton, the student affairs officer of the academic
program.

“The staying power of the program itself ““ the
consistency alone ““ has proven a tremendous asset, I would
say, to the state and the nation,” she said, referring to
graduating students’ ability to propose policy because of the
background they received at UCLA.

Stevenson said African American studies has felt budget cuts
more than most departments because of its small budget and because,
as an interdisciplinary program, it borrows professors from other
departments, who are less able to spare professors as their own
budgets are cut.

In addition to budget cuts, Gant-Britton said the effect of
Proposition 209 in 1996 has gradually decreased the number of black
students admitted to UCLA, consequentially reducing the number of
students in the program.

Proposition 209 bans state agencies ““ including the UC
““ from considering the race or ethnicity in hiring and
admittance practices.

While many non-blacks take courses in the program, the
proposition has negatively impacted the program, Gant-Britton
said.

Richard Yarborough, a former head of the program, associate
professor of English and faculty research associate with the Bunche
Center, agreed.

Yarborough said it was ironic that the academic unit in African
American studies was strong and current, while the university is
falling behind in outreach to black students.

“It’s important for us to realize these are linked
in complicated ways, but there is a connection,” he said.

The growth of African American studies did not come out of a
general consensus of the field’s importance but out of a
political struggle, and members of the faculty, administration and
community sacrificed a great deal to establish it, Yarborough
said.

“We have to remind ourselves at a time like this (that)
the legacy of the struggle that serves as the foundation for the
institutionalization of Afro-American studies is important to
provide us with a model for how we might need to move into a more
uncertain future,” he said.

Yarborough has been at UCLA since 1979, and said he came and
stayed at the university largely because of the African American
studies program and the privilege of working with the students and
faculty.

Robert Hill, a UCLA history professor and director of the Marcus
Garvey Papers project, has been at UCLA since before the program
was founded, and said its focus has shifted from struggling to get
established to maintaining the achievements of the past and
continuing to develop.

“I think there was a certain understandable skepticism
about whether it was simply a response to political pressures of
the day or whether it could endure as an academic field,” he
said.

“With time, I think more and more it became clear that it
was not just merely a response to a political catalyst, that it had
intellectual and scholarly legitimacy.”

Stevenson said the program has evolved to accommodate the
changing needs of its constituents, many of whom are pursuing
academic and artistic careers.

The program is trying to increase enrollment by expanding course
offerings and fundraising for scholarships to attract black
prospective students, she said.

But while the program is facing challenges, she said she thinks
the university understands the importance of African American
studies and other ethnic studies departments, and that the
departmentalization of Asian American and Chicano and Chicana
studies illustrates that.

“While we are careful, we think very much about making
certain we do survive ““ I think we certainly will do so. We
need the university to support us more, but we are going to
survive.

“We’ve survived for 30 years and it’s not
going to end,” she said.

Gant-Britton said she hopes that as the university budgetary
situation improves, the importance of the program to the campus
community at large will be considered.

“We are hopeful that as the administration is able to make
advances to get out of the budget crisis, that the value of the
program will be taken into consideration so that as funding levels
increase across the university as well as the opportunity to hire
new faculty, that the program will be high on the list of
priorities,” she said.

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