Center to study race in America

In an effort to strengthen Princeton's commitment to the study of race, the University is establishing a Center for African-American Studies to replace the 37-year-old program of the same name, President Tilghman announced yesterday.

The center will double the program's faculty, expand course offerings and, eventually, offer an undergraduate major. Following renovations, it will be housed in Stanhope Hall.

"As a University dedicated to 'the nation's service and the service of all nations,' Princeton must be in a position to contribute to this quest through research that yields valuable insights into the nature of racial identity and social justice, and through education that trains new generations of leaders to solve problems that have persisted too long, both in this country and abroad," Tilghman said in a statement.

Princeton is the only Ivy League university that does not offer a bachelor's degree in African-American Studies.

The addition of an African-American Studies major may reshape the University's rigid conception of majors. "This University proceeds cautiously before offering new majors, and with good reason," Tilghman said. "The academic major is our primary instrument for ensuring that undergraduate education at Princeton has the depth that comes from rigorous disciplinary training."

Because of the independent work component of all Princeton majors, the University must also consider the complications of junior papers or senior theses in African-American Studies with no other departmental affiliation. "Experience has taught us that there are risks associated with establishing a new major in a field that mixes disciplines and methods in novel and innovative ways," Tilghman said.

Center or department?

Though the committee considered creating an African-American Studies department, they decided to form a center instead. The center, while still capable of hiring faculty independently, could also retain an interdisciplinary reach.

Committee member Daniel Rodgers, a history professor and former department chair, explained that the usual University structures for an academic area — a department, a program, a school — were not right for African-American Studies. "We didn't want to take one of the institutional organizations typically used. We wanted to do something nobody, no other university, had done."

English professor Valerie Smith, who will direct the center, said in an email that "[the committee] thought that a Center would have a broader impact on the intellectual life of the University and on the production of knowledge in the field of African-American Studies than a department would."

The center will sponsor freshman seminars and sophomore courses, as well as a two-semester course for graduate students from different departments "to explore the significance of race in American life and institutions, and in the global context," Smith said.