The Center for African American Studies underwent its first external review last November to evaluate its standing and make recommendations for future expansions. Though the findings of the review are to be released later this year, one of the largest questions surrounding the review is whether the AAS certificate will be converted into a major.
Eddie Glaude Jr., religion professor and Center chair, said the external review was a “necessary step” for the Center to “get a sense of where we are, where we hope to go.” Glaude is currently on leave from the University.
Glaude said that the Center is taking “very deliberate steps” to grow, among them the Center’s introduction of a certificate for graduate students to “increase our graduate student footprint” during the last academic year.
But according to Glaude, the Center also hopes to expand into a major. “There’s a general consensus among our core faculty that we need to continue to grow,” he said. “The time has come for some serious consideration.”
While all of Princeton’s Ivy League peers have an undergraduate major in African American Studies, Princeton does not yet offer the major.
Glaude said he recognizes that Princeton is an “outlier” among other Ivy League colleges, but noted that it reflects the “unique” history of Princeton’s undergraduate curriculum, calling the school a “departmentally driven place.”
“Princeton’s a unique space in that it doesn’t allow for double majors,” Glaude said. “I think it’s something that has to do with the particular history of Princeton and the unique power of the traditional departments on our campus.”
Dixon Li ’14, an English major who is pursuing a certificate in AAS, said he doesn’t know if AAS is enough of a study to distinguish itself as an entire major because race studies is interdisciplinary “by nature.”
“The difficulty about AAS or any other kind of race studies or cultural studies is that you end up getting really interdisciplinary,” Li said. “If you read writings of people who do really good race studies at all, they usually end up talking about literature, history, sociology, sometimes philosophy.”
The external review also comes as the Center is experiencing a period of faculty transition. In the last year, Cornel West GS ’80 and four other professors have gone on leave or left active positions at the University permanently. Valerie Smith, who is jointly appointed in the English Department and the Center, is no longer teaching after her appointment to Dean of the College in 2011.
Wallace Best, religion professor and acting chair of the Center in Glaude’s absence, said the change in faculty size was the impetus for the external review.
“Any change, small or large, means you have to reevaluate your operations and sort of think about what it means going forward,” Best said.
Best noted that although the Center has not yet received the results of the external review, he suspects that a large portion of the report will describe the need to hire additional faculty.
In order for the Center to continue to be “viable,” Best said he hopes for a target number of four to five new hires.
The Center has only hired one faculty member, Imani Perry, to teach there exclusively. The rest of the Center’s 14 professors are jointly appointed and teach in other departments at the school, chiefly English, history, sociology and religion.
“There are great strengths to that,” Best said of drawing faculty from other disciplines. “But on a practical level ... we can’t be as strong as we would be if, in fact, dually appointed professors have their attentions divided,” he added.
Best said that the external review was a “thrilling time” for the Center and provided an opportunity to reflect on growth for the future.
After Dean of the Faculty David Dobkin reviews the external review report, the Center and the administration will further discuss its potential expansion.
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