Spurred on by fierce student activism a decade ago, Columbia University is now pushing forward with plans to create an American Indian studies program, making it one of only three Ivy League colleges to offer such a curriculum.

University officials say they are in the preliminary stages of planning for the academic program, which they hope will eventually allow students to major in the interdisciplinary subject.

“We are trying to catch up with something big and important that has already been going on at colleges and universities across the nation,” says Dr. Evan Haefeli, who teaches American Indian history.

Columbia’s program comes decades after other colleges, like Arizona State University and Oklahoma State University, formed American Indian history programs. The State University of New York at Buffalo grants a doctorate in the discipline while a half-dozen other colleges and universities offer master’s degrees. Dartmouth College and Cornell University are the other two Ivy League schools that offer American Indian studies.

“We are trying to bring this to the Ivy League,” says Haefeli, who is on the steering committee charged with developing the academic component of the program. Once finalized, the program will likely be coordinated through the Columbia’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. Haefeli says other top-tier universities, including Harvard University the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University, are also talking about the possibility of creating similar programs.

Most of the existing American Indian studies programs are located in the Southwest region of the country, where many American Indians reside. But officials at Columbia say New York City has become a haven for many American Indians.

But some students have questioned why Columbia is creating a new American Indian program just months after announcing the temporary suspension its African studies program, The popular ethnic studies program was put on hold largely because of a lack of funding.  University officials have repeatedly said that they are reorganizing the African studies program and it will be back in place with a new director for the 2007-2008 academic school year.