Four conferences important to African American Studies were held this fall. Columbia University's Institute for Research in African-American Studies hosted "The Future of African-American Studies Theory, Pedagogy, and Research;" New York University's Africana Studies Program and Institute of Afro-American Affairs sponsored "Finding Fanon: Critical Genealogies;" Temple University held the Eighth Annual Cheikh Anta Diop Conference with the theme "The Impact and Significance of the Works of Dr. Maulana Ndabezitha Karenga;" and the National Council for Black Studies held its annual meeting at Gallaudet University, this year titled "Celebrating Thirty Years of Black Studies/Africana Studies: A Legacy of Leadership, Learning and Change."

The programs of the four conferences not only provide straightforward accounts of what the meetings intended to achieve, but reveal much about the state of Black studies.

Future historians of Black studies will learn much by studying these programs, examining themes, and determining who was invited and who was not. Some things were predictable. That Manning Marable, who directs Columbia's Institute, would invite Abdul Alkalimat and Gerald Home, troth of whom share his leftist perspective, is understandable, as is Molefe Kete Asante's (who until recently chaired Temple's department) invitation to fellow nationalist Haki Madhubuti. But there were some surprises. The National Council for Black Studies' which just changed the name of its journal from the Afrocentric Scholar to the International Journal of Africana Studies, invited both Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cornel West-- each of whom as had harsh if not downright nasty comments on Afrocentrism--to speak. West is now on the NCBS board.

The NCBS meeting and the NYU conference on Fanon were remarkable for their breadth, with persons of varied ideological perspectives invited to participate. White the naive expect this to be true of all academic conferences, it is seldom the case, and certainly rare in African American studies.