As African-American studies disciplinarians celebrate the expansion and 20-year anniversary of African American doctoral studies this year, some are wondering when there will be a similar development at historically Black colleges and universities.
“It is one of the nastier sores in the curriculum belly of Black colleges,” says Dr. Molefi Kete Asante, creator of the first Ph.D. program in African-American studies at Temple University.
This year, Temple is commemorating its 20-year anniversary and two more doctoral programs have been established at Indiana University Bloomington and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Adding in Brown University, which will soon launch a program, to a list that includes Michigan State University, Northwestern University, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the University of California-Berkeley, Harvard University and Yale University, then there are now 10 African-American studies doctoral programs at traditionally White institutions (TWIs). Meanwhile, there are still zero programs at HBCUs.
“We should be leading the way,” says Dr. Mayibuye Monanabela, a professor of Africana Studies at Tennessee State University. “We should be the citadel.”
HBCUs have yet to build bastions of African-American studies doctoral programs because of a lack of vision, resources and doctoral programs in general — and an uncertainty about whether HBCUs are even in need of them, disciplinarians posit.
The question is whether “HBCUs are Black universities and Blackness, or the perspective of Black people is built into the curriculum because if it is, then you can not proceed with the development of master’s and doctoral programs,” says E. Ethelbert Miller, the director of Howard’s Afro-American Studies Resource Center, who teaches in its Afro-American Studies department. “What has happened since we have not answered that question is that other programs have developed at White institutions now reaching the doctoral level.”
