← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · il ragno
Thread ID: 8248 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2003-07-19
2003-07-19 06:58 | User Profile
[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/16/education/16HARV.html]http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/16/educatio...ion/16HARV.html[/url]
Rebuilding Harvard's African Studies Dept. By SARA RIMER
[color=red][font=Times]After a year of turmoil that saw two of its biggest stars defect to Princeton University, Harvard's celebrated Afro-American studies department will be refocused and expanded to include an African language program and a new major in African studies, the chairman of the department, Henry Louis Gates Jr., said yesterday.
Professor Gates, who at one point was so unhappy about the acrimony between his department and the Harvard president, Lawrence H. Summers, that he too weighed offers to leave, said he had appointed five new faculty members, including two African scholars, one a critic of African literature and one a linguist.
His recruits also include a linguistic anthropologist who is one of the country's leading experts on hip-hop. Hip-hop had figured in the turmoil in Professor Gates's department, with Cornel West, one of the stars to leave Harvard, complaining that Mr. Summers had, among other things, been critical of his recording of a hip-hop CD entitled "Sketches of My Culture."
"Given the reports of the contretemps between Cornel West and Larry Summers, some people might find this an ironic outcome," Professor Gates said.
Professor Gates described Mr. Summers as "nothing but supportive" of his efforts to rebuild the department, including his recruiting the hip-hop expert Marcyliena Morgan from the University of California at Los Angeles. Ms. Morgan has already installed her hip-hop archives at Harvard.
Harvard is by no means the first university to merge African and African-American studies in one department, and to offer a major in African studies. But for the university to take such a step is a recognition that the African-American experience in the United States must be understood in relationship to Africa and the diaspora, several scholars said yesterday.
"This is where we're going these days in African-American studies," said John Thornton, an African historian who will join the African-American studies department at Boston University this fall. "It's been a trend intellectually. In the past 15 years, more and more people who are doing African-American history are increasingly interested in the African equation. On the other side, there are more Africanists who are recognizing that there is an American side to what they do."
A year ago Professor Gates was considering jumping to Princeton after the departures of his close friends and colleagues K. Anthony Appiah, the African philosopher, and Dr. West, the black-studies scholar whose fiery lectures packed Harvard auditoriums.
While Professor Appiah had gone to Princeton for personal reasons, Dr. West left after publicly feuding with Mr. Summers over the quality of Dr. West's scholarship and the university administration's commitment to affirmative action. Mr. Summers had declined to comment on the feud or Dr. West's reports of their conversations about his scholarship and his activities outside Harvard.
"People were worried about the administration's commitment to the department," said Professor Gates, a scholar of African and African-American literature, referring to those faculty members who remained. "Several schools were trying to recruit our faculty. Many of us weren't sure we could rebuild. They didn't know if we could come back without Anthony and Cornel."
Now, a year later, he said, he and his colleagues have rebuilt the department. In keeping with the new focus, the department has been renamed African and African-American studies.
"It's not as if any of us thinks we can replace a Cornel or an Anthony," said Evelynn M. Hammonds, a prominent scholar of race and the history of science, who is joining the department from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Those are huge losses."
But Professor Hammonds said she was not worried about the administration's commitment to the department. "Summers is on his learning curve," she said.
Mr. Summers praised Professor Gates's appointments and the new focus on African studies. "We as a university are now going to be taking on African studies in the way we take on Asian studies or Latin American studies or have traditionally taken on European studies," he said in a telephone interview. "We've also been successful in recruiting a number of first-rate people in issues ranging from the history of science to African literature."
The two African scholars Professor Gates has recruited are Abiola Irele, a critic of African literature in French from Ohio State University, and John Mugane, an African linguist from Ohio University. Professor Mugane will direct the new African language program at Harvard.
Africa has 2,089 languages, Professor Mugane said. "Think of them as 2,089 treasures, 2,089 priceless pieces of culture," he said. "My challenge is to make Harvard the best place to learn these African languages."
"It's part of the global challenge," Professor Mugane added. "We have to be able to talk to each other."
With the new appointments, the African and African-American studies department has 25 faculty members. As an associate professor, Ms. Morgan will teach classes on hip-hop and linguistics and be the director of the hip-hop archives, which includes T-shirts, videotapes of the early hip-hop artists practicing their art in basements in the Bronx and an extensive collection of CD's by rappers like Tupac Shakur and Public Enemy.
"While I'm not especially a fan of hip-hop ââ¬â perhaps I'm too old ââ¬â there can be no doubt that it is one of the most important cultural phenomenons in the second half of the 20th century," said Professor Gates, who is 52. "We would be remiss if we did not treat it accordingly." [/font][/color]
Africa has 2,089 languages, Professor Mugane said. "Think of them as 2,089 treasures, 2,089 priceless pieces of culture," he said. "My challenge is to make Harvard the best place to learn these African languages."
Any continent with 2,089 languages isn't worth studying. But you never know. So the next time I have to kill a running zebra with a spear to feed my family, or need to remove a bad-luck spell the neighbor's cat placed upon me - sign me up, Dottuh Gates!
2003-07-19 15:29 | User Profile
The irony is that I doubt any African tribe would see the value in attempting to preserve the culture and language of a competing tribe. The more common practice is that of tribes attempting to annihilate other tribes. African tribes are at this moment butchering and slaughtering each other. There is no sense of the other tribes and their cultures being ââ¬Åpriceless treasuresââ¬Â. Members of competing tribes are to be beheaded and possibly eaten.
Of course, historically this has been true of most people around the world. American Indian tribes would war with other tribes to the point of genocide at times. Entire tribes and languages would come and go base on the ebb and flow of wars.
According to the Bible, the ancient Jews were commanded by God to kill every man, woman and child of the Canaanites and Philistines. There was no sense of needing to preserve other languages and cultures.
During such wars of conquest, the victor did not experience any sort of guilt and self recrimination. Typically, the victor saw the slaughter and destruction of other people as something to be celebrated in song and tale.
I would argue that the concept of preserving other languages and cultures is a modern White concept. The irony is that modern White people are typically vilified as being the most destructive and cruel of all the races.
2003-07-19 16:38 | User Profile
A [u]real[/u] Black/African Studies program would include things like: catching all kinds of exotic, deadly diseases; famine, hacking each other to pieces with machetes; killing White farmers; taking formerly successful, White-run African countries and turning them into hell-holes, then begging White Western countries for aid; taking drugs; robbing, raping, and killing Whitey; going to prison; gubbiment goodies; crying racism every 5 seconds; blaming Whitey for every problem in your life; turning thug rappers and athletes into heroes; having illegitimate children; claiming to have invented everything from the Pyramids to the internet... :y