From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline

6 Constructing the Discipline

Chapters 3, 4, and 5 examine specific universities, academic programs, and nonprofit organizations. Prior chapters show how activists targeted universities and introduced black studies. I also explore the long-term consequences of black student activism, the conditions inside universities that helped black studies programs survive, and how philanthropists responded to the rise of black studies. These case studies show the various ways that black studies programs evolved in different directions after the student movement. This chapter focuses on the black studies profession as a whole. Instead of looking at particular programs, I examine the population of black studies programs and the professors who teach in them. This chapter uses statistical data on universities and black studies professors to understand how a new academic discipline was created. When do universities create black studies programs ? What kinds of people are recruited to be black studies professors? How do these professors feel about their own discipline? What is the position of black studies in the wider system of academic disciplines? The answers to these questions show how black studies programs were assembled from the rest of academia and how movements impact an organizational field by creating an occupational group.¹ This chapter establishes the following facts about black studies. First, black studies is a phenomenon of elite research universities. Although black studies may have started in teaching colleges such as San Francisco State University and Merritt College in Oakland, the degree-granting black studies program is c h a p t e r s i x Constructing the Discipline most commonly found in research-intensive institutions. Furthermore, the spread of black studies programs among research universities depends on a combination of two factors—black student protest and a “follow the leader” effect in which universities copy each other. I show that the presence of a black studies program is correlated not only with protest but also, specifically, with nondisruptive protest. Second,black studies has many of the features one would expect of an established academic discipline. Structurally, the black studies field resembles many other academic disciplines. The black studies professoriat is similar to other social science and humanities fields in its demographic profile. Furthermore, most professors possess doctoral degrees,indicating that they have received the highest professional training in teaching and research. The black studies field has internal venues for publication, such as the Black Scholar, Journal of Black Studies, Journal of African-American Studies, and the Western Journal of Black Studies. The field has professional associations such as the National Council for Black Studies. Cognitively, as well, the field resembles other disciplines. For example ,most black studies professors believe their discipline has its own unique methods and should be under the jurisdiction of professors. Black studies professors also agree that certain books have achieved a canonical status. These findings suggest that there is common ground for discussion and cumulative research in the field. Third,black studies,as an academic discipline,has extremely porous boundaries .Black studies professors have not made black studies a self-contained academic community in the same way that economics, English literature, and mathematics are self-contained. The evidence suggests that up to 40 percent of black studies faculty members have taught core black studies courses in non– black studies departments. Appointment patterns for black studies professors show that a high proportion of them teach in multiple departments. They are trained in a wide range of academic disciplines, ranging from history to religious studies to food science. These findings suggest that black studies is an “interdiscipline.”The field has many—but not all—of the institutions associated with mature academic disciplines and is strongly connected to other fields. Black studies has institutionalized itself in research universities and liberal arts colleges. It has its own professional organizations, journals, and literary canon. However, it also recruits its professors primarily from other fields. Black studies professors routinely teach outside of their academic unit, and most of them hold appointments in 168 From Black Power to Black Studies fields outside of black studies. In the concluding section of this chapter, I summarize the quantitative evidence on black studies degree programs and the professoriat to argue that black studies is an example of an academic community whose social organization is more formalized than a research specialty (e.g., continental philosophy or polymer chemistry) but not as self-contained as one of thecoredisciplines(e.g.,mathematicsorphilosophy).Blackstudiesisasemiinstitutionalized field...