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

7 Black Studies as the Loyal Opposition

This book began with two questions. First, how did black studies accommodate to the university? Second, how does the institutionalization of black studies illustrate a social movement’s impact on organizations? I answered these questions by showing how black studies grew out of the disillusionment with the civil rights movement and the subsequent surge of black cultural nationalism. Upset that blacks did not immediately gain the social and economic equality promised by the civil rights movement, activists created groups that aggressively pushed for political power. Some groups, like the Black Panthers, established strong links with college students at campuses such as Merritt College and San Francisco State College, encouraging them to demand concessions from administrators. By the late 1960s, black student groups across the country called for increased affirmative action in admissions , financial support for minority undergraduates, black-themed dormitories , and, of course, black studies. Demands for black studies often entailed serious confrontations with university administrators. College leaders’ responses to protesters had a dramatic impact on how conflicts played out. Administrators who were inconsistent in their response to the black studies movement could escalate conflict. Deans and presidents often viewed black studies as illegitimate, or they simply saw it as a low priority. Students then staged strikes and building sit-ins—techniques honed in the civil rights movement—to force universities to establish black studies programs. At other times, deans and professors would side with stuc h a p t e r s e v e n Black Studies as the Loyal Opposition dents by helping them develop proposals that would be acceptable to the university bureaucracy, thus defusing conflict. The long-term consequence of student actions could be seen only a few years later as black studies crystallized as an academic institution. Administrators insisted that black studies programs mitigate their most nationalist tendencies and adopt the practices of other academic disciplines. Proposals framing black studies programs as a resource for the black community were met with stiff resistance. Anything that rang of cultural nationalism was quickly labeled “politicized black studies,” which was inconsistent with the academy’s need to produce objective knowledge. The version of black studies that tended to succeed was one that allied itself with existing academic disciplines. The creation and institutionalization of black studies programs shows how social movements disrupt organizations to promote new policies and practices , enact structural change, and trigger lengthy stabilization processes. Black studies’ creation from the Experimental College in San Francisco shows how organizations themselves can generate new institutional forms by altering existing practices. At San Francisco State College, students used the format of the student-run “current issues” course to invent a curriculum that was then pushed on administrators. The black studies curriculum combined ideas from outside the organization (cultural nationalism) with practices inside the organization (student-led education). Black student actions raise a number of important issues regarding organizational response to protest. A well-organized protest campaign can force issues onto an organization’s agenda, or activists can take advantage of other conflicts to manipulate the agenda.Activists did this at Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois at Chicago when they used conflicts over the Vietnam War and race relations as an opportunity to frame black studies as a university priority. Another issue raised by incidents such as the Third World Strike is that conflict not only disrupts the organization from the inside but ruptures the organization’s connections to the wider public . As the Third World Strike showed, if administrators are seen as weak, then an organization’s board of trustees will have no confidence in the administration . The inability to control insurgency leads to a debilitating spiraling of public confidence. The dual pressure of uncontrolled disruption and political censure hastens the collapse of an organization’s leadership. If activists prevail in a dispute, administrators must decide how change will occur.Organizational culture asserts itself at this point.Administrators will have 208 From Black Power to Black Studies many proposals to choose from and will gravitate toward those that agree with their view of what the organization should do. In the case of black studies, proposalssupportedbynationalistargumentswererejectedbecausetheywereseen as incompatible with academic norms. Community education was jettisoned in favor of elite training.Black studies formulated as an interdisciplinary enterprise became the standard. Resonance with organizational culture is not enough. A proposal to assemble black studies...