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With a Slew of New Hires, Lehigh U. Gets Serious About Africana Studies

January 11, 2012, 11:52 am

By Audrey Williams June

These days, academic departments are more likely to lose tenure-track faculty lines, than gain new ones. So it’s pretty easy to see why getting the green light to hire not one, but multiple, professors with plans for them to work together would generate a lot of excitement.

“Cluster hiring,” as it’s called, has become an increasingly popular way for an institution to build up a critical mass of scholars in interdisciplinary research areas and in disciplines it deems important. Cluster hires also help change a department’s culture and they serve as a recruitment and retention tool for potential faculty.

James B. Peterson knows all about cluster hiring’s allure. He is the new director of the Africana-studies program at Lehigh University — an institution which is in the midst of its own cluster-hiring initiative. Mr. Peterson’s position was the first hire in what will ultimately be a four-person cluster in Lehigh’s Africana-studies program.

“When you’re part of a cluster hire, you know that your institution is serious about supporting your discipline,” said Mr. Peterson, also an associate professor of English. He came to Lehigh from Bucknell University. “That really helped close the deal for me.”

There was much discussion at Lehigh about the best way to bring groups of professors on board since the institution is so different from the much larger research universities where cluster hiring often occurs. The University of Iowa, the University of Delaware, and the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, just to name a few, are places where faculty have been hired in clusters over the last year or so.

At Lehigh, faculty members submitted 19 preliminary proposals, which a faculty led-committee narrowed down to seven finalists. The finalists fleshed out their proposals and the campus community ranked them in a variety of categories, such as the scholarly impact the cluster was likely to have. In the end, Lehigh’s president and provost selected two “winners” in the spring of 2011. A proposal to hire four faculty members to study smart-grid electricity systems was approved in addition to the proposal from Africana studies. Hiring for both clusters is underway now.

Part of the idea behind faculty clusters at Lehigh was to make the most of the campus’ “interdisciplinary character,” which didn’t always carry over to the institution’s hiring process, said Patrick Farrell, Lehigh’s provost since 2009. “We wanted to see if we could get over the hurdle of thinking in a disciplinary way when we hire faculty.”

The plan is to hold the cluster proposal competition every other year. So new hiring proposals will be accepted again this fall, with hiring for the next round of approved clusters to begin in the fall of 2013. In the interim, Lehigh has made small cluster development grants available to the authors of proposals that fell short the first time around, as well as to faculty who plan to craft proposals for the upcoming competition.

Like many institutions these days, Lehigh is closely watching its bottom line. So for now, the money to make cluster hires will come from existing faculty lines that have been freed up once professors retire, Mr. Farrell says. But it’s possible that down the line, donors may pick up the tab for new faculty lines.

“The notion of hiring clusters of faculty to focus on big challenges really does seem to resonate with them,” Mr. Farrell says of donors. “They understand why we’re so excited.”

As for Mr. Peterson, he wants to convey that same excitement to potential candidates for the assistant professor job he’s currently trying to fill. The advertisement for the position, a joint appointment in Africana studies and history, notes the growth of Africana studies at Lehigh over the last three years. To complete the cluster, two more Africana-studies faculty members will be hired over the next two years, the ad says.

Mr. Peterson, who is co-chair of the search committee, called the applicant pool for the Africana-studies position “exceptional.” The new hire will start work in the fall of 2012.

“This is really an exciting career moment for me,” Mr. Peterson said. “I don’t think people have associated Lehigh University with Africana studies and they’ll have to do that in the future.”

For those of you on the market now, does the possibility of being a part of a cluster hire excite you and why? And if you’ve joined an institution as part of a cluster hire, how is it working out?

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  • jwhawthorne

    With all due respect to Dr. Carter, the answer is not to pay less attention to Race but to attend to Race, Class, and their troubling intersection. A quick look at current unemployment statistics demonstrates the differential life chances. College admissions and measures of achievement should be more attentive to the overlap.

  • fairtest

    Richard Kahlenberg is right — social class is an important factor in understanding college admissions exam scores. Unfortunately, ACT stopped reporting test score averages by family income several years ago, so FairTest and others are no longer able to analyze test results using this proxy for SES (the College Board still breaks down scores by family income categories).

  • old nassau’67

    Let me see now: Most Asian kids taking the ACT’s (and SAT’s, AP’s, IB’s, etc.) are first or second generation USA’er’s, whose (grand)parents speak little English, and sacrifice themselves in menial jobs for their childrens’ education. Like the Jews after WWII, and the middle Europeans now. And these kids still manage top academic achievements.

  • hruskam

    I agree with jwhawthorne, and for whom is not talkiing about race “safe?”  Our society has created racial categorization.  Talking about race may cause discomfort, but to deny that it matters further perpetuates both achievement and opportunity gaps.

  • 11144703

    Young black males, who are most likely performing worst on the ACT in comparison to other groups, can definitely be empowered by listening to another group of oppressed people of color: Asian males of color. There are exceptions, of course, in their success, but this group of Asians (like blacks, the Other) of color, that was oppressed with various laws in the 19th and 20th centuries starting with the Chinese Exclusion Acts and not ending (at least legally) until the 1943 Magnuson Act, has often been fabulously successful.

    Since these Asian males (the Other) of color are already unbelievably empowered despite the oppression day in and day out they receive from the dominant group, i.e., white people in hopelessly racist U.S., both groups of color could share their stories of oppression. Then the Asian males (the Other) of color could discuss the ways they reclaimed and developed Asian male human capital by getting their degrees and then providing a stable home life for their children born into wedlock. Since few young black males are getting advanced degrees in mathematics, physics, chemistry, computer science, etc. (unless they are from the West Indies or are recently from Africa or are transfer students from Africa), and the % of black children born out of wedlock is astronomical, these discussions should prove amazingly empowering.

    Since Asian people (the Other) of color have a significantly higher percentage of degrees, of wages, and of children born into wedlock than the hopelessly white people do, they should be empowering their fellow oppressed people of color (the Other), since some–indeed many–progressives believe that people of color feel more comfortable with other people of color (an argument in perpetuating HBCUs). It’s a win – win situation for–guess who–the Other.     

  • mbelvadi

    I think the most interesting part of this story is the claim that “income is a poor indicator of socioeconomic status”.  If this is true, then it’s far more important than the results on one test – it pretty much blows a giant hole in the “American Dream” narrative, for one thing. I’d like to read more stories in CHE that explicate further on this idea and its implications throughout society and public policy.

  • rocketman81601

    Thank you Richard Kahlenberg.  I’ve been saying this for a long, long time, yet the wheel grinds on.  Disaggregating student achievement by race is a starting point, but it’s folly to assume that race–by itself–can explain these wide and persistent variations.  We won’t get any better until we look under the hood to see how we can influence socioeconomic status and its connection to achievement.  To do otherwise is to assume that members of every racial category are exactly alike.  We know both cognitively and intuitively that within group sameness isn’t supportable. 

  • rick1952

    I think you have missed the point of Kahlenberg’s commentary – it is not just about history and race, it is about social class and current opportunity.

    I am familiar with the history you cite and you omit a key historical fact:  Chinese (and other Asian males) came here of their own volition seeking to have a better life despite the prejudice and discrimination they faced, which was substantial.  African males came here involuntarily and faced even greater prejudice and discrimination – a legal system that for well over 150 years categorized and treated them as less than fully human and therefore not entitled to the human rights accorded to others.  The legal discrimination against Asians was not as long nor as deeply entrenched in our society as that which Africans faced.  The Asian experience, while different in details from the Irish, Italian and other European immigrant experience, shares the fundamental commonality of voluntary immigration to the USA, a key factor that differentiates the experience of ALL other immigrant groups from that of Africans who arrived in the USA before the Civil War.  It is not a small distinction and its legacy is not an easy one to escape, for persons of African and non-African heritage in the USA.  Our social class system reflects this racial legacy, and the history of our nation consistently shows that the European immigrants and their descendants who dominated social institutions in our nation were willing to accept over several generations the other immigrants who arrived on these shores, including Asians, to a far greater degree than those persons whose skin color marked them as “Black.”  If you don’t recognize or accept that as part of our reality then I guess I can understand why you seem to think that all it takes it a little gumption to overcome history.

  • 11274135

    There are at least three complicating factors in discussions of this sort:

    1. We have a general tendency to look for simple and proximate causes of very complex phenomena, maybe because this allows us to be satisfied with simple solutions.

    2. We have a general tendency to find anecdotes to be more persuasive than data, thus confusing possibility with probability.

    3. Particular individuals or groups have some sort of political or personal stake in explanation A rather than explanation B, especially when differnt courses of action follow from A and  B.

    Now, back to the discussion.

     

  • bigjoe

    Lets just keep making excuses and not address the problem.  Sorry, the civil war was about 150 years ago and equal rights was passed about 50 years ago.  It is time to stop making excuses and function in society.  My grand parents came from Europe and did not speak English.  They worked for everything that they received.  They did not walk around for their “hand-out” from the government.  I still like the JFK speach, “…ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” 

  • rick1952

    As has been observed on many occasions, those who ignore history are bound to repeat it.  Understanding and taking into account history is not excuse-making, it is one way to begin to understand how we got to the point we are currently at and what we might do to improve society.  If you want to ignore history (…the civil war was 150 years ago…equal rights was passed about 50 years ago…) then you need to ignore as well the fact that the Revolutionary war for independence from Great Britain was over 200 hundred years ago, JFK’s call for service was 50 years ago, and even the Magna Carta which was signed almost 800 years ago, etc.  Society is built, in large part, by the accumulation of historical experience, for better or worse.  The consequences of history can be quite long-lasting, again for better (in the case of the Declaration of Independence, JFK’s call to service and the Magna Carta) or worse (in the case of the African Slave Trade from the 1600′s until the mid-1800′s or the creation of Black Codes after the period of Reconstruction.)

    As I noted in responding to another post earlier – Kahlenberg is pointing out the importance of taking into account social class and opportunity gaps that exist, which are not just about race.  Even a cursory review of the research on achievement will clearly show any interested person that there is a significant, relationship between social class and achievement.  So, we should be taking that into account as we devise strategies to make our nation more truly reflect its promise of equal opportunity.

  • rick1952

    Your points are well-taken and well-stated.  Your first point reminds me of a quote I came across many years ago: The world is plagued with a surplus of simple answers coupled with a tremendous shortage of simple problems.

  • 11144703

    You would be making an excellent point–if it were the 19th century or even the first half o the 20th century.  Of course legal discrimination didn’t end until the mid 1960s and de facto discrimination continues to exist.  Black families were broken up during slavery–so now we’re going to excuse the unbelieveable 70% of black children who are born out of wedlock today because of broken families during slavery?  (Black families were actually MORE stable before the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  So I guess there is a causal connection between the instability of the black family and that act?)

    One has stop making historical excuses and look at the Asian model for success.    

  • 11144703

    you mention the Atlantic slave trade.  Wat about the Arab slave trade that lasted far longer and killed millions of young black males in castrating them? How has the Arab slave trade which didn’t end till the 20th century impinge on blacks?  Or must we only examine the evil white people in the pernicious West? 

  • rick1952

    I think you are equating historical legacy with the idea of historical excuses.  If you want to look at 20th Century history, I invite you to read Thomas Sugrue’s The Origins of the Urban Crisis.  It is a well-documented and scholarly account of the highly successful efforts made to frustrate the social and economic advancement of African-Americans in the north.  It makes clear how race and class come together when we consider the experience of African-Americans.  (You don’t have to take my word for the quality of the book – it was a Bancroft Prize winner.)  If, after reading that, you still believe that the problems experienced by African-Americans (including the social and economic forces which have contributed to the disintegration of the family structure for so many low-income families) is something that can be remedied by following the example of Asian males, I will be interested to understand  better the basis for your claim.  I have heard the model minority myth promulgated for decades but it has always sounded somewhat hollow to me given the asymmetric experiences of Asians and African-Americans in the USA.

    While I am a strong believer in personal responsibility, I am an equally strong believer in equal opportunity.  I have had enough experience in my personal and professional life to know that personal responsibility cannot overcome systematic denial of equal opportunity.  No one can honestly say that a child in a racially and economically segregated school and community of concentrated poverty is receiving an equal opportunity for success in life (and I believe Kahlenberg is highlighting appropriately the socio-economic aspect of this issue.)  And those communities are the fruit of the social policies and legal structures created and perpetuated by the dominant white society.  That is not about making excuses, that is about facing facts, historical facts which contribute to our current circumstances.  Our society’s unwillingness to face historical facts makes more difficult our society’s ability to overcome the 21st century consequences of our history.

    If personal responsibility and gumption were all that is needed to erase the performance gap, then this problem would have been resolved more than 50 years ago because history shows clearly that personal responsibility and gumption were abundant among African-Americans (those were two key qualities demonstrated for example by those African-Americans who served during WWII as  Tuskegee Airmen as well as those who followed as activists in the Civil Rights movement.)

  • rick1952

    I am trying to stay focused on the topic at hand – the performance gap in the USA between African-American and other ethnic groups in the USA.  There is injustice aplenty throughout the world, no group can lay claim to innocence in that regard.  That does not change the fact that we need to address what is happening right here in the USA, right now.  By trying to be mindful of the historical circumstances that have brought us to our current reality, I am not trying to ignore what is going on in other parts of the world.

  • fibra

    I wonder how long will it take for us to move beyond simplistic explanations for the achievement gap in the US.  I am also tired of people stating that their forbears migrated from Europe and worked hard for everything they have, and nothing was handed to them-forgetting the privilege accorded to Europeans in the US.  Individual suffering and gaining a foothold in the US should be considered in the context of US history, the social creation of the concept of race, inter-generational trauma and daily microaggressions suffered by nondominant cultural groups!  The intersection of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and religion must all be considered to understand why some groups continue to lag behind, including the poor pathetic public schools in poorer schools districts.

  • 11144703

    How do you explain Asians doing significantly better than the white people in many (not all) areas?  For example, Asians with at least a 4 year college degree:  49%;  white people:  29%.  (Source:  The Chronicle.)  Is this invidious Asian privilege?  Or is it only privilege when the white people’s numbers are higher? 

  • 11144703

    “I have heard the model minority myth promulgated for decades”

    Asians rule in most (not all) measures of success:  SAT scores, percentage of those with 4 year BA (49% for Asians, 29% for the white people).  How are such stats a “myth”? 

     I love it when progressives simply dismiss fantastic Asian success as the model “myth” and then are silent on the overwhelming evidence.  No myth.  “Facts are stubborn things.”

    Of course blacks were treated differently than Asians. We agree blacks were treated as subhumans in the West (and in the Arabic slave trade for far longer).  So the fantastic progress of Asians, a fellow people of color, have nothing to say to the experience of black people? 

  • groland

    The gap is not about income but about culture and expectations.  What is valued in Asian cultures is hard-work, discipline, and duty to parents.  Parents demand success and the pressure put upon children is high.  In our American culture, academic achievement is devalued.  Just consider Athletics.  At the college and professional level, sports takes tremendous discipline, training, and dedication.  We see black men dominate in sports because the culture supports and even expects success here.  Their academic success is neither expected nor demanded.  

  • lairdwilcox

    Just as an open question: What would happen to anyone who wrote that there was a direct relationship between race and test scores?  My sense is that person would be in serious career trouble, lose many of his friends, find his job threatened, his wife and children could be made very uncomfortable, his pension and children’s college educations could be jeopardized, class time could be made very awkward, there may be organized attempts to confront, humiliate and even terrorize him, he may even be threatened with “hate crime” charges and this would be seen as all his fault for holding such a taboo opinion.
     
    This being the case, I wonder how anyone can even imagine that anything but the most politically correct comments are going to appear here, unless there is a glutton for punishment with a career death wish somewhere who would be willing to speak out.  Unless a person could be provided with physical security, job security and protection for his family, and legal immunity no one is going to go against the prevailing opinion on this subject.
     
    I’m not saying that there would be any merit to these views, or for that matter that there wouldn’t be.  What I am saying is that we have no idea how many people may adhere to them — very privately, of course — and that by not including them in the conversation we are depriving ourselves of a full and free discussion of the whole issue.  But first they would need to feel safe, and in the present militantly anti-racist climate on the campus there is no way to do that.  The militancy and intolerance of dissent surrounding this topic has sealed its fate and there is not possible to develop any kind of flexibility or honest perspective.

  • realeducator09

    As usual yet another aggregate representation of African American performance is presented in the ACT results.  To look at these results the general thinking would be that ALL African American students performed poorer than every single student in ALL of the other ethnic classes.  Is that really the case, or should we look at factors impacting social class like the academic skill impact of social and economic segregation? What about the AA students that performed as well or better than their other ethnic counterparts?  What’s different about those students, (and yes I do believe that they exist) is it just economics and society or something else?  I’m bored with this same old tune.  There are plenty of answers for these types of performances beyond Coleman.

  • groland

     ”The Bell Curve”  essentially covered this topic.  The real problem with that book was it assumed differences in achievement were genetic and not cultural.  I personally believe they are mostly cultural and that the culture can be changed.  Not surprisingly, if you look at recent immigrants, black students from Africa or the Carribean, I think they do better on average because they have a more supportive parental culture that values academics.  

  • groland

     Unfortunately, when looking at large populations, aggregate scores and distributions are one of the few ways we can try and measure efficacy.  Anyone versed in statistics knows that these numbers are part of broad distributions.  Clearly some AA students will do better than some other ethnic groups.  However, given the size of the sampling pool, the differences in mean test scores are HUGE, especially since we have known about these discrepancies for decades.  It also says that what we are doing to address the gap is not working.   We need new approaches.

  • pm9531

    We need to look at the Asians who fail and the African Americans who succeed on these tests.  What do they do differently than the majority of the group.  What about Whites who have all the requisites to do great on the test but who fail to meet preditions.  These negative and postive outliers may hold clues to why these disparities continue.

  • marka

    You’ve hit the nail on the head.  We’ve been identifying differences for decades, and yet we still try to use approaches that have essentially failed for about the same number of decades.

    Outlawing segregation & promoting integration in the 50s & 60s worked a bit for some individuals, but then stumbled across culture – ‘black’ ‘white’ and in between.  Affirmative action also worked a bit in the 70s & 80s for some individuals (but not others), but then, again, stumbled across culture – ‘black’ ‘white’ and rainbow hues.

    We still have adverse results for those Americans whose ancestors were slaves or indentured servants – both black & white (Georgia was largely populated by forced emigration):  ’white trash’ is as much a part of our collective culture as is ‘black ghetto.’

    So, cultural issues should be the focus, not ‘race’ (there is only 1 race – the human race – when it comes to the human species).

    As noted, ‘blacks’ from the West Indies, Africa, or elsewhere (dark-skinned from the Indian subcontinent, e.g.) seem to have different experiences, and different results.  ’Whites,’ collectively from the poor South, likewise seem to have different experiences and different results.

    The anecdotal exceptions ‘prove’ the general rules – and the question becomes what ‘internal’ factors keep many of those in the ‘black ghettos’ or ‘white trailer-parks’ there?  Do ‘they’ really want out?  And what internal changes are needed?  

    The suggestions are already there:  a cultural desire for formal education, and a cultural willingness to make appropriate sacrifices to achieve these goals – something lacking in some sub-cultures.  And is it even our business to force change here?  Or is that cultural imperialism?

    From where I sit, we’ve confused equal opportunity – which I fully support (separate has not been equal) – with equal results.  We may be all equal in the eyes of God, and those citizens over 18 equal to vote (since 1-’man’-1-vote); but we are not all equal in abilities or interests, as should be apparent to anyone with open eyes & ears, mind & heart.  Nor should we expect equal results, even with equal opportunity.

  • 11144703

    If we could place head clamps on Asians with heavy weights Harrison Bergeron style (a Kurt Vonnegut short story you should read if you haven’t heard of it), maybe Asians wouldn’t do so much better than the white people and then we could create a more egalitarian society. 

  • butteredtoastcat

    Standardized tests favor those who know how to take the test.

    ACT, SAT, GRE, etc. are not about knowledge or intelligence.  They are about how well you understand the types of test questions and how well you recognize these types.  If your school prepares you for testing, if your parents shell out extra money to help you beat these tests, or if you just have a knack for getting into the minds of test preparers, then you do well.  On tests.

    I am not terribly concerned about the test gap.  Racial disparity can often be explain by cultural habits of test preparation and economic access to test preparation materials and classes.  If your culture values memorizing–anything from vocabulary to test question formulas–then you will do well on these tests, especially if you have the money for materials and teachers to help you.  Many middle class kids from white and Asian backgrounds learn early on that it’s not what you really know about a subject that matters; what matters is the score on the test.  There almost a jaded attitude about it.  These kids learn how to beat the test by predicting question patterns, learning tricks and short cuts, and learning how to guess properly.

    I know they learn all this because years ago I taught test preparation classes. Ask me how many kids get a high score on the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) but can’t ask for a hot dog at a lunch cart.  Their real language skill is incredibly low, but these kids have invested a lot of time, energy, and MONEY learning how to take the test.   So they get into college, taking the place of a native speaker who has much better language skills but who may have struggled with the SAT due to a lack of test preparation.

    The real solution is to provide black and Hispanic students with (1) the jaded attitude that school is a game and test prep is what matters and (2) free massive test preparation with really good teachers and months  and months of working on test skills.  If Jaime Escalante could teach inner city kids calculus, a much lesser light could teach them how to beat the test.

  • 11144703

    “These kids learn how to beat the test by predicting question patterns, learning tricks and short cuts, and learning how to guess properly.”

    So why don’t certain peoples of color (Asians, Jamaicans, Africans) share with their brother people of color (African Americans) all these test wisdom tricks so that African Americans can do as well, indeed better than the white people?  It’s a win – win proposition. 

    The Asians, Jamaicans, and Africans need to stop keeping these secret tricks to themselves and start sharing.

     

  • misscreant

    “Despite the end of “legalized” segregation in 1964, we continue to have great difficulty discussing race in America.  And, regardless of one’s views of this movie, it offers a lot about which to talk.”

    Seriously?! We never talk about anything else!!

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_ZZUY4MJWKAR7IEGMQIOB2XGTCM christopher

    1) A rectangle is twice as long as it is wide. If the width of the
    rectangle is 3 inches, what is the rectangle’s area, in square inches?

    2) What is the largest possible product for 2 even integers
    whose sum is 34?

    - This is atrociously racist stuff folks! Expecting a negro to know math?! Outrage!!!

  • bdavi52

    It’s New Coke! It’s nifty keen!  It’s super cool!  It’s far out! 

    It’s unfortunately nothing more than a particularly trendy response to deeply systemic problems of mission, budget, and identity.  Cluster Hire funding flows  from the slow strangulation of traditional faculty lines in established disciplines which are already suffering from the increasingly rapid loss of senior instructors.  Donors may indeed pick up the tab for future ‘clusters’ but only if they are just as easily seduced by the glamorous notion that ‘hot’ issues can be leveraged to build high-visibility, hot-button faculty teams that will somehow drive market-share and media-credibility for the institution (as though these things were of real value to The Academy). 

    Business & Big Government have both wrestled with this kind of short-term thinking for years, as desperate organizations hire issue-specific gunslingers to come in to solve/launch what are dreamed to be high-dollar solutions to their own messy problems.  Success is rare and more often than not the Cluster Hire becomes nothing more than a dollar drain.  If the organization is lucky, the Cluster Hire is “temporary” and can be easily cut loose when the failure becomes evident.  In the case of tenure-track faculty this is effectively impossible.

    To the future disappointment of Mr. Peterson, Lehigh will not be associated with Africana Studies (at least no more than any other equivalent institution) nor will its cluster of Smart Grid Electrical System profs somehow radically drive increased enrollments and long-term student retention.  Though perhaps, following similarly dubious marketing logic, we could offer deep discounts on Africana Degrees?  Maybe a coupon for a free credit or two? 

    In the meantime the University (the Idea & the Ideal) is diminished; its strength failing as we scramble to attach even more ‘leeches’ in our misguided efforts to ‘heal’ what used to be our soul.

  • http://phobos.ramapo.edu/~jweiss Dr. Jillian T. Weiss

    My son is an Engineering and English double major at Lehigh, and from my observations, bringing diversity issues to the attention of Lehigh students is sorely needed. The concept of “cluster hiring” isn’t really new, it seems to me; it’s just hiring more than one person for a department at a time.  But whether or no, I think it’s important to know that it is being done where it’s needed. I think it will be important to ensure that college support will be forthcoming for the time needed to attract students. At my college (Ramapo College of New Jersey), we have recently instituted an Africana Studies major, and I can see that attracting a good number of students will take some years and publicity.  I’m still getting used to the idea that I have to market my department to the students, but times have changed. It seems to me that Professor Peterson is perfect as director, as he seems to know how to bring publicity to the department, with his quite-eloquent appearances on MSNBC as a commentator. I was very pleased to see that. I have also encouraged my son to take a course with him, but I think we all know how parental advice is often received. (To be fair, he does listen to me on occasion, at least, on those occasions when he thinks I’m making sense.)    

  • manoflamancha

    Teaching a course or two on Africana (new word?) is nothing new, but what of the (few) students who actually major in this subject? What job does this prepare students for? And are there ANY employment opportunities for such degree holders, other than teaching in some other Africana department? This all seems so silly and such a waste of time and money! A student at Lehigh would be better served by majoring in Engineering. One can always then do some good by doing well.

  • elizabeth66

    What is Lehigh thinking?  Tuition is high, and jobs for Afrakana majors is zero.  Why would anybody think that cluster hiring in a field that provides no jobs is a good idea?  If the goal is to attract minorities, then Leigh should “beef up” its programs that do offer employment and go after qualified minorities.  Very bad decision-making at the top.

  • gabrielinaz

    I confess my first reaction was the exact same as manoflamancha and elizabeth66.  Why produce unmarketable graduates in such a completely useless field of study?  But then a second thought occurred… Africa is hot, not just in climate, but economically as well.  The continent that many in the West mistakenly assume is a backwater of malaria, dictatorships and oppression is growing and prospering, far beyond what our media may represent.  What if an Africana major, because of their knowledge of the history and tribal cultures of the region, can help a company close an oil deal in Uganda, or to procure land for crops in Botswana?  Or, to take Lehigh’s interdisciplinary approach to the logical extreme, wouldn’t Africa be the perfect place to build a smart grid?  Good for Lehigh, to focus on a part of the world that hasn’t received enough attention, but soon will.

  • http://phobos.ramapo.edu/~jweiss Dr. Jillian T. Weiss

    I understand your concerns about employment opportunities, but life is not a linear progression.  I myself was the only Classics major at my college when I was there, and my parents were horrified, but I managed somehow to create a successful life.  Studying Africana Studies doesn’t mean you can only become a professor.  Studying engineering does not mean you will become a successful engineer.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=9508588 Real Qui Gon J

    lehigh in africa

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