BC Missing Department Head

As with its Cambridge neighbor, Harvard University, Boston College has had its share of difficulty within its African-American Studies Department.

While racial tension has risen at Harvard due to conflicts between President Lawrence Summers and professor Cornel West, BC has had difficulty maintaining the structure of its African-American Studies Department. The department has gone without a chairman since four years ago.

According to African-American Studies Director Frank Taylor, the Honorable David S. Nelson Professional chair position has been empty since the department’s first chair left in 1998.

Taylor said the chair position “came out of student protests on campus around 1996. One of the things that students demanded was that the chair be set up.”

The original purpose of the chair was for it to be offered to a visiting professor for two years in the hopes that the professor would “fall in love with BC” and seek permanent employment at the college, Taylor said.

Since the job’s creation in 1996, only Lucius Outlaw, Jr., has occupied the position. Taylor said there has been no attempt to find anyone to fill it since 1999, when economics expert and USA Today columnist Julianne Malveaux was suggested as a possible holder.

Taylor said the lack of a chair committee and the short duration of the position were two major deterrents filling the chair.

“The committee to fill the chair has been dissolved, and a reconstituted committee is needed,” he said. “Also, most people are already attached to an institution.” Taylor said many professors probably do not want to move their spouses and children away from their home for only two years.

Since there is no committee to search for a chair, there is no other effort being made, Taylor said.

“I have no idea why nothing else is being done,” Taylor said.

In Cambridge, Harvard has seen recent tensions between its African-American Studies Department and the administration.

Last December, West threatened to leave Harvard’s faculty for Princeton after Summers criticized West for working on the Rev. Al Sharpton’s presidential exploratory committee.

Although West and Summers said they eventually resolved the problem, African-American studies professor Anthony Appiah left the university in February for a position at Princeton University.

African-American studies expert and political science professor Dr. Michael Dawson will be joining Harvard’s faculty in September.

As for BC, Taylor said the department needs some form of help, but he said he does not know of any long-term solutions.

“African-Americans … go wherever there are jobs, and [they] can be in a position where people will treat them with dignity and respect,” Taylor said. “I would certainly like to see more African-American professors in institutions in Boston. I have suspicions [on why they are not being hired in the area], but I have nothing to confirm my suspicions.”

Taylor estimated that 25 of the current 641 full-time BC faculty members are African-American.