Reporters, radio show hosts and podcasters have reached out in recent days asking to talk with me about the state of Black studies programs and departments on campuses across the country. “Universities that have closed or merged African American studies units over the past two years include the University of Iowa, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Kansas,” Todd Wallack wrote in a Washington Post article last week. “Others have eliminated or begun phasing out majors and degrees, including Kennesaw State University, the University of Toledo and Indiana University at Bloomington. Several colleges have also trimmed classes, removed them from the core curriculum or cut staff.”
Wallack notes that declining enrollments, the anti-DEI policy environment and federal budget cuts to higher education are being used to justify the elimination of Black studies programs: “U.S. colleges awarded fewer than 700 African American Studies degrees in each of the past three years, the lowest levels in two decades.” This is indeed alarming. Could enrollment declines be explained, at least in part, by insufficient institutional efforts to attract student applicants to Black studies? Could it be that too few colleges and universities value Black studies enough to strategically showcase it as one of the most important academic offerings on campus? Or might it be that enrollment declines signal something bigger: an undervaluing of anything and everything in higher education—except big-time revenue-generating sports—that involves Black students and employees?
