Munashe Furusa, Ph.D.

BY SLAV KANDYBA

CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Munashe Furusa quickly points to the numbers to reflect the impact of the Africana Studies Department he chairs at California State University’s Dominguez Hills campus.                                                                                                                                                                     

                                                                                                                                                                           Tom Spencer-Walters, Ph.D.

There are also the partnerships with Carson city officials and Los Angeles Unified School District administrators to host the Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast and bring thousands of middle and high school students to the university campus for a visit, respectively. Even in these lean economic times, Furusa said the department is negotiating a partnership with King Drew Medical Magnet High School to bring more students to the university on a regular basis.

Although they have come a long way since their creation in the turbulent 1960s, African American studies departments like Furusa’s in the area’s universities are struggling to remain progressive. From budget cuts to a debate over whether the departments should have one standard name — it is Pan-African Studies at Cal State Northridge and African-American Studies at UCLA, for example — two chairs, one dean and a director interviewed for this story spoke of programs whose identity is still very much under the proverbial microscope.

“You have to constantly make yourself relevant,” said Tom Spencer-Walters, chair of the Pan-African Studies department at Cal State Northridge. Within his department, he highlights the work of the Black Student Union and the Hip-Hop Think Tank as helping the department stay on course. The Think Tank, which grew out of associate professor Karin Stanford’s “Politics of Hip-Hop” course, “is bridging the gap between the academy and hip-hop as its practices within the community,” Walters said. Students mentored by Stanford have gone on to Columbia and Syracuse universities, among others, to pursue the studies they began at CSUN, he said.

Over at Cal State Los Angeles, Melina Abdullah, a graduate school classmate of Stanford’s at Howard University, said she is familiar with the Hip-Hop Think Tank. At her campus, Abdullah is teaching a course called “Hip-Hop as Political Expression” and is writing a book on the subject, she said.

                                                                                                                                             Darnell Hunt, Ph.D.

“Black L.A.” will feature conclusive research from scholars at various universities, said Darnell Hunt, the director of the Bunche Center. The center, which Hunt describes as a research “think tank” and not a department, has researched African American student enrollment at UCLA, a topic that has been politicized for several years.

Kenneth Monteiro, Ph.D.

 San Francisco State’s College of Ethnic Studies is perhaps the most comprehensive program of its kind in the state, with 15 faculty members and 20 lecturers, said Kenneth Monteiro, the college’s dean. Students can choose from classes in Africana Studies, Asian Studies, American-Indian Studies and Raza Studies. Plans are in place for an undergraduate program in Arab-Muslim Diaspora Studies, Monteiro said. From the big-picture standpoint, the very existence of ethnic studies has resulted in university-wide change, a “shift in gravity,” he said.

To spread the word in the community about the ethnic studies programs throughout the 23-campus Cal State system, Monteiro reached out to clergy and helped create “Super Sundays.” The event takes place on two Sundays in February throughout California. The Southern California events will take place Feb. 22 at 26 churches with CSU officials delivering the message of college preparation for prospective students and their families (www.calstate.edu).

“We get the attention of parents, cousins and the potential students,” Monteiro said. The outreach results in a “booster shot” systemwide, he added.

Back at Cal State Dominguez Hills, Furusa acknowledges a stark reality. Because the department is new, “during budget deficits, we may find ourselves where we have to defend our existence.

“Our challenge is to develop vibrant curriculum and continue to develop new theories and perspectives that stick to our reality today,” he said.