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“Curriculum diversity” and
“curricular transformation” are not my preferred terms for referencing
a set of issues which has been of paramount importance to me throughout my
career at the University of Pittsburgh. By granting these terms privileged positions, there is the
possibility that a larger and more important set of academic issues will
be obscured by a somewhat myopic focus (which often turns into a good
old-fashioned faculty donnybrook) on curricular issues such as whether,
notwithstanding her demonstrated genius, Toni Morrison’s work should be
included in the “core curriculum.”
Those of us who entered the academy during the late 1960s,
concerned with the phenomenon referenced as “Black” and “African
American” studies, were concerned with much more far reaching issues
regarding the nature and purposes of the academy.
As Chair of Black Studies, I had curriculum concerns, but I did not
merely seek the addition of “foreign” languages such as Swahili,
Yoruba, Mandingo, Twi, and Hausa to French, German, Italian, and Russian.
I also wanted to put English in its proper political, economic,
power perspective. Now, as a
Vice Provost, I do not seek any of the various forms of “token
curriculum integration,” e.g., [1] the use of the “curriculum pepper
shaker” to add speeches by Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Barbara
Jordan, and Shirley Chisholm to other “touchstone” speeches in an
introductory public speaking course, or [2] in lieu of a programmatic
curriculum reflecting intellectual depth and breadth, the production of a
“sham curriculum” in a department and/or throughout a traditional arts
and sciences curriculum by adding a set of introductory courses prefaced
by “African American” or “Black.”
Rather, I seek a curriculum, reflecting the rigorous depth and
breadth, which flows naturally from cutting edge, high quality,
comparative scholarship related to the African Diaspora.
The Black Studies research and curriculum missions, as I and others
conceived the discipline, remain as part of my quest to address a more
fundamental matter, i.e., the issue of “power,” or, stated
differently, the prime issue of inequality in the academy—inequality in
representation within the professorate, inequality in student
representation, inequality in staff and administrative representation,
inequality in the sharing of institutional resources, inequality in the
services provided to various non-university communities— and how
inequality permits select views of higher education to achieve hegemonic
status. My concerns were and
continue to be that an inappropriate limited number of people exercise
“power” in higher education. With changes in the various forms of inequality, my hope is
that the resultant power shifts will bring about true paradigm shifts, of
which “curriculum transformation” will be but one factor. In the late 1960s, many of us were
contesting “truth” as it was defined in some areas of the University.
Consider, for example, a few online statements for our College of
Arts and Sciences. “The curriculum of the College
provides the main elements of a liberal education: acquaintance with great
works of art, literature, and philosophy, and the skills to appreciate
them; some understanding of basic social institutions and processes; a
sense of history and some familiarity with the richness and variety of
human cultural achievements; an awareness of the main ideas of
contemporary natural science and mathematics; and a capacity for analyzing
and making judgments about the important issues of public policy.” We knew that the “truth” of the
foregoing lofty matters was in part a function of “power,” the power
derived from [1] scholars’ research, publications and teaching, [2]
scholars banded together in professional associations, [3] scholars in
control of professional journals and other modes of distribution, [4]
scholars who occupy key administrative positions and in turn
institutional, state, federal and private resources, and, in sum, [5]
scholars who control the knowledge industry, thereby enabling the
reproduction of themselves and their products. We knew as Picasso knew
that some of the “great works of art” were based on African
aesthetics, but that those who controlled the knowledge industry prevented
the systematic study of African art as well as the art of Africans who
survived American slavery. We
knew that Jung found some psychoanalytic roots in African philosophical
thought, but again, those in control prevented the study of African and
African American philosophical systems.
We knew that the “richness and variety of human cultural
achievements” consisted of much more than what was being taught in the
late 1960s, and for that matter, what is still primarily being taught in
2000. My current vision is that Black
Studies, Women’s Studies, and other emerging disciplines will consist of
new research, teaching, and service that supplement the best traditions of
the University, and in so doing, will help the University achieve its
goals as a major research institution with international visibility.
As such, my “curriculum transformation” includes the “hidden
curriculum,” i.e., proportional representation of diverse faculty,
staff, administrators and students interacting with others, helping to
achieve an intellectual synergy that would benefit all institutional
members. Sadly, some have
entered 2000 with rather parochial views regarding the “new angles of
vision” that international, non-traditional, gay, lesbian, and students
of color as well as staff and faculty can bring to the University.
However, the “truth” of the matter is that this University can
never go beyond the very best in “bricks and mortar” unless it becomes
a place in which competing discourses can occur, free from internal and
external pressures, without negative repercussions.
So long as any significant members of the University prevail in
their beliefs that there is a single, fixed, immutable way of thinking
about any substantive matter, we cannot realize our highest academic
goals. Nor can our students
engage in the forms of learning they will need as world citizens. Coping effectively with regional and global changes in a highly scientific and technologically driven new world order necessitates that our students learn to negotiate differences without the presence of intolerance, to view change not as something to fear but as an opportunity to advance humankind, and to approach complex problems from multiple perspectives as opposed to using only the “tried and true” alleged “universal truth.” To achieve these goals, a truly diverse learning environment is essential. Toward that end, we must constantly remind ourselves that silencing students, staff, faculty and administrators who wish to pursue alternative visions will place a plague on our intellectual ambience. If I could implement a change on campus that would hasten the transformation I seek, then silencing would give way to intellectual self-expression, and one would no longer be able to find refuge in “veiled truth,” postponing the inevitable because “it is just too sensitive right now.” |
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