Scholar to Examine Links Between the 1970s Black Power Movement and Australian Aborigine Activists

Alex Carter, a Ph.D student at the University of Massachusetts, will spend a full year in Australia, beginning in August, working with the Performance Research Unit and the Indigenous Centre at Monash University in Clayton, Victoria, near Melbourne. His research will also take him to Sydney, Brisbane, and Canberra.

Oregon State University Constructing a New Black Cultural Center

The Lonnie B. Harris Black Cultural Center at Oregon State University in Corvallis is getting a new home. The original building is being moved to a community garden in the city and a new structure will be built at the current site.

University Effort to Boost Civil Rights for African Descendants in Latin America

The Institute for the Study of Latin America and the Caribbean at the University of South Florida in Tampa, is undertaking an effort to obtain funding to hold a major training institute for African descendants in Latin America who are working for civil rights.

Berkeley Upgrades Its Multicultural Student Development Programs

Gibor Basri, vice chancellor of equity and inclusion at Berkeley, stated that the main purpose of these programs is "to provide a place where students in these populations can find community and a safe space to talk about the challenges of being in that particular community."

University of Missouri-Kansas City Names New Director of Black Studies Program

Adrienne Walker Hoard has been serving as professor of art and art education at the University of Missouri-Columbia. She previously taught at Ohio State University and Louisiana State University.

The Five New Fellows of the African Research Center at Penn State

The fellows are housed within departments in the College of the Liberal Arts at Penn State and conduct research on or related to Africa or the African diaspora. Each fellow is matched with a mentor on the Penn State faculty.

Survey Documents the State of Black Studies at U.S. Colleges and Universities

A survey of 1,777 colleges and universities found that 76 percent of these institutions had Black studies programs to some degree. Some 20 percent of responding institutions had formal academic units, either departments or programs, dedicated to African American studies.

Major Gift Endows a New Center for Black Studies at Harvard

Henry Louis Gates Jr., who has led the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for more than 20 years, was named the founding director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research.

Michigan State University Begins Jazz Artist-in-Residence Program

The first artist-in-residence will be saxophonist Antonio Hart. He is a graduate of the Berklee College of Music and is a professor at Queens College, a campus of the City University of New York system.

The Rebranding of the Martin Luther King Center at the University of Kentucky

The Martin Luther King Jr. Cultural Center at the University of Kentucky has been renamed the Martin Luther King Center and has revamped its mission to the university.

Barnard College Elevates Africana Studies to Department Status

Barnard College, the highly rated liberal arts educational institution for women in New York City, has elevated its African Studies Program to a full academic department.

Penn State Creates New Doctoral Degree Program in African American Studies

According to the university's count, Penn State will be the 12th university in the United States to offer doctoral degrees in African American studies.

Brandeis University Announces Hiring Campaign in Black Studies

The university, where only 4 percent of the undergraduate student body is Black, has announced that it will hire two faculty members in African diaspora studies in the first phase of a multi-year cluster hire in the discipline.

UCLA Receives Donation of African Art Valued at More Than $14 Million

The Fowler Museum at the University of California at Los Angeles has received a donation of 92 pieces of African art from the collection of Jay T. and Deborah R. Last of Beverly Hills.

New Center on Urban Education Research

The University of Missouri-Kansas City has established the Urban Education Research Center to conduct research and analysis aimed at improving the lives of urban residents throughout the U.S.

Harvard Business School Honors Its Black Alumnae

The new website honoring Black women graduates was established in conjunction with the 50th anniversary celebration of coeducation in the full-time MBA program at Harvard Business School.

Cornell University to Offer a Ph.D. Program in Africana Studies

The university estimates that 20 to 30 percent of Black studies faculty nationwide will be retiring over the next decade and the new Cornell program will help fill the need to replace retiring Black studies faculty.

Yale University Acquires Letters of Author James Baldwin

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University has acquired a collection of letters authored by African American author James Baldwin.

Clark University Holds Youth Summit on Race, Class, and Education

The summit brought high school students from all parts of Massachusetts to the Clark campus for a six-hour program that discussed how race and class shape the educational experiences of American youth.

Center for Minority Serving Institutions Opens at the University of Pennsylvania

The center hopes to support minority serving institutions nationwide and to create opportunities for researchers who are focused on minority-serving institutions.

UCLA May Departmentalize African American Studies

If the program became a department, Black studies could recruit its own faculty, expand partnerships with other academic entities, and possibly develop a doctoral program in the field.

Duke University Exhibits a Copy of the Haitian Declaration of Independence

Duke University has placed on display an original handwritten copy of the Haitian Declaration of Independence. It was probably written by a Haitian who was listening to a public reading of the declaration.

New Book Offers Interesting Data on Black America

There is interesting data on Black Americans organized by chapters such as education, lifestyle and identity, science and technology, entertainment and sports, health, justice, and the environment.

Harvard’s New Group of W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute Fellows

Black scholars who are among the new group of fellows are Christopher Emdin, Shose Kessi, Achille Mbembe, Mark Anthony Neal, Wole Soyinka, and Deborah Willis.

Duke University Promotes a Two-Way African Exchange

Two years ago, Duke University launched its Africa Initiative to increase opportunities for faculty and students in Africa but also to "Africanize" its Durham campus.

CalState Los Angeles Will Require Students to Take Courses on Race and Ethnicity

The AcadCalStateLAemic Senate at California State University in Los Angeles has approved a measure by a vote of 33 to 18 that will require all students to complete a course that focuses on issues of race or ethnicity.

Name Change for Black Studies Program at the University of North Carolina Greensboro

The Black Studies program was founded in 1982 and its name was later changed to African American Studies. Now the program will have the new title of African American and African Diaspora Studies.

Robert Jefferson Named Director of Africana Studies at the University of New Mexico

Currently, Dr. Jefferson is an associate professor in the history department at the University of Alabama Birmingham and has led the African American studies program at the university.

New Study Abroad Program Will Take 16 University of Memphis Students to Ghana

The African and African-American Institute at the University of Memphis is guided by the African proverb, "Those who learn must teach."

Doctoral Student Explores Criminal Trials of Black Women During the Civil War

Tamika Richeson, a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Virginia, is researching records in the National Archives detailing 500 arrests of Black women in Washington in the years 1861 and 1862.

UCLA to Establish a Department of African American Studies

Under the proposal, the interdepartmental program in Afro-American studies will be disbanded and the bachelor's and master's degree programs in the field will be transferred to the new department.

The Oberlin Conservatory Receives the Personal Archives of Jazz Great Milt Hinton

Hinton, a native of Mississippi, had a jazz career that spanned more than 70 years and his music can be heard on more than 1,000 recordings. In addition to his music, Hinton was an avid photographer.

New Website Offers Resources for the Teaching of African American Poetry

The University of Kansas has debuted a new website that makes available to the world the content of last summer's Don't Deny My Voice: Reading and Teaching African American Poetry Institute.

New Degree Program in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California,...

The interdisciplinary program in critical race and ethnic studies is designed to help students develop a deep understanding of how race and other modalities of power have structured human life, both in the past and the present.

University of Texas Study Examines the State of Black Business in the Lone Star...

Black-owned businesses in Texas tended to be very small and 95 percent of them had no paid employees. In 2007, the average Black-owned business in Texas had sales of $60,000 compared to average sales of $1.2 million for all businesses in the state.

Florida International University Begins a Collaborative Effort on African Diaspora Studies

Florida International University in Miami has entered into an agreement with the Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar in Quito, Ecuador, to develop a collaborative program in African diaspora studies and Latin American cultural studies.

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