Founding the First PhD in Black Studies: A Sankofa Remembrance and Critical Assessment of Its Significance

Abstract

Clearly, the founding of the first PhD program in Black Studies at Temple University under the leadership of Molefi Kete Asante is a major, defining, and transformative achievement in the advancement of the discipline and in the discipline's continuous initiatives and struggles to expand intellectual and institutional space for a truly multicultural, global, and quality education beyond the existing dominant monocultural Eurocentric paradigm and practice. Its significance also lies in the Afrocentric culturally grounded, agency-focused, and transformative discourse and practice the program has engendered beyond the academy, and the seminal contribution it has made to grounding and cultivating generations of activist intellectuals and scholars who play and will continue to play generative and transformative roles in the academy, their communities, and their societies in this country and in the world. The governing interest of this essay is to critically assess the transformative significance of this historic achievement. Beginning with an introduction to the issue and an examination of the sociohistorical and intellectual context out of which this achievement emerged and grounded itself, the essay, then, discusses some salient factors that define its transformative significance. It concludes with a discussion of sustaining and expanding that achievement

Doing the Work of God: HBCU’s and Black America’s Response to the Influenza Pandemic of 1918

“…This work was a look back to move forward (Karenga, 2018), a remembering of some of the Black American contributions to ending War World One and ending the Influenza Pandemic of 1918. The Black contributions to these efforts were duty/civic-driven, but they were also part of an ongoing, domestic freedom effort.…”

The Influence of African Oral Art Forms in Raising Climate Change Awareness in Oliver Mtukudzi’s ‘Pindirai’.

“…In 1962, Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's founding president 'called for an 'Afro-centric education' for Ghanaian students' (Asante, 2020, p.148). Asante, who was also influenced by the likes of John Henrik Clarke, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, and Marcus Garvey (Karenga, 2018), advanced Afrocentricity alongside Temple University alumni such as Abu Abarry, Ella Forbes, Nilgun Okur, Ama Mazama, Terry Kersh, Tsehloane Keto, Wade Nobles, Maulana Karenga, Nah Dove, and Kariamu Welsh-Asante (Asante, 2021).…”