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Fabio Rojas, "From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline" (JHU Press, 2010)
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Dr. Fabio Rojas
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Dr. Zachary Williams
Welcome. This is Dr. Zachary Williams and I am with the New Books Network and today we are interviewing Dr. Fabio Rojas about his very influential and significant book From Black Power to Black Studies, How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline and about the state of Black Studies in general. And just to give you a little bit of information, the book speaks about the Black Power movement's redefining of African American identity while establishing a new racial consciousness in the 1960s representing an influential political force. Political force this Movement, in turn, helped to create an academic discipline now known as Black Studies, Africana Studies, African American Studies, African African American Studies, and Black Women's Studies, and a whole host of other labels that associated with. There are more than, you know, hundreds of Black studies programs, centers, departments, institutes, collectives and collaboratives around the countries, around the country at both public and elite research institutions of higher learning. And wanted to talk with Dr. Hoas today about that very significant work. And even, you know, if you could talk about even putting that work together first and how you come to. Came to even write that particular work and just tell us more about yourself, that would be good for our listeners to know.
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Dr. Fabio Rojas
Sure. Well, my name is Fabio Rojas. I teach sociology at Indiana University. And how did I get to this work? It's a very unusual story. I am not African American. I don't have any African heritage. I am Latin American. So that is like half white, half Indian, is mestizo of some type. But the way it worked was in 1999, I'll remember this. I still remember this very vividly. I was in my graduate program at the University of Chicago, and I was in a reading group on the sociology of education. So this is like a sub discipline of sociology that looks at schools and universities and asks about, like, how do they create inequality, how do they operate as organizations, how, what's the culture of schools? All those kinds of things. That's what sociologists of education study. And so we read this book called Reproduction and Education in Society by two scholars, Pierre Bourdieu and Jean Claude Passeron. I'm not French, so I apologize for the bad French pronunciation, but this is a very popular book that inside of the sociology of education as well as schools of education. They read this book all the time. And this is like a guide that they use. And the main thesis of the book is, as schools just reproduce the status quo, the rich get richer, the poor stay poor. You know, Trump's kids go to Harvard and they will go on, and their kids will go to Harvard and that sort of thing. And that's the main message of the book. Now, when I read it, I said, well, I believe that's true in some parts. I mean, like, you know, there are elite institutions and they reproduce elites and that sort of thing. But I just spent a little bit of time at the University of California at Berkeley, where I personally, face to face, saw protests that were pushing for new kinds of curricula. And specifically, there was a push for an ethnic studies requirement in the late 1990s. And I saw that, and I remembered that, and I thought to myself, what happened at Berkeley is not consistent with what's in this book. If it's all just about reproducing the status quo, then how could it be that these schools are instituting ethnic studies and ethnic studies requirements and black studies requirements? Why is this even happening? This doesn't fit the model of the book at all. And then I went to the library, and if you know your Dewey decibel numbers very well, Black Studies E184.5. I'll never forget it, because I asked myself, like, what's the history of black studies and these ethnic studies requirements? And I kid you not, at the University of Chicago, one of the most elite, wealthiest schools in the world, the bookshelf was about 8 inches long. There are only a couple of books on black studies. And I'm like, this is a huge gap. So that's how I got started. And then I wrote my dissertation and then the book From Black Power to Black Studies, answering that question of how does the activists bring issues into the university? How's the university respond? What happened to black studies after it was created?
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Dr. Zachary Williams
Yeah, I mean, it's an instructive and intriguing question, one that talks about not only process, but method, but also content, curricula, social environment, people in other areas. We call it Social terms of health. And how that social environment and social milieu help to. To spark, to create, to bring together those people and pieces in a very interesting time in American culture and history, to bring about what becomes known as Black studies and San Francisco State. What made San Francisco and the bay, San Francisco State, such a pivotal moment in American higher education?
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Dr. Fabio Rojas
Yeah, that's a fantastic question. And I myself had that very same question when I started looking into the history of it, because the book is essentially a historical book that traces black studies as a historical process, not as just one curriculum that you get on a syllabus in a class. It's like a whole process. And the Bay Area played a very focal point. You're right. Zachary is absolutely at the center. And here is the answer, which is that the first people to promote black studies as a curriculum, now before the 1960s, there were people who did black history. There's a whole background of this. Like, there are people like Carter Woodson who talked about black education, but that never quite became a curriculum. You couldn't get a degree in it. Not a lot of professors specialized in it and so forth. But the first time you got, like, a curriculum where you say, I could major in this was a San Francisco State in 1968. And the specific reason was that around 1966 to 1969, there were a number of students associated with the Black Panther Party at Oakland. They were in Oakland. So for all you history fans or people who know about the movement, the Black Panthers were a revolutionary group based in Oakland. And one of their ideas was that they would volunteer to be students. They would sign up to be students of various colleges and try to recruit people for protests. So that's a separate story there. But in the process of doing that, they signed up. There was a guy named Jimmy Garrett. He was one of the Black Panthers in Oakland at that time. And he signed up to be an English student getting his bachelor's degree and I think later, a master's degree at San Francisco State College. And he had the idea of organizing the black students together and doing campus mobilization. And then he targeted the curriculum, because at that point, like I said, almost nobody did it. There was no curriculum. It was very rare for any black authors to be assigned and say, in an English class, or maybe you get a week about slavery in American history class. These were just not the most common things that happen. And so it was that interesting combination of San Francisco State being ripe for the taking. It was a campus with a lot of very mature. They were slightly older students. Often they were commuter students. They had their act together so they. They could do political actions. And then these activists come over from Oakland, meet them, and start putting them together in groups. And the specific group that they put together was something called the Black Student Union. Even today, we still have groups called Black Student Unions, but that was a thing in the late 60s. Like, for the first time ever, these black students were on campus. Schools were desegregating. So there was like, kind of a hothouse environment. Then on top of that, add things like the Vietnam War protest, the counterculture of San Francisco, and it was a perfect environment for something like that to come in. And then there were also a number of black politicians who also helped out. So, like, the local community would support these black students. The two names that you might recognize today are Ron Delums, who was the representative of that area of San Francisco in Oakland and in Congress. So he was elected to Congress, But I discovered that he was an advisor for the black students in the 1960s. Willie Brown, who was mayor and assembly speaker in California. So basically think of San Francisco State as kind of a place with. With a slightly older profile of students who could take the time to do political actions, who take it really seriously, these Black Panthers coming in and then the surrounding black community really supporting them in many ways. And then it all comes together. In 1968, we could delve into that, because it's a really fascinating story of how it happened. But there had been this proposal floating around for this thing called Black Studies. It was even called something like Civil Rights Studies or SNCC studies. SNCC studies was something that was floating around the college for many years. And then they took it and they said, we're going to do a strike. And they had 10 demands, but one of them was a demand for a black studies program. So it was a really great environment where everything came together. The political support, the community support, the older students, the mobilization in Oakland, which then spills over into San Francisco, that all comes together in that movement at San Francisco State.
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Dr. Zachary Williams
It's amazing because, I mean, most times people talk about facts and content, but they don't understand, you know, process or procedure, how actually those, you know, events and, you know, those energies come together. You know, how that mobilization actually comes about. Because history is in history, social sciences, humanities are instructive to help us to understand not only what has happened, but how it happened and also what can influence what can take place and what can happen. So when you talk about sort of the social milieu between campus and community, that sort of spillover influences what happens on campus, because students are becoming those who are, you know, on campus and are attending classes, whether they are, you know, veterans or whether they're, you know, come back from war, whether they're students who, you know, who are related to other people. And so all that, you know, helps to show this interrelation between campus and community, city, you know, town environment. And often people separate those way too much and try to find ways to reinvent the wheel and not necessarily know what actually it took, you know, the sort of the coalescing of forces to bring about actual social change. In that sense, you know, you talk about Black studies as a loyal opposition. What does that represent, and why is it significant as it relates to this whole. Whole institution building? And could you speak to how. How does Black studies go from being a movement, a social movement, to an academic discipline? This whole question of interdisciplinarity and the institution of higher learning, some call an academic industrial complex and how it's become overly commercialized? If you look at the work of Christopher Newfield, particularly public institutions, and what's that say about how Black studies and Chicano studies, women's studies, different types of social studies, that are born on the margins, but are also essential pieces of American society. How they help to change and shift and alter that narrative of what is acceptable, what is regular, what is normative, and even how does it sort of shift the character and structure of what higher learning is supposed to be about?
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Dr. Fabio Rojas
Yeah, those are fantastic questions. So in general, when we think about black studies, but also Chicano studies, Asian American studies, Native American studies, we have to start with the point that was raised earlier, which is that they were excluded. So that was basically the issue. There had been a period of segregation in American schools that starts ending around the 1940s, 50s, depending on where you look at it. But the 1960s is when everybody starts coming to campus. Right. So women start going to formally all male schools. Black students are going to formally all white schools. And that's part of the whole milieu and social process. So when people ask for a curriculum for courses and degree programs that speak to a particular history or particular identity or particular form of social change, then that becomes a very contentious issue. Right. These people were excluded. They're bringing the new ideas and there's resistance. You asked about institutionalization, so it's a multi step process. So the first is you have to yell, yeah, this is not something you get by filling out the form and going to the DMV and getting your driver's license. This is. And even with, you know, academic disciplines that are not so, you know, contentious like ethnic studies, but you look at the history of any discipline, there's a lot of conservatism in the academy. Professors are always resistant to new ideas. And it could be the most modest things people would say, like, oh, cognitive science and AI, that's not a real thing. That's what they said in like 1950, but now it's a real thing. I discovered, I discovered my research that like, there was even a conflict between computer scientists and librarians at one point. Yeah, because the first computers are used to digitize large databases like card catalogs. And then it's like, is that library science or is that engineering? So like. And then add some. Exactly. Then add something like black studies, which comes out of the civil rights movement and the Black Panther movement, then that becomes even more contentious. So there's a phase of the struggle which is about actual protest. And so if you read chapter three of the book and, you know, read other scholars who've written on this, a lot of it has to do with mobilizing students, mobilizing faculty, you know. You know, and it got very contentious. Like, I remember, I Interviewed Nathan Hare, who is now passed on. Nathan is no longer with us. But I said, I read a report that you kind of held Martin Luther King's dad hostage for a day or two at a sit in. And it's like, is that true? And he's like, yeah, you had to be there. It made sense at the time. It's like, why would you do that, man? That's crazy. But that tells you what it was like that everybody's like, hyper emotional. People's, you know, they were fighting often life and death struggles. People like. One thing I discovered in studying the San Francisco State history was that many students got injured during these protests. Like, there were police reports and they were pretty brutal. Like, you know, ribs broken, arms broken, hospitalized overnight. And, you know, these students. And there'll be like Vietnam era protests or protests for black studies, and there'd be conflicts between police and the security. And it got very difficult. So that's like phase one. But then at some point, if you're lucky, the administration pays attention and they say, okay, we want to settle this conflict. How is it going to play out? That's the institutionalization part. And that's what I found really interesting is that you have to shift identities. It is no longer useful to scream. You have to put on a coat and tie. You have to fill out the form and follow directions. And some people did a great job at it, and some people, frankly, didn't do a good job at it. And that made operating their academic program more difficult than it might have been. But yeah, so that sets up the whole history of it. So in the way. The way you transition out of the activism phase into the suit and tie phase is really crucial to what black studies will look like in your particular campus.
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Dr. Zachary Williams
That's fascinating. It's interesting when you talk about institutionalization of it, how do you go from being a social movement, being an advocate of pushing against status quo, to becoming a part of it? Which raises the question, does it give it legitimacy or does it weaken it in moderating this? People have issues with the whole idea of radical. But whether you talk about, you know, ideas such as fascist or any other type term, it really speaks to a sense of urgency to where people have been enduring particular social conditions and want to experience better and are tired of waiting, in the words of what Fannie Hayne would say, sick and tired of being sick and tired. But this whole fine line of being within a system where you go from marginality to some centrality, balancing legitimacy and moderating in a system that amongst People that may or may not value a personhood, which that term is tossed and danted about a lot, but doesn't speak to people's sort of basic human interests. And so how do you balance that and how has it been balanced over all these celebrations 30, 40, 50 years plus of various types of black studies programs, departments and institutes? And where is it now in that sense, that question of institutionalization in a changing institute of higher learning where particular politics are still aggressively questioning its value and legitimacy?
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Dr. Fabio Rojas
Yeah, that's the constant struggle for the field, because unlike some other disciplines, I just mentioned computer science as a cute example, but that actually had a legitimacy issue. But then they won the game. And part of it was financial, that the rise of Silicon Valley made their entire field look really cool now that you could make a lot of money at it. But also as the field matured, it became very mathematical, very engineering oriented. And that gives you kind of a lot of credibility within the academic system. But for black studies, that was never completely resolved, and we're seeing that today. And you mentioned earlier in a question about being like, of the loyal opposition, I think that's a really great way to say it, because higher education is a system with a lot of actors in it. Some, some of them are very, very supportive. So in the book, for example, I talk about these wealthy philanthropists literally handing out million dollar contracts to black studies programs to help them out. Even at my campus, the Robert Wood Johnson foundation was kind enough to make an award to our center for Race and Ethnic Studies in Society. That's what it's called here. There's also an Africana unit here as well. They also got a big grant. So you see, sometimes there are actors who are willing to invest, willing to put in the money, but then there are other actors. Sometimes they're just, you know, disinterested. They're not hostile, they just don't care. Right. So your dean may be a chemist, and they may not care about the history of the black struggle in America, just like it's just not their thing. And then in some places there's actual active hostility. Probably the really excellent example today is Texas A and M University. And it's kind of funny that, you know, a couple of months ago I got one of those generic, please apply for this position at Texas A and M. And you know, it's funny, I just thought to myself, I would not be able to teach my own book according to their new policy. So it would be, it'd be very ironic if they ever hired me for that. Reason. But that shows you the example, which is like this never became a quote, unquote settled issue. This is still contentious. And the loyal opposition model is a great way to say it, which is the black slaves did transition out of activism. The important thing to know, there is a lot of people who said they were activists. They kind of got phased out, they didn't get tenure, or they were not able to continue. Then you get a new generation of people in the 80s and 90s who are super professionalized. They had PhDs, they did not claim the activist identity. But still the institution as a whole. Higher education as a whole, as I just pointed out, was very ambivalent. Like a lot of people are fighting them and not completely accepting them. So you might see a place like Yale where after many decades, they finally toss a big chunk of money at them and they have a success. Then there are other places like Kennesaw State is like a well known example where their program was shut down and you see everything in between. So it's a very complicated, contentious landscape.
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Dr. Zachary Williams
Yeah. One of our good friends and colleagues at Kennesaw State had been battling with other scholars, you know, to, you know, try to keep that subject area, you know, you know, afloat. And it's interesting when you talk about the politics of funding and philanthropy in which Joe, this, this whole managerial ethos, this commercializing, you know, going for, you know, taking, as Newfield says, public higher education from being a public good to more sort of a privatized entity and everything being sort of commercialized and even the role of foundations and think tanks, you know, and sort of, you know, the ways which we could talk about how the rise of black studies research centers and think things like the ones you're talking about, ones at Brown Roses over and others to research, you know, to have this hybrid, you know, sort of, you know, existence of being a research think tank doing scholarship and the like in ways that they're seeking also to get funding and grant support and grant funding to be able to do research and to bring on scholars, visiting scholars and hire full time faculty. And even the whole questions of not only disciplinarity, but even department status, program, department, how long it takes to become that, Questions of legitimacy around that. How does that also relate to this idea of groups like the Ford foundation and even now the Mellon Foundation's funding of Black Studies podcast helping to shape the direction of black Studies programs? And does it come at a cost? Are programs and scholars and community leaders who are associate with, able to retain some level of saliency and authenticity? And how do you counterbalance along the legitimacy question, continue to have authenticity, but still being able to call your own sort of plays and name your own faculty and have sort of institutional control? I mean, how do you, how does that kind of, where does it sit today in terms of, you know, foundations and think tanks readily wanting to support and fund, you know, those programs and institutions?
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Dr. Fabio Rojas
Yeah, so the way I would read it is by saying there's two layers to the issue. There's a very elite layer at the Harvards, the Browns, the Stanfords and whatnot. And then there's everybody else. And the reason is, is that the most elite universities, the most well supported universities can kind of do whatever they want. We saw this with the Trump administration last year where they messed with federal funding. Yes, there was a panic, but I didn't see any Harvard professors losing a job. You know, it's, yeah, they, you know, they laid off some part time staff, but that was like it. I mean, everybody was fine. You know, they didn't shut, you know, like I didn't see, you know, Harvard Square going on the rep block, you know, getting repossessed. So and so there they have enough money where if they decide that something has intellectual merit, they can just do it. Right? So at Brown they decided like, okay, Trisha Rose, super well known scholar in this area and she gets a ton of support. Skip Gates was the example I talked about where literally, you know, what happened was there was a dean, this is Henry Rosovsky at Harvard, uh, he was retiring and he said, what's the last thing I can do as dean before I retire in the next one or two years? And so he persuaded the administration to just drop a bunch of money to, to, to hire Skip Gates. And he hired a number of other prominent people. So that's like one world of academia. Then there's everybody else. And everybody else is probably like the entire system, except for maybe about 50 universities or something. And what everybody else looks like is you live and die on credit hours. And so this is where things like Kennesaw State become contentious. This is an issue here in Indiana, where I'm currently teaching is also a serious issue. And even if you love the program, it is hard to justify to trustees and state legislatures having six tenured faculty for a major that graduates, like, three or four people a year. The sociology program in Indiana has a joint bachelor's degree with our Africana studies program. And when I looked up the numbers when I became chair a couple of years ago, I discovered, like, they had one joint major with black studies every, like, six or seven years. So I'm like, oh, my God, just like. And I had no magic solution because the number of. It's called African, African and African American Diaspora studies that we call AAA ds. So the number of triple ADS majors to start is really small. And to get them to double major in social is really hard, you know. So luckily they didn' mess with us, because as a joint bachelor's program, it doesn't cost any extra money. But in general, this did point me in the direction of a problem which I did talk about in the book, which is that the field has a lot of intellectual merit, but it has trouble attracting students, especially past the freshman level. And once you're in that situation, you get into all the structural issues you're talking about, like, maybe it should be a program rather than a department. A number of other units have had their universities had their black studies units rolled into general studies or just broader ethnic studies. And even the most sympathetic administrator has a tough time justifying entire programs that serve, like, four graduates a year or something. And so this is something that the field has to grapple with, which is undergraduate enrollments. And of course, there are exceptions. Some places have gotten large numbers of people in the major. But this is like a consistent problem over decades in multiple ways that they have to figure out a way to make the accountants happy. Because having the whole research thing is something for the elite schools because they can afford it, but the rest of them is kind of tough.
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Dr. Zachary Williams
It's interesting. It's comparable when you think about what's happening in think tank space. And I've had interest in sort of hybrid existence being in institutes of Higher Learning, PWIs, writing about HBCU, Howard University, where you saw this sort of nascent form of black studies during the time of the hollow renaissance in the, like, 20s and 30s, comparable to the 60s, when black studies is birthed, but also being a part of think tank worlds, you know, been affiliated with the Institute of The Black World, the 21st century iteration of the original black world that was at the AU center that was formative in helping to shape Black studies curricula and training. Yeah, a lot of thinkers, particularly with Vincent Hardy, who was a professor of religious studies.
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Dr. Fabio Rojas
Right? Yeah. He also interviewed for the book, by the way. He was super nice to do that. So I'm eternally grateful to him for doing that.
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Dr. Zachary Williams
I had one opportunity to interview because I had crossed paths with a mentee couple at Bowling Green State University where I and a group of scholars in the James Baldwin Room came together to talk about relationship between scholarship, Africana studies scholarship and policy. Because our mentor, Dr. Lillian Ashgraf Eason, call us sort of, you know, affectionately, a mammalian, you know, was, you know, the sort of shepherd of that program. But we remember the James Baldwin Room of ethnic studies where Dr. Michael Martin, you know, who wrote a, you know, had major work in Caribbean studies, but also did a lot with regard to sort of a compendium on reparations, you know, and had and pulled together an incredible group of scholars, Gerald Horn and Bernard Boxel and others to Talk about Howard McGarry to talk about reparation from philosophical and historical position. We met in the James Baldwin Room to talk about. How do you relate Black Studies, Africana Studies, American Studies, American culture studies had all those different variations and versions to policy and measures and laws and things of that nature. And so it's just interesting to see how even groups are using and have used in another space, private space, to create a couch of two, you know, what Black studies and Chicano studies and women's studies and queer studies and other studies have created, you know, to try to, as a counterpoint to undermine social science and humanities in those think tank spaces. The recent, you know, you know, the reports are talking. The recent, what is it called? The Project 2025 was authored by a professor who got a doctorate in African American Studies or concentration in African American Studies, but then comes to create African American, you know, anti African American studies type initiatives and like, and even when the former presidents was African American, but sort of touting an anti sort of African American, you know, content, curricula, sort of message which, you know, doesn't go. Go with what black cities is trying to do. So how do we understand how there are private philanthropies and institutions who are funding those initiatives as what was funded for Black Studies? But how with Black studies and all of its versions, that funding, as with funding with regard to dei was sort of short lived and that window was very short. But with those other institutions, those counter institutions, their funding is like the fortifiests are always on. And so how is it possible to have long term professional legitimacy, institutional legitimacy, and still get funding and still have a sort of voice to speak what sort of your truth? And even the truth of what is American culture in all of its complexity and simplicity. Scott Brown talked about simplicity in the whole documentary on funk music. That of course, based on some of the work of Dr. Raylan Hrabakka and others.
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Dr. Fabio Rojas
Yeah, no, that's a really great question. And the way I start thinking about these issues is the phrase coalition of the willing. I know that's George Bush's phrase, but roll with me on this. But still, with any valuable social project that you embark on, it is going to be very hard to have other people just turn around and give you a huge amount of support with no strings attached. That's just very rare to happen. And you know, even if you think about the wealthiest companies in the world, you know, like they had their ups and downs and whatnot, and the way you make these institutions survive is that you really work a lot on your networks. You really work hard on building relationships with the people and think about the coalition of the willingness and to go in and understand that most people don't care. And some people will be hostile. You know, like the state of Florida, for example, is directly hostile towards my book. So I know from firsthand experience that they're not happy with me. But it's a coalition of the willing. And then you just have. And I think diversification also helps. So, you know, you mentioned the Ford foundation, and there's actually been a kind of a contentious history there early in the history of the discipline about co optation. Like if you take money from a philanthropy, do you have to do what they say or are they somehow diluting the message? And I think the answer is, well, if you go in with a coalition of the willing model and not say that I'm desperate, I'll do whatever it takes to get money. But instead of say, this is my project, who is willing to fund it? You'll probably have to make some compromises along the way. But they won't be too bad if you have a coalition of the willing model. And that's a much stronger place to start with. And this is what a lot of successful nonprofits do. So maybe Africana scholars can look at the world of nonprofits and say for nonprofits that aren't very mainstream or have a very. Like, for example, for many years I was on the board of kind of an abolitionist immigration rights nonprofit there. It was like there were five or 10 funders that really provided the support for that organization. And maybe Africana states can maintain a similar position to say, you know, this is a coalition of the Willing Style project, and it has value. It has had value and will continue to have value and will produce more good stuff by building this very rich network that doesn't rely on just one funder, but relies on multiple funders and multiple streams. And maybe another thing is also to really work on, you know, touching back on the previous issue is reaching out to high school students and really getting them plugged in early, because once they realize there's like an AP test or a college course they can take, then that will help you with the pipeline later that when they're juniors or seniors, and then you get those numbers in the major going up, and then a small fraction of them will become like, you know, you know, like a very wealthy philanthropist. You know, they're like, a few people will hit the jackpot and they'll invent the next AI and then. And that's what Skip Gates did. He did provide a written interview for the book, and Henry Rosovsky provided it verbal. We actually spoke on the phone a few times. And in rejuvenating the Harvard program, that was often an issue of finding the one black funder that really cared and would step in and help out. And that model, I think, is a little bit better than saying we'll just take whatever money and then we have to sell out or dilute the message. We'll say, this is who we are. We're going to be open about it. Who is willing to help this out as a painful and hard process, but probably in the long term, much healthier.
- [36:07]
Dr. Zachary Williams
Yeah, it's interesting because, I mean, we always got to think about how to reinvent. Not necessarily reinvent the wheel, but reinvent over sort of a changing social, cultural landscape. Because we know how American values and interests like we're talking about happening with regard to voting rights, they constrict and they expand. It's this sort of ongoing sort of, you know, dance. And so, you know, the question I remember asking Dr. Willeman and Lee when I was interning with the Joint Political economic studies when Dr. Eddie Williams was its president and had this interesting sort of relationship with academia and brought in scholars and thinkers like Dr. Jewell Gibbs to talk about sociologists, to talk about, you know, scholarship in the academy, in a private think tank and space, you know, that was also, you know, sort of at the forefront of promoting voting, you know, voting rights and opportunities with some of its founders like Kenneth Clark, you know, the author of the Dahl study and the pioneering social psychologist, and Louis Martin and others who are major Michigan political gatekeeper and powerhouse. And so I asked her, how is it possible to even build a bridge between academia, an institution, a bridge, scholarship institution between academia and the think tank public policy space. And she said at the time, I would, you know, have to choose one or the other. And so when you look at that, but also look at that with respect to, you know, what's happened with, you know, the work of Gene Stefanik and other scholars when they talked about no mercy and how conservative think tanks have built this, this conservative think tank foundation apparatus of which the. How other sort of the foundation that, you know, developed Project 2025, you know, how it has found a way to get support and funding for sort of a quasi, you know, counter black studies think tank space, you know, in sort of absentia, you know, the Heritage foundation, trying to think of its name and how, you know, how that, you know, how has that been replicated with regard to other types of perspectives and views, particularly that are more supportive oftentimes of African American, Chicano women's issues and perspectives and scholarship. And so I also spent some time with the center for American Progress and their efforts there to promote sort of campaign, you know, sort of campaign, sort of, you know, efforts. But the question is, what about scholarship? I had a recent conversation with the, you know, a scholar and a figure that talks about, you know, philanthropy. That said there's this major issue to where other types of effectives, you know, maybe liberal or more moderate groups don't necessarily, you know, put as much value on the scholarship, the research part, the thinking part. I know Mark Tushnett talked about that as well in the forward to Gene Stefanik and their co authors piece about conservative think tanks and the founding of the funding of those institutions and entities. I went back to that thought process that Dr. Lee talked about and I've continued to wrestle with that because when you look at the evolution of Black Africana, Chicana, African American studies, there continues to be this question of funding, getting funding and support to have sustainability, having status that is able to be autonomous. And so the question is, how is it possible to continue that in light of these questions and current debates over diversity, CRT and DEI and the like?
- [40:05]
Dr. Fabio Rojas
Yeah, that's a really great question. And when you look at the history of think tanks, you see a number of different models that you could develop to make more stable places for black studies and to create that connection between the academic environment and the nonprofit environment or the think tank environment. So one example is like the RAND Corporation. They were funded mainly to help the defense establishment conduct engineering studies and management and human resource studies and that sort of thing. But what they would do is basically they set up the shop and said, well, you know, we'll take any, any contract, private or public, and then they use the proceeds to subsidize their academic unit. A few people understand that the RAND Corporation has a PhD program. It has a journal of economics and whatnot. So that would be one model where you could say, well, if you bring people with a lot of good human capital together and just say, look, you know, Nabisco, if you want a study of who eats cookies or Doritos or whatever, we'll pay for that, but that the proceeds from that are then reinvested into other sorts of intellectual work. And that might be very valuable. The Columbia University Sociology department actually was famous for that model in the 1950s and 60s. So a lot of our understanding of the media and public opinion comes from Columbia university in the 50s and 60s, where basically they said, we'll take any contract or may not any, but you have a bunch of money, we'll do the study for you. And then what we're going to do is we'll take part of the proceeds or the profit, invest it into academic work. So that was a model that was more popular, but people have dropped that model. Another way to do it is to you but have called the Jeff Bezos model, or maybe the Charles Koch Koch model from the libertarian side of things, just to say, I really care about this X, here's a billion dollars, and we will subsidize things over time. And so in some cases, you know, a lot of these think tanks have done pretty well. So for example, the Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank. And a disclaimer, I've actually been on the Cato podcast and whatnot talking about some of these very same issues, actually. So thank you for doing that. But they're an example of where they got their initial start by, I think the Koch foundation gave them a big chunk of money in the 70s and 80s to get started. So that's another model. So you could just pray for that one philanthropist, the one Africana studies undergraduate who becomes big, and then they give you $5 million or $10 million or 100 million, and then you could have a foundation based on that. And Then maybe the final model is to do something very similar to what the Brookings does, which is to be very DC oriented, but to have a subsection of scholars. So here I'm going to give a shout out to a personal friend and collaborator, a guy named Rashawn Ray, who's a professor of. He was a student of mine like 20 years ago. He's like an amazing dude. We edited a magazine. Yeah, it's like we edited a magazine together. I love him. He's like an amazing dude. But he, he, he's a walking model of another path. Where, you know, what he does is he has an appointment at Brookings, but he's very careful to say that part of my mission is to make the academic think tank connection because it's not going to build itself. It takes somebody of his intelligence and caliber to build that. So, so that's another model where you say, okay, you know, Brookings, I don't know where he gets his money from, but you know, it is what it is. But, but you could have a subgroup, a loyal opposition inside. So to say there were Shawns of the world. And it takes a lot of effort. But I think he's very skilled at talking to non academic audiences. He's been very good at it. And that's like another model. And then if you think of those different models, like for example, like the IBW Stuford Black World was maybe in that first model, when they started in their first iteration, they had a weird complicated history. We could go down that rabbit hole. But suffice it to say, it did work out, but there's no reason it couldn't work out. Right. So you may say, well, okay, you know, there's like Institute for the Black World Part 3 or something. And they have a number of people with our interests who are signed up and we do contract work. But then some of the profits go back into more independent thinking. Or you could find the, you know, the patron who gives you a ton of money, or you could do what Rashawn does, which is to learn to build that bridge and take it as your own project to create that space. And there's no one way to do it. But I think those are ways to kind of, you know, circumvent some of the problems you've been talking about.
- [44:43]
Dr. Zachary Williams
Yeah, I mean, there's, there's so much, you know, synergy and overlap. Kind of like, you know, what Lewis or Lewis talked about, overlapping, you know, diasporas. As you talk about African diaspora scholarship. But it does speak to, in the age of open, you know, AI and you know, the changing nature of university. What's the role of public scholars, public intellectuals, public thinkers, you know, who haven't always gotten sort of a appreciative sort of, sort of, you know, position. And when you think about a lot of the scholars, Even during the 20s, 30s and 40s, you know, like, you know, the Zordon Hurstons and the Sterling Browns and Elaine Lockes and even, you know, a lot of the other thinkers of various backgrounds, you know, they, they, they participate in public scholarship, whether they were at HBCUs or minority serving institutions, because oftentimes their sort of identity was based not only in their scholarship, but also based in neighborhoods that they, they, they came from, that they were living in, that they were still rooted in and connected with. And their scholarship was also global in that sense. And so now we look at what public scholarship is and how public scholarship plays a role with this question of humanities and social sciences and people questioning whether or not it has validity and the like. And what does that, you know, say about, you know, you know, how, you know, people can build bridges and build gaps at a time where people are trying to tear away public institutions and structures, where people have come to find voice and be able to find a relationship or in a role in society, whereas they have been marginalized or stigmatized. And even with it, what does it say about institution of higher learning and how Black studies and its different relatives contribute to the developing of a multiracial democracy in the ways that Dr. Manning marable and others talked about for quite such a long time? And even with that, how do we speak about lessons that modern student leaders or activists can learn from the movements that help to sustain support black studies?
- [46:42]
Dr. Fabio Rojas
Yeah, those are all fabulous questions. And so I've always thought, what makes Africana studies or Black studies special or unique is historical experience? I remember when I was researching this book and I was starting to hang out in black science programs, I remember, you know, seeing a talk given by Beth Richie, who was, I believe, the chair of the UIC program. And I think I showed up at their seminar or something, and she got up and said, you know, you know, the point here isn't just to add color to a discipline like a cook might take a food dye, just make it like a different color, but is to bring some, like, kind of a certain perspective. And I, and I just remember her talk, and it was very vivid. And even to this day, I can still remember that discussion she led in that seminar or lecture, and that really attuned Me to what makes Africana studies interesting or important is that historical experience that, you know, people say, well, why can't you be an economist and study black, you know, laborers or workers in an econ department? Is like, you could. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, that would be great if we had more black economists. That's wonderful. But there, the focus would be on technical economics. It would not be focused on that particular experience. So if you buy this argument that what makes the whole field special is that it represents a certain experience, then what that means is that it would be an integral part of people's education. Right. To understand that, like, they're like, there is American history overall, but they're also separate streams of that history that reflect different experiences. And even to understand that the experiences of somebody whose parents went through the great Migration is different than the parents. If your parents just came from Nigeria and they're like educated professionals, like, those are just different. Right. That would make you a better student in high school. It also would make you a better citizen in general. Just to understand the people living next to you are coming on a different trajectory. Right. And so I think that's how the field would really maintain its integrity and its distinctiveness, but also make a strong argument for intellectual merit. Because here's the interesting thing about the humanities and the social sciences, which is that it's not like chemistry, it's not like math, where there's, like, a technical answer and it doesn't matter who you are. Right? Just like, it's like, I know people might say there's special math. There's like, no, no, no. Just like, trust me, numbers are numbers. That's the way it works. But history is not just history. Literature is not just literature. And the special thing about books, you know, and history is they allow you to experience somebody else. Right? Right. And so, like, I was in, you know, an online reading group about James Baldwin a couple years ago, and I find. I mean, he's such an amazing writer, but I think the phrase that I got, you know, was fire in the belly. Just like, he wrote everything with extreme urgency and passion. And I don't think that's my personality. Like, I care about things. I'm more cool and analytical. But, like, he. He was coming from a position of urgency, personal urgency. Had a very difficult time growing up. This really tough economic urgency. Then later in his life, he radicalized. So that's like another form of urgency also. Frustration with white America was another element of his urgency. But having his books published and having the workshops on them allows somebody in the year 20, 25 or 23, whatever, I did that, to go back in time and to be him for a few seconds or to think about his perspective. Right? And that is the, the argument, the merit based argument for Africana studies, which is like, there's a distinctive experience. Like when I read Afro pessimists, I don't buy their argument. Ultimately, that list, like people can only experience a positive feeling if they think blackness is, is, you know, negative. But what I did take from that literature is that there is a really unique history that's not quite reproduced with any other cultural group in the world, right. Like there are other diasporas, but not quite in the same way. You know, even historians will say things like, you know, the American south is one of only a handful of civilizations that was so deeply intertwined with slavery that, you know, defined its economy and identity, right? So while slavery existed in many places, very few places have had like their entire economy based on it on that level. And, you know, for that to exist in, you know, the south, the Caribbean, various parts of the Americas, to have that diaspora be all over the place, to have it be, you know, transatlantic in that particular way, that's a very special experience. And that's what these programs and these people can bring. And also, I think that could be brought in a way that speaks to lots of people, regardless of their political orientation. Like, you know, like, for example, like one year I was teaching a summer seminar for, for gifted and talented juniors that it's called the Telluride Program. And so I did it on the issue of black activism. And at the end I had them read Colin Powell and Clarence Thomas and they're just like, fabio, this is dumb. It's like, they're not dumb. Maybe you're dumb for thinking they're dumb, but they're black. And like Clarence Thomas is saying, I grew up in Georgia in this environment. The reason I'm conservative is because I believe this happened. And you could have a legitimate debate about that. But it's like he comes at it from a very African American perspective. Like, his parents were Geechee, they did not speak English all the time at home. He had a reaction to people in the 60s, right? And that was his thing. Then Colin Powell had a very different reaction. He's also coming from a position of disadvantage, but he kind of goes more mainstream, right? And I'm like, but you'd only have that perspective if you appreciate what is special about the diasporic experience to start with, right? And it's like there's not one way to be black. It's a whole universe of humanity we're talking about. And that's why I think the field can keep its relevance by saying it's a lens that's valuable and important and relevant to a lot of people.
- [53:22]
Dr. Zachary Williams
It's interesting we had that conversation in class. I taught class I teach at LSU Adjunct Professor, a class on upper division class on 3044 on black rhetorical traditions. And we talked about one of the courses texts we used was Aaron Green and other authors recent book the Sociology of Cardi B where he talked about, you know, the phenomenon of Cardi B, the person of Cardi B and even the cultural background of Cardi B from sort of, you know, Afro, you know, Latin backgrounds that become sort of, you know, you know, enmeshed into sort of a broader black identity within the United States, you know, and even students who even had both, you know, Haitian and Dominican Republican identity, they also talked about how that relates to this broader blackness. Again, back to Earl Lewis overlapping diasporas and how we can conceptualize not just who people are, who people become, but environments that they grow up in. And there's a broad array of perspectives and people and cultures and happenings that are taking place. Even talking about even Emily Rabito's sort of cultural narratives based on her work like Searching for Zion and some memoir esque sort of piece, but also showing how she is a daughter of a prominent black religious scholar, Albert Rabato, sorry, the African American church, the invisible institution comes to conceptualize black identity and black culture in a global sense, you know, but, but what does that say about, you know, even what you call loyal opposition groups within black studies who may carve a particular space like now, Black feminist thought seems to be somewhat oppositional in some respects because of the, the black gender divide and that course that sort of spans I think even race and class and is characteristic of, of sort of America's national identity and global identity. This, this sort of, you know, global sort of, you know, questioning, continuing questioning of the role of gender and as relates to labor and identity and things of that nature. And even people finding themselves generationally, you know, at points of feeling isolationist and separate from groups and collective experiences. And what does it say about how we consume, how we relate and everything else and even the mission of Black studies, you know, and other sorts of, you know, areas that, you know, are shaped by even other figures at, who are at San Francisco State, like, you know, the great poet laureate Sonia Sanchez, who was A mentor to one of my colleagues, Dr. Finnil Joseph, who's a major scholar in African American studies. Right. So. And how does that sort of continuous and sustainability continue? You know, and it leads me to, I think one of the question, final questions to ask is, you know, looking back over your scholarship, even the sort of the origins and evolution of Black Studies, has it fulfilled its original goals envisioned by early activists and scholars? And what can be done to, you know, to take Black studies and women's studies and Black women's studies as, you know, colleague, you know, Stephanie Evans has at Clark Atlanta to a whole nother level that is constructive in ways that Dr. Marable talked about. Living Black history can be, you know, has corrective pieces, has descriptive pieces, basel pieces that are prescriptive, sort of point a way forward institutionally and be about institutional sort of building and sustainability.
- [56:36]
Dr. Fabio Rojas
Yeah, that's a great question. And I think the way I would think about it is partial credit. If you're asked the question, is this what the activists thought in 1965? I would say they might give partial credit. And I think the reason is if you, you know, I did interview some of those folks and I did, I do have their documentary records and they mentioned a field that had like a great deal of autonomy, a great deal of support, and they've gotten part of that. Like if you told them like, you know, if you said in 1966, we're going to do this at Harvard in 1970, that would have been a mind blowing statement. They would not have believed. But also one of the big messages of the book is that when you're in a big institutional system, there's all kinds of compromises and reshapings that you have to do in order to survive. And so rather than saying, did they achieve what the activists wanted in 1968? The answer is no. But they evolved. And currently the evolutionary point we're at right now is this model where the elites are doing kind of well. But the more typical institution in the United States is having a tough time sustaining this Black studies program, even with favorable administrations. But some of them don't have favorable administrations. And so that kind of two sides of the coin is where we're at today. And that's where a constant experimentation and learning to, you know, like the sociology cardiov is a great example. Learning to refresh, to update, to connect to new experiences is the right way to go. And it's okay. You know, the activists of the past are the activists of the past. And we're playing the game today. And we're going to do the best we can.
- [58:22]
Dr. Zachary Williams
Yeah. And I think that more conversation, critical thinking, you know, just being. Being willing to debate and discuss and talk about ideas, you know, that's. Has become a sort of an art that needs to be sort of revived, resuscitated, that you have your position, perspective, but you need to be willing to be in conversation with ideas and like you talking in the 60s and 70s, have a sort of a deep analysis, you know, have breadth and depth to be able to see how your work also relates to other subjects in other areas in the social science, humanities, natural sciences and the like. And even have a global sort of perspective about how you see scholarship and subject material. And like even how we address these questions of objective supposed objectivity, even as there is this evidence subjectivity that is a part of analysis. And even how do we get even people in public spaces and public work to appreciate the work, the rigor, the research effort of what happens and takes place among communities and collectives of scholars in academia, in academic spaces, to show that there's value, particularly as we look at society where there's these, in addition to this isolationist epidemic, the sort of reading, you know, crisis in our country where people don't read and read actual books anymore, you know, and like I was telling my students, like we're going to talk about the trap music of Cardi B. Got to talk about the trap music of TI and have them in conversation with each other and other global thinkers and speakers as it relates to hip hop in its post 50th anniversary and how even that as a movement also overlaps with these other movements, that they're not isolated, they're interrelated, very much so. And. And help to pioneer a new era of scholarship. And I guess one of the other things to think about too, as it relates to scholarship in Black studies, how does AI influence it? In light of figures like Dr. Katherine Johnson and Dr. Gladys west and others who are central pieces in helping human computers to not only send people into space, but to give sort of mathematical, computational, sort of intellectual thought to what becomes these global positioning systems and computer systems that become sort of foundational for AI, how can we help to encourage students to see whether in the sciences, social science, the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities or whatnot, how Black studies still has a role in even shaping that not just from a future Afro futuristic position, globally speaking, broadly speaking, but from a position of across areas, subjects and disciplines?
- [61:04]
Dr. Fabio Rojas
Yeah, well, that's the question for the day and at the very Least academics have a really good position to maintain the dialogue, to keep the eye on the ball with AI is a wonderful example because it's not neutral. AI only models what we give it. People forget that the current version of AI is called a large language model. And in layman's terms, that simply means that computers are fed lots of language, and then they come up with a statistical guess on what the proper response is to a verbal cue. So if you put in stuff that has a particular flavor or slant or bias into it, it'll spit out something biased. It's not an independent thinker. And understanding these biases and how they may be built in the systems is a crucial task for scholarship. And, you know, I think the entire Africana studies field can be one of the anchor points for these discussions.
- [62:04]
Dr. Zachary Williams
That's. That's great. Look forward to talking to you more about that, you know, and other scholars as we try to conceptualize and think about what comes next. And that leads into my final question. What's next for you? What are you working on now in current research or research interests?
- [62:19]
Dr. Fabio Rojas
Right. So the thing that's coming up immediately is a book called Two Visions of the Art World. And so this is a separate track of research which asks the question, how do artists organize their lives? And this is an argument saying that, you know, instead of thinking about the art world in terms of markets and auctions and chasing status through fancy educational programs, there's a communal side, there's a community side that you have to really understand that if you omit it, you just aren't going to understand a lot of what happens in the art world. Then maybe more relevant to our discussion today, I have some papers on the Black Lives Matters movement, if people want to follow my work. There was a 2022 paper with Jelani Ince and Zachary Donovan and Harry Yan that came out of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing that when there was a BLM protest, it took a critical theory, terms that made them more prominent in American culture. And then I have some more recent work which I try to get published on when and where Black Study, Black Lives Matter protests happen. So a lot on the plate. And if you want to read about the art stuff, send me a note that'll be coming out from Oxford University Press in the fall, probably around September, October. But thank you very much. I appreciate it.
- [63:38]
Dr. Zachary Williams
Well, thank you, Dr. Rojas. It's been great to talk with you and wish you well in your scholarship and look forward to, you know, talking with you, collaborating with you, in the future on, you know, Black studies initiatives to move the, you know, the area forward. So thank you for your time. Best wishes to you and look forward to talking with you again.
- [63:57]
Dr. Fabio Rojas
Thank you.
- [63:58]
Dr. Zachary Williams
Thanks so much. Take care.
- [63:59]
New Books Network Host
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- [64:35]
Dr. Fabio Rojas
Sam.