Historical Urgency of Reinstituting the Africana Studies Program at WMU

 

 

The Africana Studies Program is a multidisciplinary program that facilitates the study of peoples of African descent around the world and has its roots in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The aim of programs and departments that teach about the African experience from its inception was to create a more inclusive curriculum in American universities, and to teach African American students about their experiences, histories, struggles, and triumphs in the United States, Africa and in the African Diaspora. The Africana Studies Program at WMU is the result of the struggles that students wagged in the 1970s and the sacrifices they made to have an inclusive and diverse education at WMU. It is therefore contrary to the principles of diversity, multiculturalism, inclusion and equity that WMU stands for not to reinstitute the African Studies Program. If reinstituted, such a program will also prepare students to think critically, to express themselves creatively, to respect cultural diversity, and to make independent contributions to the intellectual, cultural, and spiritual growth of WMU, the United States, and the world community. This will close the gap of the need for “broader participation and willingness for other people to be included in the conversation about diversity” (Worthington, 2012-13, p.43).