Faculty and students say the initiative is long overdue.

“Students have always wanted to see their cultural worlds represented in the classroom, in courses offered and programs developed,” said Anthony Pinn, founding director of the Center for African and African American Studies.

And considering Rice’s location in the diverse city of Houston, a place that owes some of its development directly to the African and African American presence, “it would be inexcusable for Rice… to not study African and African American studies and do it in a substantive way,” he said.

Other black studies programs

Houston Community College offers a 12-semester hour credit certificate in Africana/African American Studies.

Texas A&M University has both a minor and 12-hour graduate certificate.

UH-Clear Lake offers a minor in Africana studies.

Texas Southern University has minors in both African studies and African American studies.

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In its first year, the Rice center will focus on expanding the African studies minor, which was first approved in 2009. The revamped program will offer a two-track African and African American studies minor, with courses from the college’s anthropology, English, history, religion, sociology and political science departments. The center will draw upon a dozen faculty members with the goal of hiring more to boost the program.

Pinn, who is also Rice’s Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities, said he and his team are developing an introductory course for the updated minor that will hold the combination of African and African American studies in “creative tension.”

“Within this one course, students will get a sense of how these two longstanding intellectual enterprises developed, the kinds of questions they ask, the kinds of methods they make use of and the kinds of theories that ground them,” Pinn said.

Drew Carter, president of Rice’s Black Student Association, said there’s a lot of excitement surrounding the center “and what it could possibly mean for all students across campus.”

Carter, who studies sociology with a minor in politics, law and social thought, said he applied to Rice with hopes of taking black studies courses, but later learned the university didn’t have a program.

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“It’s nice to see Rice at the forefront of this kind of academic pursuit,” Carter said, adding that he hopes the new center receives an equal amount of commitment — financially, through support of faculty, and other resources — as other Rice initiatives.

“It’d be quite a shame if this was another program or center that did not get the same support of others because of who would likely be attracted to program,” Carter said.

In Fall 2018, Rice, a private university founded in 1912, had a student population of 6,989. Of that number, 33 percent were white, 26 percent Asian, 16 percent Hispanic or Latino, and 7 percent were black. The university’s enrollment data also included 4 percent of students who were two or more races, 2 percent of an unknown ethnicity and 12 percent were listed as “international.”

Carter sees opportunity for Rice. “We all should really value this center as we look into our institution’s history in race and racism,” he said.

A scandal earlier this year involving Virginia’s governor in blackface in his college yearbook prompted universities across the country to dive into their own annuals. In February, a Rice student audited yearbooks dating to 1919 only to find years of racist cartoons and images, photos of students performing in blackface, and derogatory captions.

In June, Rice officials announced a “Task Force on Slavery, Segregation and Racial Injustice” to explore the college’s slavery connections, to spark dialogue on campus and to better understand the college’s past.

Then in August, racist flyers depicting four women of color who resembled Democrat U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley were found on campus. President Donald Trump tweeted the previous month that they should all “go back” to where they came from, though each congresswoman is an American citizen. No public results of that investigation have been issued.

“We reached the point where there were no more excuses to not have this presence on campus,” Pinn said of the new center.

Studying history and culture

“The discipline of African American studies is relevant in this day and time because it requires interdisciplinary reading and writing” of scholars, said James L. Conyers, director of the African American Studies Program at the University of Houston.

Black studies is not far removed from areas in STEM, he said referring to science, technology, engineering and math. Universities are also exceedingly interested in finding scholars who are well-versed and can teach in a range of topics. “There’s a collective value,” Conyers said.

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While the names for similar programs have evolved over the decades, universities across the country and in Texas have long had centers or departments focused on studies that explore explore history and culture across the African diaspora. The UH program, established in 1969 following student protests, is the state’s oldest.

Citing the history of the discipline, UH notes that “Africana students and communities demanded Black/Africana/African American studies programs and departments” in the 1960s, and a decade later, “more than 600 educational institutions added the discipline to their curricula.”

Today, Houston Community College, UH-Clear Lake, Texas A&M University and Texas Southern University, the second largest historically black college in the country, offer either a certificate or minor in a variation of black studies. And Prairie View A&M University, also an HBCU, has been hosting a speaker series and events with African-American scholars.

Just two public universities in the state — UH and the University of Texas at Austin — offer bachelor’s degrees in the discipline, and UT-Austin also grants doctorates, Conyers said.

Harnessing synergy

The launch of Rice’s center comes after officials and staff saw an increasing interest in African and African American studies expertise on campus, and realizing all of the important work Rice faculty was doing in relation to both African American studies. There “was no way to harness that synergy and unify that conversation and participate in the national and international work taking place in African and African American studies,” Pinn said.

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Pinn said programming is in the works and officials are looking to establish a physical space for the center, which is now housed jointly in Rice’s schools of humanities and social sciences. The main priority, however, is to create the curriculum for both undergraduate and graduate students, he said.

Conyers predicts good things for the Rice center. “Tony Pinn is prolific scholar, so Rice is very fortunate to have him,” he said.

And Pinn is confident that finally launching a center focused on black studies is a step in the right direction and an “important moment at Rice.”

“My attitude is every university and every college needs this sort of structure. Race needs to be taken seriously. It matters,” Pinn said. “We want to make certain that we do it right.”

brittany.britto@chron.com