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Syracuse University’s African American Studies affinity group held its first virtual meeting Wednesday at 8 p.m. with 120 alumni, students and faculty attendees. The group discussed the current state of the department and planned for its future for more than two hours.

The affinity group was formed at an April 11 meeting over concerns about the university’s handling of the AAS department, which has not had a chair for the entirety of the spring semester.

Earlier this Wednesday, James Haywood Rolling Jr., an arts education professor, was named interim AAS chair. Department faculty were notified of the decision during a meeting with Behzad Mortazavi, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, that morning.

“The bad-faith operations of Syracuse University have been very explicit and very disrespectful,” said Danielle Taana Smith, a professor in the department. “The most recent example: the department’s faculty were summoned to a meeting early this morning with Behzad Mortazavi to be informed that professor James Rolling, our colleague, has been appointed as the interim chair of the department.”

AAS faculty said they had “no previous knowledge” of Rolling’s appointment. They also said they were given less than one day’s notice for the meeting and expected it to center around future discussions about finding a chair. Faculty were “stunned” about the announcement, as administration had “never met with (them) to discuss this.”

Joan Bryant, associate professor of AAS, said Rolling emailed department faculty saying he was asked to serve as chair “last week.”

Bryant said AAS faculty met with Gwendolyn Pough, the associate dean of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility of Arts and Sciences, two weeks ago. Bryant mentioned that she listened to a recording of the meeting before the affinity group met and said that, at the meeting, faculty were told that Arts and Sciences was “in conversation” with a potential outside chair.

When Smith asked for faculty to be part of the conversation before a decision was made, Pough implied that the conversations were in “early stages,” Bryant said.

At their Wednesday morning meeting with Mortazavi, AAS faculty asked why they were not included in the decision-making process.

“When we pointed out the disrespect, the lack of transparency and the lack of faculty governance, the dean responded that he had to act quickly because the semester is ending,” Smith said. “We know that the real reason for this hasty decision is that alumni and students are expressing outrage for arbitrary and capricious treatment of the department.”

Neither Rolling nor Mortazavi were present at the affinity group meeting.

Attendees of the affinity group meeting said the new interim chair appointment was a result of their work — sending letters to administration, calling the university multiple times daily and publicly expressing concern.

“It is because of our work … that today they appointed a new chair of the department,” said Horace Campbell, professor of AAS and political science. “This was only done to preempt what we are discussing in this meeting … I want us to be aware of the machinations of the university.”

Michelle Walker-Davis, who holds three degrees from SU and first graduated in 1982, read through a series of issues that the AAS department sent in a letter to administration in 2020. The list was updated in 2024, and faculty have been “trying to push the university” to meet its demands, which include the following points:

• Department chair process must involve the department
• Supporting curriculum
• Replacement of faculty
• Create a pathway to pay increases for tenure and promotion for professors who have “extraordinary service loads”

The demands also include addressing structural racism, lack of transparency, safety and the campus climate at SU. AAS faculty also called for the university to enroll “considerably more Black and brown students.”

AAS faculty’s list requested that the university hire a departmental librarian and 12 part-time instructors for the 2024-25 academic year due to several faculty going on leave. They requested three additional teaching assistants as well as a resident advisor to be assigned to the department.

The list also called for the establishment of an endowed postdoctoral faculty fellowship and for the university to “revive and authorize” the search for visiting professorships — which was “supposed to start in spring 2020,” said S.N. Sangmpam, professor of AAS and political science. Faculty also requested that the university create two endowed professor positions in AAS.

Faculty also said they have discussed potentially “forming alliances” with other departments and professors that have been “disrespected” by the university, such as the Human Dynamics departments of the David B. Falk College of Sport and SU’s social science Ph.D. program.

After the April 11 meeting, a group of undergraduate students compiled a list of five concerns regarding AAS. Brian Cohen, an undergraduate student in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, read the list to the affinity group. The students’ concerns are as follows:

• An inability to promote a “full menu” of classes due to lack of faculty.
• A lack of respect for the department through a lack of resources, such as teaching assistants and chairs.
• Neglect of the department by the university puts undue stress on AAS faculty members. AAS faculty are reported to be feeling ill and emotionally impacted by the “stress of being in an unsupported department,” Cohen said.
• The absence of an AAS department chair, even after faculty unanimously nominated a candidate. This point will be updated in light of Rolling’s chair appointment, Cohen said.
• Discouragement of enrollment in AAS courses from academic advisors in other colleges. There have been many reports of non-AAS faculty members discouraging students’ enrollment in AAS courses, Cohen said.

The student attendees of the April 11 meeting developed a statement in tandem with their list of concerns, which Cohen recited at the Wednesday meeting.

“Without African American Studies, the most exploited and marginalized groups at the university will not even get to learn where they’ve come from and furthermore, where they can go utilizing learned concepts such as Pan Africanism and direct action,” Cohen said.

Cohen also mentioned the fact that SU openly highlights that it is “fully committed to fostering a diverse, inclusive and respectful campus community, not only in vision but in practice,” as SU’s website states.

“We cannot allow the university to continue exploiting students of color by using pictures of them to advertise the school as ‘diverse’ online, while not supporting programs that critically examine the impact racial capitalism has had on the organization of our society,” Cohen said.

The students’ statement mentioned a national trend of curriculum restrictions to education that “questions racism and structural oppression,” noting that some academic institutions have collapsed multiple departments into a single “ethnic studies” department.

“We cannot allow a trend of censorship to continue to poison the intellectual life of Syracuse University,” Cohen said.

Hiring an interim chair is the “bare minimum,” AAS faculty said at the affinity group meeting. Bryant said she thinks university administration is assuming that faculty “won’t say anything” and that the university is attempting to control its optics by appointing an interim chair whose appointment will start in one week.

Bryant said “it’s too late” because the work that AAS faculty will do for the remainder of the semester and afterward is work they will “continue to do without pay.”

“I will not be surprised if next year, in two years, maybe in six months, if we are back here discussing the same problem. The way the new chair was appointed tells you the full story. It is a story of total lack of respect for this department,” Sangmpam said. “Unless the university respects this department, nothing will happen.”

DISCLAIMER: Brian Cohen was previously a columnist for The Daily Orange and Ahna Fleming is on the writing committee for his magazine, “Tender.” He does not influence the editorial content of the News section nor did he influence the editorial content of this article.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article stated that the Wednesday night affinity group meeting had 85 attendees. It had 120 participants throughout, according to Michelle Walker-Davis who hosted the Zoom meeting.

Published on May 2, 2024 at 2:56 am

Contact Ahna: arflemin@syr.edu