“It’s been two years now, and I think we have enough material to reflect upon, to rethink a few things,” she says. “But it’s only now.”

The department, Carpio says, must learn to live without the big name professors and rely instead on those who have made their name simply as intellectuals, not necessarily public intellectuals.

NEW ROADS

One possible way to bring students back into the concentration is to restructure the department’s introductory courses, Gates says.

“We have to reconfigure Af-Am 10. Basically it was Cornel West 10,” he says.

Gates describes large introductory courses as “funnels” of students into concentrations. And so when West dropped Harvard, students dropped out of Af-Am.

Gates says of the several hundreds of students who would take West’s introductory course, many would find it enjoyable and then decide to concentrate in Af-Am.

He says now there needs to be new points of entry into the department.

“What we need to do is have more of us teach lecture courses and figure out which courses are most responsive to the students,” Gates says.

One plan he suggests would make two Core classes introductory courses for the department. Literature and Arts B-82, “Sayin’ Something: Jazz as Sound, Sensibility and Social Dialogue,” could become the introductory humanities course, while Social Analysis 68, “Race, Class and Poverty in Urban America,” could become the introductory social studies class.

“Sayin’ Something” is taught by Jones Professor of African American Music Ingrid Monson and “Race, Class and Poverty” is taught by Geyser University Professor William Julius Wilson.

Next year, Af-Am 10, the department’s current introductory course, will also fulfill a Core requirement, as it did under West.

“They changed the syllabus, they changed the faculty,” explains Director of the Core program Susan W. Lewis of the reasons behind why the course this year does not fulfill a Core requirement. “[Af-Am 10] is not the course that was approved by the Core the year that Professor West taught it.”

The department is confident this reintroduction of Af-Am 10 will cause a spike in enrollment—last year, without West but with Core credit, enrollment was at 96 students. That course, however, was taught by Gates, a more renowned intellectual than Hammonds, who will teach the course alone next year.

Gates also predicts that with the introduction of an African track to the department, the number of concentrators will rise.