Racism and Anti-Racist Rebellion at Penn State
Read the full Fall 2024 SCDS Dis-Orientation Guide here.
The history of the racial justice struggle at Penn State teaches two basic lessons. First, the Penn State Trustees and President give nothing to students of color at Penn State; everything we have was won from them through the sacrifices and struggles of racially oppressed students, faculty, and staff and the solidarity of anti-racist comrades among the white working class population. (1) Second, to advance the fight for racial justice, anti-racist Penn Staters must organize as an independent force that fights against Penn State Trustees, who are duty-bound servants of the capitalist-imperialist class, and the President’s office.
To apply these lessons, student organizers must first gather and organize the small number of uncompromising anti-racist fighters who will make personal sacrifices for racial justice. This organized core must then mobilize larger and larger sections of the student population over time. Anti-racist organizers should not try to appeal to racists and moderates at the outset, which will end the movement before it begins; these people will only be won over later, once the movement has already won the battle of ideas and has forced “common sense” to change. Some faculty and staff will join early, but most will be won over as the prestige of the student mobilization increases. Movement leaders must refuse the trap of “dialoguing” with top administrators; instead, organizers must increase their leverage until victory is assured and the rubber stamp of “negotiations” crowns an already achieved victory.
In place of a longer study, we reprint an opinion editorial authored by several Penn State student marshals on April 28th, 2023 and published in the Daily Collegian titled “Letter to The Editor: Penn State Must Invest in, Not Divest from African American Studies.” (2) This editorial describes the struggle to defend Black Studies, with which SCDS organizers were and are heavily involved. While SCDS did not write this editorial, we support its positions and salute the courage and integrity of these student marshals who did not give in to the intimidation tactics of the Administrators who tried to silence them. (3) The republication of this opinion editorial below does not imply endorsement of this Dis-Orientation Guide by the Collegian or the student marshals.
Penn State Must Invest in, Not Divest from African American Studies
April 28, 2023
As student marshals for the Penn State College of the Liberal Arts, we declare our support for Michael West who recently resigned as head of the department of African American studies in protest against the dean’s office pattern of undermining the AFAM department. We strongly oppose the dean’s office’s recent choice to break its promise to fund new tenure-track faculty hiring lines in the AFAM department that would sustain Black studies scholarship at Penn State. We are inspired by West’s courage in challenging this injustice committed against Black studies. We stand with students and employees committed to anti-racism in our community, alongside local groups like the Student Committee for Defense and Solidarity, the Restorative Justice Initiative and the American Association of University Professors at Penn State.
To recognize us as marshals is to recognize the community behind each of us. We come from various backgrounds, and each undertook different educational experiences at Penn State. But the key to our collective education has been the relationships we’ve cultivated with anti-racist and community-involved professors like West.
We may not all be AFAM majors or minors, but some of our closest mentors, advisers and instructors are AFAM faculty and staff. For most of us, African American studies have been the core of our experience in the College. Recognizing us, the products of the department’s faculty and staff, while considering the request for further investments in AFAM “foolish” is simply hypocritical.
These attempts by the administration to dismantle African American studies are not new. The history of African American studies at Penn State is one of protracted struggle. The Concerned African Americans of Penn State won the African American studies major after facing off with state troopers in 1988. The 2001 Village occupation of the HUB-Robeson Center won the Africana Research Center and an expansion of tenure-track faculty lines in AFAM. Police and administrators united against students and faculty who believed in a university that served all of Pennsylvania’s communities — particularly those systemically locked out of our campuses. Time and again, students and faculty won.
Today, administrators continue to undermine and censor Black studies and anti-racist education initiatives on campus by refusing to fund more hires, mistreating West and creating a hostile atmosphere against AFAM faculty which recently caused several to leave the university. We are disappointed to see, as West has documented, our Susan Welch Dean of the College of the Liberal Arts Clarence Lang is leading this attack against AFAM and insulting the intelligence and capacity of West.
We are disappointed to learn Lang is an opponent of the Center for Racial Justice, despite his being part of the team that initially recommended it. We remember the center was canceled by Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi October 26, 2022, just two days after Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes was slated to give a speech funded with student fees. Students who protested this event were attacked by an individual with pepper spray as police watched. No charges were ever filed against the attacker.
When Bendapudi canceled the Center for Racial Justice, Penn State said it plans to “enhance existing [diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging] programs [and] efforts.” We agree. Divesting from AFAM and defunding the center, however, are not enhancements. Such actions suggest administrators’ commitment to DEIB and anti-racism is hollow. The AFAM department is one of few remaining bulwarks on campus for anti-racism that marginalized students need and deserve. Abandoning the department abandons students, like us, whose sense of belonging was enriched and defined by the department of African American studies’ faculty, staff, pedagogy and community.
We demand leaders invest in African American studies at Penn State. However, as West’s letter of resignation and the Center for Racial Justice’s fate both indicate, we can no longer trust university leadership to make good on promises alone. We demand a democratic university where students and faculty can hold leaders accountable and receive an education that serves our communities.
As far-right speakers such as James Lindsay and Alex Stein continue attempts at student programming, we fear administrators are abandoning any and all commitment to anti-racism. This abandonment, in combination with a canceled Center for Racial Justice and an underfunded African American studies department, bodes ill for Penn State’s future. In Pennsylvania and across Penn State campuses, white supremacist politics and violence are on the rise, while environmental and state-led racism target communities of color daily. We believe Penn State and its administrators must redouble, not renege on, their commitments to institutional antiracism. A university that fails to serve the whole state by investing in antiracist research and pedagogy is no “state university” at all.
Read the full Fall 2024 SCDS Dis-Orientation Guide here.
Sources
- See: 1980s campaign to divest from South African Apartheid; 2001, the “Village” protest movement for justice for a murdered Black Man and against death threats targeting Black PSU students; 2022, PSU community shut down Gavin McInnes, founder of the neofascist, racist gang the “Proud Boys”; and many more examples.
- “Letter to the Editor: Penn State must invest in, not divest from, African-American studies” (April 28, 2023):
https://www.psucollegian.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/letter-to-the-editor-penn-state-must-invest-in-not-divest-from-african-american-studies/article_f1c6952c-e547-11ed-b839-0b1ca898e0f4.html - “Penn State official’s ‘unprofessional’ response to students’ anti-racism letter draws criticism” (May 26, 2023): https://www.centredaily.com/news/local/education/penn-state/article275103506.html
