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Minority Scholars Committee
Report from the Minority Scholars’ Committee 1998
The Minority Scholars Committee reported on its activities for the annual meeting and in regards to cooperative ventures with the Women’s Committee and the Presidential Advisory Committee on Relations with Ethnic Studies Programs, Faculty, and Students.
The Minority Scholars Committee met once this year at the 1997 Washington DC convention. They met as a Committee and also jointly with the Women’s Committee. They continue to find these collaborations fruitful. Their panel “Coalition or Collision: Territory, Deference, and the Institution” was well attended. Individual panelists provided perspective with personal anecdotal accounts of the minority scholar and the issues that they encounter at the institutional level. They agreed as a Committee to offer the second in this series of panels at the Seattle meeting with the focus being on issues of scholarship for the minority, woman and scholar in a new field like disability studies encounters. They are also co-hosting a reception.
Over the year the Minority Scholars Committee continued to address outreach and how to keep the Council informed about important concerns of minority scholars and their communities. Individual members communicated throughout the year with the Council with suggestions especially with Native American scholars with the help of the former chair of the committee, Carol Miller.
This year they will revisit their three-year “Coalition and Collision” plan. They will also address “Crossroads” more specifically in relation to the work and concerns of the Committee. Indisputably access to electronic medium is less within minority communities, yet at the same time the potential it could provides is even more important for them. The very issues of outreach and inclusion of more minority scholars into American Studies needs to be more aggressively approached by the Committee especially with the Crossroads project. The ability to not only reach scholars but students formally and informally beyond the walls of the academy has great appeal to the Committee, and again can be addressed through Crossroads. And lastly, the isolation of minority scholars on individual campuses can be alleviated through the building of scholarly communities on Crossroads. Crossroads will be on the agenda for the Minority Scholars committee’s 1998 meeting. However, the members understand that technology in and of itself is not the cure for concerns that we have and will continue to face.
The Minority Scholars Committee was also pleased with the creation of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Relations Ethnic Studies Programs, Faculty, and Students. The inaugural pre-convention workshop for Ethnic Studies chairs should be of real value. The Committee members look for to the convening of the Task Force and will aid it in whatever ways they can.
The Minority Scholars Committee petitioned the Council to place issue of the dismantling of Affirmative Action and the prospects for education in America on the 1998 business meeting agenda. The committee is concerned with the results of this closing of opportunity for minority youth and a return to a monolithic voice and experience in the university. While the effects will first be felt on college campuses the long-range socio-economic effects for American society can not be ignored. The Committee believes our voices of outrage and protest must continue. They request that the Council create appropriate venues addressing this matter: educating our colleagues on an organizational and institutional level programmatically and via a formal resolution; and that the issue be made part of the information disseminated on our Crossroads site.
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