Molefi Kete Asante, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair of Africology and African American Studies
The public murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, and the subsequent Black Lives Matter Movement marches, re-activated the most chilling centuries-old outrage of African Americans and others of goodwill. Responses to the arrogant, ignorant, and brutal killing of Floyd by a police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis were immediate as ordinary citizens and CEOs, preachers and politicians, lawyers and athletes, authors and first responders reacted with practical actions. Words were not just spoken, deeds were done.
The Department of Africology’s students were agitated, then distraught, talkative and energized, as were faculty members in America’s first doctoral program in African American Studies. After conversations with the faculty and students I wrote a letter to the president of the university on June 20, 2020 expressing the combined and pent-up rage I have often felt at Temple for its lack of active antiracism in departments and colleges. In my letter I addressed five issues specifically related to what Temple could do. One of those issues was stated simply as asking the University to “Promote Temple’s leadership role in Africology and African American Studies and set up a Center for Antiracist Research much like the ones at American University and Boston University that have been directed by our former student.” I was referring to Ibram X. Kendi, who wrote How to be an Antiracist. Dr. Kendi started the antiracism center at American University and then was lured away to Boston University where he was able to attract millions of dollars for a first-rate center for antiracism.
President Richard Englert’s positive response to my modest proposal meant that our faculty could begin to discuss the nature of such a center at our urban university located in the heart of North Philadelphia. I requested ideas from faculty and doctoral students about the shape of such a center. As the author of Erasing Racism: The Survival of the American Nation, I had some thoughts about themes that might be covered in Temple’s Center for Antiracism Research as proposed in my June 2020 letter. However, the Center would have several important characteristics impacting the entire campus. First, it would be, as other centers at Temple, open to campus-wide participation while being in a constant search for new synergies and research formations investigating various aspects of racism. Secondly, the center would be directed by a tenure-track professor with a commitment to racial equity, justice, and the elimination of the racial ladder. Thirdly, the center’s director, while a member of the department of Africology, will report to the Office of the President. It is expected that the director with the support of an advisory committee composed of faculty members from Africology and other departments will create formations around the study of topics such as white supremacy, anti-African police actions, economic discrimination, early interventions in racial culturation, structural racism, resistance to dysconscious racism, cultural domination, elimination of violence against racialized bodies, racial politics, astral-blackness and afro-futurism, racial discontents in the 21st century, racial stereotypes in visual media, homelessness and racism, intersections of patriarchy and hierarchy, and epistemological racism. The Center will invite all faculty members to participate and join in the antiracism work. Our intention is to stand the center up as soon as we can select a director.