Students exult: We won! We re getting a Black Studies Department at @Stanford!
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A Stanford University student walks in front of Hoover Tower on the campus in Palo Alto.Paul Sakuma / Associated Press 2012
Stanford University officials announced Tuesday that they are transforming their 52-year-old program of African and African-American studies into a full-fledged academic department.
The move comes after Stanford’s Black Student Union and Black Graduate Student Association created a petition last summer urging Stanford to make the change, following the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd. The groups noted that elite universities had such a department.
At Stanford, African and African-American studies has been a program for more than half a century and resides in the School of Humanities and Sciences. A department, unlike a program, is an administrative organization that can search for and hire its own faculty.