How Columbia is Shaping African American and African Diaspora Studies

On December 1, when Columbia’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously to create the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department, the cry heard around the University was, “It’s about time!”

In reality though, the development is the latest growth spurt in a scholarly interpretation of the black experience that began at Columbia in the early 20th century.

Farah Jasmine Griffin, who will be the new department’s first chair, traces its beginnings to the years that Harlem Renaissance literary icon Zora Neale Hurston (BC’28, GSAS’34–35) spent here studying with Franz Boas, a pioneer of modern anthropology who joined Columbia in 1896 and was its first professor in that discipline. Boas was largely responsible for establishing critical studies that drew distinctions between race and culture. His work helped discredit “scientific” theories of race. Hurston’s focus was on her own people: African American folklore, music, customs and—as anyone can read in her novels—ways of speaking.

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