The first Achebe Colloquium on Africa is this Friday in downtown Providence. Details about the event, which is free and open to the public, are available here. As the name suggests, the colloquium is being held this year in conjunction with the hiring of post-colonial Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe to the faculty of the Africana Studies Department. For past FID commentary on the Achebe appointment, click here and here.

During his grand welcome at Brown earlier this month, an audience member questioned Nigerian writer and new faculty member Chinua Achebe about his criticism of Joseph Conrad and his novel, Heart of Darkness, as being racist and anti-African. Achebe neither defended his view nor backed away from it.  Here is how The Brown Daily Herald recorded the exchange:

Once Achebe began taking questions, an audience member referenced his controversial critique of Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” — in which he accused Conrad of being “a bloody racist” — and asked if the book inspired Achebe’s work. Achebe responded, “Inspired? I read the book and that was it.” … But Achebe added, “If you haven’t read it, I recommend it. Don’t throw away any book ever. Read it.”

Well, to his credit, he didn’t tell students not to read Heart of Darkness. But he is telling them to judge whether a novel is a great work of art based on how it portrays a particular race or ethnicity. And that is still a big problem. Were this standard applied across the board to Western literature pre-Civil Rights, many literary giants would be felled.

The above article, by the way, marks the thirteenth article this semester that The Herald has published on Achebe. All have been overwhelmingly postive, save one: our letter to the editor calling him out on his remarks on Conrad. While the Achebe appointment certainly merits coverage, a dozen celebratory articles on this news is more than excessive.

Of course, it’s not his literary talents or merits as a scholar that are earning all this coverage, it’s the fact that Achebe has become the latest emblem of Brown’s commitment to racial and cultural diversity. Can anyone imagine 12 articles on someone like the esteemed historian Gordon Wood, whose recent retirement certainly was big news on campus. (For the record, we found two articles on Wood in the past two years, available here and here.)

In FID’s discussion about the appointment of Chinua Achebe to Brown’s Department of Africana Studies, we have frequently touched upon the idea of “diversity programs”: efforts to recruit significant numbers of students from minority racial groups. I would like to extend this discussion by exploring the logic of these programs, in the context of the current economic environment.

There are, of course, important social reasons that have motivated these programs since their inception. Many universities are chartered with a “mission to their communities,” and see an important duty in helping historically under-privileged groups. This is in many ways commendable, in principle if perhaps not in implementation.

There are, too, many related economic / business reasons for these diversity programs. As admissions officers see it, many future leaders – with unique experiences, especially for young-adults at age 18 – can be found in developing communities. It has often been assumed (correctly or not) that there is a need to a “critical mass” of a given minority population, in order for that population to be comfortable, as well as “sustainable” from year-to-year.

And, finally, there is the issue of demographics: rapid growth in minority populations, and especially in the percentage of these minority populations who are, potentially, college-bound. Colleges, always eager to out-compete one another in the selectivity-driven national rankings, see a golden opportunity for an influx of new applicants.

As several board members of FID pointed out in a recent press release and editorial, Brown has fully embraced the philosophy of diversity programs. With regard just to African Americans: “Brown has a Department of Africana Studies with 14 full-faculty members — not counting seven visiting and affiliated professors. In addition, Brown has the Third World Center, the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America and the Africa Group Colloquium, and the University recently sponsored the Focus on Africa speaker series as well as the Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice. All are related to Africana studies.”

Much of this is a creation of very recent years, driven in conjunction with a booming endowment and significant growth of financial-aid programs, at a cost of millions of dollars per year. However, the crash of the past year has resulted in an estimated 20-25% average reduction in university endowments, nationally. (Brown was slightly worse than this average, with a 26.6% loss).

Many universities will necessarily be scaling down these efforts, needing instead to spend their dwindled reserves on core academic services. But in hiring Achebe while modestly reducing faculty elsewhere, Brown has shown that it will not.

And in this context, we can see an underlying logic: if indeed “diversity programs” contribute to successful recruitment and / or academic success for the relevant population; and if indeed at least a modest number of Brown’s peers scale back their programs (as is likely); then Brown has the potential to increase the number of its recruits, who in other years would have matriculated elsewhere. Further, Brown may see a synergy with the appointment of Achebe and its desire to expand international recruiting to Africa proper, especially, again, when its peers may be scaling back.

Of course, if all of this is true, Brown could well have hired a faculty member of equal repute to Achebe, without Achebe’s tendency to politicize his work. Channeling and cultivating post-colonial angst would not seem to lend itself well to developing future leaders; and we can no longer afford feel-good facades that gloss over substance.

One might further ask: is it not illogical — if not profoundly disrespectful — to assume that Africana Studies is the key to recruiting Africans and African-Americans? Would a black physicist or a mathematician have been less inspirational? (Does the color of the professor’s skin matter, even in this context?) If Brown is serious about recruiting continental Africans, practical knowledge of the sciences and economics would seem to be among the most valuable tools that the University could impart.

If Brown is to keep to its values, the harsh challenges of the moment demand substantive and imaginative self-reflection about what “diversity” truly means in higher education. Given what we have established regarding the social, economic, and business goals at hand, it is clear that Brown can and should do better.

The Brown Daily Herald today published a letter to the editor from three members of the Foundation for Intellectual Diversity, questioning the ongoing push to expand Africana Studies and raising concerns over the hiring of postcolonial scholar Chinua Achebe:

We were surprised to recently read that Brown University is planning to expand Africana Studies (“In hiring, hallmark of a broader push on Africa by University” Oct. 6).

We have to wonder what could possibly lead Brown administrators and faculty to think they have neglected this area. Brown has a Department of Africana Studies with 14 full-faculty members — not counting seven visiting and affiliated professors. In addition, Brown has the Third World Center, the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America and the Africa Group Colloquium, and the University recently sponsored the Focus on Africa speaker series as well as the Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice. All are related to Africana studies.

We are especially concerned over the hiring of Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe to the faculty of the Africana Studies Department. Achebe is known for denouncing British author Joseph Conrad as a “bloody racist” and claiming his book Heart of Darkness “celebrates” the “dehumanization” and “depersonalization” of African people.

The University should consider more creative ways to teach its students about the classics of Western literature than calling them racist. Students deserve to appreciate great books on their own merits, without having them cut down into caricatures of European colonialism.

Prior to this letter, The Herald had published four articles on Achebe – two news stories, one editorial, and one guest column – none mentioning his famous criticism of Joseph Conrad or his controversial views on European racism.