The University of Pittsburgh will require all incoming first-year students to complete a course on anti-Black racism.
What We Know:
- Ann E. Cudd, provost and senior vice chancellor, wrote in a letter to students on Monday that the course is intended to serve as an introduction to the Black experience. All incoming, first-year students will automatically be enrolled for the class for the fall semester and it will count towards one academic credit. Cudd said that “the course is designed to inform us all about Black history and culture, about the multiple forms of anti-Black racism, and about how we can be anti-racist.”
A new course, “Anti-Black Racism: History, Ideology, and Resistance,” will be offered as a required, asynchronous, one-credit offering for first-year students on the Pittsburgh campus starting this fall.
Details in Pittwire: https://t.co/Fs4i76P5GJ pic.twitter.com/QruXu1RkWc
— University of Pittsburgh (@PittTweet) August 24, 2020
- The central tenets of the course, titled “Anti-Black Racism: History, Ideology, and Resistance”, will be roots, ideology, and resistance to anti-Black racism. Other themes to be covered throughout the course include pre-colonial African history, race, policing and mass incarceration, health disparities, and racial capitalism. As of now, it is expected that there will be required readings for most weeks and different scholars presenting the discussions.
- “This multidisciplinary course seeks to provide a broad overview of this rich and dynamic history. Built around the expertise of Pitt faculty and Pittsburgh area activists, this course will introduce students to the established tradition of scholarship focused on the Black experience and Black cultural expression,” the course overview read. “It also seeks to examine the development, spread, and articulations of anti-Black racism in the United States and around the world.”
- Cudd cited the recent social uprisings and protests against racial injustice and police brutality that have followed the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor as a motivator for creating this course. Cudd also shared the students of Pitt were also a contributing factor. She said that throughout the summer she heard from Black students as well as Black faculty and staff who shared their experiences that Pitt was not a “safe, inclusive and equitable place for all,” something that Cudd said they are committed to changing.
- Yolanda Covington-Ward, chair of the Department of Africana Studies in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, took the lead in helping to develop the course. “We wanted to make sure that the course provided some historical context, while also looking at ideologies of race and contemporary struggles against anti-Black racism locally in Pittsburgh, nationally and globally as well,” Covington-Ward shared that she hopes this course will help students develop strategies to be anti-racist in their everyday lives.
The course will be graded on a “Satisfactory/Non-Credit” basis. The University of Pittsburgh started their academic semester on August 24th.
