00:00:19.250 - 00:00:33.470

Good afternoon, Dr. Byrd. I think we can call it good afternoon, or at least a couple of minutes past the top of the hour, by my accounting. Mine too, we must be signed into the same Apple server on our computers indicating our

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time. Yes, I have 12:02 exactly. Good afternoon. I'm, I feel like I was just here. Well, you were just there, last night too.

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We had our, our wonderful task force webinar. I hope you're gonna talk a little bit about that. Yeah, I will... Great event.

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Talk a little bit about that. I'm still, still a bit overwhelmed, in the best way that one can be overwhelmed, by, by it all. It was one of the really special moments in my life at this university.

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And for, if you, for those of, if you weren't with us last night, we had a conversation with Catherine Clack, exploring and celebrating her 40 years at the university, and I had the honor of talking with Catherine about how her career has unfolded at Rice, and that led into the real highlight of the evening, which were

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two appreciations, one by John Hutchinson, her long-time supervisor at the university, and our former Dean of Undergraduates, and Blaque Robinson, a member of the Class of 2016 at Rice, who, and I'm going to share some backstory, some backstory from the webinar. While we were getting ready, the dean asked me how I determined the order of

00:02:16.220 - 00:02:32.870

the appreciation. See, he asked me why it was that he was going first, right, I think he wanted, didn't wanna have to be ready so quick. And I said, well, dean, you know, I just, I just thought I would never want to follow

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Blaque, and so why would I put anyone else after Blaque? You were wise. You were wise. So that was just an amazing and well-deserved celebration of Catherine. I'm just, I'm delighted to have been there.

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It was, and I was telling you, I think if the task force did nothing else from here on out, that would, that I think would be, be worth the existence of our group. It was a wonderful event. So kudos to you for, for moderating what I know was difficult to kind of cover

00:03:11.990 - 00:03:28.340

everything you wanted to cover in just an hour, hour and a half. But clearly, there's threads even in that conversation that we'll wanna follow up on as we continue our work. Absolutely, and I aim to follow up on some of those threads with Catherine early in the

00:03:28.340 - 00:03:57.620

week, and I'm gonna start exploring, pulling on a few of those threads today with the document, maybe it's two documents, that I, that, maybe it's three, the three documents that, that, that I have with me today. So from last night, one of the questions I asked Catherine was about her reaction

00:03:57.620 - 00:04:18.040

in 1996 to the Hopwood v. Texas ruling, which for all intents and purposes basically outlawed the use of race as a consideration in admission at, at Texas, at universities in the Fifth Circuit.

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The law had an especial impact on highly selective colleges and universities because of their selectivity. You can imagine why it had less of an impact on universities who were less selective, and were basically admitting most, most of their student body, or most of the folks who, who

00:04:37.520 - 00:05:01.550

apply. But I want to, today, to, to, to take on the question of how to come to terms with some of that history around Hopwood. Catherine answered the question that I posed, "Why didn't you just get out of Texas and the Fifth Circuit as fast as you can when Hopwood happened?" Because it, it really

00:05:01.550 - 00:05:24.110

represented a really, added real difficulty to you being able to do your job. And I was surprised in the best way by her answer. She said, "You know, I never even considered it," right, "I never even considered leaving, and to tell you the truth, the difficulties around Hopwood were never

00:05:24.110 - 00:05:54.200

really top of mind, because the university's response was so robust," in her opinion, and also that the, the way that response materialized gave her great comfort and hope. And I wanna explore some of that right now. So I'm gonna go first to a secondary work, a kind of secondary work, and this is an

00:05:54.200 - 00:06:15.110

untitled article from the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, which is called, "The Short History of Race-Based Affirmative Action at Rice University." And it's written in 1996. You'll be delighted, I think, Dr.

00:06:15.110 - 00:06:36.510

McDaniel, "delighted" in quotations, that this article, which is ostensibly about the history of race-based affirmative action at Rice University, you can't believe, you won't believe how it actually starts, right. So powerful is the founding myth of the university.

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You can't even write about race-based affirmative action without beginning with the mystery around the murder of the university's founder. But after that is dispatched with, I feel a reaction, I feel you wanted a reaction. "A fortune in oil," I noticed, too, so, which is not exactly accurate.

00:07:01.380 - 00:07:10.320

Well, it's, it's, you know, it's a journal about higher education. Well, I notice, I notice, I'm sorry, I don't want to get, I'm. .. No, please, please.

00:07:10.890 - 00:07:29.670

Well, at the end of the first section too, the, the, I notice an interesting error that we've kind of talked about before in kind of establishing the history of the enrollment of the first black students at Rice. It mentions Linda Faye Williams as the first black undergraduate to enroll at Rice, which

00:07:29.970 - 00:07:46.710

we know is not the case, but it's interesting how, how those firsts get selected in narratives over time. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think even in memories at the time, there was some, we've explored some confusions,

00:07:46.710 - 00:08:10.110

even, confusion isn't the right word, but some difficulties in laying out the chronology, even for people who were, who were there. So this is an early attempt, right, to, to come to terms with affirmative action at Rice, which is really an attempt to talk about black enrollment at the university in

00:08:10.110 - 00:08:35.970

this period. And I think the first thing that's important for, for those of you who might wanna take a look at this article yourself, is that it begins with a really amazing starting point, and that is, come the mid 1990s, this real surge in black

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enrollments at, at the university. And even if you look at the period 1994 to 1995, just look at that one year, right, there's this doubling of the, of black undergraduate enrollment at the university. And ten percent of black domestic enrollment, right, is about where we are today.

00:09:00.210 - 00:09:24.450

So, you know, for, for, it's interesting for those of us who want to deal with progress narratives and what exactly is the narrative thread for black enrollment at the university, that in the mid 1990s, just before Hopwood, we're really at a high watermark in terms of the, the part of the undergraduate population that African

00:09:24.450 - 00:09:40.020

American students comprise. It is, it's basically as high then as it is now. Now the numbers are completely different, right, there are way more absolute, in absolute numbers, way more black students at the university now than, than there were

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then. But the main points of the argument, right, can be found here in this non-highlighted portion. I'm holding my tongue about the picture in the middle, but... Well, this is, I mean, it really is amazing, right, the power of narrative, isn't it?

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Could have put, I mean, there was a couple of people mentioned on the first page who I, I could imagine having pictured there, but... Yeah, you could have Linda Faye Williams there, right, and so it's, you know, I wanna be careful, though, I wanna be careful 'cause, you know, we'll be long dead in our

00:10:17.940 - 00:10:40.740

grave, we'll be coming in for the same, the same stuff. So true. So true. But, but, yes, you cannot, I don't think it can be overstressed how powerful a founding narrative can be and how it can, in many ways, probably unconsciously, shape the

00:10:41.040 - 00:11:11.220

choices that, that folks, folks make. And so the major point of this work is that Hopwood really has a phenomenal impact on black applications and enrollment at, at the university. And it moves black enrollment at the university to more or less the same troubled

00:11:11.220 - 00:11:42.330

area as the number of black faculty had long been at the university, which is a number, which is another major point of, of the article, that in in the fall of 1996, there were six, six black faculty members at the university out of a faculty population of almost 450, almost 450 folks.

00:11:42.720 - 00:12:00.030

And out of that, only two black faculty were actually tenured. One more point, and I'm gonna get a lot faster after this, let me check the time. Actually, I'm doing much better on time than I thought I was. So I'll move moderately faster after this.

00:12:00.960 - 00:12:33.060

Another important point of the article is the introduction of a character that we haven't spent a lot of time with, I think, in our work thus far, but he is a prime actor in the story of race at the university and black faculty development and black student enrollment. It's Malcolm Gillis, who in the early 1990s is named president of the

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university following his work at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, as dean of the graduate school there. And the article reinforces a point that, that, that Catherine made last night. President Gillis is, takes up a lot of space in her narrative of the importance of

00:12:57.630 - 00:13:22.370

leadership at the university during this time. And the article definitely centers him in highlighting the, the Board of Trustees' decision-making around hiring him, that one of the things that impressed them about President Gillis is his ability to stress the strategic importance of diversifying the

00:13:22.370 - 00:13:42.890

graduate school at Duke when he was dean there. And if you ask me later, this is a bracketed story, if you ask me later, I will tell you a great, and a short, but I think great story, of what strategic leadership looks like at, at a, at a university, especially in the, in the graduate school.

00:13:43.190 - 00:13:59.810

Malcolm was, did remarkable work at Duke in moving the departments there to recruit and graduate black, black PhD students. So that's a, that's the start. And now I'm gonna get a little faster, I guess.

00:14:00.980 - 00:14:34.460

So here we have an email from the Malcolm Gillis papers from the summer of 2000, and it, it is a collection, it is the office of the president reaching out to a few people to try and get a handle on, to begin to write a first draft of history, an email draft, of the history of the university's reactions to Hopwood.

00:14:34.460 - 00:15:00.570

And so what you have here is someone in the president's office reaching out to some key players to collect this, this, this history. And the vice president, the person who fills the position of vice president for public affairs, collecting this material and, and laying it out in, in a, in a chronology, and

00:15:00.590 - 00:15:12.590

just looking at this chronology, particularly from last night, we can, we can begin to do a little history. I don't wanna do too much of it here, I wanna save it for the last page of this, but we can begin to do a little history.

00:15:12.590 - 00:15:35.420

So Rice creates a position of Associate Vice Provost who will focus on issues of diversity at the university in 1995. In March of 1996, before that position is even filled, Hopwood happens, right. I can't imagine any better luck.

00:15:35.930 - 00:15:59.750

And for those of you who were here last night, the next two items on the chronology will be important. So President Gillis offers an initial statement on Hopwood on March 18th, and then on April 19th, another statement! Another statement on, on Hopwood.

00:15:59.750 - 00:16:13.730

That's, that's a lot of statements on Hopwood, Dr. McDaniel, in a relatively short period of time. Only one of them linked, too, so. Well, I can, I can guarantee you that that link that's linked is no longer linked.

00:16:14.030 - 00:16:34.700

But, but yes, only one of them linked. And there may be something, there may be something to that. We see some of the structural reaction to Hopwood by the summer of 1996. President Gillis basically orders a review of all the admission procedures.

00:16:35.300 - 00:16:56.060

And so the optional question on race and ethnicity is, is removed. Roland Smith comes to Rice anyway from Notre Dame in, in the middle of Hopwood, and goes ... Could we, could we footnote there, another shout out to Catherine Clack, at least from

00:16:56.060 - 00:17:09.110

some of the things that I've seen in the archives, she played a pivotal role in recruiting... Yes, in recruiting, Roland, absolutely. She was on, she was on, she was on that, on that committee.

00:17:09.530 - 00:17:41.180

I think our colleague Edward Cox also played a role, a role in this, and the previous article gives President Gillis credit for doing what presidents do, right, and that's raising, raising the money to support, to support the office. So we have at this time in the next year just following Hopwood, the trustees a firm

00:17:41.270 - 00:18:08.420

commitment to cultural inclusiveness. The last time I looked, that was still somewhere on the, on the Rice webpage. And then by the late 1990s, we get some more pronounced structural reactions to Hopwood, and that is some of the, the beginning of some fellowship

00:18:08.420 - 00:18:33.740

opportunities, the Barbara Jordan Fellowships and the James, James Byrd Jr. scholarships that, that are established. Until you get to a point in almost at the turn of the century where the freshman class that enters in the fall of 1999, this is a little bit of an optimistic presentation, I

00:18:33.740 - 00:18:53.050

think, of the numbers, but it says the new freshman class returns minority numbers to about pre-Hopwood levels. And I guess that depends on whether you think the difference between ten percent and 7.1% is "about." Hmm, okay.

00:18:53.690 - 00:19:22.490

I did say this was public affairs, so, right, it makes sense that you would stress, that, that they would stress the positive. So I wanna hit a couple of these structural reactions in a little bit more depth, and one of them, or two of them in particular, are aimed at increasing the network or the pool

00:19:22.490 - 00:19:47.450

of students available to the university. So one is a, is the Rice Nominators Circle, which is a program that Roland Smith from his perch as associate provost develops. And it brings in counselors from across the country who, who the office,

00:19:47.450 - 00:20:23.690

who Roland knows that he can depend on to introduce, that they will introduce Rice to, to students, and pique their interest in, in the university, and people who are particularly good at highlighting the university to underrepresented students. And the second networking response, which happens in the fall of 1999,

00:20:23.690 - 00:20:49.040

is the Urban League scholarship, which is a partnership between Rice and the Urban League, first in Houston, with the aim of then moving to Urban League chapters throughout the nation, where the Urban League will do similar things, that is, recommend students, but also these students would be scholarshipped at, at the

00:20:49.040 - 00:21:13.580

university. And the number one criteria for these scholarships is that, that these be people strongly involved in, in their, in their communities. If you know a little bit about the Urban League, if you know anything about the Urban League, you'll know that these scholarships, though they would have, they could have gone

00:21:13.580 - 00:21:32.900

to folks from any race or ethnicity, the Urban League works primarily in areas that would have had significant numbers of African American students. Another scholarship effort was the Barbara Jordan scholarship, which students didn't apply for.

00:21:33.320 - 00:21:59.260

What would happen is that folks in the admissions office would read through the essays of students and, and look for folks who showed themselves to have an ability to build bridges between cultures and races and ethnicities and religions. Basically, folks who could build bridges through what we would now call a, call a

00:21:59.600 - 00:22:24.200

cultural difference. Maybe--one of the structural necessities of Hopwood was the renegotiation of a fellowship program run by the Mellon --Mellon--the, the Mellon Foundation. And that was a program called the Mellon Minority Undergraduate Fellowships, which, as

00:22:25.370 - 00:22:46.270

initially established, were for minority students only. Now, post Hopwood, anyone in the Fifth Circuit kind of had a problem, right? If you kept those fellowships, you'd be breaking the law in the Fifth Circuit. And what Rice does is they renegotiate their, their contract with Mellon so that the

00:22:46.270 - 00:23:15.130

fellowships are open to folks who embrace diversity, right, and still serve a large number of folks who are also undergraduate-- underrepresented minority students. But this renegotiation allowed Rice to, to stay in the program. Also changes a scholarship that was first opened to students of Hispanic descent, and

00:23:15.130 - 00:23:41.900

changes the criteria a bit to focus on first language. What is the first language of people who are--folks speak, which, which then focuses the, the scholarship on a particular aspect of the, of the Hispanic community. So those, that's, that's where I wanted to, to start, and in the five or so minutes, or

00:23:41.920 - 00:24:05.680

that's what I wanted to do today, in the five or so minutes, I wanna raise a few questions that, that come to mind from, from these documents. And mostly for me, it was looking ahead from them. What, what is the, and this is kind of following up from Catherine's response from

00:24:05.680 - 00:24:34.510

last night, that she saw the university emerging from Hopwood with great strengths, right, strengthening its attraction to and from minority students. And, and I can see, or I wanna ask questions about, what, what do these initial structural reactions to Hopwood, what do they yield even beyond the '90s?

00:24:34.510 - 00:25:01.270

And a couple things I wanna focus on. So in the, in the Urban League scholarship, what we see is a partnering, right, we see the beginning of a partnering of the university with community organizations to, to increase awareness about the university in communities that were hard for Rice to

00:25:01.270 - 00:25:21.340

reach. And Catherine gave us some great examples of why they were hard to reach. Open parentheses, sometimes they were hard to reach 'cause Rice made them hard to reach, close parentheses. In her story about how she, how she was able to add a historically African American high

00:25:21.340 - 00:25:45.430

school in Washington, D.C., it was good for her to go to it, but she couldn't stop going to any of the other high schools that she had to go to. But we see a different strategy toward this, this partnering with community organizations, that would in some ways deliver students to the university.

00:25:45.430 - 00:26:14.330

And so one of the questions I have is, is how does this strategy unfold and and how does it compare to the strategy that, that Catherine Clack used, right? It's a different kind of strategy, right, it depends on a third party, in a way. And so I'm curious about what the benefits and, and, and some of the problems that, that

00:26:14.330 - 00:26:32.690

could arise from that. The other thing that is still there, right, is, is this assumption, or at least having to deal with this assumption, about qualifications when it comes to talking about black students.

00:26:33.200 - 00:26:59.270

Still nowhere in any of this, when applicants, black applicants to the university, are mentioned, boy, the word "qualified" has to, has to get in there, and still, still makes it, makes its way there. I didn't stress this in what I said, but we also see some visitation programs developing

00:26:59.270 - 00:27:27.830

in the '90s. Owl Days is, is mentioned. And what the, what the university begins to do is to pay the way of a certain number of URM students to come to Owl Days, and so we see the beginnings of some programs that are developing in this period that, that, that still exist to this day.

00:27:28.280 - 00:27:45.470

And I also, I'll say this, and then I'm interested in, well, I'm interested in what you have to say, I've only left you like three minutes to say it, sorry, Dr. McDaniel, but once... I deserve that, I've, I've done the same on more occasions than I'd like to count, so.

00:27:46.460 - 00:28:14.930

You know I always like not having a lot of time, but so, I always consider it a favor. But I want to, in here, to just, to, to highlight the nature of the debate, right, at this time, and how difficult it could be. So in this letter from the mid 1990s, post Hopwood letter, we get an

00:28:14.930 - 00:28:41.150

example of just how, how complicated and difficult the debate over affirmative action was, because even when the university is in some ways pulling back from some of its affirmative, many of its affirmative action strategies that had worked pre Hopwood, and is embracing new strategies, the reaction to some of those new strategies, and the example

00:28:41.150 - 00:29:12.350

I want to use here is from Owl Days, really highlights the, the distance people had to cover. So here we have a letter from a student who has come to terms with Malcolm Gillis's and Dick Stabell's, in the, in the admissions office, new projects around admissions, and is happy of course to see, this student is, to see minority scholarships

00:29:12.680 - 00:29:40.190

gone, the race question gone, but is also not quite sure what to make of this paying students way to Owl Days, right. And so the letter, the letter reads that Gillis and Stabell find themselves using resourceful ways of meeting their commitments to diversity.

00:29:40.580 - 00:30:04.310

But the letter writer responds, "It sounds to me like disguising affirmative action. One of these ways was to increase the budget for transporting such students to Owl Days. So some students are still getting special preference." So this, this is a really, really, in some ways a contentious and deep divide.

00:30:06.250 - 00:30:27.760

Well, one of the things, another kind of language that I found in the timeline that you showed about the Mellon scholarships that was interesting was, the argument was being made that diversity would be of benefit to all students, and so that's how the university, and not just Rice, but the many universities post Hopwood were, were

00:30:27.760 - 00:30:50.920

making the case for these kinds of, of initiatives, which is reminiscent in some ways of the arguments that Rice was having to make in the charter trial, you know, back in the '60s, that, that, if you recall, the university's lawyers argued that the original charter of the institute was intended to provide educational opportunities and

00:30:50.920 - 00:31:15.400

knowledge and advancement of learning for the entire community, and so this was going to be a way to do that, to, to, to remove the racial exclusion from the charter. And you see in the '90s, so thirty years on, something about the way that, that the broader society, and I don't include just Rice in this, it's something about the way

00:31:15.400 - 00:31:39.640

Americans talk about race and opportunity, leads to the, the recurrence of those, of those same arguments, even at a moment when, as you pointed out, significant progress had been made. There's that, those old arguments kind of, kind of keep coming up. It reminds me, I think one of our early doc talks, the discussion of the idea of interest

00:31:39.640 - 00:32:04.890

convergence. The only way that that you can, that, that many American institutions can make gains in, in repairing some of these historic injustices against particular racial groups is to argue that it will benefit the dominant group in the end or it will benefit more than, than, than only that group, and so I noticed that as well, the,

00:32:05.860 - 00:32:27.050

these, even as time passes and even as progress is made, some of these same starting premises have to be reestablished again and again. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm just hesitating from, from adding that, that, right, we're still in there,

00:32:27.050 - 00:32:58.190

right, we're, it's a space that we have not escaped from. But I would argue that I think I see more pushing against the kind of, "a rising tide lifts all boats" or "reparations for everyone," no, that, that I think we've seen the strongest arguments that, than we've ever seen, for, for highlighting what some of

00:32:58.190 - 00:33:16.760

the real difficulties are around that approach when it, when the question is actually dealing with groups who were harmed. I think this, this conversation about language is maybe a good segue to the document that I wanted to share today.

00:33:16.790 - 00:33:33.350

Would it be okay to move to that one? Let's go, let's go. So I'm gonna pull up on my screen a memorandum, says that right at the very top of the page, that is dated July 24th, 1969.

00:33:33.860 - 00:34:00.290

And I'm old enough to sort of recognize the color of this ink on this memorandum, it's the old mimeograph machines that were used to, to make copies of documents. So this is, we can, we can assume, a copy of an originally typed memorandum, and it's addressed, it's double-spaced, and it has the standard address block for a memorandum

00:34:00.290 - 00:34:19.040

at the top. No letterhead, but it's addressed to the Vice President of Humanities and Social Sciences and Departmental Chairmen of Humanities and Social Sciences. And the author of this memo is in the front line. Here is Frederick C.

00:34:19.040 - 00:34:42.020

Gamst, who was then assistant professor of anthropology, and he's writing this memo to provide a report of the Committee on Ethnic and Minority Group Studies. So I'm just gonna read a little bit about this memo, and then we can, we can scroll down and examine some other, some other parts of it.

00:34:42.020 - 00:35:07.550

But Professor Gamst begins, "Attached is a preliminary list assembled to indicate existing offerings at Rice University," this is in 1969, "in interrelationships of minority groups with numerous aspects of American and other societies in the past and present." And I'm thinking a little bit about the conversation we just had, about the

00:35:07.550 - 00:35:35.630

way that, that this report and this list is, is phrased, "the interrelationships of minority groups with numerous aspects of American and other societies." And he says, "This list is not in its final form, and it was assembled without prior commitment to any single definition of Rice's ultimate role in minority group studies." But as we scroll

00:35:35.630 - 00:35:58.780

down, what we see is that Professor Gamst is providing a listing of courses in a variety of departments that this, let me not get ahead of myself, has he, has he referred to a committee yet? I'm not sure he's referred to, oh, yes, a report of the Committee on Ethnic and Minority Group Studies.

00:35:58.780 - 00:36:20.050

So we learn at the bottom of the first page that Professor Gamst was the chairman of this committee, but we don't know anything about its membership yet, he's just writing for the committee. And what he's done here is, is something very similar to a project that one of our undergraduate researchers did early in the work of the task force.

00:36:20.050 - 00:36:29.050

You remember that, don't you, Dr. Byrd? Absolutely, yes. And what, what he's trying to do is sort of go through the, the general announcements, or

00:36:29.050 - 00:36:51.820

the course catalog, and flag any classes that seem like they might have some relationship to this somewhat amorphous topic, "interrelationships of minority groups with numerous aspects of American and other societies in the past and present." And he comes up, at least under that definition, with a pretty robust list.

00:36:51.820 - 00:37:11.040

You can see here it goes, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine pages. That's a pretty significant list. It's got lots of departments that are represented here, from philosophy to

00:37:11.040 - 00:37:34.380

political science to religion to history to anthropology. Now, that said, not all of these departments are as, are as well represented on the list of courses as others, so we can see here that English, for example, at this time, the committee only identified one course that, that fell into this rubric, Black Literature

00:37:34.380 - 00:37:54.480

in America, and no description was available from the catalogs. Not really clear why. And immediately below that, we see that the fine arts department also had only one course that made this list, in African art, but no description was available for it, because the

00:37:54.480 - 00:38:11.040

report notes that it was not to be offered until 1970 to 1971. And I, and I'm going to acknowledge that you raised your hand, Dr. Byrd, so I'm going to call on you for a comment or question. Thank you for calling on me, and following you, your treatment of the English department

00:38:11.040 - 00:38:24.450

class, I could not help to see the environmental science and engineering class, which does have a description, but... Yeah, so let's, let's scroll up here. For me, it's not clear to me how that description relates to the work of the

00:38:24.450 - 00:38:35.850

committee. I'm glad you, I'm glad you raised that, yes. Right above that is one class from the environmental science and engineering department on Synthesis of Water Quality Systems.

00:38:37.420 - 00:39:01.840

And the description is, "The theory of the operations and processes used in water and wastewater treatment and the synthesis of systems for accomplishment of a specified water quality objective." And like you, I'm not exactly sure what that has to do with minority and ethnic group studies, but it's indicative of the, the somewhat, let's say

00:39:02.200 - 00:39:19.660

heterogeneous nature of this list as we, as we scroll through it. There's some courses that I think we can clearly see why it would be included, so under those two classes from English and fine arts, there's also a history course, Readings in the History of the Negro American.

00:39:21.480 - 00:39:44.070

And let me just point out, too, that, that just on this, this one page, we see sort of several different ways of referring to the disciplinary space that we're talking about here. There's the, the history of the "Negro American" in the history department, but we can contrast that with the title in the English department, "Black" Literature in

00:39:44.070 - 00:40:03.300

America, and then in the fine arts department, there's, there's African art. As we go down through the list, we're gonna see some other classes that, that also, you can kind of see the, the relation to the overarching topic. America Since the Civil War, two, two different courses.

00:40:03.450 - 00:40:19.170

I was a little taken by that as the chair of the history department, that there were two surveys of the post Civil War era. Neither of the descriptions actually mentions, though, anything having to do with, with minority groups or ethnic groups.

00:40:19.470 - 00:40:37.830

But I think we can imagine why Gamst and the committee might have thought that history course would cover those things. But there's also the History of Southeastern Europe, two different courses here. And if we go down to the philosophy department, we again see several courses that

00:40:38.070 - 00:41:03.250

you kinda wonder why these were selected. There's The Nature of Human Freedom; there's Science, Religion, and Morality; there's Ethics. And as we go down to political science, we can see Politics of China and Japan, Politics of Developing Areas, a Seminar in Urban Politics, which does

00:41:03.250 - 00:41:28.210

mention, and I think this came up actually in the, in one of the surveys that our student researcher did, because there was a mention of race in this study on urban politics. There's also a course in the psychology department that I think is sort of a product of its time, and it's called The Psychology of Disadvantaged Children.

00:41:28.490 - 00:41:52.150

And I just wanna read the description here for, for Psych 363A, I'm quoting, "The study of children who are considered deviant by the majority culture. Diagnosis, personality assessment, techniques of personality, and institutional change will be covered. Contents will also include the educational and personality problems of

00:41:52.150 - 00:42:13.880

Mexican American, Negro, and lower socioeconomic class white children." So we're seeing, I'm not gonna spend the whole time going through this list, there's a snapshot and it's clearly kind of a scattershot of a lot of different courses. It's clear that the committee in writing this memo has cast a pretty wide net, wide

00:42:13.880 - 00:42:32.750

enough to capture, I'm looking at, here at the anthropology department, everything from History and Culture of Japan to Peasant Societies and Cultures to Peoples and Cultures of Africa. There's a pretty wide net. But if we go back to the first page, Professor Gamst kind of acknowledges that.

00:42:33.590 - 00:42:55.570

He says, "This list is not in its final form, and it was assembled," there's a passive voice here, it "was" assembled, "without prior commitment to any single definition of Rice's ultimate role in minority group studies. Until the committee knows," I'm quoting him here, "until the committee knows the degree

00:42:55.570 - 00:43:17.740

of commitment of the university, it is impossible to make any realistic forecast of the correct avenue of approach to minority group studies at Rice." Now, I already have a lot of questions in reading that paragraph, because we have this Committee on Ethnic and Minority Group Studies, it's writing the Vice President of Humanities and Social

00:43:17.740 - 00:43:42.640

Sciences and the Departmental Chairmen of Humanities and Social Sciences, but I don't really fully understand from this text who formed that committee, whether it was asked to embark on this work, what its charge was, or if the committee sort of formed itself and then assembled this list to send to the vice president and the chairman.

00:43:43.240 - 00:44:03.400

But what's clear is Professor Gamst says there hasn't really been a prior commitment from the university or a clear statement of commitment from the university about developing an approach to minority group studies at Rice. Nonetheless, the committee discussed several different possibilities, whether they were

00:44:03.400 - 00:44:18.250

asked to do this or not, areas that the committee thought could be focused on in the university's initiatives. And it lists four different possibilities here. The first one, Afro-American Studies.

00:44:20.090 - 00:44:39.810

That's a possible avenue for approaching minority group studies at Rice. Number two, Afro-American and Mexican-American studies. Number three, studies concerned with all non-European-American minority groups. We're kind of, we're kind of widening out here, right.

00:44:41.670 - 00:45:03.090

And then the fourth is maybe the widest of all and maybe explains some of those courses that didn't quite seem to fit on the list that might fit under this last umbrella: "Studies concerned with all non-European-American minority groups, foreign area courses relating to these groups, urban problems, and problems of

00:45:03.090 - 00:45:18.360

physical and environmental pollution." There's your, your wastewater treatment course, Dr. Byrd. These are, it's kind of interesting, and I have some questions about how the committee's discussion settled on these, these four ideas, and maybe what were the

00:45:18.360 - 00:45:36.030

arguments that were made for each of these different areas, and particularly that last one, that kind of has this grab bag of different topics, or maybe they would seem to us, but clearly they didn't seem to all the members of the committee at the time as a kind of grab bag. So I have some questions about that.

00:45:36.570 - 00:45:56.490

And I also am reading between the lines here a little bit and thinking back to some of our earlier documents, including one that postdates this memo by a couple of years. The conversation between Curtis Davis, the President of the Black Student Union, and then Dean of Students F.A.

00:45:56.520 - 00:46:22.680

Wierum, about, in 1972, the Black Student Union's plans to create a BSU center. Do you remember that discussion? And that discussion, and the memo that Dean Wierum wrote afterwards, sort of made me acutely aware as I was reading this memo of what the committee does not say, or what

00:46:22.680 - 00:46:34.500

avenue of approach is not listed here. There's a particular framing of, of minority group studies that the committee doesn't put on the list. Does that jump out to you at all, Dr.

00:46:34.500 - 00:46:49.020

Byrd? It's not, it's not jumping out enough. And so I think I'm, I think, I think I'm missing it. Sorry, I went, I went out for a second.

00:46:49.020 - 00:47:09.420

And because when you started to pose the, the test question, I was thinking black studies, but I would, I would put that in with one, unless it's a, it's a, it's a fine degree, it's a finer distinction that you want me to make. Well that, well that's what I wonder, is, is if there is a distinction, because you're

00:47:09.420 - 00:47:32.430

right, number one, Afro-American Studies, we might think of that as sort of equivalent with Black Studies, perhaps, but, but the committee doesn't choose the name Black Studies for this memo, and that raised a question for me, because that seemed to be one of the things that most concerned Dean Wierum about the plans that the BSU was

00:47:32.430 - 00:47:49.650

developing in 1972, that it was really gonna be a springboard for, for arguments for black studies at the university. And you remember, he was talking about black humanities courses in, in Hanszen College. So it just raises a question for me, a historical question, about whether there's

00:47:49.650 - 00:48:10.680

any significance to that, and there may not be significance to the wording here, and the language that's used to describe this discipline. But it's a question that I wanna, that I wanna think about and maybe look into more to see how various officers of the university thought about black studies and what, and

00:48:10.680 - 00:48:32.250

what the discourse around black studies was at other universities at this time. This is in 1969, so we're at the very end of the 1960s, which has been a tumultuous time on many university campuses, and in fact, I should mention here that Professor Gamst had some direct experience with one of the campuses that I think experienced some of the

00:48:32.250 - 00:48:54.360

most tumult, which was the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Gamst had gotten his B.A. degree from UCLA in 1961, and then he completed his PhD in anthropology, working on a dissertation about Ethiopia in 1967 at the University of California, Berkeley.

00:48:54.720 - 00:49:16.110

And that means he would have been on campus during a lot of the the controversies on campus about free speech, about the civil rights movement, about the Freedom Summer, and about this kind of emerging construction, maybe, maybe it would have emerged by now in 1969, of the idea of black studies.

00:49:16.500 - 00:49:36.720

Maybe my dating's a little bit off there. No, I, if it's off, we're both off because I think the, the first black studies departments and programs and protests for them begin early '70s, late, late '60s, and so it's, we're, we're in the, we're in the ballpark.

00:49:37.260 - 00:49:56.310

We're in the ballpark, yeah. And so it's something maybe to, to, to investigate a little bit more. Professor Gamst was, was also, I should say, involved, he's a, he was a busy assistant professor because he was also overseeing an interuniversity consortium in Houston in

00:49:56.310 - 00:50:22.830

African studies that involved faculty from TSU, U of H, and, and Rice, that was trying to develop at the same time a sort of student exchange program in African studies. Unfortunately, Professor Gamst didn't remain at Rice very long. He left for, for a position somewhere else a couple of years later, but he was one of a

00:50:22.830 - 00:50:48.570

cohort of very energetic young PhDs who were coming to Rice at a moment when there was a lot of conversation at Rice about reforming the curriculum, changing the governance of the university. And Professor Gamst was part of that and this committee. Now, I wanna, before we close, scroll down to, does it count as one document if, if the

00:50:48.570 - 00:50:55.410

scan file includes two documents in one file? This is... Definitely one document. Okay, it's one document.

00:50:55.410 - 00:51:06.650

By our, by our rules. Well, this is more file talk, I guess, but if we scroll down, you can see what I have here is another memorandum. And this one is in black ink.

00:51:06.670 - 00:51:29.740

It's not the, the, mimeographed version, copy, that we saw before. It's typed in black ink, and it's dated a little bit later, November 7th, 1969. So this is, let me do my math, About 3 to 4 months after that initial list that Professor Gamst said was not yet complete.

00:51:30.310 - 00:51:48.000

And this memo answers some of the questions we had, or that I had, after reading the first memo. It tells us a little bit more about how this committee for the consideration of ethnic and minority group studies; again, not black studies, but ethnic and minority group studies; was formed.

00:51:48.000 - 00:52:04.510

It was formed, according to this memo, by the Vice President and the Departmental Chairmen of Humanities and Social Sciences. They formed this committee to consider the possibilities. And now, this is, according to the subject line here, the committee's final report.

00:52:04.900 - 00:52:24.400

This is what, their final report. And they make two recommendations in their final report. "The recommendations," Professor Gamst says, "are an expansion of the second of four possible avenues to such studies." Which, if you remember, was Afro-American and Mexican

00:52:24.400 - 00:52:38.350

American studies. But then the committee; which, by the way, is, is named here at the bottom, we learn a little bit more about who all was on the committee; they make a couple of other points to the university as they deliver this recommendation.

00:52:40.120 - 00:52:57.490

First, they say, "Before any kind of program can be started, the administration must make a commitment to the program, especially in the area of the hiring of additional faculty members to staff the program. A legitimate program cannot be pieced together solely from faculty members who are

00:52:57.490 - 00:53:16.990

asked to reorient themselves to an ethnic studies specialty of their discipline, for which they have no training." There seems to be a, kind of a recognition here that if the university is serious about doing this, about doing Afro-American and Mexican American studies, it's going to have to hire faculty who are trained in those fields.

00:53:17.230 - 00:53:30.530

And there's an awareness that, that it can't just be anybody teaching that course who doesn't have the training. But then they also say that this, this could be an opportunity to meet some of the other goals of the university.

00:53:30.550 - 00:53:52.730

"The university should explore the possibility of hiring qualified," there's that word again, qualified, quote, "Negro and Mexican American faculty members to teach in the program and to teach other courses." And then they kind of give some, some reasons for their settling on this recommendation.

00:53:52.740 - 00:54:11.480

They said that "An ethnic studies program at Rice should be restricted to" these two areas, Afro-American and Mexican American studies, "because Rice actively recruits students from these groups," and because "the city and state around Rice is inhabited by members of these groups, and we could spread ourselves too thinly in attempting a

00:54:11.480 - 00:54:33.080

wider coverage of American minority groups." They don't recommend at this time any "major, department, or degree in ethnic studies," but they suggest maybe a certificate could be given "in either Afro-American or Mexican American studies in conjunction with a student's normal major." Now, what's really interesting about this is

00:54:33.080 - 00:54:53.790

they, they give a list of the courses that they think would be relevant to these two proposed programs to study, and you remember that the first memo came with nine pages of courses, complete with descriptions. But when we get to the final report down here, that long list has been, has been

00:54:53.790 - 00:55:14.170

culled and reduced to one page. And by my count, there are about eleven courses that the committee has identified as relevant to Afro-American studies and Mexican American studies. Not the wastewater treatment course, that's dropped off, but some of the other ones we

00:55:14.170 - 00:55:33.610

noted, Psychology of the Disadvantaged Child, for example, is there under both categories, and also the courses that we saw in African Art, Black Literature in America, two courses that had not yet even been described in the catalog or offered yet, along with Readings in the History of the Negro Americans.

00:55:33.610 - 00:55:53.590

So from that long list, the committee ultimately decided actually, if you cast a little bit of a narrower net, the curriculum with Rice's current level of commitment was not quite as expansive as that, that first draft indicated. So for me, there's a lot of questions to follow up on with this.

00:55:53.590 - 00:56:14.560

I think it's interesting to, just like we were doing with your document, think about change over time and, and the recurrence of issues. I noticed an email from the Faculty Senate that went out this week about an agenda item for next week's Faculty Senate meeting, and one of the items that's gonna be considered

00:56:14.680 - 00:56:42.570

is a proposal for a new minor in Latinx and Latin American studies. And so that, that's not a minor that has existed, even though something kind of like that was proposed here, if, depending on, on how we characterize Mexican American studies. But this is in 1969, and, and one question would be, I don't know whether or not that

00:56:42.570 - 00:56:57.550

actually anything came of this memo. That's a question for further research. But it's telling to me that, here in 2022, the Senate is taking up a similar issue in its meeting next week.

00:56:57.570 - 00:57:14.730

The way, of course, that these disciplines and these fields are described over time is also really interesting. And the way you can see, even in this memo, the, the, Professor Gamst sort of switching between different languages here, there's Afro-American Studies, and yet when he talks

00:57:14.730 - 00:57:32.430

about hiring faculty, it's about hiring Negro faculty members. So I think we're in a moment of flux here in 1969, where a lot's happening, and this document's giving us a window into what one group of faculty members is advocating for from the administration.

00:57:35.220 - 00:57:47.940

I, I like this. I like, well, of course I always like it, but I, you know, I, we don't collude. I wanna make that clear. It's no collusion here.

00:57:47.940 - 00:58:12.960

No collusion. But I do like how so often our stories come together. And a couple of things that I'll take with me from these two documents is, right, is, man, people work on the same things for a long time, is one thing, I guess that's, I'm

00:58:12.960 - 00:58:40.440

embarrassed as a historian to say that, but, right, it, it is clear. And I think the other thing that is, I didn't mean that unserious, but, but is a little more serious, is we, I was playing a little dumb on some of the environmental things in the late '60s and '70s, and I think, or I wonder, I wonder if, if some of

00:58:40.440 - 00:59:08.370

the discourse on poverty and particularly racial poverty in Appalachia, in, in "blighted" urban areas, this is, I think, a beginning of attention around places that, in the United States, that still don't have proper water treatment. In the late 1960s, early '70s in Houston, there are a series of stories around the

00:59:08.370 - 00:59:28.950

Riceville area of Houston and African American neighborhoods who are, are still not connected to sewers. And I wonder if, right, but this would be, I wonder if environmental studies at Rice in engineering at this moment, I'd be curious how attuned they were to those specific

00:59:29.610 - 00:59:54.630

social and cultural issues as opposed to the technical and civil engineering issues. Because I do know, right, if you, if you pull a decent number of folks in Earth and environmental and planetary sciences now at Rice, right, they do, very many of them do very much see their work squarely in this way.

00:59:55.860 - 01:00:12.840

No, that's a great point, and it raises the question of how that course got on the list. There's some, some reason why that course got on the list. And so the committee knew something about the instructors or the department that perhaps prompted them to put that there, to make that connection, although...

01:00:12.840 - 01:00:21.150

You're giving us a lot of credit, right... Maybe, maybe. As, as someone who's done first-pass curricular reviews, sometimes... You're just grabbing everything.

01:00:21.150 - 01:00:42.420

I don't know, I mean, it raises a question. And then the fact that it fell off in the shorter list in a way represented a, potentially, a narrowing of, of thinking about how an attention to the issues facing what the committee saw as minority groups could, could ramify across every discipline

01:00:42.420 - 01:01:01.290

on campus. Something that I think the new analyzing diversity course requirement, I think has that more expansive understanding. And, but yeah, it does, it is an interesting question. Another, another find I'll throw out from the archive, earlier this week, I was not

01:01:01.290 - 01:01:27.990

aware that in the early 1970s, the department of sociology, which, I'm not sure if it had been founded yet by the time of that memo, although I'll have to check on that. But one of its early hires for a course as a, as an adjunct lecturer, was Professor Robert Bullard, who of course at the University of Houston has gone on to a

01:01:27.990 - 01:01:55.770

very distinguished and internationally renowned career as a theorist and a scholar of environmental racism and the kinds of interlocking injustices that you're referring to with water quality and, and urban communities. And he taught a course at Rice, one course, in the early 1970s, on Urban Studies.

01:01:56.220 - 01:02:20.760

So, so you're right that there may, there may have been some understanding among some of the faculty, although clearly not all, about the connections between these things. I think this could very well, at ,least especially in the Houston context, relate quite closely to the stories that are bubbling up about the poor suburbs of Houston

01:02:20.760 - 01:02:33.420

in the late 1960s, early 1970s. Well, you've given me another question to wonder about, which is, why is Riceville Riceville? But that's a conversation for another day. I bet you know the answer to that question.

01:02:33.420 - 01:02:54.090

I, I've often wondered, I've often wondered and sniffed around the edges of the question, but I think there's more research that could be done. You know, I think, like the best doc talks, we're ending with more questions instead of all the answers, and I wanna thank all of our audience for being along with us today.

01:02:54.390 - 01:03:04.320

We have one final doc talk of the academic year next Friday, and we hope that you'll join us next Friday for that. Have a great weekend, everyone.