AlterNet By Ingrid Monson and Carol J. Oja
May 15, 2012 |
Among the less obvious impacts of the economic downturn are its effects on college and university scholarly research centers devoted to the exploration of arts and culture. As budget shortfalls rise and colleges and universities prioritize their spending with greater emphasis on the more profitable sciences and social sciences, some of the major achievements of scholarly activism in the 1970s and 1980s are now under threat of drastic cutbacks, or in some cases, elimination.
Consider the Center for Black Music Research (CBMR) at Columbia College in Chicago, a thriving operation from the 1980s through the late 2000s. The center is now being threatened with elimination or downsizing on such a scale as to destroy it.
Research centers come and go, but the Center for Black Music Research has made a remarkable difference, facilitating the birth of a now-central field of study. CBMR was founded in 1983 by Dr. Samuel A. Floyd, Jr., who had a community-based vision of a research and performance center devoted to black music in its most expansive sense—including African American music of all genres, and the music of Africa and its diasporas. On the strength of this vision and with extraordinary entrepreneurial skill, Dr. Floyd launched a center that would eventually blossom as the institutional hub for a wide variety of activities.
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