Deborah Curry
IROW Associate Deborah Curry was the only University at Albany faculty member to attend this landmark conference. She agreed to share her impressions with IROW News.
On January 12, 1994 Black women academics made history. Over 2,000 women from nearly every academic discipline and department in the academy - from large and small historically white and historically Black institutions - converged on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for a three-day conference. The conference, "Black Women in the Academy: Defending Our Name, 1894-1994," was the brainchild of two untenured faculty members at MIT. Professors Robin Kilson and Evelyn Hemmond. The impetus for this effort centered on the recent criticism surrounding the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings and the nomination of Professor Lani Guinier. Professor Hammond commented that "Black women have come in for a large share of this criticism."
Presenters and participants came from as far away as the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa to discuss a myriad of issues including pedagogy in Black women's studies courses, Black feminist theory, homophobia and heterosexism in academe, and race and gender politics in academic culture. Several roundtable discussions drew standing room only audiences; but two panels in particular provoked the hottest debates of the conference: "The Political (Re) Awakening of Black Women: What's Feminism Got To Do With It?" and "Black Lesbians in Academe." Workshops on "Going to Graduate School: How, What, When, Why, Where, Who"; "Black Women and the Power of Information"; and "Finding Research Funding for Black Women's Research" offered practical information. Participants also could attend screenings of Alice Walker's "Warrior Marks" and Ngozi Onwurah's "And Still I Rise," browse through book displays, or take part in "Woman to Woman: Women of African Descent Networking Sessions," safe spaces for Black women to dialogue.
The three keynote speakers, Professor Lani Guinier, University of Pennsylvania Law School, Dr. Johnnetta Cole, President of Spelman College, and Professor Angela Davis, University of California, Santa Cruz, brought their own brand of inspiration to the proceedings. Professor Guinier captivated the audience by drawing from her personal experiences. She implored Black women in academe not to speak from anger, but to understand that "We are women with a gift, not a grievance."
Dr. Cole drew thunderous applause when she remined the Black professorate to go beyond the classroom to extend "Black women in academe" to the infinitestimal number of Black women who serve as presidents of "majority" institutions as well as to "the substantial number of Black women who can be found in "majority" and `minority' institutions cleaning bathrooms in dormitories and cooking food for campus dining halls," Her resounding declaration - "And so, if I know my name, I know that in the academy, as in America, the sister is caught between the rock of racism and the hard place of sexism," echoed throughout the hall. In closing she appealed to the participants to consider the "diversity among us as well as the shared experiences that bind us one to another."
Professor Davis closed the conference calling for coalitions, with the understanding that all is not well at home for Black women either. "We can no longer assume which we is one monolithic force against which we position ourselves in order to defend our name. We have to defend our names in those places we consider home as well." She also cautioned that "We cannot afford to commit ourselves so fervently to defending our name that we end up being poised against our Asian, Latina, Pacific Island and Native American sisters."
In response to the resounding success of the meeting, planning already has begun for a second conference to be held at Spelman College in Atlanta in 1997.