Northwestern U. Scholars Mobilized in Countering Blog Attack on Black Studies

Northwestern U. Scholars Mobilized in Countering Blog Attack on Black Studies: In five hastily conceived paragraphs, a White conservative blogger threw cold water on the warmly received dissertations presented by three African-American Ph.D. candidates at an academic conference last month.

Naomi Schaefer Riley, an affiliate scholar of the Institute for American Values, a New York-based conservative think tank, ripped into the scholarly research of the Northwestern University doctoral students after reading summaries of their work in story by a Chronicle of Higher Education reporter. Calling the dissertations “a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap,” Riley, then a contributor to the Chronicle’s “Brainstorm” blog, cited them as evidence that the entire Black studies discipline should be eliminated.

The three students’ research was presented at “A Beautiful Struggle: Transformative Black Studies in Shifting Political Landscapes — A Summit of Doctoral Programs,” put on by Northwestern University’s Department of African American Studies in mid-April.