“You better believe I will never stop studying you because I am deeply invested in not just your continuation and survival, but your eternal life… .”
Black Study(ies) at Columbia remains unique because of our more than 100-year-old tradition of humanistic, social-cultural, and political-economic study and engagement with Black communities, at home in Harlem and around the world. Dedicated both to the intellectual and creative project of Black studies in the academy and to the wide-ranging, transnational long Black intellectual tradition beyond institutions that has come to be understood as “Black Study,” Black Study(ies) at Columbia University comprises three parts: our academic unit, the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies (AAADS); our founding research and community engagement arm, the Institute for Research in African American Studies (IRAAS); and our free and open-access platform and scholarly journal, SOULS: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society.
“… This is what Black Studies has taught me and what I carry into the classroom and beyond. At a time when Black histories and ideas are being diminished, pushed aside, and attempted to be erased by some of the most powerful people and forces in this country, Black Studies continues to give us tools to question, challenge, and witness, to recover what’s being lost, and, as Lorde writes, to choose the voice in which our children hear us and use our stories and legends to shape their own.”
Your gift will help us fund
- AAADS: new PhD and MA graduate student fellowships and new endowed faculty chairs;
- IRAAS: new community-based initiatives, including a Harlem Freedom School and Community Makers’ Workshops, and returning programs like our Summer Teachers and Scholars Institute;
- SOULS: newly online, free, and open access after 25 years of publication.
Ways to give
Give now. Choose AAADS, IRAAS, or SOULS below, or more than one, to give by credit card. Or mail us at 1200 Amsterdam Ave., Mail Code 5512, New York, NY 10027. Dr. Manning Marable established Membership in IRAAS to connect the Institute to communities near and far. In that tradition, every gift counts. While we have important goals and work to fund, a donation’s impact doesn’t come down to the amount you can give. Gifts designated to Black Study(ies) stay with this work.
Named and endowed gifts. To establish a fellowship or endow a professorship, please contact our Associate Director for Finance & Administration, Shawn Mendoza; our Chair, or our Director.
Restricted bequests and gift planning. You may make a restricted bequest to BlackStudy(ies) by naming “Columbia University, for the benefit of [AAADS, IRAAS, or SOULS], as may be designated by letter.” Columbia’s Office of Gift Planning can help with this and with other planned gifts that meet your philanthropic, financial, and estate-planning goals.
Your gifts of material and moral support ensure that this vital work continues and assure our independence. Black Study(ies) has always been a Freedom Practice, and we thank you for your continued support.