Multiple U.S. colleges are cutting, merging or ending Black Studies programs due to political pressure, reduced budgets and low student enrollment. According to a report by The Washington Post, at least a dozen public and private universities have reduced these academic offerings since 2024.
The University of Iowa eliminated its African American studies major when enrollment dropped to nine students. The University of Texas at Austin consolidated its African and African Diaspora Studies department into a broader social and cultural analysis unit.
Indiana University Bloomington ended its standalone African American and African Diaspora Studies degree, moving it to an interdisciplinary subfield. Institutions like the University of Kansas, Kennesaw State University and the University of Toledo have also reduced classes, cut staff or phased out majors.
Broad financial constraints across higher education led to targeted programmatic cuts. New state laws and federal scrutiny targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives have forced many institutions to scale back race-related education. In addition, federal data show that fewer than 700 students received degrees in African American studies nationally for three consecutive years through 2025, marking a 20-year low.
Black Studies programs began in the United States in the late 1960s following student-led strikes, the Civil Rights and the Black Power movements. Individual courses existed earlier, including “The Negro in American History,” started by W.E.B. DuBois in 1948 at The New School for Social Research in New York City and the Negro History Fact Group, organized by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in 1961 at Merritt College in Oakland, California.
In fact, Angela Davis helped lay the foundational intellectual and structural groundwork for Black Studies programs in California colleges. In 1969, Davis delivered landmark lectures, including what became a 24-page pamphlet titled Lectures on Liberation, which formulated a rigorous intellectual and political framework for the emerging field of Black Studies.
Davis views Black Studies programs as vital intellectual spaces that connect rigorous academic scholarship with movements for social justice and liberation. These programs also expose the narrow focus of traditional academia by centering the histories, literature and philosophies of people of African descent and teach students to analyze systemic power structures, linking race, gender, class and capitalism. Davis emphasizes that these programs are tied to a broader quest for justice and freedom, aiming to dismantle hierarchies of power rather than merely studying identity categories in isolation.
An interdisciplinary academic field, Black Studies programs examine the history, culture and lived experiences of African people throughout the global diaspora. Outside the classroom, Black Studies programs also equip students to challenge real-world oppression and enact societal change.
It rejects the idea of “neutral” or detached scholarship. Instead, Black Studies connects academic learning directly to social change, which opponents often label as political indoctrination rather than objective education.
Black Studies programs challenge traditional narratives of oppression. However, re-examining history through the lens of systemic oppression and resistance threatens “national unity” and established national narratives.
The field naturally analyzes how major institutions, including governments, legal systems and universities, have perpetuated racialized inequality. Institutional leaders often view this critical self-examination as adversarial. Sound familiar?
I have a minor in African and African American Studies from Buffalo State College, which began as a unit in 1969. It would later become a program, then a department, before returning to a program. Despite these changes, I have no doubt that I was without a complete historical narrative and lacked the critical support my personal identity needed for cultural pride before engaging in the reading and writing those courses required.
I was introduced to historical figures I wouldn’t have met on my own and taught deep textual analysis, data evaluation and cultural competency. The program’s interdisciplinary approach gave me tools from history, sociology, literature and political science.
Without the African and African American Studies program, I would have continued to view myself as an object of history, merely acted upon rather than an active participant who has the power to shape events, tell my own stories, and assert my humanity. Those undergraduate courses not only challenged Eurocentric frameworks; they disrupted them. Consequently, I could see why this method of learning would be reframed as “threatening” or “problematic.”
“The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy,” bell hooks declared in Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. She believed, as do I, that “learning at its most powerful could indeed liberate.”
Education should be a tool for conscious awareness and social liberation, rather than mere conformity. Though Black Studies programs are on the decline, you can still pick up a book on African American history and learn how to get out of line.
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Director of The Raceless Gospel Initiative, an associate editor, host of the Good Faith Media podcast, “The Raceless Gospel” and author of Take Me to the Water: The Raceless Gospel as Baptismal Pedagogy for a Desegregated Church.