The African American Postdoctoral Program and Department of History will host a lecture with David Varel, the Postdoctoral Fellow in African American Studies.
Varel will present “Black Scholars and the Struggle Against Scientific Racism: The Case of Allison Davis 1902-1983” Friday, April 28, from 12:45 to 2 p.m. in Mather House, Room 100.
His lecture will highlight the forgotten career of African-American anthropologist Allison Davis, as it sheds light on the larger struggle against scientific racism during the 20th century.
Davis, a preeminent pioneer whose career was marginalized by the very racism he studied, comprised but one part of an early generation of black scholars to enter the academy to combat hereditarian thinking. His particular work contributed to the proceedings of Brown v. Board of Education (1954), laid the intellectual roots for the federal Head Start program and prompted school districts all across the country to revise or discontinue their use of culturally-biased intelligence tests.
Varel will explain how, by placing black scholars such as Davis at the center of the environmentalist revolution in American social thought, we gain a better understanding of the politics of knowledge production, and of the central role of ideas within the long civil rights movement.
Learn more about the Postdoctoral Fellowship in African American Studies at history.case.edu/postdoc-fellowship-african-american-studies/.