We are concerned: the University’s administration wants to subsume the Africa Center, the only space explicitly and solely devoted to the study of the continent, into the Africana Studies Department. This decision was only revealed about two weeks ago, effective July 1st, without any consultation of neither Africa Center staff nor students. We invite you to join our fight for the Africa Center to be kept open.

The Africa Center, a 22-year-old institution, has lost Title VI funding for the first time this year. The response of the administration was to put an end to the center, instead of strengthening its support of it to manifest Penn’s true Global Engagement. The Africa Center is not the only nor the first to lose funding: it happened to the Middle East Center in the past and is happening to the Center of East Asian Studies in the present. However, they have not been discontinued. Furthermore, Dean Fluharty mentioned the recent opening of the Center for Contemporary China.

Putting the study of 55 countries under the study of the African diaspora who have left the continent and face very different issues is problematic. Penn’s administration does not believe so. Dean Fluharty mentioned in our meeting with him that the presence on campus of both the Center for Africana Studies and the Africa Center is a “redundancy”, and failed to present us with a 5-year-plan concerning the future of the Africa Center in the department. A specialized committee was only formed last week, following student protests on Monday 4/13/2015, to begin planning how the subsumption of the Africa Center will work even though the decision was made in January, according to Dean Fluharty.

Additional ways to help:

1. Emailing Dean Steven Fulharty (sasdean@sas.upenn.edu), Dean Jeffrey Kallberg (kallberg@sas.upenn.edu), and Dean DeTurck (eliebman@sas.upenn.edu) expressing your support for keeping the Africa Center open.

2. Connecting us with media outlets to get the story out.

3. Writing opinion articles and publishing in the DP, Huffpost, or other media outlets.

Thank you for your much needed and crucial support,

Students for the Preservation of the Africa Center