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AFAM Colloquium: Dr. Ray Block

Wednesday, October 5, 2022
3:30 p.m.–4:30 p.m.
335 Willard Building
AFAM Colloquium: Dr. Ray Block

Ray Block, Brown-McCourtney Career Development Professor in the McCourtney Institute for Democracy and Associate Professor of Political Science and African American Studies

“The Intellectual Benefits of Diversity: How Political Science Suffers from Its Lack of Diversity, and How It Can Do Better”

For decades, political scientists have written about the need for increased diversity, generally in terms of gender, race, and socioeconomic class origin. These important studies often focus on the inherent benefits of diversity and its importance for reasons of fairness and for pedagogical purposes by allowing students to see instructors and role models who reflect the full range of demographic profiles. In this chapter, we consider the intellectual benefits of increased racial diversity in the discipline; it will make our profession richer by producing better research.

An important element of demographic diversity is the substantive diversity in research foci and the methodological diversity in terms of approach that it engenders. Even though Black people are grossly underrepresented in the discipline, Black scholars have produced innovative research projects on new topics of exploration, and they have often pioneered new methodological approaches to understand them. These innovations have affected every field of the profession, from international relations to political theory, not surprisingly with many important contributions in race and ethnic politics. Key to these substantive and methodological contributions is the fact that minority scholars often adopt different perspectives and theoretical starting points. We document the paucity of diversity in the profession by looking at the make-up of the tenure-track faculty in the most prominent PhD-granting institutions and we show that few PhDs are granted to Black scholars across a range of disciplines. We then provide numerous examples of the theoretical richness and innovations that have come from Black scholars in recent years (and some not so recent), and we note how many of these insights would likely not have come from White scholars; at least they did not. We discuss how identity matters in shaping our research questions, our theoretical approaches, and our abilities to study different topics.

For these reasons, our profession will be richer in terms of theoretical questions, approaches and capacity to address important research questions to the extent that it corrects the enormous shortfalls that currently characterize its demographic profile. We also show that political science is in the middle of the pack with regards to its lack of demographic diversity compared to cognate disciplines. Therefore, the intellectual benefits that could come from addressing these questions in our field would likely be similar in many other disciplines including economics, philosophy, sociology, psychology and history.For decades, political scientists have written about the need for increased diversity, generally in terms of gender, race, and socioeconomic class origin. These important studies often focus on the inherent benefits of diversity and its importance for reasons of fairness and for pedagogical purposes by allowing students to see instructors and role models who reflect the full range of demographic profiles. In this chapter, we consider the intellectual benefits of increased racial diversity in the discipline; it will make our profession richer by producing better research. An important element of demographic diversity is the substantive diversity in research foci and the methodological diversity in terms of approach that it engenders. Even though Black people are grossly underrepresented in the discipline, Black scholars have produced innovative research projects on new topics of exploration, and they have often pioneered new methodological approaches to understand them.

These innovations have affected every field of the profession, from international relations to political theory, not surprisingly with many important contributions in race and ethnic politics. Key to these substantive and methodological contributions is the fact that minority scholars often adopt different perspectives and theoretical starting points. We document the paucity of diversity in the profession by looking at the make-up of the tenure-track faculty in the most prominent PhD-granting institutions and we show that few PhDs are granted to Black scholars across a range of disciplines. We then provide numerous examples of the theoretical richness and innovations that have come from Black scholars in recent years (and some not so recent), and we note how many of these insights would likely not have come from White scholars; at least they did not.

We discuss how identity matters in shaping our research questions, our theoretical approaches, and our abilities to study different topics. For these reasons, our profession will be richer in terms of theoretical questions, approaches and capacity to address important research questions to the extent that it corrects the enormous shortfalls that currently characterize its demographic profile. We also show that political science is in the middle of the pack with regards to its lack of demographic diversity compared to cognate disciplines. Therefore, the intellectual benefits that could come from addressing these questions in our field would likely be similar in many other disciplines including economics, philosophy, sociology, psychology and history.For decades, political scientists have written about the need for increased diversity, generally in terms of gender, race, and socioeconomic class origin. These important studies often focus on the inherent benefits of diversity and its importance for reasons of fairness and for pedagogical purposes by allowing students to see instructors and role models who reflect the full range of demographic profiles. In this chapter, we consider the intellectual benefits of increased racial diversity in the discipline; it will make our profession richer by producing better research.

An important element of demographic diversity is the substantive diversity in research foci and the methodological diversity in terms of approach that it engenders. Even though Black people are grossly underrepresented in the discipline, Black scholars have produced innovative research projects on new topics of exploration, and they have often pioneered new methodological approaches to understand them. These innovations have affected every field of the profession, from international relations to political theory, not surprisingly with many important contributions in race and ethnic politics. Key to these substantive and methodological contributions is the fact that minority scholars often adopt different perspectives and theoretical starting points.

We document the paucity of diversity in the profession by looking at the make-up of the tenure-track faculty in the most prominent doctorate-granting institutions and we show that few doctoral degrees are granted to Black scholars across a range of disciplines. We then provide numerous examples of the theoretical richness and innovations that have come from Black scholars in recent years (and some not so recent), and we note how many of these insights would likely not have come from White scholars; at least they did not. We discuss how identity matters in shaping our research questions, our theoretical approaches, and our abilities to study different topics. For these reasons, our profession will be richer in terms of theoretical questions, approaches and capacity to address important research questions to the extent that it corrects the enormous shortfalls that currently characterize its demographic profile.

We also show that political science is in the middle of the pack with regards to its lack of demographic diversity compared to cognate disciplines. Therefore, the intellectual benefits that could come from addressing these questions in our field would likely be similar in many other disciplines including economics, philosophy, sociology, psychology, and history.

Hybrid Event
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335 Willard Building