African Studies Association

Herskovits's Vision

However, Herskovits's vision of the association as one whose sole purpose was to be a gathering of scholars for scholarly purposes did not have the support of the entire membership of the association. The African and African American membership, in particular, disagreed with Herskovits. Their major argument was that their scholarly production ought to have some form of connection to the larger society in which the African Studies Association exists. Indeed, Herskovits's preference was to engage the world in his writings rather than through the association. He has done this eloquently by using his research on the African kingdom of Dahomey and African roots of African American culture to engage racial ideas about Africa and an orchestrated mainstream erroneous projection of Africans and African Americans.

Herskovits's actions as the president of the African Studies Association were, however, contradictory to the ideas in his scholarly works. The climax of this contradiction was his role in helping to deny funding to panAfricanist W.E.B. Du Bois's Encyclopedia Africana project, while offering the association's full assistance to the CIA's Allen Dulles in his projects in Africa. Scholars were critical of his actions as the greatest affront to the institutionalization of African Studies since the birth of ASA in the 1950s and the 1960s. Herskovits's actions were interpreted by African Americans as an attempt at eliminating competing forms of scholarship on Africa, in this case, the panAfricanist element. Thus, it has been speculated that perhaps Herskovits used his position as the African Studies Association president to undermine Du Bois's Encyclopedia Africana project because of his concern that pan-African scholarship would generate racial tension and increase his marginality as a white Africanist.

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