Rojas, Fabio. From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 2007), $26.00, 304 pp. ISBN: 978-0-8018-9825-9 (paper).

For many, diversity and access are critical issues facing the American academy today. Globalization dictates that if colleges and universities are going to compete and survive, then stakeholders must be committed to broadening opportunities for those in “out” groups who are generally categorized as minorities, underserved and/or underrepresented. Administrators and faculty alike are asking how their institutions can be more inclusive and responsive to “out” groups. In the process, they are initiating programs, projects, and processes to address these concerns. Unfortunately, this recent level of commitment to diversity and access has not always been a priority within the American academy. History tells us that this was not the case in the 1960s when African American students across campuses demanded diversity in the student body, faculty, and curriculum, and yet were met with overt opposition to their inclusion in the American academy. Fabio Rojas’ book From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline chronicles the evolution of Black students’ protest on college campuses in the 1960s and the rise, fall, and reemergence of Black studies as a sustained outcome of the Black power social movement.