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This article offers insights into conceptual, pedagogical, and programmatic crossings and conflicts between the fields of Environmental Studies and Ethnic Studies. It highlights both the important intersections between the two fields and their potential value, while also addressing the challenges posed in the development of programmatic collaborations. Utilizing case studies drawn from the author's own experiences, the article's focus is on harnessing the strengths and limitations of both fields to promote transformative knowledge and action at multiple scales.

That there is a strong historical intellectual tradition of African Americans studying Africa is news to some. That there remains a demand among African Americans in the United States to study Africa is also a surprise. That these ideas are challenging to some is ludicrous to others. For many African Americans in African studies, affirming our engagement with Africa over and over is not only a nuisance but also a waste of precious time and intellectual energy. After countless efforts, many African Americans have simply disengaged, refusing to have these futile conversations. Others bear witness in perpetuity to the defense of Black nationality and global Pan-Africanism for themselves, the race, and the enlightenment of disbelievers. Both groups act with calculated rationality, yet denials of African Americans' interest in, engagement with, and effect on African studies abound. The denial within the community of scholars comes mostly from White Americans but also from continental Africans and other African Americans.

While the United States wrestles with a college completion crisis, the Division of Institutional Research at San Francisco State University found a high correlation between Ethnic Studies curriculum and increased student retention and graduation rates. Majors and minors in the College of Ethnic Studies graduated within six years at rates up to 92%. Those who were neither majors nor minors in Ethnic Studies also boosted their graduation rates by up to 72% by taking just a few courses in Africana Studies, American Indian Studies, Asian American Studies, Latina/Latino Studies, or Race and Resistance Studies. Faculty in the College of Ethnic Studies demonstrated significant levels of high impact instruction in the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and senior exit surveys as compared with their colleagues across the university.

Afro-Americans have always had more than academic interest in the study of Africa; it was inevitable therefore that they would come into conflict with Euro-Americans who (through myopia or cunning) insisted that they had no unique relationship to Africa. Viewed in historical perspective, it is quite understandable why in the 1960s blacks would challenge those whites who had arrogated to themselves the control of African Studies in the United States. For blacks, parity (if not dominance), in the study of Africa is inextricably part of their struggle for full equality in America. The reasons for this are quite simple: the whites who conquered and settled America decided quite early that the people of African descent who were brought to these shores as captives could not and (later) should not be permitted to live on a plane of equality with them.

In Pensée 1, "Africa on My Mind," Mervat Hatem questions the perceived wisdom of creating the African Studies Association (focused on sub-Saharan Africa) and the Middle East Studies Association a decade later, which "institutionalized the political bifurcation of the African continent into two academic fields." The cleaving of Africa into separate and distinct parts—a North Africa/Middle East and a sub-Saharan Africa—rendered a great disservice to all Africans: it has fractured dialogue, research, and policy while preventing students and scholars of Africa from articulating a coherent understanding of the continent.

In the last century, and up to the 1930s at least, the usual relationship in African Studies was that of expatriate specialist and African informants. (SJO)

In 1958, when the African Studies Association was founded, a small group of American scholars who were interested in Africa comprised the first annual general meeting. This year nearly 1,000 people attended the eighth annual meeting. Most of those attending were fellows and members of the Association, augmented by visitors from many parts of the world. These included Seretse Khama, Prime Minister of Bechuanaland, who gave the main address at the opening plenary session. Other visitors included Daryll Forde from London, S. N. Varma from the Department of African Studies at the University of Delhi, and Philippe Decraene, African correspondent for the Paris paper, Le Monde.

The sixth annual meeting of the African Studies Association, the leading American academic society of specialists on Africa, was the first to be held on the west coast. Although attendance could not be expected to match that at meetings in the east, a registration of over 250 testifies to the increasing strength of African studies in America. Quite a few of the founders of the Association were present, but the participation of many newcomers suggested that a second generation of American Africanists was bringing new vigour and insights to the field. Several visiting African scholars made notable contributions to the meeting.