Thirty years ago, the Trinidadian scholar C.L.R. James stated that "Black Studies is the study of Western civilization." Because it is that, and also much more, the three hundred programs in this country have established individual scholarly foci.

At UC Santa Barbara, the Department of Black Studies assumes a matrix model, bringing together scholars from an array of disciplines that are concerned with the Diaspora and Africa.

The faculty of nine tenure-track professors and four lecturers ground their students in history, literature, the arts, and the social sciences, with particular concentrations in the achievement of moral ideals like democracy and equality, cultural theory, and the social, aesthetic, and political ideas emerging from historical and contemporary societies.

In both their research and teaching, the faculty seek to determine the influences and intersections of Africa and the African Diaspora on the formation and future of the modern world.

The department enrolls some four thousand students each year and offers for its undergraduate majors an honors program, which provides a year-long engagement with original research. To continue the department's record of excellence and to achieve even greater impact on the field, a doctoral program is envisioned.