OU is considering dismantling the Clara Luper Department of African and African American Studies, according to a report from The Black Wall Street Times.
The Black Wall Street Times reported Thursday night that members of the department’s board say the university is moving toward dismantling the department. The Daily contacted 16 sources in the OU and Norman community on the matter Thursday night and as of 11:09 p.m. only three responded.
One directed the Daily to OU’s Marketing and Communications team, which did not answer its after hours number. One has committed to connecting the Daily on Friday morning with a representative with the Clara Luper Legacy Committee — the group cited in the Black Wall Street Times article.
The only one who would speak late Thursday was OU Regent Rick Nagel, who told OU Daily that he hasn’t heard anything that would suggest the department is closing.
“People don’t cancel programs unless it comes before the (Board of Regents). That has not come before the board,” Nagel said. “I can never speak for the whole board, but that would be a hard thing to get through. … That’s not something we’re gonna do.”
In a second call with the Daily later Thursday, Nagel said he reached out to the OU Board of Regents’ office and contacts there told him there were no plans to cut the department.
History of institutional changes
In December 2023, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed an executive order banning the use of state-allocated funding for diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Since then, the university has initiated a series of institutional changes in compliance with the order.
In February 2024, OU announced its Department of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion would be rebranded and restructured as the Division of Access and Opportunity.
In April 2024, OU announced it was closing the Gender + Equality Center. Another office, called the Office of Advocacy and Education, replaced it.
In January, following his return to office, President Donald Trump initiated a broad campaign to dismantle DEI efforts in universities
On the first day of his second administration, Trump signed an executive order calling for the removal of DEI programs from the federal government, which some federal judges have ruled against.
Oklahoma, one of only two states in the country that saw every county vote Republican during the 2024 election, has been a flashpoint on the matter at all levels of its state’s education system in recent years.
That has coincided with the African and African American Studies Department experiencing low enrollment for the past decade.
In the 2015-16 academic year, nine bachelor’s degrees were awarded to students enrolled in the African and African American Studies Department and that number fell to two in the 2020-21 academic year, according to OU’s Institutional Research and Reporting office. The department awarded three bachelor’s degrees in the 2024-25 academic year.
Who is Clara Luper?
The department is named after civil rights leader Clara Luper, an Oklahoma native and the first Black American admitted to OU’s graduate history program. She led the Oklahoma City National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Youth Council in 1957.
In 1958, Luper and a dozen Black students held a sit-in at Katz Drug Store to protest segregation. Luper led the country’s first sit-in movement, along with hundreds of members of the NAACP Youth Council, integrating restaurants across Oklahoma City.
In 2018, as the Daily wrote in a profile about Luper published that year, OU took its first step toward honoring the civil rights icon by naming its African and African American Studies Department after her.
“There is no one alive or passed away,” said Karlos Hill, then the department’s chair and now a Regents’ professor, “that better suits what we’re about than Clara Luper.”
Last month, the Board of Regents agenda deleted Hill’s title as OU President Joseph Harroz Jr.’s adviser for community engagement, a move that came with a nearly $47,000 pay cut.
A few weeks before that, during the first week of classes, the provost’s office sent a memo on behalf of the Division of Access and Opportunity advising instructors to avoid course content that could fall under diversity, equity and inclusion.
The memo’s suggestions diverge from the university’s previous stance on academic freedom. In 2022, Harroz announced the university would adopt the Chicago Statement, a set of principles that emphasize the importance of freedom of expression on college campuses.
At the time, Harroz wrote the statement was “fully consistent” with OU’s policies on free expression and academic freedom.
“In a society permeated by deep political and social divides, there is a common misplaced assumption that honoring the principles of free speech and celebrating diversity, equity, and inclusion cannot coexist, or that one infringes upon the other,” Harroz wrote three years ago this month. “At OU, we do not accept this false choice or narrative.”
On Sept. 23, installation began on a $3.6 million 8,000-pound sculpture in Clara Luper National Sit-in Plaza in downtown Oklahoma City. The statue commemorates the 1958 Katz Drug Store sit-in.
