Western University students working to graduate with a major in Black Studies celebrated the start of the program earlier this week at Western University.

Launched this fall, the program itself is an achievement, according to the professors and staff behind the effort who point to the pushback taking place south of the border against initiatives designed to support people of colour and marginalized groups.

“I am feeling amazing. It’s been such a long and sometimes challenging journey, but it was lots of commitment, lots of passion that brought us to this point,” said Erica Lawson, an associate professor at Western who teaches for the program and contributed to its creation.

While Western has offered a minor in Black Studies program since 2022, the multi-year effort to offer a major began this September.

In terms of the content of the undergraduate program, there’s a wide range of potential areas of study, Lawson said. It offers education in Black history, culture and heritage, politics, sociology and more.

Being an intra-faculty module, students pursuing it can take courses in Black Studies, but also in anthropology, political science, English, art and history.

“Depending on your interest, people teach it very differently. I come out of Jamaican culture, a culture of resistance. So I’m talking about Marcus Garvey in my course. I’m talking about slave resistance. I’m talking about maroons,” Lawson said. “It’s really about how people survive by insisting that our lives matter.”

To Lawson, it’s not only an occasion to feel proud, but also one to reflect on why the program is important.

“I think this is a really strong pushback against what we’re hearing and the ways in which Black people, other racialized people, trans people, queer people are being devalued and told that our lives don’t matter,” she said, referring specifically to the push against diversity, equity and inclusion programs and other similar initiatives in the United States.

“These programs really say something very different and very powerful.“

On hand to congratulate the students and faculty on their achievement was Ontario Poet-laureate Matthew-Ray Jones.

“There’s so much rich history that is being made each and every single day. That’s what is happening in Western right now,” Jones said of the program. 

Miranda Green-Barteet is an associate professor involved in getting the major off the ground. She said the process involved many people, including a committee called the Black Studies Organizing Committee that involved 10 people including faculty and students.

“It’s a pretty big deal. We’re really proud of the work that we’ve put in to create the module,” she said.

“Historically, Western hasn’t always addressed these topics. By having a Black Studies major and minor, it demonstrates Western’s commitment to its Black students, but also to teaching the wider community about Black studies.”