African American Studies Faculty Welcomes Dr. Saida Grundy
African American Studies is pleased to welcome Dr. Saida Grundy to our program. Dr. Grundy was hired as a result of a nation-wide search that involved five departments and over 100 applicants. Her work on Black masculinity at Historically Black Colleges and Universities impressed all who spoke with her, including Sociology faculty and BU students, who had extensive conversations with her during her campus visit and look forward to gaining such a strong teacher and mentor.
As many people know, a number of tweets from Dr. Grundy’s personal Twitter account were recently made public by a conservative website. That site published excerpts of remarks she made in conversations with her followers on Twitter that were informal in nature but appeared unprofessional in tone and content. Articles and posts on national media outlets concerning the event make clear that Dr. Grundy’s remarks have hit a nerve. We have been shocked by the number of voicemails left and the hostile emails sent to our office and our individual email accounts as well as to other parts of the university. However, most troubling was that among the numerous that were serious expressions of dismay were many vile messages, explicitly racist and obscene, that consider cyber-bullying a substitute for frank discussion and freedom of speech.
The African American Studies Program continues to support nuanced conversations inside and outside the classroom about the complex issue of race and look forward to Dr. Grundy’s contributions to that dialogue when she begins teaching in the fall.