Interview with Barbara Savage

Barbara Savage is Geraldine R. Segal professor emerita of American social thought and professor emerita of Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Her latest book Merze Tate: The Global Odyssey of a Black Woman Scholar is a biography of the first African-American woman to study at the University of Oxford.

Where and when were you born?
Rural south Virginia in the 1950s.

How has this shaped you?
I grew up in a small-town farming community where the same families had lived for centuries, so there was a depth of connectedness to those around us that those who don’t come from these places will not experience. It gave me a tremendous network of family and friends whom you assumed you would see all your life.

Were you expected to attend university?
I went to college in 1970, so my class was the last one that had only black students. I didn’t fit the profile of the kind of student who went to the University of Virginia, but the idea of seizing educational opportunities – and using them to build a better life – was one of the strongest values in my community. This was drummed into our brains at church and school.

Merze Tate was the first black woman to take a PhD in government from Harvard University before becoming one of the first female history professors at Howard University. Why isn’t she more famous?
She was very well known in her lifetime, even from a very early age when she won public speaking competitions. From childhood she had a sense of herself as a historically significant black woman and kept newspaper cuttings about her achievements. In the years after she died in 1996, she slightly disappeared from history but, since the digitisation of her archives at Howard University, her work began to pop up, which led me to a long list of her books.

‘She is the most ambitious person I have ever known. Brutus would have withdrawn his accusation of ambition against Caesar if he had seen Merze first,’ said one contemporary. Many people seem to remark about how incredible her desire for education was.
It’s a theme throughout her childhood and life. After her high school burned down, she had to walk eight miles each way every day to attend another school. That image of an intrepid girl tramping through the snow of central Michigan every day is striking.

Tate said she didn’t experience racial injustice until she was denied a high school teaching post in Michigan, despite graduating top of her class. Was her late experience of racism usual for that time?
Being born in Michigan rather than Mississippi in 1905 gave her access to an excellent elementary education, which was unusual. That discrimination that she faced after graduating was the first time she experienced racism herself, but she already had a very deep racial consciousness and, as a child, she was troubled by the way that black soldiers returning from the First World War had been treated in America.

Arriving in 1931, her time as a graduate student at Oxford wasn’t plain sailing. Why did she struggle?
She was woefully underprepared when she came to Oxford. The struggle wasn’t that she wasn’t smart enough, but adapting to a specific and very different type of education. When her degree was delayed – which wasn’t uncommon in those days – she was devastated, not just because her own ambitions weren’t realised, but because she felt no other black woman would be able to follow her to Oxford. But she never gave up.

Does her eventual success at Oxford and glittering academic career as a Fulbright Scholar in India and then at Howard University underline the importance of broadening admissions?
Absolutely. I was also a beneficiary of affirmative action and I say that proudly. The University of Virginia realised that, if it wanted to broaden its admission pool, it had to look beyond the usual places and consider those from the all-black schools of southern Virginia who might never think of applying. At Penn, I began to see the number of white blue-collar students increase in my classes thanks to affirmative action and a focus on first-in-family students. Institutions should have a responsibility to act affirmatively and find students capable of doing the work, even if they’re not so academically prepared as others.

Merze Tate blazed a trail for today’s black female scholars, with Harvard University now led by Claudine Gay. What do you make about the hostility she is now facing after her appearance – with other university presidents – before a congressional committee, including alleged plagiarism charges regarding her PhD?
There is no plagiarism here – it is a very minor citation error. This tells us everything about the commitment of those who want to see her removed, because they have done election-style research on her to excavate anything that can be used against her in addition to their performance in front of that committee. It was a trap of sorts on a very serious issue [allegations of antisemitism on campuses], but any time someone takes over an elite university and does not look like someone who would have held that position 25 years ago, you will hear from traditionalists who claim anyone who is not a white man cannot be qualified to hold those positions or do them well. This critique of [diversified] leadership at elite institutions isn’t new, though we have a perfect storm now, because it’s wrapped up in a tragic international situation.

You travelled across the US, to India and Thailand, and spent a year as a visiting professor at Oxford while researching this book. How did these trips help you understand Merze Tate?
I tried to globetrot a little, but I couldn’t keep up with Merze, who went round the world twice. To be at Oxford and see that historical education infrastructure – much of which is unchanged – was important to get a sense of the difference that Tate felt in 1931. Back then Oxford was the centre of the British Empire, where leaders were prepared – so I felt obligated to go Kolkata and see what that was like and try to feel that contrast.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com

CV

1974 BA, University of Virginia
1977 JD, Georgetown University
1995 PhD, Yale University
Prior to graduate study, Professor Savage worked in Washington as a Congressional staff member and as a member of the staff of the youth advocacy group the Children’s Defense Fund
1995-2020 Various positions at the department of history, University of Pennsylvania
1999 Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Race, 1938-1948, winner of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Award for the best book on American history in the period 1916-1966
2008 Your Spirits Walk Beside Us: The Politics of Black Religion, winner of the 2012 Grawemeyer Prize in Religion
2013-17 Inaugural chair of the department of Africana studies, Pennsylvania
2018-19 Harmsworth visiting professor of American history, University of Oxford

Appointments

Sharon Pickering has been appointed as the next vice-chancellor of Monash University following the departure of Margaret Gardner, who has become Victoria’s state governor. Professor Pickering, Monash’s deputy vice-chancellor (education) since mid-2021, started her career as a lecturer in criminal justice and criminology at the university 20 years ago. Chancellor Simon McKeon said she had stood out in a “rigorous and broad-scale executive search” and hailed her integrity, energy and “fiercely capable” qualities.

Mark Welsh’s appointment as the president of Texas A&M University has been made permanent after he held the role on an interim basis since the resignation of Katherine Banks in July. A former fighter pilot and chief of staff of the US Air Force, Mr Welsh was appointed dean of the Bush School of Government and Public Service in 2016. He said it had been “one of the greatest honours of my life” to serve as the university’s president and was looking forward to continuing the work.

Lynn Wells has been named vice-chancellor of Laurentian University in Canada. She is currently at Brock University, serving as its provost.

Mark Cassidy will be the new deputy vice-chancellor (research) at the University of Melbourne after spending five years as the institution’s dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.

Anthea Rhoda has been appointed as deputy vice-chancellor, academic at the University of the Free State in South Africa. She is currently dean of the Faculty of Community and Health Sciences at the University of the Western Cape.

Shivani Sharma is joining Aston University as its new deputy dean for people, culture and inclusion in the College of Business and Social Sciences. She moves from the University of Hertfordshire, where she is head of the department of psychology, sport and geography.