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Outlaw to lead African-American studies in A&S
by Beth Fox
Lucius Turner Outlaw Jr., the T. Wistar Brown Professor of Philosophy at Haverford College, has been named director of the African-American studies program at Vanderbilt. His appointment is effective the beginning of the fall 2000 semester.Outlaw has also been named a professor of philosophy and will teach three classes in academic year 2000-01.
“I am delighted that Professor Lucius Outlaw has agreed to join the Vanderbilt intellectual community as a professor of philosophy and as director of the African-American studies program in the College of Arts and Science,” said Ettore Infante, dean of the College of Arts and Science. “Professor Outlaw has made distinctive contributions to American, African, African-American and continental philosophy. Vanderbilt will benefit from his scholarly and educational contributions in these fields, and by his administrative and intellectual leadership of our African-American studies program. We are most pleased to have this distinguished colleague join our community.”
“I think Vanderbilt’s move certainly places it in the vanguard of American universities,” said Molefi Kete Asante in a story recently published in The Tennessean. Asante is a senior professor in Temple University’s African- American studies department. “They have captured one of the most significant African-American scholars of this era.”
“[Vanderbilt has] captured one of the most significant African-American scholars of this era.”
— Molefi Kete Asante, African-American studies professor at Temple University
Outlaw has been a member of the Department of Philosophy at Haverford College in Haverford, Penn., since 1980 and served as chair of the department from 1990 to 1993. While at Haverford, he served on the Diversity Committee as well as the Academic Council, the Africana Studies Advisory Committee, the Minority Scholars Program and chaired the Educational Policy Committee, in addition to being a member of several other committees.
Before joining Haverford, Outlaw was on the faculty of the Department of Philosophy at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Md., and prior to that was on the faculty of the Department of Religion and Philosophy at Fisk University. He received his bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Fisk in 1967 and his Ph.D. in philosophy from Boston College in 1972.
“I am thrilled that Professor Outlaw has accepted the offer to join Vanderbilt,” said Jimmie Franklin, professor of history and chair of the search committee. “He is a person of exceptional scholarly ability and leadership skills.”
Outlaw’s research interests and areas of specialization include African and African-American philosophy, the history of philosophy, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and social and political philosophy, specifically Karl Marx’s social theory.
The author or editor of numerous articles, including a collection of essays titled On Race and Philosophy, Outlaw is writing a monograph, Race, Reason, and Order. He also maintains an electronic database of biographical and bibliographical information on philosophers of African descent, past and present, from which he prepared the International Directory of Philosophers of African Descent.
He is a member of the American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division; the North American Society for Social and Political Philosophy; Phi Beta Kappa; the Society for African Philosophy in North America; and the Society of Philosophers in America, Inc.
The African-American studies program at Vanderbilt emerged from the social and political ferment of the 1960s, Infante said. Following the approval by the Educational Policy Committee and the Faculty Council, the University created a student-faculty group, the Select Committee on Afro-American Affairs, which had the task of overseeing and evaluating the progress of the program. The program initially concentrated on establishing a sound interdisciplinary curriculum, recruiting strong faculty members and strengthening library holdings in the field.
From its inception, the interdisciplinary program offered an undergraduate major in African- American studies. The major program requires 36 hours of courses; the minor, established in 1991, requires 18 hours of courses. Students may take courses taught at Vanderbilt or take approved courses at Fisk.