Abena Busia Interview½1 Women, Education and Leadership at Rutgers 2015 Interviewee: Abena Busi (AB) Interviewer: June Cross (JC) AB: My name is Abena Busia and I’m the chair of the Department of Women's and Gender Studies. I’m also faculty member of the English Department who actually originally hired me 35 or something years ago. So I’m on an English faculty member really in, in black … In African-American and black Diaspora literature and I also serve on the board of the Center for Women's Global leadership and the Center for African Studies. I’m the longest continuous serving member of the board of the center for women's global leadership at this point because I was appointed by Charlotte Bunch [Center for Women’s Global Leadership] from day one and maintained by Radhika Balakrishnan [Department of Women’s and Gender Studies]. So I've served under the both directors and I think I’m the only person left who had actually served under both and the- again, with the group of colleagues, all of them still around with the foundation members of the Center for African Studies are also still here. All of us served in various capacities, all of us at some point been director and in charge of various programs and so on and like that but, you know, I’m here. Yes. JC: You sound at home here at Rutgers? AB: Yes, actually I love it here at Rutgers [laughter]. I think it's because all the things I care about, all the things I identify myself as professionally are strong here or people, I found communities here. A group of people in, in African-American literature and African-American studies, a group people in African studies, even writers, you know, those are wonderful creative writers and I've never taught creative writing but this is a place that is invested in writing and we have that writers at Rutgers series and the writers in Rutgers from Rutgers here which I've read in. So all the different moving parts of my life have found very strong communities here and, of course, the women's community which is what centrally interests you. And I've said this before, you know, I, at the start of my professional career, I was most conscious of being an African. I did my undergraduate and graduate work at Oxford, in English literature and where my undergraduate was in English literature my doctorate was in social anthropology because I did a study of images of Africa in post-war popular fiction and images of- at Oxford it’s anthropology and not literature [laughter]. But, I … So I came to the United States conscious of my "Africanness" and therefore conscious of my blackness. I became conscious of women's studies and became a feminist here at Rutgers. I mean I remember one of the early, you know, iterations of our lecture series here back in the mid-80s, I was asked to speak and I remember entitling my papers something like “What Do I Call I?,” you know, and talking about that, that exciting process of arriving at a place where all this wonderful work was being done on women and finding a niche to in that context of, you know, establishing women's studies as a discipline also finding a space to talk about blackness and African womanness and learning to negotiate the difference between, if you like being seen as African-American and knowing myself to be African in terms of what my heritage and what's my journey, my different journey here had been. And this has been a place that I've been able to explore all of that and be able to help create programs. I mean I've helped found the Center for African Studies. I was there at the start of the Center for Women's Global Leadership. I joined a very nascent series because I came to Rutgers when we were still colleges. I was the last Livingston college English person hired back in academic year ‘80- ‘81. So I arrived in the fall of ‘81 just before the university was reorganized and the colleges abolished for the faculty. The colleges were not abolished for the students for another 20 or 25 years or something but ... So when I arrived there was different women studies programs that had been at Livingston and at Rutgers and, of course, at Douglass which when we were reorganized came together as the program of women studies and we hired Alice Kessler-Harris to pull us all together and so on. And so we became a department sort of only 15 years ago. That is we've had, you know, 45 years of, of women's studies, 35 of which I've been here and 15 of which we've been a department of which I’m now chair. So I've been part of making it happen of watching it grow and, and seeing, you know, and when I say learning, because you know how sometimes when something is there when you get there, you fail to comprehend really that it's new … JC: Yeah, or you fail to comprehend its role in the instance. AB: Yes. Yes. JC: … it's like … AB: Yes and really and then you sort of slowly think, "Oh my goodness, this is what I’m about all." I have the same experience for example with the African Literature Association which I joined when I came in 1981 and it was there, I joined it, you know, and didn’t fully comprehend that this is an organization that was less than 10 years old when I joined it, you know, now 40 years later I’m one of the old timers, you know [laughter] but yes, you know, it's that … I think because I’m in fields that as disciplines were just finding themselves and becoming established and Rutgers has been a space that's been really open to that. Really open to the adventure and fabulous really, extraordinary students and fabulous colleagues So I was employed by Livingston but I already knew when I came that the organization was taking place. However, I was embraced by the Livingston community and 1 or 2 people like Cheryl [Wall]. I mean Cheryl actually interviewed me. [laughing] Cheryl was part of my interview team. But because I joined a Livingston very afraid of its social justice mission disappearing into this large liberal arts stream. I remember the first few years of our existence the people who were Livingston faculty started what we call the progressive potluck and we would meet monthly and we bring a potluck dish and just meet and eat and share and that went on for several years but I also very quickly became a Livingston fellow and I was actually employed to run the Livingston Honors program which was it had… The year I interview was its first year and David Leverens who was chair of English at the time, knew he was leaving and he had me as his replacement and I taught it jointly with Professor Dennis Bathory in Political Science so I knew I was coming so I immediately had a cohort of the Livingston, old Livingston people and I became a Livingston fellow and was a Livingston fellow until the fellows were abolished with, at the reorganization 25 years later and I ended up directing the Livingston Honors program for many years. New Jersey is a very diverse state as you may know, Rutgers Newark has been voted the most ethnically diverse college campus public, of a public university. I think for the last 20 odd years. And that number is not just the conventional black-white or even black-white-brown. It includes all the different white ethnics, Polish-American, Hungarian-American, large Portuguese community et cetera. I mean those … If you drive from here to Princeton, you will suddenly see Magyar this and Magyar that, you know. So New Jersey is a very, very ethnically diverse state and it shows in our student body. According to the, I believe it was the 2000 census, we have both the highest concentration of people from the Asian subcontinent and twice the national average of the percentage of its foreign-born population as continental Africans. I think the national average is something that 2.4 the percentage in New Jersey is 5.6 or something like that and what's interesting about that figure is that it includes people like me who were born abroad but it does not include our children. Heritage students who identify as African but are actually technically American. So if you were to include that number the diversity is even greater. I think that has a lot to do with it but I also think Rutgers with its peculiar, I mean I can’t understand it’s had a very peculiar history of experimentation, we're a land grant university. Henry Rutgers after whom the university's name we discovered recently that in fact funded a women's college in New York before he gave money to Rutgers. I don’t know. It's an interesting question. I think, I'd like to think there's something about the people of New Jersey [laughter]. I don’t know. JC: … yeah, or maybe just people they hire. AB: The people we hire that has … JC: Present company included. AB: Yes. You know, there's … I mean, you know, if you start to think about the origins of the university, the Dutch Reformed Church was not a radical church but the people who founded Rutgers were radical in the sense that they were Dutch Reformed wanting to create and educate English speaking ministers for the Dutch Reformed Church and the Dutch weren’t having it which is why we’re chartered by the English [laughter], yes.