Distinguished professor to offer inaugural address
By Gisgie Dávila Gendreau
Darlene Clark Hine tells a story that captures how she views MSU's newest president.
About five years ago, Hine and a group of professors met with then-Provost Lou Anna Kimsey Simon to request the creation of a bachelor's program in African American studies.
“We presented our well-rehearsed and orchestrated proposal,” Hine said. “She listened attentively. And then, after we finished, she looked around the room.”
Simon pointed out that the professors making the request were leaders in this field.
“‘You should be asking for a doctoral program in African American studies; go back and bring me a proposal for that,'” Hine remembers Simon saying.
“We were amazed. Now that's leadership,” Hine said.
On Feb. 11, Hine will deliver the inaugural address during the Founders' Day Celebration at the Wharton Center.
As a historian, author and scholar, Hine has a long list of accomplishments: the Board of Trustees Professor of African American Studies and a professor of history at Northwestern University and John A. Hannah Professor of History at MSU.
In 2002, The Detroit News named her “Michiganian of the Year” for her significant contributions to the community, state and nation. She is one of the foremost African-American historians in the country. She is co-author, along with Kathleen Thompson, of “A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America,” which traces the history and tells stories of black women from colonial Jamestown in 1619 to the present.
Her contributions to the field have been significant and innovative, said Gordon Stewart, the Jack and Margaret Sweet Endowed Professor of History at MSU.
Instead of concentrating on the Midwest, she chose to broaden her study of African Americans—women in particular—to the Caribbean, Brazil and the West Indies .
Where historians have concentrated on men, Hine has studied and written about black women.
“Men tended to be more active in the public sphere; the history tends to be in favor of men,” Stewart said. “She broke through that and put women at the center of African American history with lots of agency; women did things, they organized, they protested, they wrote. They weren't simply carried along by history.
“In the midst of all this, she's a very decent and warm human being.”
During her address, Hine will emphasize how during the early 1990s, women broke through the glass ceiling of presidencies at major universities, leading to spots across the nation—Princeton University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania the University of Michigan.
“We are witnessing the rise of women who have put decades into university careers,” Hine said. “They've done the work; they've mastered the intricacies of management and leadership skills; and the country is now recognizing their invaluable pool of talent.
“I'm very, very proud of Michigan State University and proud of Lou Anna Simon and what she will mean for the future and what she symbolizes to women in this country.”
As for the doctoral program? MSU created the sixth doctoral program in African American Studies in the nation—the only one in the Big Ten.
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