I was shocked to read the Feb. 22 opinion piece, “Tense Moment at African American Studies Conference: Public Conflict between Departmental Faculty Unprofessional, Insulting.” I want to begin by apologizing to Ms. Callahan, who was clearly upset and insulted by my question and comments at the conference. I also want to assure my Anthropology colleagues who were not present that I did not intend to insult them.

I had intended to raise a very particular question, but Ms. Callahan’s opinion essay suggests to me that I did this in an ineffective way. I would like to take this opportunity to clarify my concerns. As someone who has written opinion essays in the past, I appreciate the form and respect the author’s rights to express her/his opinions. However, I wish that Ms. Callahan had spoken with me, either on the spot or as she was preparing her essay, as she has misquoted me, misconstrued my comments, and placed them in a context that aims them in a direction I did not intend.

If she did not want to confirm or clarify my comments by speaking with me, she might have consulted the videotape of the session to check her quotations and construction of the discussion, but her essay suggests to me that she did not do so. In the question I raised after the panelists’ presentations, I called attention to Mr. Soderstrom’s evidence that anthropology was a historically constructed discipline. His paper detailed anthropology’s evolution as a department at the University of Minnesota over the first four decades of the 20th century and how scholars there were able, over time, to build a case that it merited institutional support as an autonomous discipline. While his paper also argued that the racial views and practices of its most prominent faculty members were central to the ways it made a case for disciplinary status, university resources and departmental recognition, I did not refer to this part of his argument in my question.

Rather, I noted that the disciplinary and departmental character of African American Studies is currently a subject of debate at Macalester, and that it struck me as ironic that an important voice in this debate, one that had argued that some disciplines deserve departmental status because they are natural and/or historical structures for the organization of human knowledge, came from the very discipline of anthropology, whose youthfulness and historical/social contruction had just been documented in Mr. Soderstrom’s paper. I specifically asked those conference participants from outside Macalester to address the issue of the disciplinary character of African American Studies and thereby add their experiences and points of view to the developing Macalester discussion. And, indeed, several participants did respond to my question by sharing information about the status that their institutions accorded African American Studies or by expressing their own theoretical and intellectual perspectives on the disciplinary. No one took this as an opportunity to attack anthropology, anthropologists, or any particular Macalester faculty member, although the headline and tone of Ms. Callahan’s opinion essay seems to suggest that a veritable ad hominem feeding frenzy resulted.

Still, I want to express my wholehearted support for Ms. Callahan’s concern that rude and unprofessional behavior is inappropriate. I am sorry that she experienced my question, comments and the ensuing discussion in this way. I did not intend it to be and I hope that my colleagues and other members of the campus community who were not present will not conclude that I was rude and unprofessional. I do feel that the issues of the disciplinary and departmental status of anthropology, African American Studies, and even my home department of history deserve to be debated, and we should recognize that women and men who devote long years of their lives to constructing professional and even personal identities in scholarly fields may have deep feelings, not just intellectual commitments, about such issues, and so our discussions can be experienced as painful, regardless of our intent.

It would be particularly unfortunate if questions of the ineffectiveness of my own posing of questions detracted from the community’s appreciation of the quality of the African American Studies. For two and a half days, hundreds of people-academics and non-academics, students and faculty, whites, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and international students-passionately discussed a range of critical issues. Sincerity, intellectual curiosity, commitment, respect for others’ opinions, experience and research informed their/our presentations and discussions. The conference itself demonstrated, I would argue, the intellectual vitality, integrity and potential of African American Studies to inspire the imaginations of broad segments of our community.

This, I hope, is where our conversations and debates will begin.