New African Canadian studies degree could be coming to Dalhousie University

Dalhousie University could soon be offering a new Black and African diaspora degree program, which would be the first of its kind in Canada.

The university’s senate recently approved the program, which will concentrate on the unique story of the African Canadian experience.

The university has offered a minor in Black and African diaspora studies since 2017. Isaac Saney, who teaches some of those courses, said the large number of students enrolled and interested in the classes proved the need to expand the program.

“We haven’t had it embedded as an explicit field of study within the academy where you can do a degree,” he said.

In 2019, Saney was chair of the committee that began looking at how to create a major, which he called a “very complicated, very challenging, very rigorous process.”

Saney said the death of George Floyd in 2020 and the Black Lives Matter movement gave urgency to the creation of the full degree program.

“We had here in Canada massive rallies and demonstrations as well that not only were in solidarity with what was happening in the United States, but also highlighting that similar problems have existed in Canada historically, the over-incarceration of people of African descent or disproportionate policing of Black people,” he said.

Saney said offering the degree validates the struggles faced by African Canadians and African Nova Scotians.

“It validates the fact that … people of African descent exist in Canada, have been here long-standing, and have been a very important element in this history,” he said.

“It validates that there’s something in the Black experience that … crucially speaks to history, crucially speaks to humanity, struggles crucially speaks to the challenges of our time.”

The program will require the approval of the Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission before going ahead.