This story is part of a series for Black History Month. Read more stories highlighting Black excellence at UC Merced.
The brutal deaths of African Americans George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and others at the hands of police officers five years ago catalyzed for Black communities to unite globally and reignite the Black Lives Matter movement.
The movement also propelled the formation of the Center for Africana Studies at UC Merced with its mission to bring students, staff, faculty and community members together to develop an understanding of and appreciation for the African and African diasporic cultural identities.
“The center was in the works for a number of years, and it became paramount post the George Floyd murder. I think the activities of BLM put it at the forefront of the campus leadership,” said center co-director Muey Saeteurn, a history professor who studies the lived experiences of rural Kenyans or rural Africans and their role in the nation-building process.
The Department of History and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts hit a critical mass of faculty who study Africa and African descendants across the world, including Saeteurn and CAS co-director Professor Sabrina Smith, who studies African-descended people in colonial Mexico.
CAS — initially dubbed the Black Collective — officially launched in summer 2023. “We felt like we were in a privileged position to bring people together to have the conversation,” Saeteurn said.
“We have such a diverse campus, and we do have a sizable number of African students in our graduate programs and undergraduates as well,” Smith said. “Through CAS, we can have these conversations with all of our students and create the space for that type of intellectual growth and community engagement beyond the boundaries of the campus.”
