Howard School of International Relations
The Howard School of International Relations is a school of academic thought originating at Howard University in the decades between the 1920s and 1950s. Articulated by scholars such as Merze Tate, Ralph Bunche, Alain Locke, E. Franklin Frazier, Rayford Logan, and Eric Williams, the Howard School emphasized race and empire in the study of international relations. These scholars posed a sustained critique of dominant international relations theories such as racial hierarchy, which vindicated the Jim Crow era in the U.S. as well as the practice of colonialism in the world through the 1960s.
Contributions to theory
Race in international relations
"'Backward' Peoples Under the Mandate System" by Raymond Leslie Buell demonstrated the prevailing attitude towards racial hierarchy by white scholars at the time. In this article, Buell justified the League of Nations' mandate system, which functioned as a racial hierarchy with European countries along with Japan and South Africa, controlling various parts of Africa and Asia. Actions made by the mandate powers functioned to erase native culture with legislation forbidding native rituals and by extending a hand to Christian missionaries. This system also enabled the extraction of resources from the mandated territories for the enrichment of the mandate powers. Buell goes on to state that white people grew more kind to colored people, as seen by the ending of slavery, and hoped that the "colored problem" could be resolved by a treaty of the mandate powers. This view of race in international relations as a "problem" which could be resolved through racial hierarchy was directly challenged by members of the Howard School with calls for decolonization, self-determination and human rights.For example, Ralph Bunche's PhD Dissertation "French Administration in Togoland and Dahomey", after visiting Togo and developing an understanding of the colonial experience undergone by the native people, adopted a different perspective. Bunche advocated for providing education that was motivated by an intent to understand and promote native culture. Furthermore, he advocated for education which would help the colonized people gain independence instead of education which would make them more easily exploitable by colonizers.
The Howard School scholars saw race was a factor in international relations that should be recognized, studied and understood.
Hierarchy in international relations
A key topic addressed by members of the Howard School of International Relations was that of decolonization. This is the process by which colonial rulers relinquish control of their colonies. The Howard School scholars produced analyses that connected race and colonialism. They demonstrated not only how the system of colonization perpetuated itself, but also how the system could be changed. For example, Ralph Bunche proposed changes to the Mandate system in his 1934 PhD dissertation, and worked to replace the Mandate system when he joined the new United Nations Secretariat as head of the Trusteeship Department in 1946. Rayford Logan was another key contributor to this topic and wrote "The African Mandates in World Politics." He also did research on the effects of colonialism in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.Race hierarchy consists of the application of race relations and principles of hierarchy to explicate the display of power politics in the contexts of colonialism, imperialism, and institutionalized oppression, generally in opposition to black populations. In an effort to contextualize imperialism in the frame of race hierarchy, Ralph Bunche, head of Howard University's Political Science Department from 1928 to 1942, expressed his understanding of the attitudes held by European officials and African peoples in his book, A World View on Race. Bunche stated that imperialist agendas cast the unsupported image that there existed "backward" people, perpetually incapable of progress and "advanced" people, who continually guided the world into the modern, industrial age. Bunche argued that the "white man's burden" to which European imperialist aims were attributed masked the real intentions of these countries that sought only to acquire resources found on the African continent. Bunche offered a deconstruction of the biological positioning of race put forth by Earnest Hooton by identifying phenotypical inconsistencies in race classification. Bunche asserted that race serves industrial states in ascribing to their "economic and political policy."
Notable scholars
Below is a list of notable scholars of the Howard School of International Affairs and their key contributions to the school of academic thought.Alain Locke
, an American philosopher, theorist of the Harlem Renaissance, and the first black Rhodes Scholar, began teaching at Howard in 1912 as an assistant professor in the English Department. After receiving his PhD in Philosophy from Harvard University, Locke returned to Howard as chair of the Department of Philosophy, where he taught philosophy and English. Dismissed from Howard in 1925 for advocating equal pay for African American and white staff in the school, he was reappointed by Mordecai Johnson, who became the first African American president of Howard in June 1926. Locke taught until his retirement in 1953.At Howard, Locke's scholarship conceptualized race beyond the biological and hereditary by emphasizing cultural and social elements. This view, along with his philosophy about value systems, is visible in his involvement with the Harlem Renaissance, which he labeled the New Negro movement. In this new movement, Locke gave voice to a Black America beyond "the Negro Problem." He sought to elevate the arts, literature, and music of this "Black mecca" in the U.S., which he herald as new era of change. In this way, Locke's scholarship elevated Black life and aesthetics in the U.S. and around the world.
Additionally, Alain Locke, educated in Germany and England, had a significant international orientation and influence. Locke viewed race as a primary motivator in imperial and colonial endeavors that were pushed by commercial and religious agendas. This was a direct challenge to the privileging of Empire within International Relations discipline.
E. Franklin Frazier
, an American sociologist and author, was an expert on the African American family. Frazier attended Howard University and graduated with honors in 1916. Afterwards, he began teaching mathematics at Tuskegee University from 1916–1917, English and History at St. Paul's Normal and Industrial School from 1917 to 1918, and French and Mathematics at Baltimore High School from 1918–1919. In 1920, Frazier earned a master's degree from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. His thesis was entitled, "New Currents of Thought Among the Colored People of America," and explored sociology in depth.Frazier was a Russell Sage Foundation fellow at the New York School of Social Work, now known as Columbia University School of Social Work, from 1920 to 1921. He continued his education at the University of Copenhagen where he was awarded an American Scandinavian Foundation fellowship. Afterwards, Frazer became director of the Atlanta School of Social Work at Atlanta University and worked as a lecturer of Sociology at Morehouse College. In his five-year tenure as director, Frazier made contributions as an administrator, theorist, and activist against racism. However, he had to leave the school shortly after publishing several articles pronouncing racism as similar to insanity.
Frazier received a fellowship at the University of Chicago's Sociology department and culminated his time there by earning a PhD in 1931. Then, Frazier taught at Fisk University, another Historically Black College University, before moving to Howard University. Frazier taught at Howard from 1934 until his death in 1962. At Howard, his research covered the Black family in the U.S, race, and culture in the modern world. His scholarship addressed the role of race in social, economic, and political conditions of the world.