Students exult: 'We won! We're getting a Black Studies Department at @Stanford!' FacebookTwitterEmail A Stanford University student walks in front of Hoover Tower on the campus in Palo Alto.Paul Sakuma / Associated Press 2012 Stanford University officials announced Tuesday that they are transforming their 52-year-old program of African and African-American studies into a full-fledged academic department. The move comes after Stanford’s Black Student Union and Black Graduate Student Association created a petition last summer urging Stanford to make the change, following the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd. The groups noted that elite universities had such a department. At Stanford, African and African-American studies has been a program for more than half a century and resides in the School of Humanities and Sciences. A department, unlike a program, is an administrative organization that can search for and hire its own faculty.