AALS Presumed Incompetent power point
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This document contains an introduction and multiple essays that discuss the unique challenges faced by women of color in achieving tenure in academia. The essays explore how these professors must carefully negotiate their racial and gender identities to survive in systems dominated by hierarchies that privilege whiteness and maleness. The contributors advise building communities of support while also directly confronting inequities in the tenure process.
![Beyond "Diversity":
Negotiating Racial and Gender Identities on the Path to Tenure
Essay: Lessons from a Portrait: Keep Calm and Carry On
Adrien Katherine Wing, Bessie Dutton Murray Professor of Law, University of Iowa
―My advice to my sisters when the bombs are
dropping—literally or figuratively—is to [follow the
British saying]—keep calm and carry on. I have
unknowingly tried to pursue this motto over the
years in all the areas that affect us as teachers,
scholars and service providers as well as on the
personal level.‖](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/aalspipowerpoint-finaledits-1-130109201134-phpapp01/85/AALS-Presumed-Incompetent-power-point-5-320.jpg)
AALS Presumed Incompetent power point
- 1. AALS January 5, 2012 New Orleans, Louisiana Beyond "Diversity": Negotiating Racial and Gender Identities on the Path to Tenure
- 2. Beyond "Diversity": Negotiating Racial and Gender Identities on the Path to Tenure ―The women of color who have managed to enter the rarefied halls of academe as full-time faculty find themselves in a peculiar situation. Despite their undeniable privilege, women of color faculty members are entrenched in byzantine patterns of race, gender, and class hierarchy that confound popular narratives about meritocracy."
- 3. Beyond "Diversity": Negotiating Racial and Gender Identities on the Path to Tenure "In modern society, witch hunts and burnings do not take the medieval European form, when thousands of women who defied male supremacist systems of power were burned or hanged. However, they still take place. Anyone who has been involved in or witnessed the politics of tenure at a university understands well that metaphoric burnings at the stake are common. Women of color are frequent outsiders whose identities have been brightly burned at the stake of academic politics."
- 4. Beyond "Diversity": Negotiating Racial and Gender Identities on the Path to Tenure Essay: Silence of the Lambs Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Charles M. and Marion J. Kierscht Professor of Law, University of Iowa "How then can women of color, especially those from poor or working-class backgrounds, draw the line between following advice for survival and resisting their own subjugation--between balancing the identity-affirming conduct that maintains their voices and the identity- negating conduct of remaining silent?"
- 5. Beyond "Diversity": Negotiating Racial and Gender Identities on the Path to Tenure Essay: Lessons from a Portrait: Keep Calm and Carry On Adrien Katherine Wing, Bessie Dutton Murray Professor of Law, University of Iowa ―My advice to my sisters when the bombs are dropping—literally or figuratively—is to [follow the British saying]—keep calm and carry on. I have unknowingly tried to pursue this motto over the years in all the areas that affect us as teachers, scholars and service providers as well as on the personal level.‖
- 6. Beyond "Diversity": Negotiating Racial and Gender Identities on the Path to Tenure Essay: They Forgot Mammy Had a Brain Sherree Wilson, Associate Dean, Cultural Affairs & Diversity Initiatives University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine "While hiring a critical mass of faculty of color to avoid placing one of them in solo status is recommended to facilitate their retention, the fact that a campus or department is ethnically and racially diverse in number doesn't necessarily translate into an environment that is positive for faculty of color."
- 7. Beyond "Diversity": Negotiating Racial and Gender Identities on the Path to Tenure Essay: Are Student Teaching Evaluations Holding Back Women and Minorities?: The Perils of “Doing” Gender and Race in the Classroom Sylvia Lazos, Justice Myron Leavitt Professor of Law, University of Las Vegas, Nevada ―Minority professors must negotiate many more burdens than non-minority professors from the first moment that they walk into the classroom. These additional burdens and potential risks are difficult to navigate even for the most experienced professor; but the risks are higher and the penalties even heavier for newly minted assistant professor who must also master new material, learn to teach effectively, and get a productive research agenda on track. New minority professors start their careers with a significant handicap.‖
- 8. Beyond "Diversity": Negotiating Racial and Gender Identities on the Path to Tenure Essay: Visibly Invisible: The Burden of Race and Gender for Female Students of Color Striving for an Academic Career in the Sciences Deirdre Bowen, Associate Professor, Seattle University School of Law "Neither gender, nor ethnicity, nor class allows for a one- size-fits-all approach. But if we are to truly change the nature of the field, mentors must think carefully about the way they engage female students of color so they no longer remain visibly invisible. Perhaps we should work to develop programs that better train professors in the art and science of effective mentorship for all students, not just the ones they see when they look in the mirror."
- 9. Beyond "Diversity": Negotiating Racial and Gender Identities on the Path to Tenure Essay: Working Across Racial Lines in a Not-So-Post-Racial World Margalynne J. Armstrong, Associate Professor of Law, and Associate Academic Director of the Center for Social Justice and Public Service, Santa Clara University & Stephanie M. Wildman, Professor of Law, and Director of the Center for Social Justice and Public Service, Santa Clara University "The existence of presumed incompetence that affects both women of color and white women should provide a basis for deeper understanding, sisterhood, and alliance among women and enable work across racial lines to combat the presumption as well as other professional issues. But women can only forge that bond by acknowledging—rather than ignoring—the differences in the presumption’s operation. Systems of privilege operate through multiple identity categories and affect a professor’s institutional presence and possibilities."
- 10. Beyond "Diversity": Negotiating Racial and Gender Identities on the Path to Tenure Essay: Notes toward Racial and Gender Justice Ally Practice in Academia Dean Spade, Associate Professor, Seattle University School of Law ―"There are many structural obstacles to working as a white ally in struggles for racial justice in legal academia. The pressures of professionalism promote silence and assent, perhaps especially in untenured professors. The white cultural norms that shape academic institutions -- hierarchy, individualism, competition, scarcity -- encourage us not to act as allies, not to endure the risks of taking unpopular action by naming oppression in our academic work or professional interactions with students, faculty, and staff. . . However, a central tenet of this work is recognizing the opportunities that privilege provides to disrupt the creation of that privilege and the obligation to take action."
- 11. Beyond "Diversity": Negotiating Racial and Gender Identities on the Path to Tenure Essay: On Community in the Midst of Hierarchy (and Hierarchy in the Midst of Community) Ruth Gordon, Professor of Law, Villanova University School of Law "Many of us spend our professional lives contesting hierarchy and exclusion -- whether on the basis of race, gender, or class -- but when it comes to academia -- and I would suggest especially legal academia -- we appear to have finally found a hierarchy we can believe in. It not only goes unquestioned but is often at the core of our complaint. Thus, Professors Merritt and Reskin's excellent study focuses on access by white women and people of color of both genders to the sixteen most prestigious law schools. But most of us, regardless of gender, race, or class, do not teach at those schools, nor do most of the law students in this country attend them."
- 12. Beyond "Diversity": Negotiating Racial and Gender Identities on the Path to Tenure Essay: Sharing our Gifts Beth Boyd, Professor of Psychology, University of South Dakota ―We have to learn how to deal with turmoil without getting changed by it. We have to remember why we are doing this work, develop a vision for ourselves . . Success means helping our people, connecting to others, being real, and making things better for our families and communities. It is essential to find a way to integrate that definition into the work that we do – otherwise we do run the risk of losing ourselves in the work for reasons we do not fully understand.‖
- 13. Beyond "Diversity": Negotiating Racial and Gender Identities on the Path to Tenure Essay: Dis/Jointed Appointments: Solidarity amidst Inequity, Tokenism, and Marginalization May C. Fu, Assistant Professor, Departments of Ethnic Studies and History, Colorado State University "It is ironic that as scholars invested in equity issues for disenfranchised groups, we are so poorly valued for our work. We are neither supported nor rewarded for our engaged-activist scholarship, yet the university benefits from our engagement, activism, and scholarship. When we ask that our labor be honored in ways that are reflected in annual evaluations or tenure and promotion, it is telling to observe the strategies the administration uses not only to deny our requests but also to frame their justifications in ways that divide faculty interests and potential solidarities."
- 14. Beyond "Diversity": Negotiating Racial and Gender Identities on the Path to Tenure Essay: Dis/Jointed Appointments: Solidarity amidst Inequity, Tokenism, and Marginalization Roe Bubar, Associate Professor, Department of Ethnic Studies and School of Social Work, Colorado State University "It is also ironic that many of us as womyn of color have strategic, organizing, mediation, and research skills related to equity, allocation of resources, power, and structural racism/sexism; yet seldom do we put those skills into practice in collective ways to address gender inequity and retention of womyn of color within the academy. We create circles of support for students and others, yet our isolation within the academy keeps us from creating that same support for ourselves as a collective."
- 15. Beyond "Diversity": Negotiating Racial and Gender Identities on the Path to Tenure ―The academy will be a better, healthier place if we (1) continue to actively build collectives and openly discuss challenges involved with being Native scholars in the academy, (2) continue to be true to our values of honoring the collective above individualism, (3) use our collective strength to communicate and advocate to the academy for community needs, (4) focus on the ways that our struggles will benefit future generations, and, most importantly, (5) continue to raise all of these issues in official capacities inside of the academy to foster progressive change.‖
- 16. Beyond "Diversity": Negotiating Racial and Gender Identities on the Path to Tenure Essay: Navigating the Academic Terrain: The Racial and Gender Politics of Elusive Belonging Linda Trinh Võ, Associate Professor, Department of Asian American Studies University of California, Irvine "As a democratic society, we are grappling with how to ensure that access, allocation, and distribution of limited resources are equitable, and these struggles over scarce resources are mirrored in the universities where we work."
- 17. Beyond "Diversity": Negotiating Racial and Gender Identities on the Path to Tenure Essay: Facing Down the Spooks Angela Mae Kupenda, Professor of Law, Mississippi College School of Law ―As a final story, when I was working in an extremely oppressive environment, my sleep was regularly disturbed by dreams of being chased by something scary. When I told my mother about these fitful dreams and scary characters, she said the next time I had that dream I should make myself acutely aware of their presence, stop running, turn around, and face them down. I did, and these nocturnal creatures went away. I stood up to them in my dreams and also, subsequently, found courage and words to confront them in my nightmarish work situation. Somehow facing them minimized their power over me and enlarged my own power.‖
- 18. Beyond "Diversity": Negotiating Racial and Gender Identities on the Path to Tenure From back cover of Presumed Incompetent Mari Matsuda, Professor of Law, University of Hawaii, William S. Richardson School of Law ―This book felt so painfully familiar I almost could not read it. Those of us who started our careers as firsts and onlys have had to forget much about the cruelty hidden in academic enclaves. Forgetting, a means of surviving, buries pain and erases history, leaving us morally and intellectually flimsy. Thanks to these women for taking the harder path of truth-telling.‖
- 19. Beyond "Diversity": Negotiating Racial and Gender Identities on the Path to Tenure AALS January 5, 2012 New Orleans, Louisiana