Voices and images from Presumed Incompetent

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