Week 1
In Professor
Kieu-Linh Caroline Valverde’s Fight the
Tower, she talks about her struggle in her fight to obtain tenure. In her
struggle, she finds that the “holy bastion of education,” is indeed actually
dominated and corrupted by politics. She begins by telling us how, like many of
the students who attend a college university, she came to a university because
it is “supposed” to be above politics and mainly based on ones’ merits and
achievements. However, as seen with Professor Kieu-Linh Caroline Valverde’s
fight for tenure, it is not. As she once believed, like many other students
aspiring to be professors, she thought that education was above “office
politics.” It is through her fight for tenure that she becomes disillusioned to
the fantasy of education and realizes the reality of it. That education is not
above office politics and that one needs to have political alliances in order
to succeed in education. In a discipline that preaches to its students that as
long one works hard, they will succeed, Professor Kieu-Linh Caroline Valverde’s
fight for tenure reveals the harsh reality of the world we’re in. That even the
field of education is slowly becoming corrupted and ruled by politics. With
that in mind, my question is: how might we as students inform the rest of the student body in a
way that lets us know our rights as students, so that when the time comes, we
may be well-equipped with the correct knowledge to defend ourselves and fight
back against hostile acts of inequality and aggression committed by the
university?
References
1. Valverde, K. L. C. (2013). Fight the Tower: A Call to Action for Women of Color in Academia. Seattle J. Soc. Just., 12, 367.
2. Williams Mali. (2015, March 12) Student Activism, [Photograph] http://beaveronline.co.uk/has-student-apathy-overtaken-student-activism/
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