Week 2

Savannah Keyse
Week 2
Section 2

This week's reading, "Transformative Disjunctures in the Academy" by Linda Vo, covered the struggle that university students have endured to have Ethnic Studies courses be taught at their schools. Vo writes from person experience as well as ample research to show the injustices that are placed against faculty of color in the university setting, and specific acts taken that hinder and impair the field of Asian American Studies (AAS) and Asian Studies (AS) specifically. Vo mentions that when Asian American Studies and Asian Studies are combined they lose the characteristics that separate the two disciplines and undermining the field because it is too broad to show the knowledge that students gain. Connecting this reading to this week's theme of Miseducation, Linda Vo explains that one way a campus obtains AAS or AS courses is by hiring loosely connected but renowned scholars to draw attention to the course but these scholars are not experts in AAS or AS therefore miseducating the students. Marginalization is another theme seen in Vo's passage; she explains through personal experience the intense racism that faculty of color experience in academia, much like the experiences of last week's article by Professor Valverde. An example of the racism is in the amount of people of color the UC system hires: 80% of UC faculty are White while only 49% of California's population are White. Even when a person of color is hired, their track to tenure is much more difficult than it was for those who are evaluating the new applicants creating even greater marginalization for tenure applicants of color and specifically Asian heritage. This article was similar to that of Professor Valverde's where the acts of blatant racism in the education system I am currently enrolled in is shocking and Linda Vo has explained through her article how this system is largely unfair to those of color.

Question: Has the publication of this article adversely affected Linda Vo's employment status with the UC system?



UC Davis Asian American Studies (Image). Retrieved from https://asa.ucdavis.edu/prospective-students.
Võ, L. T. (2012). Transformative Disjunctures in the Academy. Transforming the Ivory Tower, 120-144.