Week 10
In the “Introduction
to Fight the Tower,” Kieu-linh Caroline Valverde and Wei Ming Dariotis reframes
the idea of academia into a workplace with its own political agendas and labor
abuses rather than the typical image of academia as a place above politics and
that views someone based upon their merits. They do so through their shared experiences
as Asian American women fighting for tenure, in which they are wrongly
positioned as the “idealized worker” due to the Model Minority Myth. Their
unique position also allows them to see and experience the injustices and structural
inequalities that the university tries to mask from the public.
The authors
continue to state that the failures of academia is being manifested through the
deconstruction of tenure, which is that even if someone acquires tenure, they
themselves are still not “safe,” and through the increasing proportion of adjunct
faculty. Instead of the keeping professors, the university runs on a business
model in which it prioritizes maximum profits and corporatizes itself through
the usage of its adjunct faculty since the process itself is much easier and
profitable.
Valverde and
Dariotis describes their reframing of the image of the university as being “woke”
to the harsh realities of it. For both Dariotis and Valverde, it was through
their fight for tenure in which they were awakened. Although their experiences
differed slightly, they both saw that what happened to them wasn’t a special
case, rather it was happening to many Asian American women in academia. To
which they responded with this anthology of their shared experiences to bring
light of the injustices that academia has. For myself, it was interesting to
read how these Asian American women go against their gendered and racialized
stereotypes to fight for an institution that they believe is worth fighting
for. Yes they understand that the institution is corrupt, but they still see
the value in it even if that institution works against them.
References:
1. Women of color in academia. (n.d.). Retrieved June 04, 2017, from http://fighttower.com/
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