Professor Valverde's "The Time to Fight is Now": When Asian American Women in Academia Go Rogue as a whole feels like a reflection of ASA2. As I read through the paper, only slightly groaning to myself that it was a 40+ page long piece, I found myself immersed in the words as it reiterated things that I was learning as a student in the class. The things she and Dariotis resonated with me. They also provided the validation I wanted in understanding the academic world around me - a place in which I've been debating on entering since I entered University of California, Davis.
The quote that struck me throughout the paper was this: "This reengineered higher education system has been dominated by corporatization, using outdated business models with deleterious effects: prioritizing private gains over public good, a ballooning administrative class, rampant incivility within the academic workplace, heightened tokenism, and the over-privileging of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields at the expense of the humanities and social sciences."
As a student, there are things we aren't told - everything has been censored to fit some larger, more seamless narrative, but the more I'm in Professor Valverde's class, the more I feel "woke" to the things around me, the more willing I feel to make a difference because these things are important despite how insignificant they may seem to other people. The way she puts it on words and in real life is simple: we either sit there and take what we're being given or we ask why we're being given these things. She implores us to question what's going on in the world and develop a sense of curiosity in order to understand our world because there are things we don't realize are happening, much like this instance in which Asian American women in academia are not getting the recognition or the promotions that they deserve.
There's an issue with way schools are run now, whether that's high school or college - it's become a business in which everything is strategically placed. The "ivory tower" itself is strategically places, so what we need to do as active bodies within this tower is make a choice - either sit down and take what's coming or understand what's going on and then make a decision then. Either way, there's a lot to be said as an Asian-American in academics, and something needs to be done to create a just educational system, not only for us as students but for the faculty and the instructors that are teaching and guiding us.
References
Rauch, J. (2014). "Ivory Tower Movie Review". Retrieved from http://www.skilledup.com/articles/ivory-tower-movie-review-higher-education-failing
Valverde, C., & Dariotis, W. (2017). "The Time to Fight is Now": When Asian American Women in Academia Go Rogue. Retrieved June 4, 2017
Questions
In what ways can we make a change to this system of corporatization of the university and the oppression of Asian American women in academia? The first few steps have been accomplished, so what can we expect as we continue to make efforts in tearing down this systematic oppression?
One word...WOKE!
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