June 3, 2017
A03
The introduction to Fight the Tower shows how Asian American faculty, especially women, in American universities are constantly attacked from the system yet continue to unite, understand the patterns, and serve as allies and mentors to fellow faculty who are going through or are about to undergo similar stresses. Even before delving into the unique stories that make up Fight the Tower, we learn that with every seemingly different narrative follows an obvious pattern of achieving excellent work for the community, gaining moral support from colleagues and campus administrators, yet being denied tenure or promotion from the same higher-ups in the academy. I learned through this reading that the struggle for academic freedom experienced a sudden increase when more women and people of color joined the university. Still, I was not at all surprised when the underlying cause of this tension was meant to stay hidden by those who started this problem in the first place. Therefore, as students, we are partly responsible for demanding, strategizing for, and carrying out change in academia for our professors, who we look up to for mentorship. As we discussed in class, it is okay to be angry. Anger is a valid emotion for motivating action, but we must be smart about how we use our anger. Because there are many of us students but fewer faculty, we can advocate for our instructors just as much as they advocate for us and our community.
Q: Who's down?
Truong, E. (2013, 29 Mar). Grant Tenure to Prof. Kieu-Linh Caroline Valverde. Retrieved from
https://www.change.org/p/grant-tenure-to-prof-kieu-linh-caroline-valverde?source_location=minibar.
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