This week we analyzed the text “Fight the Tower: A Call to Action for Women of Color in Academia.” written by Kieu-Linh Caroline Valverde. This text gives a first hand account of Kieu-Linh Caroline Valverde’ experience with the hardships faced to gain tenureship as a professor. This theme directly aligns with the main theme of the week, “Your Education at UC Davis and the Asian American Experience.” The text Fight the Tower relates to this theme as it really sheds a lot of light unto a part of our education system that is not always made public, professor tenureship and its following process. This text begins to just scratch the surface into how our educators are chosen to be tenured professors. Sadly, gaining tenureship seems to be more determined by who you know rather than based on what you know. I came away from this text feeling very informed, previous to this I had no idea how my professors were chosen for tenureship. Fight the Tower really puts into perspective how broken our academic system is as someone even as accredited as Valverde was denied censorship. Something I found very shocking after reading this text was how UC Davis was in a sense stuck in the past when in regards to disabilities, gender equality and even racial equality. For example when Valverde goes on to discuss how during her review for tenure the board scrutinized her for being unorganized, which was a direct attack on her adhd and not to mention the hardships she faced in her own department, it seems unreal such a prestigious University would be so biased towards an individual based on race, gender, and things out of there own control. Learning of these hardships makes me very excited for the upcoming quarter as I know my Professor has been through it all and for that she has grit and I know I'm receiving my education from a top notch professor.
One question that I could not get off my mind after reading this is, even after gaining your tenureship, after this long and frivolous battle to gain it, what was it like returning to a department already proving they don’t have your back, was your battle in academe just beginning?
New Teacher Evaluation, Assessment System Comes to Louisiana. (2012, November 20). Retrieved October 01, 2017, from http://www.educationnews.org/education-policy-and-politics/new-teacher-evaluation-assessment-system-comes-to-louisiana/
Valverde, K., (2013). “Fight the Tower: A Call to Action for Women of Color in Academia, 12(2), 367-419. Retrieved September 30, 2017
Indeed, the battle continued after receiving tenure. Which I'm happy to share in class.
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