Though I had heard about public universities,
such as those in the University of California school system, becoming more like
corporate-run businesses, I did not feel the full extent of this transition’s
effect until I became a student at the University of California Davis. As Kieu-Linh Caroline Valverde stated in
her work, Fight the Tower:
A Call to Action for Women of Color in Academia, many women of color are being forced to remain in lecturer positions despite
the exemplary work many of them produce. I first witnessed a sign of this epidemic
when I discovered that my statistics teacher was not a professor, but a
part-time lecturer during my first quarter at UC Davis. She was an excellent teacher,
always available and encouraging during office hours, and was never averse to
being more available to her students who needed extra help despite commuting
from Berkeley every day. After reading Professor Valverde’s article, I am
beside myself that UC Davis can find money to renovate the Activities and
Recreation Center as well as engage in multiple other construction projects,
but not have enough funds to give exceptional faculty tenure, especially women
of color. In accordance with the latter, I was astonished to learn that despite the fact
that 3.2 percent of the people who earned master’s degrees and 3.1 percent of
the people who earned doctoral degrees in 2007 were Asian American women, only 1.8
percent held tenured positions at colleges and universities (Valverde, 2013).
However, what struck me the most about Professor Valverde’s article was her
shining light upon inter-racial and inter-ethnic tensions in the Asian American
community. I have often been critical of the university’s mission to so
forcefully push diversity and an anti-racist mindset without acknowledging the
racism and bigotry that often exists within minority communities. I think it’s
important that we as Asian Americans join forces against the white, patriarchal
system that is so ingrained in our governmental system and societal structure.
Otherwise, our division will only aid the oligarchy in staying at the top and
force us to remain at the bottom of the economic ladder.
I’m glad that Professor Valverde has
brought attention to this matter as an Ethnic Studies professional and would
like to end on the sentence that struck me most in her piece, Fight
the Tower: A Call to Action for Women of Color in Academia, “ The general belief though is that we were fighting the white
supremacist patriarchal system out there -
that no matter how messy inter-departmental fighting got, they would not easily
jeopardize ethnic studies or even those within ethnic studies” (Valverde,
2013).
Questions: I would like to know why California in particular does not more of
their yearly budget toward funding public schools and universities. I also
wonder why public universities, such as the University of California system,
are able to spend their funds so freely without the input of faculty and the
student population.
References:
Valverde, K.,
(2013). “Fight the Tower”: A Call to Action for Women in Academia, 12(2),
367- 419. Retrieved October 7, 2017.
Off the Great Wall. (Producer). (2016, September 16). JUNGLE ASIANS VS FANCY ASIANS. Video retrieved
from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9JYWjLvPL0
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