After reading “Fight the Tower: A Call to Action for Women
of Color in Academia” by Professor Valverde, my eyes were opened to the huge
struggles that minorities, especially women still face today in their careers. The
huge struggles that she faced affected not only her career, but also had hugely
negative effects on her health, to the point of near death. It is quite obvious
after reading this passage that she was evaluated not purely based on her work,
as one would expect from academia, and instead was repeatedly unfairly targeted
based on her race and gender. I had personally always thought of academia as a
pure meritocracy. I was under the
implicit assumption that academic positions and promotions were decided based
only on the professor’s work and what they had contributed to the university
and to the field. After reading about Professor Valverde’s experience I realize
that office politics, and colleague attitudes on race and gender play a huge
role in this process. As a student, I personally find this reprehensible and
offensive. The fact that tenured professors are not being chosen only based on
the merit of their work directly affects me, as a student who attends the
University. I want to be taught by the most qualified professors, not those
most adept at navigating department politics. If the university truly wished to
retain and develop the best professors to research and to teach their students,
such subjective and non merit based factors should not be allowed. I think the
professor’s experience is indicative of a larger problem in the world as a
whole, as this is definitely not an isolated incident, and things like this
likely happen in many fields. It seems the prevailing attitude by most these
days is that racism and sexism are no longer prevalent in the academic world,
but this could not be further from the truth. This is further compounded by the
“model minority” myth that is often applied to Asian Americans. Often the
continued struggle of Asian Americans in the present day is ignored due to this
misconception that many people have. I maintain that professorship and tenure
should be based solely on qualifications and merit, and I believe that we must
fight to make this a reality. This story is truly inspiring to countless others
who are likely facing similar struggles in their careers.
Question: What can we do to prevent perpetuation of the
inherently harmful model minority myth?
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