ASA002 A02
November 26, 2017
According to Professor Valverde in Introduction to Fight the Tower, although it should follow rationally that tenure and promotion within university should be based on a meritocracy, her own experiences and those of Dariotis, a fellow Asian American studies faculty member at San Francisco State University argue the contrary. Instead, those in higher power in university systems abuse their privileges by only promoting those who are able to maintain a “low profile” balance within the system. In particular, people of minority status and doing research in ethnic studies stand out against the usual members of a campus administration because their work tends to be controversial, or trailblazing as they stand for a smaller subset of the population in academia. I find the point made about prioritizing STEM fields over social sciences and humanities particularly fascinating, because I never looked at it that way. Perhaps the point that Professor Valverde made previously about prioritizing corporatization and private gains over pure education for the sake of education has caused STEM majors to be seen as the “more valuable” members of a university, since they can fuel corporations and governmental interests, and in turn, capitalism. Finally, the argument made by Professor Valverde that those who dare to speak up in an academic setting are ostracized for doing so is a huge indication of the tendency towards “normalcy” that the corporatized university system has.
Question: If divergent opinions within the realm of academia are discouraged, by campus administrators putting down those who invent new ways of thinking, how does a university advance beyond old ideas?
References:
1. Valverde, C. & Dariotis, W. M. (2017). “The Time to Fight Is Now”: When Asian American Women in Academia Go Rogue. Retrieved November 26, 2017.
2. [Digital Image]. (2016). Retrieved November 26, 2017. From https://koreanamericanactivist.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/cropped-screen-shot-2015-05-06-at-12-58-28-pm.png
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