In this week’s readings, I was exposed to the “dark side” of academia, and I was shocked. As a student here at UC Davis, and I am sure in majority of the institutes around the United States, challenges faced by faculty members are never mentioned. The only thing outsiders know is professors are often not paid much, despite the importance of their contributions to future generations and the society. The readings explained how Asian American, especially women, are often discriminated and their identity as Asian is hindering them from being promoted, getting a full time position and acquiring funds for research. From all readings, my thought is that a lot of the times institutes try to show students and outsiders how inclusive and diverse their institutes are by accepting students from all over the world and from different ethnic groups, but the fact is that what they did were all for the reputation and a strategy to sugarcoat this “business”. Higher ups (often whites) are scared of Asians succeeding, and instead of trying to learn from whoever is doing better, they use immoral strategies to control the career paths of Asian faculty members. Another idea that struck my mind was how Asian faculty members could not even rely on their other Asian faculty peers. The idea of allyship is so weak that school management can manipulate other members to backstab on whoever they do not like or have the guts to speak up. Though as students we cannot do much to change corruption and racism embedded in the college administration, but it is crucial to be aware of the dynamic and discriminations in our society, literally everywhere, even in academia, which should be a role model.
Chen, K. (2019, January 24). How Harvard Is Failing its Asian-American Students. Retrieved June 27, 2019, from http://harvardpolitics.com/harvard/harvard-failing-asian-americans/
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