Vincent Serracino Week 3 - SS1

     The upward struggle through scholasticism has additional filters for international faculty, Asian American women in particular. “Opening the Box” by Akiko Takeyama is an eye-opening window to the often unheard plight of academics who must acclimate in a new country and face a slew of discrimination. One of my immediately surprising discoveries from the reading was that international Asian American female faculty can lose their residency in the US if they do not “make tenure or otherwise lose their academic position” (Takeyama, 2). Imagining the common pressures of keeping an academic job has already been described as gut-wrenching in past readings, but having your right to stay in the country dangled above your head strains their livelihoods. Additionally, having observed racial and accent discrimination before, learning about the blatant biases against women in tenure decisions was heartbreaking. It is already a tough hustle for so many out there that being seen as two different types of candidate because gender is completely unnecessary and unwarranted.

     The complete lack of formal support systems for Asian American women as described is also very disheartening, learning that she was in the dark about both publishing processes - essential for advancing your career, and her tenure process shows a lack of preexisting support and care for anyone not considered integrated into the system. I enjoyed her pointing out the commercialization of mentorship and its effects on societal inequality as well.

     I also liked her section on lessons learned. I felt like a call to action that addressed the obvious need for systemic support systems to combat discrimination and inequality.

Now that the box has been opened, Rani Neutill describes how she closed it. In “How to Leave Academia” Neutill highlights how the problem of scarcity limits options for most who want to be a part of the Academic lifestyle and or just hold a job in their beloved career. “The breakup was rough,” (Neutill, 10)  and she estimates nearly a decade of healing on her horizon. She really expressed to me how deeply academia can envelop your life, to the point where she, like many others, lost her identity in it.

Leaving academia as she did is “pretty easy,” you just stop applying to the countless places that are not accepting a majority of applicants. She also describes herself as someone who doesn't want to quote the same philosophers over and over, in contrast to her contemporaries. What stood out to me was how her many years of teaching at Harvard, Yale, etc. did not do much to help her in the academic job market. Available positions are quaint and I liked her insight on how wholesome her life was as a waitress compared to past experiences, also she is really sick of Kant.  

Question: Did anyone else see the irony in how Neutill prefers to be “an end in itself” (Kant) compared to how cutthroat she describes the “means to an end” attitude of her old environment?

Sources:

Csun.edu. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.ecs.csun.edu/~rlingard/COMP450/cs450edm/sld010.htm

WanchisenMay, B. A., LanginMay, K., HoskinsJun, S. G., LanginJun, K., & LanginJun, K. (2018, May 17). There's no shame in leaving academia. Retrieved from https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2018/05/theres-no-shame-leaving-academia

Kant, I., Gregor, M., & Timmermann, J. (2012). Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals (Rev. edition / translation rev. by Jens Timmermann.. ed., Cambridge texts in the history of philosophy).

Takeyama, A. (n.d.). Opening the Box:An International Asian Woman Scholar’s Fight. Retrieved from https://canvas.ucdavis.edu/courses/392140/files/folder/Weekly Readings/Week3?preview=6337678

NEUTILL, R. (n.d.). How to Leave Academia. Retrieved from https://canvas.ucdavis.edu/courses/392140/files/folder/Weekly Readings/Week3?preview=6337682