Ruoting Wan ASA2 A03 Week9

Ruoting Wan

ASA2 A03

Week 9 Blog

5/24/20

In the article "Academic Symbiosis: A Manifesto on Tenure and Promotion in Asian American Studies," Wei Ming Dariotis talks about her idea associates to tenure and promotion in academia. She said, “Tenure and promotion are posited as the reward for decades of individualized academic preparation and labor.” I can feel the intense desires of those faculties who wish to get tenure and promotion since these are the best evidence for them to prove their ability and efforts to academia. However, the current situation in academia is unamiable to Asian American women's faculties. The author is one of the faculties to fight against the actuality. She points out the idea of “Academia Symbiosis” which is the opposite of academic competition, hierarchy, and parasitism. Under academia symbiosis, the environment of academia will become friendly and neighborly. People will be willing to help each other and get rid of fighting for limited resources. I think the idea of “Academic Symbiosis” is an idealized model. Competition is also an essential part of today’s society. People would be stimulated in a competitive environment and reveal their better status. Therefore, academia is more likely to create a benign competition environment instead of “academia symbiosis”.

Question: Did the author promote her ideas in academia successfully?

References:

Dariotis, Wei Ming. “Academic Symbiosis : A Manifesto on Tenure and Promotion in Asian American Studies.” Fight the Tower: Asian American Women Scholars' Resistance and Renewal in the Academy, by Kieu-Linh Caroline Valverde and Wei Ming Dariotis, Rutgers University Press, 2020, pp. 382–416.

Image from https://www.aast.umd.edu/