The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the American Academy: Principles for Transformation and Retention 3031392280, 9783031392283

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The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the American Academy Principles for Transformation and Retention Yvette M. Alex-Assensoh

The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the American Academy “While abundant research literature has focused on retention of faculty of color and Black faculty, little has changed. By embedding a fictional case study in the scholarly literature and using her SOULS framework as scaffolding, Dr. Alex-­ Assensoh has taken a powerful and highly creative approach in addressing this loss of talent. With an emphasis on humanity, as well as policy and practice that maintain the status quo, she illuminates the complexity of change while suggesting ways forward.” —Daryl G. Smith, Senior Research Fellow and Professor Emerita of Education and Psychology, School of Educational Studies, Claremont Graduate University, USA “SOULS reveals the exponential wealth and cultural gain realized when a traditional academic intuition leverages its full capacity to evolve via the rich Black kinetic energy of modern change.” —Sandra Finley, President and CEO, League of Black Women, USA “Alex-Assensoh examines how the American Academy can be transformed into a racially, culturally inclusive and intellectually flourishing space. She signals how a transformed Academy would lead to a transformed society and politics, considering the capacity of higher education to change lives and generations. Expansive in its intellectual breadth—feminist studies, higher education studies, carceral studies, history, ethics, neuroscience, biology, psychology, law—and innovative in its approach that combines academic research with fiction or storytelling, SOULS is an engaging and extremely well-written book by an experienced scholar and university administrator on how to create inclusive excellence in the American Academy.” —Emmanuel Akyeampong, Ellen Gurney Professor of History and of African and African American Studies and Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Center for African Studies, Harvard University, USA

“Powerful! SOULS is a theoretical and practical framework that should be applied at universities to understand, recruit, and retain Black faculty. Rooted in the scholar-activist tradition of W.E.B.  Du Bois, Alex-Assensoh draws upon a wide range of methodological approaches from the social sciences and humanities to capture the experiences of Black faculty. Read this book if you want to have a more equitable approach to faculty processes.” —Rashawn Ray, Vice-President, American Institutes for Research, Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland, and Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution, USA “This book employs a blend of research and fiction to investigate the historical and contemporary journey of African Americans in the American educational system. Dr. Alex-Assensoh examines the Academy’s association with past racial inequity, emphasizing the impact of racial stigma on the Black community. The book delves into the notions of double consciousness and linked fate while shedding light on the experiences of Black faculty and staff as outsiders in American society. By utilizing fictional storytelling, the author navigates sensitive topics while avoiding the retraumatization of Black individuals who might be hesitant to share their personal stories. The engaging narrative centered around ‘Towering University’ resonates as genuine, effectively advocating for transformative change within the Academy and the pursuit of fair and strategic institutional reforms to enhance the retention of Black faculty and staff.” —Jessica Lavariega Monforti, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, and Professor, Political Science, California Lutheran University, USA “Dr. Yvette Alex-Assensoh slays it with The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the Academy, shifting our understanding of W.E.B. Du Bois’ Souls of Black Folk to a new terrain. She is a gifted storyteller who can translate the dismal data on the lack of DEI progress in the Academy into narratives and five action principles designed to both guide and heal. The fictional stories she creates are drawn from real-life examples that many of us doing DEI work can feel and understand, and from which others may learn. Now the question is this—will the Academy listen to this Truth Teller and change?” —Irma McClaurin, Editor of Black Feminist Anthropology, Founder of the Irma McClaurin Black Feminist Archive at UMass, USA “Every university president, provost, and dean who is serious about attracting and retaining Black faculty and staff, and those from underrepresented backgrounds, should read this book. As a three-time college president, I have not read a more poignant, powerful, persuasive, practical, and timely treatise on this topic.” —Charlie Nelms, President-in-Residence, United Negro College Fund, USA

Yvette M. Alex-Assensoh

The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the American Academy Principles for Transformation and Retention

Yvette M. Alex-Assensoh University of Oregon Eugene, OR, USA

ISBN 978-3-031-39228-3    ISBN 978-3-031-39229-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39229-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

To A.B., Kwadwo, and Livingston—loving and being loved by you are the greatest sources of joy in my life. I am eternally grateful to God for the gifts of you. To Black faculty, staff, students, diversity officers and allies from all walks of life, who have given so much of their hearts and brilliance in hope of a better Academy and world. While working toward that end, please remember that our children, families and loved ones are our most precious gifts. Put them first, with no regrets.

Acknowledgments

A book, which weaves together narrative and interdisciplinary research, has many influences. The following colleagues provided either encouraging critiques of earlier versions of the manuscript or advance praise: Emmanuel K.  Akyeampong, A.  B. Assensoh, Shonell Bacon, Frances Bronet, Theodore Curry, Allison Davis-White Eyes, Sandra Finley, Paulette Granberry-Russell, Douglas Haynes, Liz Halimah, Mariann Hyland, Irma McClaurin, Jessica Meharry, Joan Middendorf, Jessica Lavariega Monforti, Michael Murashige, Charlie Nelms, Bruce Poinsette, Larry Roper, Doneka Scott, Celena Simpson, Daryl Smith, Rashawn Ray, Caroline Turner and the anonymous peer reviewers. Campus colleagues Angeli Brooks and Jenny Burton provided research assistance and encouragement, while Tracy Bars helped with formatting of an earlier draft and calendaring. Augustine Adu Frimpong provided the indexing. However, any shortcoming is mine alone. Other professional colleagues, family members and friends, who challenged and  encouraged me along the way include: Ann Aiken, Michael Alexander, Terina Allen, Kwadwo Assensoh, Livingston Assensoh, Althea Banda-Hansmann, Elliot Berkman,  Jim Brooks,  Kevin Brown,  Dianna Carizzales-Englemann, Krista Chronister, Caroline Colleen,  Dominique Custos, Vickie DeRose, Sherri Dyson, Johnny Earl,  Sylvia and Floyd Egland, Karen Ford, Ibrahim Gassama, Marva Solomen Erik Girvan, Linda and Rick Hamilton, John Haroldson and Maria Chavez-Haroldson, Bill Harvey, Richie Hunter, Tracy and Robert James,  Lamia Karim, Dawn Kier,  Ed Madison,  Portia Maultsby, Toni and Percy Mayfield, DeLeesa vii

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and Norval Meashintubby, Rhonda McNight, Gertrude Moseley, Barbara Mossberg, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Rhonda Nese,  Obioma (“Obi”) Nnaemeka,  Dianne Pinderhughes,  Niko Pfund, Ricky and Irene Poon, Leilani Sabzalian,  Gerard Sandoval, Wendy Smooth,  Leslie Steeves, Melissa Redford, Lyllye Reynolds-Parker, Perry Rhue, Rebekah Samsonraj, Michelle Stimpson, Anne Washington, Deborah Wilds, Daisy-O’lice Williams and Liana Zhou. I am also blessed to work alongside a brilliant leadership team in the Division of Equity and Inclusion (made up of Tracy Bars, Rosa Chavez, Charlotte Moats-Gallagher, Kelly Pembleton and Lesley-Anne Pittard) as well as a team of talented UO colleagues in the Center for Multicultural Academic Excellence (CMAE), Multicultural Center (MCC) Campus and Community Engagement (CaCE) and Center on Diversity and Community (CoDaC). They are dedicated individuals, whose commitment to inclusive excellence, belonging and antiracism is inspiring. Furthermore, I very much appreciate the faculty, staff, students and administrators at the University of Oregon, Indiana University— Bloomington, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and The Ohio State University, indeed, for their kindnesses and support over the years. Most certainly, I am, as well, very grateful to my visionary Palgrave Acquisitions Editor Linda Braus, who saw potential in my initial proposal and encouraged me to continue weaving and knitting it together. I also express deep gratitude to the communities of scholars, which have served as a source of refuge for me over the years: “Fordies” from the illustrious Ford Foundation Fellowship Program, administered through the National Academies of Sciences, American Council on Education Fellows Program (with special thanks to Kim Wilcox and Juanita Banks), CIC Academic Leadership Program, National Conference of Black Political Scientists, The Ralph Bunche Institute of the American Political Science Association (with special thanks to Paula McClain), University of North Carolina Postdoctoral Program  (with special thanks to David Lowery and James H. Johnson, Jr.), University of Oregon Black senior administrators support group (made up of Doneka, Richie, Kimberly, Marcilynn, Kevin, Sabrina, Nikki and their families) as well as Black Strategies Group, Friday Morning Writing Circles  (with special thanks to Lara Bovilsky), Sisters Journaling Through The Journey, The Auntie Way Writing Retreat (with special thanks to Michelle M.  Jacob), the network of UO Strategies Groups, the UO Diversity Community of Practice (with a special shoutout to Norma Kehdi for her prompt assistance), UO Diversity Committees, Members and  fellow board members of the National Association of

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Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE) as well as Diversity Officers in the AAU and throughout the  Academy, colleagues in the Eugene-Springfield Equity and Community Consortium (ECC), coaching colleagues and participants in the Green Room Program of the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust (with special thanks to Rudy Carrasco), other coaching colleagues in the International Federation of Coaches (ICF), the community of sages that comprise the UO President’s Diversity Advisory Community Council (PDACC), members of the Southern Willamette Advisory Council of the Oregon Community Foundation, and praying friends in the following congregations: Bethlehem Baptist Church (Louisiana), Seventh Avenue Baptist Church (Ohio),  Bethel AME and Second Baptist Churches (Indiana), First Baptist Church and St. Mark’s CME Church (Oregon), Bethel AME Church, Saginaw (Michigan) Greater True Vine (Texas) and Rochester Church of Christ (Minnesota). My nuclear family—A. B. Assensoh, Kwadwo Assensoh and Livingston Assensoh—provides love, lively conversation, unvarnished truth telling and patience that make it possible for me to think, create and serve.

Disclaimer

Although some of the stories and themes in this book were inspired by actual events, none of the fictional characters or organizations represent any specific people or organizations.

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Contents

Introduction  1 The Inspiration   1 The Transformative Power of the Academy   2 The Difference That “SOULS” Makes   4 Overview of the Book   7 Farewell Again   9 Passage One: Institutional Responsiveness in the Absence of SOULS   9 Passage Two: Safety in the Academy   9 Passage Three: Organizational Accountability  10 Passage Four: Unvarnished Truth Telling in the Academy  10 Passage Five: Love and Spirituality in the Academy—A Change Is Gonna Come  10 How to Make the Most of This Book  11 References  12 Farewell Again 17  Passage One: Institutional Responses and the Lack of SOULS 23 Institutional Silence  24 Symbolic and Surface Responses  25 Interest Convergence Responses  26 Rethinking  26 Equity-Ready Institutional Design  27 References  28 xiii

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Exodus and the Day of Reckoning 31 The Board Meeting 41 The Cleanup Woman 47  Passage Two: Safety in the Academy 57 History of Violence and State-Sanctioned Terror  58 Socioeconomic Injury and Harm  58 Stigma, Psychological Safety and Stress  59 References  61 Saving Our Children 65 Protection from Academic Bullying  65 The Joys and Impact of Mentoring Students  66 Beyond Mentoring: How My Chair Actively Sponsored and Supported Me  67 Plans to Combat and Fight Racism in Our Children’s Lives  69 What’s in a Name: Bureaucracy or Racism  73 Choosing My Children’s Safety over Tenure  74 References  78  Act of Self-Preservation 79 An The Road to TU  79 The Stress of Mistaken and Stigmatized Identities  81 Fear and Intimidation in the Classroom  82 Racialized Trauma  85 My Encounters with TU’s Campus Police  87 Antidiscrimination at TU  88 References  91 Students Catalyzing Change 95 Our Shared Responsibility103  Passage Three: Organizational Accountability113 References 116

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The Heart Transplant119 Tenure and Promotion 122 Service 127 References 133  What About the Students?135 Misguided Paradigms and Schemas 137 The Unimaginable 138 References 145 Culpability147  Passage Four: Unvarnished Truth Telling163 References 166  “No Tea, No Shade”167 Free Speech Is Not Free 169 Where Are the Data? 171 We Can’t Afford to Keep Them 173 References 176 Towering University, Goddam177 TU Is Committed to Africana Studies 178 TU Will Provide Funding to Support Program Development and Ongoing Maintenance 180 There Is Widespread Support for the Establishment of an Africana Studies Program at Towering University 182 Unvarnished Truth-Telling as a Foundational Tool in the American Academy 185 References 190 Call and Response191  Passage Five: Love and Spirituality195 References 197 A Change Is Gonna Come199

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 Out of the Ashes203 The Road to Love and Spirituality 205 Here is What Students, Faculty and Administrators Have Said About L.A.C.E.™ 209 References 212  From Farewell Again to SOULS Celebration213 Reference 222  Implications, Resources and Exemplars223 Passage One: Institutional Responsiveness Without SOULS 225 Passage Two: Safety 227 Passage Three: Organizational Accountability 229 Passage Four: Unvarnished Truth Telling 230 Passage Five: Love and Spirituality 231 Index233

About the Author

Yvette Marie Alex-Assensoh  is Professor of Political Science, vice president for Equity and Inclusion and Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Oregon. She is a member of the Indiana and Oregon Bar Associations and an ICF Certified Coach. Her life-long belief in the power of agape love is the driving force behind how she aspires to research, serve, teach, lead, coach and consult. For the past 30 years, Yvette has devoted her career to serving people, inspiring equity as well as inclusion and shaping organizational environments that nurture meaningful teaching, research, learning and engagement. Over the years, her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Ford Foundation, Social Science Research Council (SSRC), the Spencer Foundation and the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars (CIES). She is the author/coauthor of seven books and edited volumes, scores of refereed journal articles, essays and book chapters. Prior to joining the University of Oregon, Yvette served as a tenured Professor of Political Science and a Dean at Indiana University in Bloomington. She and her husband (A.  B. Assensoh) are the parents of two adult sons: Kwadwo and Livingston. Yvette, a native of Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, enjoys napping, cooking, playing board games, reading, hanging out with her family and listening to music.

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The Inspiration I am sometimes asked about the hardest part of my job as a vice president for Equity and Inclusion, who served in the past at two different Association of American Universities (AAU) Research Institutions. Most people are surprised to learn that it is not fighting for resources in an increasingly resourceconstrained higher education context. It is also not advocating for policies and processes that everyone says they want, but few are willing to put into practice. It is not walking through the landmines of the current political environment, in which activist legislators and a politicized Supreme Court are, in some ways, undermining access to fairness and higher education. The most difficult part of my job is saying goodbye to talented and committed faculty and staff, who resign because of untenable and hostile conditions in their home departments, colleges, schools or campuses, despite mustering their best efforts to stay and contribute. Initially, my disappointments registered as sadness and episodic depression. These days, scatter headaches, chest tenderness and fatigue remind me that my body is, indeed, keeping a running tally of preventable losses that damage professional reputations, weaken the workplace and wound valiant spirits. Along the way, I have lost count of the times that students have cried on my shoulders as we together grieved over the departure of the only Black professor or Black staff member in their program, the countless campus programs, relationships with community groups and innovations © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. M. Alex-Assensoh, The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the American Academy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39229-0_1

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that wither and die as their creators depart for friendlier workplaces. Over the years, I have wondered about what I could have done differently to stem the tide of premature departures. These are regular features of my work life. Alongside these visible losses are the less visible ones: Black students and their parents, who see the absence of Black faculty and staff and conclude that these places amount to risks that they do not want to take. I do not blame them. In their shoes, I would likely feel the same way! I have found it increasingly difficult to stomach the silence of Department Heads, Deans, Provosts and Presidents, who consistently refuse to address the crisis of Black faculty and staff retention while working successfully to address other difficult problems. As I continue to watch, time and time again, members of the Academy cower in fear rather than fight for what is true, I am infuriated that we are ceding power instead of using our formidable resources to transform America and the world beyond. I have written The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the Academy: Principles for Transformation and Retention (or SOULS) as both a practical and research-based resource, for anyone who is open to a different way of thinking, showing up and leading. My hope is to speak to people of all backgrounds and persuasions, who are tired of excuses and long to find solutions to the problems that keep us from our highest and most loving purposes. It is for leaders of all types, at all levels and future leaders too, including students, parents and policymakers, who understand that the best way to change our most intractable problems is to first change ourselves. It is also written to remind Black faculty and staff, as well as diversity professionals, that they are not window dressing, but that they are seen, cherished and essential to that change. In this sense, while the idea for SOULS arose from the pain of loss, its execution has been fueled by my own unwavering hope that the Academy can and will become a leader in redressing the senseless devaluing of Black faculty and staff.

The Transformative Power of the Academy Interestingly, my first glimpse at the transformative power and promise of the Academy came through the lives of my parents, Reverend Livingston and Bethlehem Baptist Church First Lady Thelma Coleman Alex of Louisiana. Against the formidable odds of a sharecropping economy, lynching and other forms of legalized violence against Black people and underresourced rural schools, my parents (Livingston and Thelma) miraculously gained access to higher education and earned bachelor’s and master’s

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degrees, academic credentials that catapulted them out of grinding poverty. Yet, mere access to the Academy was only part of their story. Black faculty and staff members had a profound effect on my parents, creating learning environments that were academically rigorous and rich in love and fairness. Years after my parents earned their academic degrees, one Professor Frederick and his wife offered advice and support over shared meals, indeed as my parents launched their professional careers. The Fredericks regaled me with stories of my parents as college-age students and tenderly celebrated, along with my own parents, the birth of our own sons. Even though all of them have transitioned to eternity, the relationship is still bearing fruit. Upon my arrival in Oregon, I literally ran into Senator Lew Frederick, the son of my parents’ two mentors, and he is a light of inspiration to me. So smitten were my parents by the nurturing power of the Fredericks and the Academy that, in addition to their professions as biology teacher, pastor and librarian, respectively, they built a 5000-square-foot daycare center and hired staff to teach mostly Black but also Mexican, Vietnamese and White preschoolers reading, social-emotional and numeracy skills, which set these children on their own paths toward the Academy. For my parents, the Academy and the Black faculty as well as staff, who guided them, transformed their lives and provided them with the tools to facilitate transformation in the community, in which they lived. My parents represent for me the awesome possibility of the Academy and the need to safeguard its transformational potential for future generations. My deep longing is that students of all backgrounds should have an opportunity to envision themselves through the eyes of role models and mentors, who look like them and who also share their experiences. In fact, the Academy has made great strides in diversifying its faculty, staff and student body, including people from myriad backgrounds. Yet, as the Academy celebrates its increasing diversity, it does so within the tragic context of vanishing Black faculty and staff. According to National Center for Education Statistics, only 4% of the 1.5 million faculty at degree-granting post-secondary institutions are Black females and 3% are Black males, with only about 3% of Black faculty at historically White institutions. Additionally, a recent report of Journal of Blacks in Higher Education emphasized that the nation’s highest-ranked colleges and universities have, for the most part, made only slight progress in increasing the percentage of Blacks on their faculties. At the current rate, they predict that it will be a century or more before the Black percentages of the faculties of these institutions mirror the Black percentage

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of the American workforce. I cannot stand idly by and allow such absolute waste of lives and talent. Therefore, with this book, I am issuing a clarion call to interrupt the processes that diversify the Academy at the expense of Black thriving because it is imperative to be diverse in ways that include Black people and the incredible contributions that they offer in impactful ways. Though Black faculty and staff are small in number at most historically White institutions, I have witnessed firsthand the ways that Black faculty and staff innovate, produce world-changing knowledge, and support students of all backgrounds to lead locally and globally. I have written essays to caution colleagues to choose wisely as they serve above and beyond the terms of their contracts in order to make their institutions and communities better (Alex-Assensoh, 2018). From my own personal background, I know that their impact is impossible to overestimate, and that is why I am analyzing the retention of Black faculty and staff as a national crisis that deserves a national response. As a political scientist, I conduct research on racial politics. In that capacity, I have spent much of my career helping others to understand how each racial group has been racialized in different ways. I offer an opportunity to explore the specific experiences of Black faculty and staff as important mechanisms to broaden our understanding of how institutional structures and lived experiences shape climate and retention in the Academy. Black people are a perpetually racialized group, historically occupying the margins of American political, economic and social life, and I use this specific vantage point to offer a perspective, which is important for understanding  Black faculty and staff as well as in providing a path forward for the Academy as a whole.

The Difference That “SOULS” Makes I have always been fascinated with W. E. B. Du Bois’ 1903 breathtakingly expansive classic, The Souls of Black Folk. In that book, he highlighted the unique impact of subjugation and racial segregation, indeed what Du Bois called the veil, on the Black psyche and experiences further explaining: The Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-­ sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-­ consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense

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of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro... two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. (Du Bois, 1920, pp. 10–11)

As Dr. Du Bois cogently argued, Black people lived behind the veil of racial segregation and largely outside the view of most White people, even as Black people had to maneuver in a world predominated by Whites. Consequently, Black people’s experiences provided them with a unique understanding of racialized discrimination, their own lives in this racialized context and the world of White supremacy and its racialized advantages from which Blacks were largely circumscribed. These experiences characterized double consciousness, or Blacks’ propensity of looking at “oneself through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” (Du Bois, 1920, pp. 10–11). Over my three decades of varied experiences in the Academy and, now, in my role as a consultant as well as a board member of National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE), I know that Black faculty and staff face a similar veil of isolation. That is despite the fact that some of America’s most prestigious, historically White institutions are headed by Black Provosts, Deans, Presidents, Chancellors and governing board members. Since the Academy was designed without Black faculty and staff, as intellectual agents of change, in mind, most of the formal academic processes do not anticipate the methodologies, scholarly inquiries and ways of engaging that all too many Black faculty and staff bring to historically White institutions. Consequently, many Black faculty and staff contend with unearned disadvantages, even as research and public opinion polls continue to document that Whites and White adjacent groups largely either cannot see the unearned disadvantages, choose not to see them, or chalk them up to individual failings and lack of preparedness among Black faculty and staff (Kendi, 2016; Geronimus, 2023; Flaherty, 2020; Gaynor 2022). The consequence is a revolving door of Black faculty and staff, who are basically homeless in an otherwise spacious Academy. Yet, while the past is certainly important in illuminating the current context, it does not necessarily determine our future. As a labor of love, SOULS is my contribution toward better options for the future, which are inspired by over 50 years of research on Black faculty

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and staff retention as well as the lived experiences of those dating from previous generations. In fact, over the past few decades, I have combed through the literature on Black faculty and staff retention as well as a wide swath of interdisciplinary scholarship in law as well as psychology, history, educational leadership, political science and neuroscience. Based on that research coupled with over three decades experience in teaching, research, diversity leadership and academic leadership, I argue that the principles of SOULS or: • Safety (Pierce et al., 1978; Constantine et al., 2008; Gregory, 1995; Harlow, 2003; Dawson, 1995; Edmondson, 2018; Eberhardt, 2020; Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 2009) • Organizational accountability (Harris et al., 2017; Matthew, 2016; Cole, 2020; Daniels, 1991; Griffin et al., 2011a; Griffin et al., 2011b; Ray, 2019; Williams & Wade-Golden, 2013; Edmondson, 2012; Harper & Hurtado, 2010) • Unvarnished truth telling (Wilder, 2013; Niemann et  al., 2020; Mabokela & Green, 2001; Dyson, 2017; Schmidt, 2008; Grant, 2021; Taylor-Arger & Smith, 2002; Cooper, 2018; Chambers, 2012; Cross, 1994; Glaude, 2021; Harris-Perry, 2011; Daniels, 1991) • Love (hooks, 2018;  hooks, 2012;  West, 1993; Odozor, 2022; Beckles-­Raymond, 2019; Alex-Assensoh, 2017; Brooks, 2019; Fredrickson, 2013; Anwar et al., 2021) and • Spirituality (Patton & McClure, 2009; Giles, 2010; Rocha & Pinheiro, 2021; Morton, 2020; Du Bois, 1920) are foundational ingredients in reimagining an Academy in which the talents of Black faculty and staff are welcomed to give the Academy a necessary infusion of brilliance that will enhance knowledge production and betterment of humanity. In providing an alternative way of understanding and processing the literature on Black faculty and staff retention, I do not intend to offer a comprehensive review of the literature. Instead, I connect relevant interdisciplinary research with narrative-cum-fiction-based methods in ways that are generative of reflection, empathy and action that brings the experiences of Black faculty and staff to the center rather than the margins of academic life. I also borrow two other ideas that are important to this work: First, Adam Grant’s concept of “Thinking Again” or the idea of “rethinking” our convictions and assumptions is a constant theme in play as SOULS

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weaves back and forth between interdisciplinary research and narrative fiction. The second is Victor Ray’s concept of racialized organizations that reflect and perpetuate the racialized processes in the broader society.

Overview of the Book Drawing on Du Bois’ The Ordeal of Mansart (Du Bois, 1957) and also from lived experience as well as research about the healing and instructional power of storytelling (Nayebzadah, 2016; Leavy, 2012, 2015; Wang et al., 2017), I use fictional accounts and interdisciplinary research to encourage the interplay between reflection and movement. I construct each Passage to explore the ways in which an array of complex individual, institutional, and structural factors impact Black faculty and staff retention (Leavy, 2012). The narrative aspect of SOULS is set at fictional Towering University (TU) without reference to any particular institutional type or geographical setting because the issues that beleaguer Black faculty and staff transpire across geography and institutional type. Additionally, the Black faculty and staff that I created fictionally do interact with a variety of characters across racial and other identity backgrounds, who lead the university and whose experiences and inner thoughts are shared as a way of understanding how the culture of the Academy lives, thrives and is perpetuated. By further using fictionalized experiences, I seek to expand our view of what counts as acceptable data or evidence in exploring the issues of retention. Their stories, which are shared in varied ways and also through letters, provide compelling arguments for doing everything possible to redesign the Academy in ways that allow Black faculty and staff to thrive and contribute. However, the purpose of the letters is not simply to present the issues at hand, but also to portray each of the unique characters as human beings worthy of dignity, respect and love. The major characters include the following: • Hillman Robinson, President of the fictional Towering University (TU), and third-generation White male academic leader, represents the traditional face and approach to today’s academic leadership. • Jennifer Frank is the first Black as well as first female Provost of TU, a professor of law, former Dean of a top 20 Law School, who finds herself caught in the double bind of loyalty to the traditions of Academia and the current crises, which are calling for new ideas and different actions.

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• Austen Astor Fuller, wealthy, White and longtime member of the TU Board of Trustees currently serving as the Board’s first female Chairperson, is focused on ensuring that TU succeeds at all costs. • Marie Coleman, executive coach, represents the opportunities associated with institutional learning, accountability and possibility. • Rosscoe Higginbotham, nationally recognized leader in sustainable architecture, ideologically conservative, with affluent family background. His experiences shatter myths about what safety looks like and to whom it is owed. • Uberto Hernandez, chief of staff, Office of the Provost, offers steady administrative support as a sounding board for the Provost. His unwavering kindness literally saves lives. • Cathy Luetta, Jennifer’s biracial daughter, serves as a mirror for Jennifer to see the need for growth and evolution regarding issues of race and institutional transformation. • Ron Chew, Jennifer’s former boyfriend and Cathy Luetta’s father, provides support for their daughter, especially around issues of anti-­ Black and anti-Asian racism. • Wendy Williams, assistant professor, a plus-size, married mother of two young children with natural hair. Her experiences suggest that attention to the individual safety issues of Black faculty and staff is necessary but not sufficient. • Aisha Jackson, professor of computer science, Dean of the College of Sciences and owner of dozens of patents, illuminates the impact of being at the vanguard of necessary change without institutional support and buy-in. • JoWanda Sparten, advisor, recently married to her female high school sweetheart, working-class background, survivor of inner-city urban renewal, illuminates the human costs of institutional unaccountability. • Tiffany Gyasi, director of Communications at TU, bicultural daughter of Ghanaian immigrant father and African American mother, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, a wheelchair rider and the mastermind of the SOULS communication strategy, illustrates the personal costs of communicating without unvarnished truth telling. • Antonio Mendes, professor of Africana studies at TU, now VP for research at his former university, husband to Wendy Williams, Afro-­ Portuguese, White adjacent, shows how deception through omission and commission endangers the professional reputations and health of Black faculty and staff.

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• Dante Hills, Clinical researcher, whose efforts to utilize his training in neuroscience to build community by embedding practices of love and spirituality in campus programming and policies are ignored and undervalued  at TU, even as he is gaining recognition and prominence at other colleges and universities.  Chapter 1 and the Five Passages that make up the rest of SOULS are explained here.

Farewell Again I intentionally open the narrative aspect of SOULS at a Farewell Party that represents both the problem of Black faculty and staff retention and their resilience in navigating through it. Seven Black faculty and staff members gather early to finalize a strategy for using their mass resignations as an opportunity to get the attention of university leadership and offer strategies for change. Their strategy sets the stage for the First Passage, which examines institutional responsiveness to the crisis of Black faculty and staff resignations.

Passage One: Institutional Responsiveness in the Absence of SOULS In Passage One, I provide a brief overview of the research on possible responses to the resignations of Black faculty and staff, using the example of Black Thriving at the University of California at Irvine.

Passage Two: Safety in the Academy In Passage Two, I examine safety for Black faculty and staff as relative freedom from physical, psychological and relational harm, danger, injury and loss. I draw on research about systemic Black oppression (Cose, 1993; Pattillo-McCoy, 1999; McClain, 2019), verbal assaults, which are also known as microaggressions (Pierce et al., 1978; Anthym & Tuitt, 2019; Menakem, 2017), bodily harm and injuries to mental well-being that Black people sustain while carrying out their duties in classrooms, research labs and departmental meetings (Constantine et al., 2008; Gregory, 1995; Harlow, 2003; Fasching-Varner et al., 2014; Moses, 1989).

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Passage Three: Organizational Accountability In Passage Three, I explore the ways in which Black faculty and staff are called upon to serve as harbingers of change. Based on hundreds of conversations with Black faculty and staff as well as department heads, Deans, university presidents, and other supervisors, I define organizational accountability as being explicit about a vision and strategy for change, calling out inappropriate resistance to change work, incentivizing opportunities for new institutional learning, movement as well as transformation and systemically repairing harm that occurs on the change journey (Butner et  al., 2000; Matier, 1990; Rockquemore & Laszloffy, 2008; Haynes, 2022). When done properly, organizational accountability provides the content through which individual and mutual accountability are fully actualized. It is also crucial in providing support for Black faculty and staff, who are frequently hired to be change agents.

Passage Four: Unvarnished Truth Telling in the Academy In this passage, I explore unvarnished truth telling as a three-fold process: (i) introspection and lifelong learning about racial equity, with a focus on thoughts and behaviors that support Black thriving, (ii) institutional truth telling about the history of the institution and how it has and is treating its Black faculty, staff, students and alumni and (iii) truth telling about the dual and dueling history of racial equity, with a focus on Blackness in America and the world.

Passage Five: Love and Spirituality Change Is Gonna Come

in the Academy—A

In this passage, I examine how academics usually dismiss love and spirituality as emotional, and in conflict with intellect. I explore what happens when universities ignore love and spirituality as forms of knowledge and insist on cognition as the supreme mechanism for knowledge, often eschewing a full-body approach to learning as well as disseminating knowledge and lessons learned from moving beyond SOULlessness to embryonic strategies for change. I conclude the book with a snapshot of what the fictional campus looks like as it begins to incorporate some of the SOULS principles in the Academy.

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How to Make the Most of This Book I appreciate the time that you are investing to read ideas for transforming the Academy by redressing the crisis of Black faculty and staff retention, and I also have a few thoughts about how to make the best use of your time. First, feel free to read the book straight through or to read the narrative sections first to get a sense of the narrative, and each of the characters. Open yourself up to the experiences shared through the characters and explore them with a sense of adventure and as an opportunity for individual, interpersonal and institutional learning. Revisit the themes that grasp your attention and which are most relevant to your situation. Think alongside each of the fictional characters with empathy and love, even when they are acting in unflattering and despicable ways. Second, as you work through the SOULS’ principles, make note of the ideas and questions that are coming up in terms of existing norms, policies and processes at your own institution. Identify the points of resistance— those ideas that you are tempted to reject—and then do some “rethinking” about them. Each passage has resources and ideas that are embedded throughout the stories, coaching sessions, conversations as well as in each of the bibliographies at the end of every Passage. Third, take care of yourself physically, spiritually and mentally, as you journey through the lives of the SOULS’ characters. Each of the stories contains images and language that can be activating—evoking feelings and sensations of the ways in which we have been on the receiving end or as the perpetrators of past and present mistreatment and harm. Seek out the support that you need from friends, family, your faith, coaches, therapists and others. Where necessary, work on repairing harm. Circling back to the pain and hope that “birthed” this book and remembering the transformative impact that the Academy had on my late parents, my nuclear family, and also me, I hope that students of all racial and ethnic backgrounds have an opportunity to experience the expertise, talent, brilliance and nurturing that Black faculty and staff have to offer within the context of an affirming and inclusively excellent Academy. Building on that hope, SOULS is my sincere invitation for everyone to think more expansively about how the Academy can become more relevant as well as humane, why that transformation is necessary, and how we can indeed work collaboratively to bring it about so that my years of mourning the loss of my colleagues and institutional underperformance can finally come to an end.

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References Alex-Assensoh, Y. (2017). What’s love got to do with it? Diverse Issues in Higher Education, 34(16), 24. Alex-Assensoh, Y. (2018, February 21). Flip the script. Inside Higher Ed. Anthym, M., & Tuitt, F. (2019). When the levees break: The cost of vicarious trauma, microaggressions and emotional labor for black administrators and faculty engaging in race work at traditionally white institutions. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 32(9), 1072–1093. Anwar, M. F., Danna, F. E., Ma, J. F., & Pitre, C. J. (2021). Love as a business strategy: Resilience, belonging and success. Lioncrest Publications. Beauboeuf-Lafontant, T. (2009). Behind the mask of the strong black woman: Voice and the embodiment of a costly performance. University Press of Chicago. Beckles-Raymond, G. (2019). The value of love in higher education: Ethical dilemmas for faculty and students racialized as black in Britain. Journal of Underrepresented Minority Progress, 3(1), 33–50. Brooks, A. C. (2019). Love your enemies: How decent people can save America from the culture of contempt. Harper Press. Butner, B. K., Burley, H., & Marbley, A. F. (2000). Coping with the unexpected: Black faculty in predominantly-white institutions. Journal of Black Studies, 30(2000), 453–462. Chambers, C. (2012). Candid reflections on the departure of black women faculty from academe in the United States. The Negro Educational Review, 62 & 63(1–4), 2011 & 2012. Cole, E. R. (2020). The campus color line: College presidents and the struggle for black freedom. Princeton University Press. Constantine, M. G., Smith, L., Redington, R. M., & Owens, D. (2008). Racial microaggressions against black counseling and counseling psychology faculty: A central challenge in the multicultural counseling movement. Journal of Counseling & Development, 86(3), 348–355. https://doi.org/10.1002/ j.1556-­6678.2008.tb00519 Cooper, B. (2018). Eloquent rage: A black feminist discovers her superpower. St Martin’s Press. Cose, E. (1993). The rage of a privileged class: Why are middle-class blacks angry? Why should America care? Harper Collins. Cross, T. (1994). Black faculty at Harvard: Does the pipeline defense hold water? The Journal of lacks in Higher Education, 4, 42–46. Daniels, L. A. (1991). Only the appearance of diversity: Higher education and the pluralist ideal in the 1980’s and the 1990’s. Policy Perspectives, Pew Higher Education Research Program. Dawson, M. C. (1995). Behind the mule: Race and class in African-American politics. Princeton University Press.

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Du Bois, W.  E. B. (1957). The ordeal of mansart (pp.  315–316). Mainstream Publishers. Postscript. http://www.webdubois.org/dbOrdealOfMansart-­ Postscript.html Du Bois, W. E. B. (1920). The Souls of black folk. A.C. McClurg and Company. Dyson, M.  E. (2017). Tears we cannot stop: A sermon to white America. St. Martin’s Press. Eberhardt, J. L. (2020). Biased: Uncovering the hidden prejudice that shapes what we see, think and do. Penguin Books. Edmondson, A. C. (2012). Teaming: How organizations learn, innovate and compete in the knowledge economy. Jossey-Bass. Edmondson, A. C. (2018). The fearless organization: Creating psychological safety in the workplace for learning, innovation and growth. Wiley. Fasching-Varner, K.  J., Albert, K.  A., Mitchell, R.  W., & Allen, C.  M. (2014). Racial battle fatigue in higher education: Exposing the myth of post-racial America. Rowman & Littlefield. Flaherty, C. (2020). The souls of Black professors. Inside Higher Ed. https:// www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/10/21/scholars-talk-aboutbeing-black-campus-2020 Fredrickson, B. (2013). Love 2.0: Creating happiness and health in moments of connection. Plume. Gaynor, S. (2022, December 16). A love letter to Black women in the Academy. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2022/12/16/ letter-support-and-solidarity-black-women-academe-opinion Geronimus, A. (2023). Weathering: The extraordinary stress of an ordinary life in an unjust society. Little, Brown Spark. Giles, M. S. (2010). Howard Thurman, black spirituality and critical race theory in higher education. The Journal of Negro Education, 79(3), 354–365. Glaude, E. S. (2021). Begin again: James Baldwin’s America and its urgent lessons for our own. Crown. Grant, A. (2021). Think again: The power of knowing what you Don’t know. Viking Press. Gregory, S. (1995). Black women in the academy: The secrets to success and achievement. University Press of America. Griffin, K., Pifer, M.  J., Humphrey, J.  R., & Hazelwood, A.  M. (2011b). (Re) defining departure: Exploring black professors’ experiences with and responses to racism and racial climate. American Journal of Education, 117(4). https:// doi.org/10.1086/660756 Griffin, K. A., Bennett, J. C., & Harris, J. (2011a). Analyzing gender differences in black faculty marginalization through a sequential mixed-method design. New Directions for Institutional Research, 151, 45–61.

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Harlow, R. (2003). “Race doesn’t matter, but...”: The effect of race on professors’ experiences and emotion management in the undergraduate college classroom. Social Psychology Quarterly, 66(4), 348–363. https://doi.org/10.2307/ 1519834 Harper, S. R., & Hurtado, S. (2010). Racial and ethnic diversity in higher education (3rd edition). Alibris. Harris, M., Sellers, S., Clerge, O., & Gooding, F., Jr. (2017). Stories from the front of the room: How higher education faculty of color overcome challenges and thrive in the academy. Rowman and Littlefield. Harris-Perry, M. V. (2011). Sister citizen: Shame, stereotypes, and black women in America. Yale University Press. Haynes, D. (2022). In M. Bonous-Hammarth (Ed.), Toward an inclusive excellence university: Building a culture where black people thrive in the University of California. Bridging marginality through inclusive excellence. hooks, b. (2012). Salvation: Black people and love. William Morrow. hooks, b. (2018). All about love. William Morrow. Kendi, D. I. X. (2016). Stamped from the beginning. Avalon Publishing Group. Leavy, P. (2012). Fiction and the feminist academic novel. Qualitative Inquiry, 18(6), 516–522. Leavy, P. (2015). Methods meets art: Arts based research practice (2nd ed.). Guilford Press. Mabokela, R. O., & Green, A. L. (2001). Sisters of the academy: Emergent black women scholars in higher education. Stylus. Matier, M. W. (1990). Retaining faculty of color: A tale of two campuses. Research in Higher Education, 31, 39–60. Matthew, P. (Ed.). (2016). Written/unwritten: Diversity and the hidden truths of tenure. University of North Carolina Press. McClain, D. (2019). We live for the we: The political power of black motherhood. Bold Type Books. Menakem, R. (2017). My grandmother’s hands. Central Recovery Press. Morton, C. S. (2020). Water from the rock: The role of spirituality in the lives of black women in engineering doctoral programs. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Michigan. Moses, Y. T. (1989). Black women in academe: Issues and strategies. Project on the Status of Education and Women. Association of American Colleges and Universities. Nayebzadah, R. (2016). The truth behind fiction-based research theory. History and Literary Criticism. http://www.jhss.ro/downloads/14/articles/4%20 Nayebzadah.pdf Niemann, Y.  F., Gutierrez y Muhs, G., & Gonzalez, C.  G. (2020). Presumed incompetent II; race, class, power and resistance of women in academia. Utah State University Press.

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Odozor, E. T. (2022). A love ethic for black feminisms: The necessity of love in black feminist discourses and discoveries. Hypatia, 37, 241–256. Pattillo-McCoy, M. (1999). Black picket fences: Privilege and peril among the black middle class. University of Chicago Press. Patton, L.  D., & McClure, M.  L. (2009). Strength in the spirit: A qualitative examination of African American college women and the role of spirituality during college. The Journal of Negro Education, 78(1), 42–54. Pierce, C., Carew, J., Pierce-Gonzalez, D., & Willis, D. (1978). An experiment in racism: TV commercials. In C.  Pierce (Ed.), Television and education (pp. 62–88). Sage. Ray, V. (2019). A Theory of racialized organizations. American Sociological Review, 84(1), 26–53. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122418822335 Rocha, R.  G., & Pinheiro, P. (2021). Organizational spirituality: Concept and perspectives. Journal of Business Ethics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-­020-­ 04463-­y Rockquemore, K., & Laszloffy, T. (2008). The black academic’s guide to winning tenure without losing your soul. Lynne Rienner Publishers. Schmidt, P. (2008). Many Black women veer off path to tenure, researchers say. The Chronicle of Higher Education. http://chronicle.com/news/articles/511/ many-­black-­women-­veer-­off-­path-­to-­tenure-­research Taylor-Arger, M., & Smith, S. (2002). Our stories: The experiences of black professionals on predominantly white campuses. The John D.  O’Bryant National Think Tank. Wang, Q., Coemans, S., Siegesmund, R., & Hannes, R. (2017). Arts-based methods in socially engaged research practice: A classification framework. Art/ Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal, 2(2), 10.18432/R26G8P. West, C. (1993). Race matters. Beacon Press. Wilder, C. (2013). Race, slavery and the troubled history of America’s universities. Bloomsbury Press. Williams, D. A., & Wade-Golden, K. (2013). The chief diversity officer: Strategy, structure and change management. Stylus Press.

Farewell Again

The Towering Seven gathered for a night certain to be full of tears, laughter, commiseration and, hopefully, strategies to spark real change. With two hours before the start of “Farewell Again,” a now annual celebration of sorts for those leaving Towering University (TU), the group worked on the cover letter explaining the choice to send their resignation letters in unison. They knew the coming days could change their lives forever, but hopefully this bold move would do the same to the institution that was forcing them out, change it for the better. “Isn’t it funny how each of us was just leave quietly, just like so many others before us?” asked Rosscoe. “I don’t believe in making myself out to be ….” “A victim, right?” Wendy winked as she finished Rosscoe’s sentence. “That’s what some of our conservative Black folk believe,” joked Wendy, placing emphasis on conservative, as she stared down at the man whose height once invited people at TU to look up to him. “But I was planning to make my views known in an assertive way,” she continued, keeping an eye on her rambunctious seven- and five-year-old boys, entertaining themselves in the center of the room. “I had actually planned to leave without a word,” Antonio offered as he reached over and caressed his wife’s supple shoulders. Wendy leaned into the massage and smiled as she thought about how often people mistook pencil-thin Antonio for White, that is, until he opened his mouth and the Afro-Portuguese heritage made itself known. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. M. Alex-Assensoh, The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the American Academy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39229-0_2

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“I have the best one hands down,” JoWanda said. “I had planned to write my resignation on some toilet paper.” She caught her wife Cassandra’s adoring gaze, while everyone nodded knowing that she was as serious as a heart attack. “I didn’t plan to leave this place quietly,” Aisha chimed in. “I had already planned to write a letter to the President, Provost, and board chair and copy all of my science colleagues.” Adjusting her hijab, she added, “It was going to be a bombshell, but the more I thought about it, the better I liked the idea of connecting our stories.” Catching Aisha’s eye, Rosscoe gave Aisha a thumb’s up. He couldn’t help but remember his initial impression of Aisha as subservient, which had everything to do with his own stereotypes. As Rosscoe got to know her, he was convinced that she was going to be a national leader one day. She was just the right mix of strategic, intelligence and compassion. “That is why I agreed to join in too,” said Dante. “I could not pass up the opportunity to join one last effort to make TU and its leaders better.” Clearing her throat, Tiffany, the mastermind of it all, shared a Ghanaian proverb: “Ti koro nko agyina,” which loosely translated means that “One head cannot go into a council.” It was similar to the English sage “two heads are better than one.” In response, she heard a collective hum from the group, signaling their agreement and understanding. Next, Tiffany laid out the next steps for their work. In addition to the letters, she explained that she was working with contacts around the world to keep the story alive over the next few weeks. It would all begin with the cover letter explaining the Towering Seven’s rationale and offering a framework, SOULS, for TU and the Academy to engage in truly transformative change. The story about the Towering Seven’s departure was going to be published the next morning, hours before the Board of Trustees met. It was their best chance at getting attention for the issues that were not merely undermining their lives and safety but, in their minds, jeopardizing the future of TU, a place that most of them had tried to make their academic home. “What happens if they just ignore the front-page story?” JoWanda, the most jaded of the bunch, queried. “After all, we’re just the latest. Do you really think our stories are going to make a difference?” Tiffany shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine, but I cannot leave without trying. Right now, caring about people is neither modeled nor rewarded at TU, and that is dangerous. My hope is that we create enough

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empathy to shock the system into doing better over the long term. We can’t just do nothing!” Tiffany continued outlining the plan. “The story will hit all of the major higher education newspapers and various social media outlets, and I have connected it with the Ford Foundation Fellows listserv. I also have contacts at the AAU, American Council on Education, Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), NADOHE, Association of Governing Boards, AAC&U, and the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars (CIES). For the next few weeks, at least, this story will be alive and well across the country. I am also hoping that the national news cycle creates pressure for the TU administration to act—but in a good way.” After taking a sip of her sweet iced tea, Tiffany added, “Speaking of the news, we also have to anticipate that people will want us to share our individual letters, but, in the spirit of using this to transform rather than embarrass, I am hoping that we can agree to share those only with the people on campus, at least for now, unless they are the subject of a public records request. What do you think?” Aisha finally chimed in. “Great insight, Tiffany. By sharing those letters publicly, we lose control of our own stories. So, for now, I agree that we keep our letters confidential and request that the Provost and President do the same, sharing the letters only with those who are playing a role in redressing the issues that are making us leave.” Aisha was proud of all that she had learned from Tiffany. When they had first met, Aisha treated Tiffany like she was fragile and also like her ears did not work. Slowly, but surely, however, Tiffany let her know that just because she used a mobility device did not mean that she was deaf or fragile. To be sure, Tiffany was none of those things! One by one, the others agreed. As the light bounced off his clean-­ shaven head, Dante offered a closing thought. “We have all been mistreated, but I am so proud that we have not allowed the mistreatment to destroy us. Our goal is not to have a scorched earth impact on Towering University but to shake it up enough that it will actually move forward with transformative change.” “I’m actually hopeful, although there were times when I came really close to hating the people who hurt me and my family.” Antonio said in a hushed tone. “We have a humane plan, timing on our side and a new Board Chair who looks like she is not to be fooled with.”

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“Yeah,” Aisha said. “I’ve done a little background reading about Austen, and she has little patience for nonsense, and she comes from a long line of women who are well financed.” “I like that she is comfortable in her skin,” Wendy chimed in. “It’s good to see an affluent, confident, plus-size woman running things.” “Yeah,” JoWanda said, rolling her eyes, “well financed from the sweat of others. We do not know her agenda. I agree that we don’t want to burn the place down on our way out, but some of the things going on are definitely explosive. I am still working on that love thang that Dante keeps talking about.” “You’re right to be cautious about Austen,” Wendy replied. “But, as the first female Board Chair, I am also sure that she has little patience for embarrassment. She also likes money, and the conditions that are driving us out are also drying up university revenue.” Lifting a pen to scribble another note, Tiffany said, “We have a few minutes until the other employee resource groups get here. Let’s give them a heads-up about the story that is coming in the newspaper. These people have been our family, and while they know that we are leaving, they don’t know about the strategy. If you don’t mind, I’ll handle that part of our announcement.” “Farewell Again” was born from the various employee resource groups’ desire to transform TU into a world-changing institution. Their gatherings included family members and community partners, and the food reflected a United Nations’ like palate. The group was not under any kumbaya illusions, however. Structural racism and institutional racism had definitely advantaged some of them more than others. Some had internalized stigmas and stereotypes about their own supposed inferiority or the superiority of others, and this internalized oppression also made their lives difficult and interesting. These meetings provided opportunities to educate one another, resolve conflict, tell the unvarnished truth and truly be seen and heard. Over time, they were learning how to call one another into conversation rather than calling people out in ways that damaged their self-esteem and place in the community that they were building. Their work taught them that diversity is a necessary condition, but it is wholly insufficient for creating racial equality and harmony. Intentional work must be done to cultivate environments of loving collaboration where equity was ever present and mistreatment was rare. What they were confident of was that in this space that they had intentionally created for themselves, they had agency, and these gatherings provided them with an

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opportunity to build the kind of relationships that were necessary to create the individual, interpersonal, and, to some extent the institutional changes that universities like Towering were supposed to bring about. The Towering Seven made their way up to the front of the tent, with Antonio and his sons pushing Rosscoe in his wheelchair. Each of them shared briefly that they were leaving the institution and how grateful they were for the employee resource community, which had provided a measure of family and love during their stay. Tiffany went last and shared that although the group was leaving, they were working on a strategy to make things better for those who remained. The accelerando of their collective voices, their individual chords of the Black experience blending into an indictment against the Academy, would crescendo to an argumentative coda that would force TU to, at the least, hear them.

Passage One: Institutional Responses and the Lack of SOULS

Every year, universities and colleges across America engage in the “hard sell” and a variety of tactics to recruit hundreds of energetic, promising and accomplished Black faculty and staff, who are eager to contribute, achieve and make a difference in the Academy (Kelly et al., 2017). Yet, every year, a similar number of Black faculty and staff abandon university and college campuses in search of probity and satisfaction (Dee, 2010; Flaherty, 2020). However, their resignations often occur one or two at a time, with their departures occurring across hundreds of institutions. The consequence is a revolving door of Black faculty and staff, whose brilliance and impact are lost in the shuffle and whose limited representation in the Academy has remained largely unchanged (National Center on Education Statistics, 2021; Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 2022). Indeed, calls for transformation in the Academy from futurists, university presidents and other leaders (Alexander, 2020; Crow & Dabars, 2015; Crow & Dabars, 2020; Cowen & Seifter, 2018; Loss, 2012; Owen-Smith, 2021) offer blueprints and wisdom for a more sustainable and, in some cases, empowered university (Hrabowski III et al., 2019). As the Academy becomes more racially diverse (Turner & Meyers, 2000; Smith et  al., 2002), too many discussions of transformation in the Academy are either colorblind or focused on rhetoric with scant evidence of change in daily practices, reward structures and policies (Fryberg

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. M. Alex-Assensoh, The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the American Academy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39229-0_3

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& Martinez, 2014; Turner & Meyers, 2000; Smith, 2020). For the most part, research on transformation in the Academy has not generally been connected with research on diversity or the research on Black faculty as well as staff retention. This is despite the fact that each of these literatures has important contributions that, when connected, go a long way to create environments in the Academy that nurture Black faculty and staff expertise and brilliance. That is why institutional transformation in the Academy must not only strive for inclusion and belonging, but it must also be equitable (McNair et al., 2020), strategic (Williams, 2013; Williams & Wade-Golden, 2013) and seen as an institutional imperative, much like what has been done with technology, which is seen as a “necessity that, despite all the challenges of change, must be implemented without excuses” (Smith, 2020, p.  55). Moreover, transformation in the Academy cannot move forward in a serious way without addressing the specific barriers that Black faculty and staff face in terms of safety, organizational accountability, unvarnished truth telling, love and spirituality, or SOULS. By underestimating the impact of the changing cultural contexts, the American Academy is falling prey to its most critical threat: Clay Shirky convincingly argued, “The biggest threat … isn’t video lectures or online tests. It’s the fact that we live in institutions perfectly adapted to a world that no longer exists” (Alexander, 2020). Below, we share three typical responses that are often leveraged by the Academy (Shain et  al., 2021; Ahmed, 2010, 2012; Smith, 2020), ending with a fourth alternative for re-imagining the Academy as an equity-ready space for Black faculty and staff to achieve and thrive.

Institutional Silence The most frequently used institutional response to the ongoing departure of Black faculty and staff is simply silence,  the refusal to publicly  engage with the problem. Research shows that universities often argue that there are simply not enough Black faculty and staff or they are being hired away by other universities, but qualitative studies with departing faculty confirm they were forced out by alienating classroom experiences, inhumane policies, toxic departments, constant demand to prove their value and worth, a dearth of skilled and consistent mentoring

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and lack of appreciation for their research and ideas (Allen et al., 2002; Smith, 2020; Turner & Meyers, 2000; Kelly et al., 2017; Griffin, 2020; Harvey & Scott-Jones, 1985). The consequence is that few academic departments, outside of African-American studies, women studies or ethnic studies, have a critical mass of Black faculty. Indeed, in most colleges and universities, new Black faculty and staff are not being hired to build up a critical mass, but to replace departing faculty (ClaytonPedersen et al., 2007). Turnover rates especially among faculty of color are an indicator of climate problems. In a study of California campuses, researchers found that three out of every five faculty of color who were hired were replacing faculty who had previously resigned, but few campuses engage their institutional research offices in ways that allow them to understand and use turnover quotient data as a signal of a toxic climate (Smith, 2020). A simple first step for any institution is to examine its own disaggregated  turnover rates across the institution and, where possible, across individual schools and colleges as a first step in understanding the challenges and opportunities.

Symbolic and Surface Responses Another way that institutions respond to the revolving door of Black faculty and staff is by reluctantly accepting the fact that there is a problem but not addressing the structural components of the issue. Instead, institutions focus on fixing the Black faculty with programming, including listening sessions, meals with university administrators, diversity statements, hiring new diversity officers, mentoring and faculty development programs. While the programming resources are important, they must be matched with structural changes in policies, resource allocation, ensuring fair and transparent tenure as well as promotion policies, pathways to senior leadership opportunities, administrative processes that address biased and hostile working conditions (Stewart & Valian, 2022; Kelly et al., 2017; Rockquemore & Laszloffy, 2008). Symbolic fixes provide the appearance of change without actually facilitating institutional transformation. As a result, the revolving door continues because although programs have been established, the root cause of distress continues to render the environment inhospitable to the long-term success for Black faculty and staff.

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Interest Convergence Responses The third type of institutional response is what some have described as strategic action focused on protecting the university’s reputation and safeguarding its resources. Researchers describe this type of strategic action as being motivated by interest convergence (Bell, 1980). Interest convergence is the idea that institutions have acted in ways that benefit Black people not out of a sense of organizational accountability, but when the interests of Black people converged with societal or institutional interests in ways that compelled action. For example, legislative change during the 1950s–1960s Civil Rights Movement occurred because they coincided with our national interests of promoting democracy around the globe to counter communist pressure. When the US had achieved its purposes on the international front, the pressure for change on the domestic front became less of an imperative. In higher education contexts, social movements like Black Lives Matter did bring pressure for colleges and universities to be more equitable and inclusive, which led some colleges and universities to hire more Black faculty, staff and administrators or to increase programming and curriculum that was deemed to be important to Black students. However, when the external pressures waned, so did many (though not all) of the commitments. In this respect, interest convergence does bring about change, but it is fleeting and does not transform the root issues that undermine full participation among Black faculty and staff.

Rethinking Each of the foregoing traditional approaches is rooted in assumptions about who belongs in the Academy and how the Academy should function, even when traditional approaches are ineffective. The ongoing utilization of ineffective institutional responses illuminates the importance of Adam Grant’s concept of “Thinking Again” or “rethinking” our convictions and assumptions. How will the Academy feel and act differently when traditional  assumptions change in ways that bring flourishing and life to the Academy?  As an example of the way in which rethinking can literally save lives, Grant reminds us that prior to COVID-19, most people assumed that it was safe to go to hospital or even a restaurant. Many Whites had a conviction that the police protected all members of our society equally (Grant,

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2021). However, COVID-19 revealed that hospitals and restaurants are not always safe. As the pandemic lockdown forced everyone to watch televised images of police brutality over and over again, the reality of unequal treatment for Black men and women shook loose previous convictions about policing as objectively fair and just. Grant invites us to start thinking and behaving more like scientists, whose methods create space for curiosity and humility in search of knowledge and truth. Grant argues that being too comfortable with our convictions can open the door to pride—what he calls confirmation bias, or a focus on only the facts that confirm our assumptions. When those assumptions are informed by prejudice, tragic consequences await, similar to what we are witnessing time and again with our Black faculty and staff in the Academy. He contrasts the overconfidence cycle (pride, conviction, confirmation as well as social desirability bias and validation) with his recommended rethinking cycle (humility, doubt, curiosity and discovery). Finally, Grant contends that thinking and rethinking occur within power dynamics and that those who are most empowered should lead the way in rethinking. This is especially important in the Academy where the power to enact change must come from those who have been least likely to share it. Thinking again is a constant theme in SOULS as readers have an opportunity to explore lived experiences against the backdrop of interdisciplinary research that offers options for rethinking the status quo. The section below provides a brief overview of University of California-Irvine, which is using an inclusive excellence framework that illumines the rewards and benefits of rethinking traditional approaches.

Equity-Ready Institutional Design In contrast to the three aforementioned approaches that were colorblind and mired in the traditions of the Academy, the University of California, Irvine (UCI), offers an alternative institutional response that situates racial equity at the center of the university’s mission. It replaces the myth of meritocracy—the idea that promise, talent and achievement are finite— with the generative concept of inclusive excellence whereby intelligence and achievement are abundant in all groups of people if provided opportunities to achieve (Haynes, 2002). Known as the UCI Black Thriving Initiative, the institutional response mobilizes “the entire missions of the university to build and advance a culture where Black people thrive wherever teaching and learning, scholarship and creative and healing and

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service take place at or on behalf of the university” (Haynes, 2002, p. 288). In many respects, the UCI Initiative does not require new ideas, but rather rethinking assumptions that are undermining achievement for Black people in the Academy. This “thinking again” aligns well with Adam Grant’s work in organizational psychology. Grant’s thesis is that rethinking our basic beliefs is just as important as thinking and coming up with novel ideas. Passage One provides an opportunity to examine the traditional institutional approach to Black faculty and staff retention, through the lens of those in charge of responding on behalf of the institution, the President, who is firmly rooted in the traditions of the Academy, the Provost, TU’s first female and first Black Provost, who is being called upon to manage a crisis that she did not create. She is supported and challenged by an executive coach, another Black woman, whose role is to support university leaders to use crises as opportunities for organizational learning and transformation. The next two chapters provide an opportunity to explore these themes through the  fictionalized lived experiences of TU faculty, staff and administrators.

References Ahmed, S. (2010). Foreword: Secrecy and silence in the research process: Feminist reflections. Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education., 23(4), 158–161. Ahmed, S. (2012). On being included: Racism and diversity in institutional life. Duke University Press. Alexander, B. (2020). Academia next: The futures of higher education. Johns Hopkins University Press. Allen, W. R., Epps, E. G., Guillory, E. A., Suh, S. A., Bonous-Hammarth, M., & Stassen, M. L. A. (2002). Outsiders within. Race, gender and faculty status in U.S. higher education. In W. A. Smith, P. G. Altbach, & K. Lomotey (Eds.), The racial crisis in American higher education: Continuing challenges for the twenty-first century (pp. 189–220). State University of New York Press. Bell, D. (1980). Brown v. Board of Education and the interest convergence dilemma. Harvard Law Review., 93(3), 518–533. Clayton-Pedersen, A., Parker, S., Smith, D., Moreno, J., & Daniel, T. (2007). Making a real difference with diversity: A guide to institutional change. Association of American Colleges and Universities. Cowen, S., & Seifter, B. (2018). Winnebegos on Wednesdays. Princeton University Press.

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Crow, M., & Dabars, W. B. (2015). Designing the new American university. Johns Hopkins University Press. Crow, M., & Dabars, W.  B. (2020). The fifth wave: The evolution of American higher education. John Hopkins University Press. Dee, J. R. (2010). Turnover intent In an urban community college: Strategies for faculty retention. https://doi.org/10.1080/1066892049046724. Flaherty, C. (2020). The souls of Black professors. Inside Higher Ed. https:// www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/10/21/scholars-talk-aboutbeing-black-campus-2020 Fryberg, S., & Martinez, E. J. (2014). The truly diverse faculty: New dialogues in American higher education. Palgrave McMillan. Grant, A. (2021). Think again: The power of knowing what you don’t know. Viking Press. Griffin, K. A. (2020). Looking beyond the pipeline: Institutional barriers, strategies, and benefits to increasing the representation of women and men of color in the professoriate. In L. Perna (Ed.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research (vol. 35). Switzerland: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/ 978-3-030-31365-4_4 Harvey, W. B., & Scott-Jones, D. (1985). We can’t find any: The elusiveness of black faculty members in American higher education. Issues in Education, 3, 68–76. Haynes, D. (2002). Toward an inclusive excellence university: Building a culture where black people thrive in the University of California. In M.  Bonus-­ Hammarth (Ed.), Bridging marginality through inclusive higher education. Hrabowski, F. A., III, Rouse, P. J., & Henderson, P. H. (2019). The empowered university. Johns Hopkins University Press. Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. (2022, September 24). https://www.jbhe. com/features/48_Black faculty_colleges-­uni.html Kelly, B. T., Gayles, J. G., & Williams, C. D. (2017). Recruitment without retention: A critical case of black faculty unrest. Journal of Negro Education., 86(3), 305–317. https://doi.org/10.7709/jnegroeducation.86.3.0305 Loss, C. P. (2012). Between citizens and the state: The politics of American higher education in the 20th century. Princeton University Press. McNair, T. B., Bensimon, E. M., & Malcolm Piqueux, L. (2020). From equity walk to equity talk: expanding practitioner knowledge for racial justice in higher education. Jossey-Bass. National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). (2021). Retrieved January 15, 2023, from https://nces.ed.gov/ Owen-Smith, J. (2021). Research universities and the public good: Discovery for an uncertain future. Stanford University Press.

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Rockquemore, K., & Laszloffy, T. (2008). The Black academic’s guide to winning tenure without losing your soul. Lynne Rienner Publishers. Shain, F., Umet, K., Yildiz, V. P., & Bulent, G. (2021). From silence to strategic advancement: Institutional responses to decolonising education in Great Britain. Teaching in Higher Education., 26(7–8), 920–936. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/13562517.2021.1976749 Smith, D. (2020). Diversity’s promise for higher education: Making it work. Johns Hopkins University Press. Smith, W., Altbach, P. G., & Lomotey, K. (2002). The racial crisis in American higher education: continuing challenges for the 21st century. State University of New York Press. Stewart, A., & Valian, V. (2022). An inclusive academy: Achieving diversity and excellence. MIT Press. Turner, C. S. V., & Meyers, S. (2000). Faculty of color in academe: Bittersweet success. Allyn and Bacon. Williams, D. A. (2013). Strategic diversity leadership: Activating change and transformation in higher education. Stylus Press. Williams, D. A., & Wade-Golden, K. (2013). The chief diversity officer: Strategy, structure and change management. Stylus Press.

Exodus and the Day of Reckoning

“What the hell?” Jennifer whispered as she read the front-page headline: “Exodus at Towering University (TU): Seven Black Employees Resign.” Why was she learning about these resignations from the newspaper, in an above-the-fold story? As Provost at TU, it was her job to know everything about the campus. She shook her head, her chestnut brown coils bobbing in cadence as she continued beyond the irreverent headline to read the background of the historical hiring process, whereby seven Black faculty and staff members were hired in an organized plan, something that had not been done in the university’s history. As she anxiously read the article, the drum roll ringtone signaled that her boss, President Hillman Robinson, was calling. Hillman, a chemist by training, came from a long line of academics. His great paternal grandfather was a college president. His mother was a Provost, and in fact, his father had also served as vice president for research at a leading institution. Hillman was a black-haired, bespeckled and bearded man, with skin the color of porcelain and a lofty academic pedigree that one could smell and see a mile away. Before Jennifer could say a word, Hillman was peppering her with questions about the newspaper story and why he was also reading about it in Inside Higher Ed rather than hearing about it directly from her. According to the news story, seven Black faculty and staff, or the Towering Seven, had prepared a series of letters, but there was nothing more about © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. M. Alex-Assensoh, The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the American Academy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39229-0_4

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who authored the letters or what they stated. As she apologized, Jennifer could hear finger tapping in the background, a telltale sign that he was upset. “This is the first time I’ve heard about any of this,” she said, and in even saying the words, she thought twice. The memory of several conversations with and about Black faculty and staff since her arrival at TU reminded her that there were probably warning signs that she had ignored. “So, Jennifer, have you seen the letters? What are you doing in terms of narrative and damage control?” Hillman asked. “Our primary responsibility is to safeguard the institution’s reputation. We have to make sure that this terrible effort to embarrass us does not impact our financial bottom line.” “Well, I am going to head into the office as soon as we finish talking, but here are the things I am already thinking about as I look through the newspaper.” She rattled off the list of questions: “Is there anything in any of the letters that is going to be embarrassing to you and or the Board? How is this going to impact enrollment? What will our donors think? Will this be another talking point for employees as they try to unionize? Are any of the employees threatening to sue the university? Have any of the employees done anything illegal? And, are there any conflicts, which were causing collateral damage with our students, other faculty, or staff, and/or will impact our enrollment numbers, which we are trying to increase?” “You are on the right track,” Hillman replied. “I am going to reach out to our  Board Secretary and also our new Board Chair and suggest that we modify the board meeting agenda so that we can go into Executive Session to discuss this issue,” Hillman said. “I am so happy that you are already thinking about damage control.” As they hung up the phone, Jennifer placed an online delivery order, grabbed her heels and headed out the door for the ten-minute drive to campus. Her adrenaline and nerves were high, and she had a sneaking suspicion that they would only go higher as the day wore on. Meanwhile, Uberto Hernandez, Jennifer’s Chief of Staff and closest confidant, had hustled into the office as soon as he’d read the newspaper. He knew that she would need a lot of support, and he wanted to do as much advance preparation as possible before her arrival. Uberto was coming out of Jennifer’s office when she arrived. He had placed a thick envelope on her desk with the words “SOULS Matters” in bold, along with additional information about each of the employees and

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disaggregated data about retention at TU. His full, café au lait face was crunched up at the fishy odor wafting through the building. “Whew,” Jennifer frowned. “What did the maintenance staff say about the smell?” “The supervisor is sending someone over today,” Uberto replied, “of all days.” “It smells like someone dropped a boatload of fish in the building, and I am not a fan of seafood.” Holding up the newspaper, she asked, “Did you know anything about this?” “Nothing but what I read in the newspaper, and that’s why I came in early—to make sure some things were in place before you arrived.” Clasping her hands and smiling, Jennifer responded, “Thank you, thank you, thank you. You are so prescient, Uberto.” “Just doing my job. Oh, speaking of job, I got a call from Garrett this morning.” Jennifer sighed. “I’m sure he won’t be the only one.” At her office door, she turned and said, “I called in an order of your favorite breakfast. It should be delivered within the hour.” “And this is why we work so well together, Jennifer,” Uberto smiled, rubbing his round belly. “Why, because I feed you?” Jennifer laughed. “No,” Uberto chuckled. “Well, maybe that, too, but it’s also because we always know what the other needs, and we help out.” “My mama used to say, Somos la manifestación de los sacrificios de nuestros antepasados. That means that we are manifestation of our ancestors’ sacrifices, and we have to look out for each other because that is what our ancestors did.” Nodding in agreement Jennifer entered her office, realizing that in the time that she’d been Provost, Uberto’s alliance with her had never wavered. The first thing she noticed was a large envelope on her desk and supplementary material from Uberto. Uberto popped in. “I’ll attend to other calls and meetings today while you handle that.” A ping sounded from Jennifer’s phone. Looking at it, she saw the notification of her coaching meeting with Marie. A part of her wanted to solely focus on the firestorm before her, but she realized that seeing Marie might be exactly what she needed.

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Maybe she can help me clean up this mess, she thought before saying to Uberto, “Can you make copies of the letters with confidential notations on all of them, and then special messenger them to Marie? Include a note from you reintroducing yourself and letting her know that the documents are confidential, that they should not be shared without my written permission, and that I’ll reference them in our coaching session today.” As soon as Uberto returned with the envelope, Jennifer was ready to open it. Over her career, she had seen many resignation letters, but nothing like this. There was a cover letter describing the resignation package. The cover letter explained that initially most of them were eager to contribute their talents and experience to TU. In the end, however, each of them realized that to stay at TU meant compromising their health and integrity. The cover letter went on to explain that, at this point, the group decided not to share any of their letters with the press, or on social media, and that they were requesting that they be kept confidential. Their interest was in initiating transformation at TU, not in embarrassing the university. To that end, they provided permission to share copies of the letters with the Board Chair. “Tell that to President Robinson,” Jennifer said under her breath as she thought about how Hillman was already feeling attacked and pressured. As she continued to read through the cover letter, it became clear that each of the resignation letters was not simply a letter of resignation but a story. The memo line of the first two letters was the word Safety. The second set of letters, Organizational Accountability. The third set, Unvarnished Truth-Telling. The fourth and final letter’s memo line read Love and Spirituality. Put together, they formed the acronym SOULS. For the Towering Seven, TU’s need to embrace SOULS was crucial not just for TU but for the revitalization of the American Academy. As a final note, the authors requested that President Robinson and Provost Frank read the following items—Craig Wilder’s Ebony and Ivy,  Patricia Hill Collins’ Black Feminist Thought, Khalil Gibran Muhammad’s The Condemnation of Blackness, Claude Steele’s Whistling Vivaldi, Jennifer Eberhardt’s Biased, Adam Grant’s Think Again and Victor Ray’s A Theory of Racialized Organizations—as important works in understanding the conditions that needed to be addressed at TU and in the broader Academy. Despite the gloominess of the letters, Jennifer could not help but perk up when she saw Ebony and Ivy on the list, but that sliver of joy was short lived. “So, in a nutshell,” Jennifer began, exasperated, “Black employees are resigning because the university lacks SOULS? What the hell? Do they

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think this is a joke? What does SOULS have to do with the Academy? Would they have written such a letter to a Provost who is White, or is this targeted at me because I am Black, but not Black enough?” She was breathing hard and fast. “They think things are bad now? It’s mess like this that sets us back further.” Getting up from behind her mahogany desk, Jennifer started to pace. This situation was not merely difficult, but enigmatic. It was almost too much to take in. But, this was not the first crisis in TU’s history, and it would certainly not be the last. To her mind, the job as Provost was transactional. It was about setting and implementing academic priorities, but foremost, it was about protecting the President and the university. Provosts also had to be savvy in protecting their universities from politicians who were taking shots at university curriculum and diversity programs, even as she was still dealing with the ongoing impact of COVID-19 on employee and student burnout, supply issues, risk management and so much more. In order to protect the university, she had to take care of President Robinson’s concern about damage control. Then, she could return to the whack a mole of rising costs, playing nice with the TU Senate and haggling with the chief financial officer about stretching the ever-diminishing resources to cover rising costs. As Jennifer went through her mental checklist, her stomach began to quiver. She had read Ebony and Ivy and recalled that it made a compelling case for how the Academy was built on the  profits from enslaved Black people’s labor and the theft of Native American land,  while historically excluding Blacks and Natives from the fruits of their ancestor’s contributions. As a Black woman, who had experienced her own bouts with marginalization and discrimination, should she use her position to really address these things or should she be strategic in positioning herself for a presidency? Could she do both? Was it possible for her to do right by Black people and the institution and to do well for herself? Jennifer couldn’t stop thinking about the importance of reaching out to the employees who had resigned but doing so was definitely not part of the usual plan, and it was definitely not something that Hillman wanted her to do. The usual institutional policy was silence—or at most a lukewarm response as the institution announced what was coming next. She needed to get input from Hillman first. As TU’s first Black Provost, she was not going to make exceptions just because the faculty and staff who resigned were Black. But, come to think of it, sudden resignations like this usually involved Black employees.

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There was a brief knock on the door and Uberto quickly walked in to let Jennifer know that the meeting with the President was to take place in her office, but only because the President’s video conferencing system was not working.  He quickly exited her office to give her a few minutes to prepare herself and her office for change of plans. A few minutes later, Uberto walked the President and General Counsel, who also served as Secretary to the Board of Trustees, into the office and then brought Chair Austen Astor Fuller into the room via video conferencing. As soon as Austen finished thanking the group joining, Jim Drear, who had served as TU’s General Counsel and Secretary of the TU Board for over two decades, jumped in. “I’ve read through the letters, and I did not see any real legal issues or institutional risks,” he continued. “Let’s just issue a brief statement congratulating the professors on their new appointments and wishing them well. We should definitely remain silent about the race issue because that will open up a Pandora’s box of uncertainty.” Jennifer flinched. Her belly was quivering again. She began to open her mouth, perhaps to challenge Jim, but before she could form the words, he continued bulldozing his thoughts to the group. “I took the liberty of asking the assistant director of communications to craft a few draft statements for us.” His face reddened as he added in a huff, “Truth be told, I am not sure why we passed her over to hire Tiffany in the first place. We had to spend thousands of dollars on disability gadgets when we already had an able-bodied person who was just fine.” “Able-bodied?” Jennifer asked on reflex. She was embarrassed for the outburst, but the unease dissipated when she realized that Austen, too, had asked the same question. Ignoring the question, Jim placed copies of the prepared statements on the conference table. “I sent you copies of these statements, Austen, via email.” Option 1: “We are very fortunate to have (names of the faculty and staff) with us through the academic year, and I know their colleagues and the students of TU are looking forward to working with them during this transition (Architectural Record, 2020).”1 Option 2: “We want to stress that we do not tolerate discrimination or bias in any form. We care deeply about our colleagues’ well-being and safety, and we continuously strive to create a workplace that fosters a sense of belonging where all people feel valued and connected (Young, 2021).”2 Before Jennifer could respond, Hillman nodded and said, “Silence is the ultimate tool of power. Although I asked for a statement, now I am

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not sure that we need to say a word. People cannot get into our heads if we say nothing. That is my standard approach, and it’s the tactic that most universities use. But, if we do decide to say anything, it must be short— something like what Amanda is offering.” “But—” Flittering his hand dismissively, he cut off Jennifer and continued, “Since we are behind closed doors, I am just going to put it bluntly: I do not negotiate with terrorists. These people never really cared about us or TU. They were just out to get what they could. We bent over backward and gave them good salaries and benefits, and they did not have the professionalism to use the normal channels to address their grievances. Instead, they intentionally wanted to embarrass us by sending letters of resignation to the newspaper.” Folding his arms over the small pouch of a belly, Hillman pursed his lips together and looked over at Jennifer, awaiting her response. Terrorists? These people? Who are “these” people? she thought to herself. She wanted to be as blunt as Hillman was allowed to be, but instead, she swallowed hard and replied, “So, I agree that the resignations are shocking and that the simple thing to do is to issue a statement that wishes them well and ignores the racial elephant in the room. God knows that I have done that in the past.” Out of the corner of her eye, Jennifer could see Jim smirking. Gritting her teeth, she continued. “Here is where we disagree, however. I do not think that their goal is to embarrass us, and they said as much in the cover letter.” The President opened his mouth, surely to rebut her, but Jennifer pressed on, “In any event, I seriously doubt that their resignation will have any lasting impact on the university, but I think that the manner in which they resigned calls for a response that is different from the normal approach. I just finished reading Ebony and Ivy about the role that Black and Indigenous people played in building the American Academy. It’s really compelling, and it’s causing me to think more about the human element here. I’ve already asked Uberto to get copies for the three of you.” Ignoring Jennifer’s offer, Hillman continued. “My sense is that we need to continue to do what we have always done. This will blow over.” In the ensuing silence, Jennifer identified the three moods in the room: Hillman’s finality, Jim’s superiority, and her own strained anger. Her eyes flitted toward the screen where Austen appeared, sitting straight, remaining tight lipped except for her one brief remark at “able-bodied.” “Hillman,” Austen finally jumped in, “I don’t think Jennifer was finished sharing her thoughts.” Hillman was flustered. “I just—”

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“Please continue, Jennifer,” Austen said, interrupting Hillman. Jennifer nodded. “Oh, yes. Thank you. We cannot issue a statement that congratulates the faculty who resigned on their new appointments until we carefully read the letters to ensure that there is actually another appointment for each of them. Besides, there were two staff members who resigned too. There would be nothing more embarrassing to us if we responded in a way that showed insensitivity. Also, we will want to make sure that our letters are authentic. The drafts look very familiar to resignation letters included in a story last week about the resignation of high-­ profile Black administrators at other universities.” She glanced toward Jim, who was clearly embarrassed by the possibility that his letters were not original, and continued, “I am also a contracts scholar and lawyer, and I plan to comb through the letters to understand the human and legal issues at hand, not just institutional risks. We need to do all of those things at a minimum, even as part of the narrative and damage control process.” Silence hung in the air as Hillman, Jim, and Jennifer looked toward the video screen, waiting for Austen to weigh in. TU had been in place for nearly 200  years, and in that time, it had essentially run under the same mission, beliefs and values—those created by a White man and continued by other White men. It had never had a woman serve as Board Chair—until Austen. Austen, however, was not new to power. The Astor family had owned cotton plantations and hundreds of enslaved Africans in the South. Always on the search for new economic opportunity, some of the Astors moved to the West in the late 1860s to take advantage of the Homestead Act. With the aid of the federal government’s genocidal policies, the Astor family became land barons. Other segments of the family cultivated the land and eventually grew agriculture and turned to manufacturing out East. Just like what was documented in historian Stephanie Jones-Roger’s Work, They Were Her Property, the money in Austen’s family came from the women because they were the ones who owned the slaves. Austen was acutely aware of her privilege and the devastating history that allowed her family to prosper. It was those facts that pushed her to want to believe in change—in any place where positive change was necessary. Clearing her throat, Austen said, “Hillman, what do you think about the data on the retention of Black employees at TU? From the information that Jennifer’s office culled together and charted, it seems like Black people leave TU at almost three times the rate of other racial groups. Also,

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I was struck by the characteristics of the people leaving. One is a Pulitzer Prize winner. Another is a Dean. Still another holds an endowed chair. What do you make of this puzzle?” Hillman responded slowly, as if he were trying to measure the weight of each word: “You know, Austen, we have over 4000 staff, faculty and student employees. Many of them are excellent. Good people leave TU every day to take advantage of other types of opportunities.” Looking to Jennifer, he said, “One of the reasons that we hired you, Jennifer, was due to your sensitivity to diversity issues, especially in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement. We were missing that perspective on our team.” Sensitivity to diversity issues? Jennifer thought. That’s just code for Black. “You addressed this issue in your application, and some of your references talked about your role as a diversity champion in law school. I’d like you to take the time that you need to develop a statement for us to review and then a plan for narrative and damage control.” With an edge to his voice, he added, “Normally, I would have told you to work with Tiffany, but she’s among those who resigned.” Although Hillman was talking to her and speaking highly about her, Jennifer felt properly placed in a corner where she had to follow his train of thinking without any input of her own. She had worked hard all of her life to be her absolute best to avoid being second-guessed or silenced. Yet, in this moment, Jennifer couldn’t help but wonder if her voice would be enough—and if it were, what voice would she display? Her muddled thoughts quieted as she sensed Austen’s attention on her. “That sounds like a winner, Hillman,” she heard Austen say. For whom? Jennifer wondered as she worried about how helpful Austen would actually be. “I know this is hard,” Austen continued, “but maybe we can learn something from this issue that will help us to be more profitable and maybe everyone in the Academy to be better. I’m looking forward to seeing what Jennifer comes up with, especially considering she’s been reading Ebony & Ivy. The idea of learning by rethinking our assumptions is one of the key takeaways that I am learning from the book, Think Again.” “Oh, speaking of communications,” Austen added, “I am concerned about the media coverage of this issue. Today, it was in the Register and Inside Higher Ed. Where will it show up tomorrow? I agree with Jennifer, TU should not be using communication templates from the past. We need a fresh vision and fresh action to match the moment. It’s important for

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our bottom line. What are the faculty and other members of the TU community saying about this? I am really concerned about this story mushrooming into something that is too hot to handle.” Without missing a beat, Hillman responded, “Yes, we were caught off guard by the article in the newspaper”—he cast a strained smile at Jennifer—“but this is not going viral, so we should be ok.” Austen looked skeptically through the Zoom room. “If there is one thing that I have learned from my businesses, it is that when it comes to journalists, you should never underestimate their ability to sniff out the unusual and make it a national news story. So, let’s see what happens at today’s board meeting. I might need to buy the university some time by offering myself up for an interview, especially from the perspective of the first woman to head the Board of Trustees in the university’s 200-plus year history. See you soon at the board meeting.” Jim and Hillman stood, and Jennifer followed suit, walking them to the door with a tiny bit of relief in her heart and a thank you on her lips. They were not out of the woods yet, but at least she and Austen had convinced the President not to create even more of a mess for her and others to clean up. She was also learning to lean into Hillman, but she definitely needed to be more assertive. The nerve of him to boldly talk about diversity when it came to hiring her, but to insist that colorblindness was the best and most appropriate way to lead the university. The nerve of him to ask her to shape the narrative and then double back to communications for their support, too. She was going to have to find the courage to nip all of that manipulation in the bud.

Notes 1. A similar letter was issued in response to the 2021 resignation of a Dean at Spitzer. Retrieved from https://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/ 14831-­lesley-­lokko-­explains-­her-­resignation-­from-­city-­college-­of-­new-­york s-­spitzer-­school-­of-­architecture 2. A similar letter was issued in response to a 2021 resignation of a staff person at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. Retrieved from https://www. edsurge.com/news/2021-­0 2-­1 7-­c iting-­r acism-­a nd-­y ears-­o f-­b ullying-­ dena-­simmons-­resigns-­from-­yale-­center-­for-­emotional-­intelligence

The Board Meeting

“The May 1st meeting of the TU Board of Trustees is called to order,” Austen said as she tapped the gavel on the table. No one would guess this was her first day as the new board chair. She had used the previous years, when she was a member—and a very generous member at that—to watch and learn. She wanted to get a feel of the traditions and rhythms of the institution, but she was not afraid to make changes or waves. Often times, there was money to be made in innovating. Next on the agenda was the public comment period, and in previous years, this was her entertainment time. This part of the board meeting was like the Wild, Wild West. Sometimes, she literally had to put her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. Other times, she had to pull herself together to keep from crying. Occasionally, she was proud of an initiative or innovation that TU was leading. She sat up in anticipation to see what was on today’s agenda. TU’s student government president, Garrett Barnes, led the way. A physics and history major, he had done extensive research on Samuel Towering, TU’s founder. Based on those findings, Garrett had led several protests asking for the name of the university to be changed, especially after he realized that Samuel Towering had swindled Native American nations out of the land on which the university was founded. Garrett also shared several other documents that identified the university’s first President as a sexist segregationist, who did everything in his power to © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. M. Alex-Assensoh, The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the American Academy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39229-0_5

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prevent Blacks, Natives, Jews and women from enrolling. The ironic thing about Samuel Towering was that he wrote several editorials against the KKK, even though he was clearly not a proponent of justice for people who were not White or male. Austen leaned in for another recitation, and was surprised, however, when Garrett took a different approach. He held up a document and cited TU’s slipping US News and World Report rankings and a litany of other problems: enrollment declines, failure to provide mental health resources, inequities in financial aid provided to Black, Latino/a, Pacific Islander and Native students, and the results of the recent climate report that showed alarming percentages of students, faculty, and staff perceived their learning, living, research, and creative environments to be inequitable. Garrett ended by promising that the university would be hearing from the student body about its disrespect for Black faculty and staff, and how disappointed he was that the new Provost had done nothing to stop the usual Black faculty and staff exodus. Jennifer, who had been looking down at her watch, looked up and nodded. The honeymoon was definitely over. After only a few years on the job, she was being called out by the Black student government president. The next commentator was Robin Littlefoot, Chair of one of the 12 Native nations in the State. Moving forward to the microphone with a copy of the newspaper in her hand, she asked the President and Provost what they planned to do about the Exodus. Hillman, who had clearly tuned out, cast an irritated look at the speaker just as Austen cast an “I told you so” look back at him. “Every one of these employees is someone this university should be dying to keep,” the Tribal Chair said. “Not only did they do the teaching and research on campus, but they were out in the community and in the Tribal Nations trying to make things better for everybody. TU’s usual response is not to respond. But, don’t fool yourself. We see your silence as a decision in and of itself because what it says is that you don’t really care about the employees who are leaving, and that is very sad.” “Yes, I did read about the departure in today’s newspaper,” Hillman responded, “and we are looking into this seriously.” Austen’s attention was split between the President and Provost. While already thinking on the talk, she would need to have with Hillman, the Provost’s open mouth and wide-eyed expression told her that Jennifer had found some “viral” news about the situation.

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Jennifer forced herself to read some of the posts and knew that people were angry. TooLittleTooLate 3 hours ago 2Blessed2BStressed 4 hours ago

So, will #ToweringUniversity, once again, keep quiet about the racial issues there?

If I had a nickel for every time I felt assaulted by #ToweringUniversity’s lack of love and care toward their students… I’d be sooooo rich.

AintNevaMad 4 hours ago #ToweringUniversity, y’all had NO CARE for my boy Dakota and his life, and now you don’ t have care for his ONLY supporter here on campus!

SistaSoulja 2 hours ago So, when are we starting the protesting? #ToweringUniversity needs to know that we’re not going to allow this ignorance and silence!!! #BlackLivesMatter

#NativeAmericanLivesMatter #DakotasLifeMattered #BlackLivesMatter

Sighing, Jennifer shut off her phone and turned her mind back to the Board Room. Inwardly, Austen sighed and looked over at Hillman. He could not just say what he wanted, when he wanted. She had not observed him doing that to any of the other Board Chairs and she was not going to have him doing that to her. The only reason that she did not intervene was because he was trying to minimize the impact of the news story going viral. It was something that he was sure would not happen, yet it was happening just as sure as they were sitting here. While she was not happy, Hillman’s miscalculation helped her to feel more confident in her own leadership. As she adjourned, Austen vowed to lean into the work and really lead. It seemed that she knew more about these issues than she and others gave herself credit. * * *

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With less than an hour to go before her coaching meeting at Marie’s downtown office, Jennifer reflected on the events of the day. The cover story, the tweets, the Instagram posts, everything had her stomach churning. Rubbing her hands together, she decided to take a few minutes to relax and mentally prepare for her session with Marie. Initially, Jennifer was reluctant to seek out Marie’s help. Then America’s most recent racial reckoning after the murders of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd began. The pandemic hit, and universities went remote, but the racial tensions continued to simmer, and as news articles, documentaries, and books told the story of racial injustice, she realized as a Black, cis-gendered woman, who grew up in the home of loving Black parents, but who had also been educated and socialized in predominantly White environments, that she had a lot to learn. Besides, as a scholar of contract law, Jennifer was learning that being Black and understanding the scholarship on race in America were two different things. Securing Marie’s services was the right call, even if those sessions were $750 per session. But while Jennifer felt a measure of relief about the prescience of having help in place for such a time as this, she also felt uneasy about working with Marie, who was also Black. Jennifer, as an only child, had not grown up around too many Black people. To be sure, she had Black cousins and play cousins, but she did not see them every day. In fact, she was often the only Black person in her classes. Along the way, she had learned to not draw attention to her Blackness and to try to blend in. Her teachers were happiest when Jennifer overlooked racial comments, so she learned to suck up the pain and “be the bigger person” so that her White classmates and teachers would like her. To the extent that Jennifer focused on anything that had to do with diversity, she learned that it was more strategic to focus on other minoritized groups. That way, she would not be accused of being angry or selfish. In her application to serve as the TU Provost, she recounted how as a law student, she organized an impromptu protest to the then Dean’s office demanding that she hire two Latina faculty. Yet, the Towering Seven showed her that when it came to Black people, she did not have the same fire. Now, she felt discomfort about her own discomfort. Growing up, the perception of the White people in her school was that other racial groups seemed easier to get along with, but Black people always seemed to be

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angry, dissatisfied and ready to protest. The mere thought of having to deal with an issue that focused specifically on Black people, especially Black people who descended from slavery in America, made her heart skip a beat. It was weird because that was her own lineage, but it was like she had no connection with Black people who were not cousins or relatives. There was just so much distance and difference between her and them. She wondered how she was going to bridge that gap. The more Jennifer thought about it, the more she was convinced that social distance was the issue. She had lived in neighborhoods that were diverse but that lacked other Black families. She attended schools where the only Black people beside her were bus drivers, custodians or cafeteria workers. Throughout her college years, she developed a relationship with only a couple of Black students and the staff person in charge of her dorm. Other than that, she had never been in a relationship where she had to depend on a Black person for professional support. In law school, she had fallen in love with a fellow student Ron Chew, who was a third-generation Chinese American. Together, they had a beautiful daughter, but they mutually agreed not to get married. Now, she was looking to a Black woman to provide major support, not just for her job, but the reputation of the university that hung in the balance. Was Marie talented enough? All of these thoughts seemed to come to a head while in the meeting with Hillman, Jim and Austen. She had felt the sting of being othered—at least she thought she had. Why? Why now? Was it just from the cover letter she read that set the stage for stories she felt might unlock some things in her own life story? Then, Jennifer reminded herself of all the many problems she had surmounted as a single mother and as Dean of a major law school before she was hired a few years ago to be Provost at TU. Moreover, she had done her research on Marie. She had once served as a Dean at one of the most highly ranked institutions in the country and was nationally renowned for her research on political and positive psychology. She also worked briefly as a diversity officer, benefiting from the good work of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE), but she retired, disillusioned by the Academy’s willingness to only go so far. Rather than doubting Marie, Jennifer vowed to trust that she would help her to clean up TU’s mess and to become more comfortable and effective in addressing racial issues.

The Cleanup Woman

Marie Coleman watched as, with a few minutes to spare, Jennifer walked pensively into her office. This was Jennifer’s second appointment and with the current events, Marie could sense her client’s anxiety. Although she was not the Provost and not personally entrenched in TU’s current crisis, Marie understood the energy, for she, too, had her equilibrium momentarily rocked with the same headline, the same story. Marie’s morning had begun with her daily weight training routine. She then moved out onto a rocking chair on the wraparound porch that she and her late husband had built, humming to John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme and running her hand through her short, salt and pepper afro. Beside her on a table sat Kim Johnson’s Invisible Son and  a homemade smoothie. It had been part of her daily ritual to rock in the dawning of each brand-new day with a good book, and to talk to God about the challenges ahead as she waited for the newspaper to be delivered. Like clockwork, her newspaper delivery boy Alex had arrived, walking the paper up the steps of her porch and handing it to her. She and Alex took good care of each other. She made sure that he had some of her baked goods and presents for Ramadan and Eid, and Alex gave her the gift of a hand-delivered newspaper and his beautiful smile. With newspaper in hand, Marie got ready to enjoy her peach and banana smoothie. Then her eyes bucked as she took in the headline: “Black Exodus at TU.”

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“Here we go again,” she said. “TU knows how to bring Black people to campus, but they can’t seem to keep them.” She continued to read the article about how all these faculty and staff were brought to campus with great fanfare by the Provost and President, and how many of them leave in less than two years. Marie bit her lip and wondered how this news was impacting Jennifer, her early evening appointment, and whether or not Jennifer planned to engage with Marie about these issues. The package that awaited Marie’s arrival to her office told her two things: Jennifer did plan to engage with her, and maybe, just maybe, the new Provost could help turn things around. After wrapping up her newspaper reading, Marie returned to the kitchen where her toy poodle LK was taking a nap. She rubbed his back, a mix of white and apricot fur, glad she had continued all her calming morning rituals rather than rush to her office for a meeting with high potential to disrupt her mood. Knowing it would be an invigorating meeting, she needed to dress her body and her mind for it. Now, as she turned toward the door, Marie took in Jennifer’s countenance and body language and smiled. She could sense not just high but expectant energy. “Welcome, Jennifer. Please have a seat, and we will get started soon.” Jennifer, a creature of habit, chose the same purple wingback chair from her first appointment. After pleasantries, Jennifer launched in, detailing how  she and the President learned about the resignations of seven Black faculty and staff from a front-page article in the local newspaper. Marie nodded, noting that she read the article, and that she also read the documents that had been sent to her via a messenger service. “Oh, well, I was thinking that I actually have a messy problem that has to do with race and that you can help me to clean up the mess at TU.” Clearing her throat, Marie gently placed her hands on her lap before responding. Just hearing “clean up” rankled her, and she refused to do what she felt forced to do in the Academy—mask her emotions in order to ensure that her friends, supervisors, and peers felt comfortable around her. Chuckling a bit, Marie replied, “While my great-grandmother and my grandmother did not have many choices, I do. That is why I worked hard and earned a B.A., M.A., D.Phil, and JSD—to make absolutely sure that I never have to clean up anything for anybody, unless it is my choice to do so.” There was a slight fire in Marie’s tone and her eyes danced as she spoke. “I am so ashamed,” Jennifer said, tapping her foot nervously.

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“One of your goals is to work more intentionally and to become more literate about institutional power, race and other social identities, and you seem to be serious about that goal,” continued Marie. “I really am,” Jennifer said. “If so, you will need to worry less about shame or what people think about you and focus more on whether you actually are doing things that are harmful. Harm can occur because of what you choose not to do as well as because of what you choose to do. Harm can occur even under the best intentions and circumstances. The fact that you are Black does not lessen the impact of institutional harm. In some cases, your very presence, as a Black woman, can make it even more lethal.” Sitting straight, Jennifer closed her eyes and thought for a moment. How can I make this lethal? she wondered. I’m not the one with the power. “Lethal and harmful in what ways?” Jennifer asked. “Lethal because people who look like you may expect better treatment from the institution just because they assume that since you are Black, you understand institutional discrimination and that you won’t allow those things to happen under your watch,” Marie replied. “As a result, they may not anticipate the harm that is coming their way from a system that does not change unless it is reimagined, disrupted and made anew.” Pausing to see if Jennifer had any questions, Marie noticed a coldness in Jennifer’s body and demeanor. Jennifer, meanwhile, was recalling the many dinner conversations where her father had shared how he was the first Black person in his position and how he was always “fighting,” but Jennifer did not want to always fight. Marie continued. Sometimes, the truth was difficult to hear, but as Jennifer’s coach and also as a fellow Black woman who was rooting for Jennifer, she so badly wanted her and TU to succeed. “Your reference to ‘cleaning up’ is an example of careless language that can activate Black faculty, staff and students in the Academy. In this particular example, Black women have historically been the ‘maidens of the Academy’—doing a lot of the service work, making things right when other folks create a big mess, explaining why the racist, sexist, homophobic and inhumane language and practices of the university aren’t really that horrible after all. Making the Academy look nice and neat, without getting credit for anything that is deemed important or relevant. We have literally been the ‘cleanup’ women. My reaction to what you said—with little thought—is an example of a verbal assault, or microaggression, they activate what social psychologist Claude Steele refers to as stereotype threat.”

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“Wait one minute, please,” Jennifer said, rummaging in her backpack. “I need to write this down.” As she grabbed a pad and pen from her bag, she thought of all Marie had said. Marie couldn’t have known about her feelings of inadequacy. She didn’t understand all the sacrifices that Jennifer had made to get to this point, being the strong Black woman when she was breaking into little pieces inside. And now Marie wanted her to give even more of herself? She shook her head and refocused. Unlike the idea of changing systems, this stereotype threat sounded like something she could learn and put into practice right away. “As Provost, TU’s first female and first Black Provost, you and others may assume that because you are a double minority that you understand how institutions are racialized and gendered. That is not the case. Academics devote energy, intellect and passion to studying gender, race, racialized conflict, intersectionality, colonization just to name a few, and your position as Provost opens the door for you to ensure that other leaders on campus have an opportunity to learn, recognize and intervene to eliminate the insidious barriers that undermine full achievement for people who look like you. But don’t stop there, what does it look like to incorporate these experiences into hiring processes so that you are hiring people who incorporate this knowledge into their leadership and management strategies? What would be different at TU if this important work were embedded into the reward structures so that it is recognized, compensated and heralded in an Academy that is still largely ivory, but becoming more melanated every day?” Marie took a breath to calm herself, while Jennifer thought about all of the reasons that Marie’s suggestion would not work at TU. Yet, she was intrigued by the stereotype threat concept. Although it shouldn’t have, it always surprised her when she realized just how much more work needed to happen in the Academy—and the world regarding racism, anti-­ Blackness, intersectionality and oppression more generally, but there was too much promise in the Academy to give up hope. Once Jennifer was ready, Marie gave her the CliffsNotes version of stereotype threat. “It’s when you intentionally or unintentionally associate a person with stereotypes that others have used to oppress and discriminate,” she began. “When you do this, you activate the nervous system’s flight, fight, freeze, or appease mechanisms. In turn, this does two things: It shifts attention away from the cognitive work that they are doing, and then it refocuses them on responding to the threat.” Jennifer wrote quickly as Marie continued, “Steele’s theory initially explained achievement gaps

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between Black and White students, but it is also used to explain achievement outcomes between men and women in STEM and White men and Black men in sports. It is especially important in cases where there is a power differential—perceived and or real.” Jennifer sat quietly, absorbing what Marie had offered. “Ok,” Jennifer finally said, “I experienced stereotype threat most of my life. It’s a part of being a pioneer in predominantly White institutions.” Interrupting her again, Marie asked her to think about what being a pioneer means to Indigenous people, for whom pioneer may also mean a total destruction of community, life and self-determination. “Wow,” Jennifer said, “so now, with all of the other things that I have to deal with, I also have to walk around on eggshells? Give me a break, Marie. We Black people also need to lighten up and stop talking so much about what happened in the past. The discrimination that I have faced hurts, but I just stuff it down and continue to work.” Without missing a beat, Marie posed a question: “Have you read the research about Black people dying at higher rates from heart disease, Alzheimer’s and high blood pressure? Ironically, more affluent Blacks have higher health disparities because they are often on the front lines of racial change. So, maybe stuffing the discrimination down is not such a good thing to do. Even if you chose to overlook the discrimination that you faced, why do your choices have to dictate the choices of other Black people? If you know how painful those circumstances are, why can’t you use your presence and power to change things for the better?” Jennifer breathed out a heavy sigh. “Those are some heavy questions, Marie—too heavy for me to answer in the moment. You know, Rome was not built in a day, right? But I promise to think about these ideas and issues. Maybe stereotype threat offers a way into these issues. I am making the connection now between your advice for me to worry less about institutional narratives and shame, and focusing more on how to stop the harm that is taking place. But if that is the case, this is not only about me learning not to activate stereotypes, but it also about providing ways for others to make the connections, too.” Excited, Jennifer stood and began pacing. “But it goes beyond that, to shining the light on how stereotype threats are activated in our classrooms, our department meetings, onboarding processes and also thinking about the ways that it might be affecting the achievement gaps for Black people on our campus. That is a huge undertaking.” Marie stood to stretch her own back and neck. “Say more.”

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“Well,” Jennifer replied, still pacing, “there are endless stigmas and stereotypes for Black people, and then there are stereotypes for other groups. Is TU responsible for addressing all of that? Aren’t those societal issues that are beyond our mission?” Jennifer’s breath caught at the magnitude of such an enormous problem. “We are almost halfway through our session, and I am calling an audible,” Marie said. “Would you like to sit down again?” Sitting herself, Marie extended her hand toward the chair that Jennifer occupied. Nodding, Jennifer slowed her pacing and lowered her curvy hips onto the purple wingback. “You’ve had a challenging day,” Marie began, “and we usually want to move quickly in addressing challenging issues, but the research suggests that decision making that is done too quickly often incorporates biases. Current research also requires more attention to the body’s response to racial trauma. Add My Grandmother’s Hands to your reading list and let’s talk about it once you are done. In the meantime, I want you to take a few minutes, close your eyes and let every part of your body relax.” The two then took ten minutes to enjoy the calm that they had welcomed into the room. “In our remaining time,” Jennifer spoke softly, “I’d like to return to the issue that we began with—the resignations of the Black employees at TU.” Leaning forward in her chair, Jennifer shared how Black faculty and staff were resigning at disproportionate rates, the meeting with the President, General Counsel and board chair, and the feeling that she had won a small victory, but also that she was missing something. Jennifer talked about the pressure that she felt from the President and General Counsel to move quickly to generate an institutional response, control the narrative and protect the institution without any support. The only thing that provided her with time to think was the board chair’s questions about the resignations. “I am curious about the legal threats that you and your colleagues see. What issues in the letters suggested that there were legal or criminal issues at play? Most importantly, what do you think about the experiences that the Towering Seven shared in their letters? What did they say when you reached out to them?” Jennifer sat up and leaned toward Marie, puzzled. “Well, I’m intrigued by your questions because I have not reached out to any of the employees, and I barely read their letters. Given the mess that is going on, the Board Chair is now calling the shots, but she is polite enough to still make our

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President feel like he is in charge—at least for now. That is why I don’t really know what I think about the issues they raised. And, since they are leaving, I am not sure that it really matters. As Provost, my immediate concern is how their resignation makes the university look.” Marie closed her eyes before reflecting back to Jennifer what she had heard. “So, seven Black employees summarily resign and rather than think about what caused them to resign, you, the President, and the General Counsel think that it is more important to focus on narrative and damage control? Even though you are focused on damage control, you have not talked to anybody else on campus or in the community?” “It’s almost an existential issue,” Jennifer responded without missing a beat. “If the institution does not exist, students can’t learn, faculty can’t teach, Presidents can’t lead, knowledge is not being produced, no innovation and discovery are going on, society languishes, and so forth. That is why my number one job is to control any damage that gets in the way of the university functioning.” “That is a lot for you to carry on your shoulders. Are you also the Black superwoman who is trying to do it all? Where do your Deans and department heads, chief diversity officer as well as other vice presidents, fit into this enormous task of institutional viability? Shared governance is a big part of the Academy. What input have you sought from the university Senate, student government, staff council, from the employee resource groups and your ‘kitchen cabinet’ of trusted advisors? Just as important, where is your sister circle of friends who can listen to you, support you, critique your work and provide their shoulders to cry on?” Jennifer sighed. “The President does not really understand that my presence as a Black woman is a challenge for many of the people who report to me. The sly comments, the mob-like attacks that are disguised as innocent inquiries and free speech, the second guessing, the sarcasm, and the insults framed as jokes are all frequent experiences that make me question my ability to lead, even though I know that I am more than qualified to do this job well. It gets really hard some days, like today, for example. But I like the challenge. I don’t have any trusted advisors. I am pretty much a loner when it comes to my work, other than Uberto, my chief of staff. But you are right that other people need to help, so I need to figure that out, too.” “One more question,” Marie paused. “What if the real threat to the institution is not the resignation of the Black faculty members, but the actual issues that caused them to resign, and it is probably much deeper

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than stereotype threat? In other words, what if the Towering Seven’s departures are mere symptoms of deeper institutional problems that, if not addressed, will eventually take everybody else out, too? What if part of the institutional response to this issue requires you to lean into your identities as a Black person and a woman, rather than shirk them? What if you—as an educated, strategic, powerful, brilliant Black woman—were hired for such a time as this?” While Jennifer was thinking, Marie reflected on what she had learned from her quick review of the letters. The Towering Seven was a collective of men and women brought together by a truly once-in-a-lifetime experience at Towering University, but their unity within this experience did not negate their individual circumstances that showed the eclectic nuances of intersectional identities. As Jennifer’s coach, it was crucial that Marie find a way to connect Jennifer with their stories. TU’s viability as well as Jennifer’s healing and advancement were tied to her ability to reckon with issues in these letters. “Truth be told,” Jennifer said, rubbing her forehead, “I had not thought about it that way.” “Well, what would it look like for you to humanize this question by first agreeing to read the letters and thinking about the people involved. Then, ask yourself whether or not the issues raised in the letters actually help you to protect the institution?” Before Jennifer could respond, Marie added, “While you’re reading the letters, here’s companion reading material.” Marie reached over and handed a copy of Think Again to Jennifer. Intellectual humility was important in addressing the issues that Jennifer and the university were facing, as was the mental agility that Adam Grant wrote about in Think Again. As a former academic, Marie knew that rethinking traditional approaches to Black employees and the issue of retention more broadly was also a very challenging proposition in the Academy, where tenure and promotion systems reward intellectual arrogance much more than intellectual humility. Nodding, Jennifer declared, “I accept the challenge. I plan to read the book and the letters, but with one caveat. It’s my weekend to take care of our adorable daughter. Cathy Luetta and I will be immersed in mommydaughter things all weekend, but early next week, I plan to begin reading the letters, starting with the first one on safety, and I also plan to read the book.” Marie offered a slight smile and nodded. “And the accountability?” “I’ll send an email about next steps.”

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“Sounds like a plan that we can believe in,” Marie responded. “Oh, and thank you for helping me to help myself, Marie. I feel so much better,” Jennifer said as she put her hand on her chest and headed out the door for the weekend. But, Jennifer only shared a half truth, something that she had learned to do in order to survive. She felt much better, while at the same time deeply troubled by Marie’s call to unearth all the pain and live a life that was authentic, free and powerful, not just for herself and the Towering Seven but for TU and the Academy as well. With Jennifer on her way home, Marie sat at her desk to summarize their meeting. She really hoped that Jennifer would read Adam Grant’s Think Again as a companion to reading the letters. The book would open new possibilities to Jennifer and her blind spots. Until she was open to thinking again about herself, the employees who were resigning, about TU, and the need for transformation in the Academy, very little change was possible. As she reflected on her most challenging times, Marie wished that she had the benefit of a coach. Someone like  Mama Champion Caroline Colleen, who works hard to empower overlooked and overwhelmed mamas and help them to go from burnout to bliss, or  Althea Banda-­ Hansmann, who leverages the fabric of personal experience to inspire growth and change, or Dr. Dawn Kier, who helps leaders and teams to uproot the systems and processes that are undermining growth and flourishing. With someone to think alongside, mothering, earning tenure, and going to law school, all while climbing the administrative ranks of Dean of the faculty and chief diversity officer might have been a healthier experience. That is why Marie enjoyed playing the role of coach, thought partner and champion now. As one of the initial guinea pigs in America’s experiment around racial school desegregation, Marie had been the only little Black girl in her class. From first grade to fifth grade, she was both invisible and hyper visible, representing for the White children and teachers at her school what it meant to be Black. Although she was too young to understand the complexity, she knew that she was representing something bigger than herself, and she felt like she had to be perfect. That’s a lot of pressure for a 6-yearold or even a 12-year-old, but Marie nonetheless put on the “mask” and her superwoman cape of perfection and went to school every day. No one ever told Marie that it was impossible to be perfect and that human beings can only be what they are, which is much less than perfection most days. So even as a mother with two daughters, a young wife and

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full-time employee, Marie still tried to be perfect. In her perfection, or her attempts at perfection, her family often suffered the brunt of her absence, her anger and her volatility. As Marie came to understand what it was like to be on the other side of her—as a child, a spouse, neighbor, a coworker and fellow worshiper—she worked hard to change, but that was also difficult because when she fell short, it was like the perfectionist demon beat her over the head with yet another failure. While therapy and a lot of leaning into the red-letter words of the Gospel put her on a new path to healing, there were times that she fell short and was so paralyzed by fear that she failed to apologize, convincing herself that an apology was not necessary, even when that was exactly what was needed. That was why Marie understood, to some extent, the issues that the President and Provost were facing and their reticence to lean in, do the hard work, apologize, change, and so much more. This disease—the hesitancy to admit fault and change ways—was not just a disease for people who were in the majority, that is White people, men, Christians, heterosexuals, cis-gendered, or people without disabilities. It was part of the human condition. While that fact did not make the issues at TU any less harmful, the recognition was helpful as Marie sorted through her own emotions in providing support for Jennifer. Marie totally understood what it meant to try your best and fall short, and what it looked like to really have people desire to do better, or to really have people looking for forgiveness, but others refusing to give it. Over time, Marie began to think that what is really needed is what Gobodo-­ Madkizela calls empathetic repair, in which the survivor and the perpetrator witness transitions in each other and arrive at a different type of relationship. Marie also understood what it felt like to be blamed for things for which she was not directly responsible, even if she benefited from them. Marie was hopeful that her engagement with Jennifer would provide an opening for growth and inspiration, not just at TU, but in Jennifer’s life, and maybe even her own. That would happen only if Jennifer took the time to read the letters and open her mind to different experiences and new ways of thinking, beginning first with the idea of what it means to create and nurture environments where Black employees and their families are safe.

Passage Two: Safety in the Academy

Jennifer’s and Hilman’s initial discussions about the TU Seven focused on crafting a narrative to keep TU, as an institution, safe from reputational harm. It was only after the coaching session with Marie that Jennifer began to contemplate the issue of safety from the TU Seven’s perspective. Jennifer’s and Hillman’s initial responses are not unique. The Academy has traditionally conceptualized safety through the experiences of White men of affluence, who were the initial beneficiaries of higher education (Wilder, 2013; Stewart & Valian, 2018; Dill & Zambrana, 2009). Overtime, the Academy broadened its notion of safety to include White women, who were being admitted and hired (Alcalde & Subramaniam, 2020) and, most recently, the group known as people of color, but it has yet to address the ways in which Black faculty and staff remain vulnerable to historical and contemporary harm, risk and injury. In this book, safety entails the ability to be protected physically, psychologically and relationally from danger, risk and injury. As a group, Black people have faced unique conditions of systemic discrimination and oppression, including state-sanctioned violence, being excluded from wealth-generating federal policies and racial stigmas that continue to justify second-class citizenship and undermine well-being. Many of these conditions impact their safety in the Academy and must be addressed as part of the Academy’s effort to create environments that are humane and welcoming for Black faculty and staff.

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History of Violence and State-Sanctioned Terror The history of Black people in America is a “dual and dueling history of racial progress and the simultaneous progression of racial inequality” that often has implications for physical safety (Kendi, 2017). While Emancipation brought an end to the horrors and brutality of chattel slavery, those freedoms were curtailed by new forms of forced physical labor that continued until the onset of World War II (Blackmon, 2009). While Reconstruction is often highlighted as a period of Black hope and liberation, the Hayes-Tilden Compromise of 1876 unleashed violence and terror against Black people, resulting in the loss of life as well as property, leading up to the Plessy v. Ferguson decision that legalized racism through Jim Crow (Fireside, 2004). While the 1920s offered an opportunity for Black migration from the South, it was also a decade of lynching and race riots where Whites rioted and burned down Black communities with impunity, including Greenwood aka Black Wall Street, one of the most economically viable communities in the West (Oklahoma Commission To Study The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, 2001). These state-sanctioned racist events were not wiped away by the hands of time, but they live contemporaneously in the lives and DNA of Black people, whose families were impacted by racial violence and who are still activated by contemporary reminders of state-sanctioned violence, including the most recent tragedies of police murders of Black men and women (Menakem, 2017; Moreland-Capuia, 2019; Van der Kolk, 2015; Geronimus, 2023).

Socioeconomic Injury and Harm The dual and dueling experiences of Black people are not only limited to physical safety but also to issues of fairness that circumscribed access to economic resources. For example, New Deal policies are often touted as an important foundation of the American middle class, but Black families were denied access to most of these benefits. The result is that while Whites, including White immigrants, were able to secure government-­ secured loans, government-financed access to higher education and opportunities for homeownership that laid the foundation to build intergenerational wealth (Oliver & Shapiro, 1995; Lipsitz, 2006), Blacks were largely excluded and, in some instances, Black communities were destroyed through so-called urban renewal projects in order to make suburbanization more accessible and viable to Whites (Katznelson, 2005).

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While the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision sounded the death knell on de jure racial segregation in schools, the Milliken decision, with its geographical constraints on busing as well as the Parents decision literally undermined the ability of racial school desegregation to take root in America (Brown, 2005). The result is that while America has made huge progress in moving beyond some of the most entrenched aspects of racial unfairness and stratification, the history of racialized practices has combined with new forms of racialized norms and customs (Ray, 2020; Lipsitz, 2006; Harris, 1993; Omi & Winant, 1994; Schmidt et al., 2009) to diminish safety, thriving and achievement for Black people, including Black faculty and staff in the Academy. The latest is that as America becomes more diverse, legislatures in several states are outlawing offices for diversity and inclusion, whose mission it is to ensure that talented students, faculty and staff of all backgrounds and beliefs have fair and unfettered access to higher education. 

Stigma, Psychological Safety and Stress Black people also contend with consistent and unique forms of racial stigma rooted in American slavery, Jim Crow and racialized policies that meted out unearned disadvantages to Black people which, in turn, rationalized inhumane treatment as appropriate and necessary (Harris-Perry, 2011; Dawson, 1995; Fleming et al., 2012; Bobo et al., 1997; Clark et al., 1999; Lloyd and Dupree, 2022; Jeffries, 2014). In The Condemnation of Blackness, Khalil Gibran Muhammad deftly documents how social scientists used data and crime statistics to define crime synonymously with Blackness, pathologizing Black people as inherently criminal even as similar crimes among European immigrants were accounted for by the deleterious contexts in which they lived (Muhammad, 2010). The stigmatization of Black people and Black skin is  not mere inconvenience, but it has lifelong consequences, explaining why Blacks, as young as five years old, disproportionately find themselves handcuffed, surveilled, punished and murdered by the police (Ntim, 2021; Alexander, 2010; Eberhardt, 2020), underestimated and subjected to low expectations in K-12 education (Gershenson et  al., 2016), pigeonholed in “Black jobs” (Harts, 2019; Conley, 2020) and depicted as perpetually angry (Cooper, 2018), hyper or undersexualized or superhuman (Harris-­Perry, 2011). While individual agency, including poor choices, can play a role in disadvantage and under-performance, one must never underestimate the

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ways in which dehumanizing messages and images about Blackness, on the one hand, and aggrandized messages about Whites and other non-­ Black groups, on the other hand, impact the safety and achievement of Black faculty, Black staff and those that they love (Jeffries, 2014; Steele, 2011; Kim, 1999). The idea of racial stigmatization is not new. W.E.B. Du Bois explored it through the concept of double consciousness, whereby Blacks frequently see themselves as “outcasts and strangers” (Du Bois, 1920). The outsider status is also connected with linked fate, “the degree to which African Americans believe their own self-interests are linked to the interests of the race” (Dawson, 1995, p. 77). Linked fate is a double-edged sword, providing a sense of pride and unity that has translated into enviable electoral gains. On the other hand, it can serve as an isolating force that renders Black faculty and staff out of step with the broader ideological norms of American society, where individualism rather than group-based identity is heralded (Brown, 2005). Furthermore, racial stigmatization is also implicated in the higher sense of vigilance among Black faculty and staff in ways that may tax the mind and the body, often resulting in physiological stressors that undermine health and well-being (Steele, 2011, Moreland-­ Capuia, 2019; Collins, 1986). Ironically, the lives of Black faculty and staff have historically been impacted by what Bonilla-Silva calls colorblind racism—the idea that talking about racism is itself racist and divisive (Bonilla-­ Silva, 2014). As a result, Black faculty and staff find themselves negotiating stressful and unsafe aspects of public life, whether it is educational systems for their children, hostile neighbors, racial profiling or being constantly mistaken as students or athletes, to name a few, against a backdrop of indifference from colleagues in the Academy, whose department heads, supervisors, Deans, Provosts and Presidents lament that the tragic issues are outside their locus control. Passage Two explores the nuanced ways in which safety is at stake in the lives of Wendy and Rosscoe, two Black faculty members, and how far institutional responsibility should extend with regard to the retention and care of Black employees, providing a clear opportunity to see what perhaps was hidden in plain sight. Equally as important is that interventions are available to address the challenges that Black faculty and staff face. For example, the Academy has a host of risk management strategies and tools that focus on internal and external threats, which can be utilized as a framework for addressing safety issues for Black faculty and staff, including Amy Edmondson’s work on

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how to create psychologically safe organizations (Edmondson, 2018) and how to build teams that work effectively together across difference (Edmondson, 2012). Tools from neuroscience help leaders understand how our bodies respond to stress, isolation and discrimination as well as tactics to overcome those alienating environments (Rock, 2008). Strategies for organizational change by Black psychiatrists, lawyers and social psychologists provide protocols for using trauma-informed principles to transform systems into culturally responsive and neuroscientifically focused organizations (Moreland-Capuia, 2019) with the skills to intervene in bias (Crenshaw, 1991; Harris, 2020; Eberhardt, 2020) and stereotype threat (Steele, 2011). Also, historical research offers impactful examples of how college and university presidents used their positions and institutions to collaborate with mayors, governors, federal policymakers and others to safeguard Black students on their campuses (Cole, 2020). What remains is for the Academy to put these and other viable interventions to work in alleviating the threats to safety that undermine stability and achievement for Black faculty and staff in the Academy and to be on the lookout for other dynamic processes that are undermining and enhancing safety for Black faculty and staff.

References Alcalde, M.  C., & Subramaniam, M. (2020, July 17). Women in leadership: Challenges and recommendations. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2020/07/17/women-­l eadership-­a cademe-­s till-­f ace-­ challenges-­structures-­systems-­and-­mind-­sets. Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New Press. Blackmon, D. (2009). Slavery by another name: The re-enslavement of black Americans from the civil war to world war II. Doubleday. Bobo, L., Kluegel, J. R., & Smith, R. A. (1997). Laissez-faire racism: The crystallization of a kinder, gentler, anti-black ideology. In S. Tuch & J. Martin (Eds.), Racial attitudes in the 1990s: Continuity and change. Praeger. Bonilla-Silva, E. (2014). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in America. Rowman & Littlefield. Brown, K. D. (2005). Race, law and education in the post-desegregation era: Four perspectives on desegregation and resegregation. Carolina Academic Press. Clark, R., Anderson, N. B., Clark, V. R., & Williams, D. R. (1999). Racism as a stressor for African Americans: A biopsycho-social model. American Psychologist, 54(10), 805-16.

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Cole, E. R. (2020). The campus color line: College presidents and the struggle for black freedom. Princeton University Press. Collins, P. H. (1986). Learning from the outsider within: The sociological significance of black feminist thought. Social Problems. https://doi.org/10.2307/ 800672 Conley, C. (2020, July 1). How corporate America’s diversity initiatives continue to fail Black women. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/01/how-­ corporate-­americas-­diversity-­initiatives-­continue-­to-­fail-­black-­women.html Cooper, B. (2018). Eloquent rage: A black feminist discovers her superpower. St Martin’s Press. Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299. Dawson, M. C. (1995). Behind the mule: Race and class in African-American politics. Princeton University Press. Dill, B. D., & Zambrana, R. E. (Eds.). (2009). Emerging intersections: Race, class and gender in theory, policy and practice. Rutgers University Press. Du Bois, W. E. B. (1920). The Souls of black folk. A.C. McClurg and Company. Eberhardt, J. L. (2020). Biased: Uncovering the hidden prejudice that shapes what we see, think and do. Penguin Books. Edmondson, A. C. (2012). Teaming: How organizations learn, innovate and compete in the knowledge economy. Jossey-Bass. Edmondson, A. C. (2018). The fearless organization: Creating psychological safety in the workplace for learning, innovation and growth. Wiley and Sons. Fireside, H. (2004). Separate and unequal: Homer Plessy and the supreme court decision that legalized racism. Basic Books. Fleming, C. M., Lamont, M., & Welburn, J. S. (2012). African Americans respond to stigmatization: The meanings and salience of confronting, deflecting conflict, educating the ignorant and ‘managing the self. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 35(3), 400–417. Geronimus, A. (2023). Weathering: The extraordinary stress of an ordinary life in an unjust society. Little, Brown Spark. Gershenson, S., Holt, S. B., & Papageorge, N. W. (2016). Who believes in me? The effect of student–teacher demographic match on teacher expectations. Economics of Education Review, 52, 209–224. Harris, C. I. (1993). Whiteness as Property. Harvard Law Review, 106(8), 1707–1791. https://doi.org/10.2307/1341787 Harris, C. I. (2020). Reflections on whiteness as property. Harvard Law Review Forum, 134(I), 1–10. Harris-Perry, M. V. (2011). Sister citizen: Shame, stereotypes, and black women in America. Yale University Press. Harts, M. (2019). The memo: What women of color need to know to secure a seat at the table. Seal Press.

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Jeffries, S. (2014, May 9). Black Men: Stigma, Status and Expectations. New York Times. Retrieved April 8, 2023, from https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/03/12/young-­black-­and-­male-­in-­america/black-­men-­stigma-­status-­ and-­expectations. Katznelson, I. (2005). When affirmative action was white: An untold history of racial inequality in twentieth-century America. W.W. Norton and Co. Kelly, M. (2020, April 22). Lessons on COVID-19 risk management in higher education. https://www.wegalvanize.com/risk/higher-­education-­covid-­19/ Kendi, I.  X. (2017). Stamped from the beginning: The definitive history of racist ideas in America. Bold Type Books. Kim, C. J. (1999). The racial triangulation of Asian Americans. Politics and Society, 27(1), 105–138. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329299027001005 Lipsitz, G. (2006). The possessive investment in whiteness: How white people profit from identity politics. New York University Press. Lloyd, C., & Dupree, W. (15 December 2022). Looking Back on the Center on Black Voices’ 2022 Research. Gallup. https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/406841/looking-back-center-black-voices-2022-research.aspx Menakem, R. (2017). My grandmother’s hands. Central Recovery Press. Moreland-Capuia, A. (2019). Training for change: Transforming systems to be trauma-informed, culturally-responsive and Neuroscientifically focused. Springer. Muhammad, K.  G. (2010). The condemnation of blackness: Race, crime, and the making of modern urban America. Harvard University Press. Ntim, Z. (2021, June 5). Children as young as 5 years old are being handcuffed and removed from New  York’s schools by the police. Insider. https://www. businessinsider.com/children-­young-­as-­five-­handcuffed-­and-­removed-­from-­ nyc-­schools-­2021-­6 Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. (2001, February 28). Tulsa city county library. http://digitalcollections.tulsalibrary.org/digital/collection/p15020coll6/id/450 Oliver, M., & Shapiro, T. (1995). Black wealth/white wealth: A new perspective on racial inequality. Routledge Press. Omi, M., & Winant, H. (1994). Racial formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s (2nd ed.). Routledge Press. Ray, V.  A. (2020). Theory of racialized organizations. American Sociological Review, 84(1), 26–53. https://journals.sagepub.com/ Rock, D. (2008). Scarf: A brain-based model for collaborating with and influencing others. Neuroleadership Journal, 1, 1–9. Retrieved April 8, 2023, from https://education.nsw.gov.au/content/dam/main-­education/en/home/ school-­leadership-­institute/pllr-­pdfs/SCARF_Model.pdf Schmidt, R., Alex-Assensoh, Y., Aoki, R., & Hero, R. (2009). Newcomers, outsiders, and insiders: Immigrants and American racial politics in the early twenty-­ first century. University of Michigan Press.

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Steele, C. (2011). Whistling Vivaldi: How stereotypes affect us and what we can do. W.W. Norton and Company. Stewart, A. J., & Valian, V. (2018). An inclusive academy: Achieving diversity and excellence. The MIT Press. Van der Kolk, B. A. (2015). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. New York, Penguin Books. Wilder, C.  S. (2013). Ebony and ivy: Race, slavery and the troubled history of American universities. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Saving Our Children

May 1, 2021 Dear President Robinson and Provost Frank: Overall, my time, professionally, at the university has been fulfilling. Det, my department head, served as a buffer against many of the barriers that are baked into the daily fabric of life at TU. Yet, as valiant and as helpful as he has tried to be, there is an impotency in addressing safety concerns in the broader community that are literally taking me and my family out. As much as I had hoped to stay at TU, the university’s lack of support for my children’s safety requires me to choose them over tenure.

Protection from Academic Bullying Det—who happens to be White, male and Republican—did what all department heads everywhere should be doing, believing in me, holding me to high standards that were fair and reasonable, and making sure that I did not get caught up in the intersectional service traps that abound for Black women faculty on campus. When I was told that there was no job for my husband, a computational linguist who had worked specifically on issues of gender, race, and sexuality, Det worked with the Provost to use the Target of Opportunity Program to hire him as the new director of TU’s Africana Studies Program.

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When the department’s executive committee tried to penalize me for teaching evaluations that  were riddled with inappropriate  comments about my hair, weight and accent, Det did the research and invited Joan Middendorf, a renowned scholar of teaching and learning to provide professional development around student learning bottlenecks and how race and gender impact student evaluations (Middendorf & Shopkow, 2018). Despite the naysayers, I had a secret weapon that allowed me to rise even in the midst of ignorance and the traditions that allowed it to flourish. As far back as I can remember, my father taught me to be proud of who I am and how I look. While other girls were focused on slimming and shrinking, my parents’ love for me at every size and no matter how I wore my hair, or how dark my skin looked in comparison to my sun-colored mom, gave me an outsized confidence to match my plus-figured body. I appreciated Det’s work to protect me and to educate his colleagues as well. When my department’s merit committee tried to act like the journals that I was publishing in were second tier, Det went to bat not just for me, but for institutional fairness and told them that my research was interdisciplinary and being published in the top journals for interdisciplinary research (Matthew, 2016). Over time, the constant battles took their toll in the form of bigger fibroids, heavier menstrual cycles and more frequent migraines, but Det was on the front line beside me. I was not fighting alone. Finally, when people across campus came calling for me to serve on all kinds of committees, Det took me aside and asked me specifically how I wanted to contribute to the university—if I wanted to be a chair, dean or even a university president. After thinking about it, I was eager to support students and learn more about the infrastructure for research. He took that interest seriously and did everything that he could to connect me with people and institutional structures that supported my interests. He used my goals and interests in research to buoy me. I took his affirmation of my interests to mentor and sponsor as a signal that I should lean into this specific type of service.

The Joys and Impact of Mentoring Students Since our TU students are predominantly White, Asian and international, I mentored mostly non-Black students from all across the state and world, many of whom expressed never having a Black professor before. I sat through some pretty interesting conversations—which were almost like confessionals about all of the unkind things they heard parents, grandparents, and others

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say about Black people. Interestingly, these students were doing their best to be complimentary, but in reality they were confirming that the racialized educational and media systems in our country and beyond were working just as they were intended. The systems worked to keep our students separate and apart and also to broadcast stereotypical images of Black people—in some instances aided and abetted by Black artists and entrepreneurs. The educational segregation happened despite Brown v. Board of Education and aided by the Milliken decision (Nadworny & Turner, 2019). It has also continued despite the copious research documenting the educational and social advantages of racially integrated schools. But a special sense of pride came from the opportunity to mentor Black students and to host Black students from all corners of the world at our home. Through those mentoring encounters, Antonio and I had the opportunity to witness the vast diversity of Blackness in terms of socioeconomic status, preparation for college, skin tone, spirituality, gender, nationality and political ideology. We cooked for them, invited them into our faith and social communities and offered our time as sounding boards when they faced difficult situations. We served as references and sources of tough love when they needed it. Because Antonio and I firmly believe that the Academy has a responsibility to teach everyone how to work collaboratively across racial, ethnic, class, sexuality, faith, ideological and national background, we also had gatherings at our home that included students—Biracial,  White, Black, Asian, Latino, Pacific Islander and Indigenous, sometimes inviting other faculty and administrators too—eating, laughing, debating and having fun together. While our engagement with students was fulfilling, it was also tiring, sometimes expensive and, most importantly, unrecognized by TU.

Beyond Mentoring: How My Chair Actively Sponsored and Supported Me At one point, Det gave up his own coveted seat on the search committee to select TU’s Vice Provost for Research and told them to invite me instead. I learned about this not from Det, but from the committee chair, who, at the first meeting, made a comment that I had come highly recommended by Det, who gave up his seat so that I could serve. In the end, Det was not just a mentor, but a sponsor. While I think that Det did a lot of what he did for me

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because he is a good person, I think that he also realized that in order for the Academy to be relevant and to have impact, it had to create nurturing environments for Black faculty to thrive and to help build an institution where people could really thrive and flourish. Det not only worked to make my departmental climate professional and respectful, but in doing so, he also brought about a measure of organizational accountability that is so rare for Black faculty and staff on our campus. He liked to think about it as “freeing the university from the chains of institutional bureaucracies.” I called it freeing the university from the chains of institutional racism and self destruction. We disagreed about what to call it, but at least on these issues, we were likeminded that the barriers had to come down. The real question for me is why they existed in the first place. All of this from someone who has a huge picture of George W. Bush hanging in his office. That picture, by the way, which was framed high on a wall behind his desk, was jolting when I saw it on my interview and had me conjuring up all kinds of stories about Det and the department. Looking back on that experience, I am delighted that my healthy skepticism of the 1990s Republicanism did not scare me away from the opportunities at TU. In fact, Det put a dint in every stereotype that I had about Republicans and growing up in the deep South, where Republicanism and racist rhetoric often went hand in hand, that was a big deal. I am not saying that Democrats are antiracist, but in modern times, they were a little less visible in talking and behaving in blatantly racist ways. When you are stuck between a rock and a hard place, the degree of harm matters. Still, I am content to be an Independent, even though that has its challenges as well. But, lest the real purpose of this letter gets buried, my major point is that Det, in his role as my department head, supported me and my husband. He recognized that there were barriers and did his best to “block and tackle” for me, even when some of my liberal-minded Democratic colleagues acted like the barriers were figments of my own imagination. The real work is making sure that barriers don’t exist, but at least Det helped to dismantle them in our department. Now, if that were the totality of my story, there would be no need for a letter of resignation. However, my story unfortunately goes downhill from here. Despite my best effort to create a space of safety for my family and my children, Towering does not provide the space to keep my children, the people that are the most precious to me, safe. I gave all I had to ensure that other people’s children had a sense of safety and respect on campus, including opening up my home and pocketbook to do so.  Despite that, my own children suffered through no fault of their own.

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Plans to Combat and Fight Racism in Our Children’s Lives About six months after I was hired at TU, my husband Antonio and I decided to get pregnant, and our first son Rex was born about nine months later. The department feted us with a baby shower that was replete with great food and lots of wonderful presents. Det, my department head, and our departmental staff continued to be supportive, and their trust in me made me work extra hard to make sure that I did not let anyone down. By the end of my first year, I had a book contract and two papers accepted into the top journals in my subfield even though the department merit committee labeled those as second-­ tier journals. A few years later, we decided to have another child, and in July, our younger son Malcolm was born almost three weeks early, but extremely healthy and vigorous. When my husband and I decided to have children, we accelerated our savings to ensure that our children had the safety of a house and a fenced yard where they were free to roam and play without unnecessary restraint, just as Antonio and I had when we were growing up. In order to avoid the common trap of racial steering, we worked with a Black real estate agent to ensure that we were not being steered to neighborhoods with less effective services and schools (Stauffer, 2021; Christensen & Timmins, 2018). With our real estate agent’s recommendation, we purchased a house in a middle-class neighborhood with academically-rigorous schools. We moved in about four months before our first son was born. We put a lot of work into doting on and taking care of our Rex. Before our first son had entered first grade, he traveled to Guadalajara to celebrate his first birthday at a P.E.N. conference at which Antonio gave a paper, and at 18 months, we traveled as a family to London and Amsterdam. At five, he and his younger brother lived with me in France, where I was a Fulbright Scholar. When he entered first grade, Rex, who had been taught to read by his Nana was, according to his teacher, reading at a seventh-grade level, and he also had a firm grasp of all basic math facts. Our older son sailed through the first years of school aided and supported by good teachers, all of them White. As he entered third grade, however, his life and our lives were profoundly changed. We literally saw the bright lights in his eyes dim as the long arm of racial prejudice robbed him of his confidence and joy. That happened courtesy of a third-grade teacher, who proudly introduced herself as a graduate of TU’s College of Education. As it turned out, she completed a B.A. in elementary education and an M.A. in English from TU. She was especially delighted

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to learn that we were TU professors, and her recognition of our educational kinship initially provided a sense of calm for us as Black parents who were, once again, leaving our precious son in the sea of Whiteness that was his third-­ grade class (Lazare, 2016; Tatum, 2017). But our relief was short lived. Our first concern came when we received a letter that our son had not been chosen for the gifted and talented class, despite his strong intellect and high test scores. When we inquired about the reason, we were told that he had passed the requisite tests with flying colors, but that his teacher had described him as aggressive, and she was concerned about his ability to get along well with the other children (U.S.  Department of Education, 2018). At a meeting with the teacher and the school principal, she could provide no evidence that our son had hit or bullied anyone. However, she kept referencing his height and his assertive vocabulary. The silent elephant in the room was that our son was also the only Black child and he was Black like me, rather than racially ambiguous like his father Antonio. Thankfully, the principal intervened, offering that Rex was tall and self-­ assured, just the type of child that gifted and talented programs were created to support. By the end of our meeting, our son’s name had been added to the gifted and talented class, which included enrichment opportunities in the afternoons, on weekends and on some school days. However, his third-grade teacher insisted on having the last say. Every chance she got, she sent notes home, informing us that Rex had talked too much in class, was aggressive with a smaller student on the playground, was raising his hand too frequently, not giving other students an opportunity to answer questions. For the next few months, she engaged in a battle of aggression, and our precious son almost became a casualty of this warfare. We noticed that he became weepy about going to school, which I often brushed off because I was so busy balancing marriage with motherhood, caring for his younger brother, dealing with the stress of the tenure track. At times, I recall punishing him and hitting him, sometimes out of my own frustration, failing to realize that I was only adding to the trauma. Initially, I tried to shape his spirit, which yearned for freedom and liberty, into a compliant child—animated by the reality that teachers were especially harsh on Black children who they prejudged as discipline problems. As I realized the damage that I was doing to my own child, Antonio and I discussed homeschooling, but how was I going to do that and get tenure, too? Then, I shared the story of Rex’s issue with my neighbor, who had recently moved to Towering from Mexico. She had been hired as an assistant principal at the same school, and she suggested that I request to have Rex moved to another classroom.

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While moving him spared his dignity, it also cut off his connection to the students that he had grown up with, so to speak. As it turns out, the so-called academically talented students were tracked in a single classroom, and the new class to which Rex had been assigned was filled with students in whom the school had not invested many resources or expectations. His new classmates were what Zaretta Hammond called dependent learners (Hammond, 2014). Many of the children in Rex’s new class were reading below third-­grade level, and although the teacher was eager to help her students learn, she was overwhelmed by the diversity of need and did not know what to do with Rex, who clearly had mastered the material that many of the students in her class were struggling to comprehend. The move also meant that Rex had to make new friends in the middle of a school year, when kids had already established their routines and chosen their teams and seating assignments. Rex had to learn not only the way that his new teacher wanted things, but also to balance the emotional pain of having to leave his old friends. As we learned, in his little mind, the reason that his teacher treated him differently was because his skin was black. As Rex was navigating the reality of Blackness in a world that preferred Whiteness without admitting it, we were moving through one crisis and headed into another one. This time, the long arm of racism would reach out for our younger son, an adorable and insatiably curious four-year-old at a preschool in Towering. Creative in every possible way, he loved music, art, and every form of movement—running, jumping, dancing, twirling. Then, one day, as I was sitting in my TU office, the phone rang with the news that no parent wants to hear: “Malcolm has been in accident. Please meet us at the doctor’s office.” As I rushed down four flights of winding stairs to get to my car, convinced that the elevator would be too slow, I made a quick stop at the department and asked our departmental secretary Marge to let my students know that the afternoon class was canceled because of a family emergency. I don’t even remember the path from campus to the doctor’s office, but somehow, I got there safely and parked. As I ran into the room where Malcolm was being attended to, I saw the upper left side of my son’s neck ripped open, blood gushing out, and two teachers saying over and over again how sorry they were but offering no account for what happened. Silence in the face of pain. It’s a common tactic that is used by people with power. When I continued to press them, they acknowledged that he came running to them saying that the fence had hurt him. Malcolm, who is normally radiating with happiness and joy, was crying profusely. The rip to

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his neck was so deep and ragged that he was referred to a plastic surgeon, who eventually determined that there was very little that he could do to repair the damage—permanent damage—to his tender, smooth and spotless ebony neck. As I asked the doctor what he had done to ease his pain, he said that they had simply talked to him and tried to calm him down. Then, pointing to the deep gash, I asked what pain medication had been administered, and it was only then that he was given some intravenous pain relief (Hoffman et al., 2016). In reading later about disparities in health care, implicit bias among doctors means that Black people, including Black children, get less pain medicine. Our son’s beautiful, chocolate skin was marred by an impenetrable scar. But as it turns out, that is not the only harm. His teachers’ focus on the needs of our son’s White classmates would lead to further harm. A few days after the tragedy, a teacher at the school called to see how our Malcolm was doing. When we told her that he was doing better, but that his face had not yet healed, she asked when we thought that our son would return to school. We said that we had not yet decided what to do. Her response shocked me: She said that they would begin dealing with Malcolm’s absences according to the terms of our contract. As it turns out, the contract that we signed as part of enrollment stipulated that if your child is withdrawn from school before the end of the school term, the parents are subject to the full tuition for the year. I asked her to repeat what she said because my ears were certainly failing me. The school was negligent, and they were now trying to recast the issue as my breach of contract? She calmly repeated what she said, and then I asked her if she was serious. She said we really do miss him. He is so good with the other kids. Besides, the little girl who “accidently” pushed him into the fence is having nightmares, and her parents think that if she sees him, it will make her feel better. Once again, I could not believe my ears. First, they actually did know how Malcolm got hurt, even though they said they did not. Second, they were clearly more concerned about how the little girl, who was White and who pushed him into the fence, was doing than our Malcolm, who had been hurt by her actions—intentional or not. I excused myself from the telephone call and immediately reached out to my husband to tell him what was going on. That was when I remembered all that Det had done to help “block and tackle” the issues of racism. I got on the phone with Det to get some help. While he expressed sorrow over what happened with Rex and Malcolm, and while he also referred us to counselors who could help,

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he then shared some words that I had yet to hear him utter: “I am not sure that I can help any of this because this is not about the university bureaucracy. It’s about a bureaucracy at a private school and a public school, and that is beyond the reach of me or TU.”

What’s in a Name: Bureaucracy or Racism I responded that he and I disagreed with what we called the barriers, but for me and my family, they were not merely bureaucratic—they were racial— individually, interpersonally, institutionally and structurally. Even after I responded that TU was the biggest employer in the city, that it had surely trained most of the teachers in the public schools and even a few of them at the school, he was convinced that these issues of safety were really personal, and even if they were institutional, he had no power to tell the school district and the private businesses how to behave. Hearing the disappointment in my voice though, he did promise to call back the next day to check in just in case something else came to mind. It was at this point that I once again saw how framing racism as personal bias prevented my colleague—who truly wanted me and my family to succeed—from acting in ways that clearly could provide support. Also, because he saw bureaucracy rather than a structural barrier, he focused on rerouting rather than dismantling. How we define what racism is and how it operates is an important prerequisite to understanding how to deal with it at the individual, interpersonal, institutional and structural levels (Hannah-Jones, 2021; Wilkerson, 2020; Bonilla-Silva, 2014; Johnson, 2011). At Det’s suggestion, I reached out to Human Resources to learn more about their employee assistance program. This person referred me to a lawyer, and he suggested that we file a tort claim for Malcolm but said that the law was not well developed in terms of racial discrimination in the K-12 setting. We chose to deal directly with the school’s insurance and eventually decided that we did not want to involve Malcolm in any litigation about what happened to him at school. The counselors that Det recommended seemed nice, but neither of them had any experience at helping Black children deal with racial harm, bias, prejudice and discrimination. We inquired with the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) about a Black dermatologist as well as a plastic surgeon who had experience dealing with ebony skin—which, like Asian skin, is more likely to keloid than White skin. In response, the EAP program offered that they had no such recommendations

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because they utilized a colorblind approach in the provision of services. Apparently, the colorblind approach resulted in a roster of providers who were White. A few weeks into my persistent requests for support from the university’s EAP, I received a call from the university’s Director of Human Resources, informing us that the university had a colorblind policy. This meant that they provided service without respect to race. My response was that if TU’s policies are colorblind then they are also blind to the needs that my family and I have because many of those needs are focused on addressing harms and problems that have been imposed on us because of our race. His only response was to read their policy of non-discrimination and to suggest that I seek services elsewhere if those offered through the program did not align with my needs.

Choosing My Children’s Safety over Tenure At that point, I had a decision to make: my career or our children’s lives. I am choosing my children’s lives and our sanity. As I think about what my children have experienced in Towering, I cannot risk the possibility of any additional harm. Above and beyond the need to get tenure is the need to protect my children and to keep them safe. Antonio and I have done everything humanly possible to give our children all of the access to opportunity that we could. We sacrificed, scrimped and saved to buy a house in a neighborhood with the best schools. The long arm reached into these primarily lily-White environments and found them still. Can you imagine how painful these experiences have been to my young children and how useless and worthless this makes me feel? At my lowest moment, in looking at my younger son’s face, and thinking about the pain that he endured, I contemplated suicide. I even started to do the research on what I needed to do day by day to kill myself bit by bit so that my family could still get the insurance after I died. But then I realized that Black mothers have always been constrained in their ability to protect their children—going back to slavery, when they had no legal rights to the children that they produced (Perry, 2019; McClain, 2019). That is why many Black people relish the collective because when Black mothers were sold away from their children, other Black women stepped in to fill the void. Even after slavery ended, Black communities continued to stand in the gap to collectively provide as much for others as they could—including non-Black people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds (McClain, 2019).

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Rather than taking the easy way out and leaving my husband and my children in even greater peril, I decided to live and not die, to fight and to have joy in the process. In the words of Toi Derricotte (Derricotte, 2014), joy is an act of resistance. Still, I thought that enlightened institutions like ours— where the roots of slavery, disenfranchisement and discrimination are studied, taught and researched—would have the resources to support Black people in the fight. Since you do not, I refuse to stay. With less than a year before my early tenure decision, that probably makes no sense to you. If so, we are even because, for the life of me, I cannot understand the university’s inability to see its role in the pain that my family and I have suffered. When it comes to institutional and societal racism, TU chooses to turn a blind eye. How sad. Lest you think that this issue is just about me and my children, research on the Academy has shown that my children’s experiences are part of a larger pattern that the Academy insists on ignoring. Black students, especially Black girls, are suspended and expelled at higher rates than other groups. Latino students are saddled with expectations of underperformance. Asian students are bound by model minority paradigms. Many Native students suffer from erasure and invisibility in a country that their ancestors stewarded well until colonization (Sabzalian, 2019). Biracial students are often forced to choose between racial identities. I sometimes wonder if that is intentional. After all, it allows people like you to say that the Black, Asian, Latino, Native and biracial employees who come to Towering want to be here, but the town is so racist that they leave. You may also be constrained by the idea that this is a problem that confounds Black mothers and fathers only. Not so. Any mother with a Black child has to deal with the consequences of anti-Blackness, and all Americans suffer when any child internalizes the lie that Black people are unworthy and inherently inferior. Consider the following note from a White friend, whose daughter has two Black children. The letter is about James, her oldest grandchild, who is biracial: “I’ve been wanting to tell you this story about James’ graduation—probably the kind of story you have heard before. The 8th grade teachers (White, female) made comments about each graduate, 35 students. For all of the White students, comments were very positive (and lengthy): I’ll never forget how he and his friends bonded, friends for life, etc., etc. I remember the day I met him. I learned to teach a new kind of math for him, etc., etc. For an Asian girl—she is a natural leader. She helped more students in algebra class than I did.

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For the 2/3rds of students who were Black or Latino, they always described some area of discipline or something that was improving or needed improvement: He was naughty—we even found a note he wrote to his 1st grade teacher that was naughty. But I know he can reach his potential in the future. Haha For a Black female student: No one should say she is bossy; she is good with words and will develop into a wonderful person in the future. For James (no mention of him getting the highest scores in his algebra class or leading his team to an undefeated season in basketball): James can be good at anything he tries, but no one matured more in middle school than James. I know the teachers at this school devote so much time and effort to their students, but they are careless toward their Black and brown students. They have no idea of Black excellence. I was angry and still haven’t decided what to do beyond sharing this story of White blindness. I don’t know how the parents could bear it. James starts at the historic Black high school in a nearby city this fall.” The saddest part of these stories is the untold pain and misery that our children experience—often with no one to advocate for them. However, the Academy—with all of its knowledge and access—can play a role in making these situations better. We can change our curriculum, empower our TU lobbyist to include safety issues as part of their policy advocacy, design teacher education accountabilities that incentivize inclusive excellence, partner with licensing agencies to ensure that racist ideas and processes are not tolerated or inadvertently embedded in the licensing processes, create new national ranking indicators for schools that make anti-oppressive practices a priority, and we can definitely ensure that the Employee Assistance Programs that institutions finance provide effective assistance in ways that serve all employees, not just those who are White, heterosexual, English-speaking, Christian, American or middle class. But the choice is yours, and I hope that you will choose a richer life for TU than you have during my time here. I am certainly choosing life, and what that looks like for me is to resign from Towering. Thankfully, we spent the last few years living on one income, so we have enough money saved to live for a few years without worrying about money. I am not sure if we will be returning to the Academy because the price for a lifetime appointment of tenure seems too high to pay. I will spend the next year homeschooling Rex and Malcolm and also doing research about building resources that Black people

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across this country can use to teach, empower, and protect their children. No other child—of any racial or ethnic background, gender or nationality— should ever have to experience what my precious sons did. With a heavy heart, and a made-up mind, Wendy Williams, Ph.D. Jennifer drew her knees into her chest, as she processed this stunning news. Wendy’s letter—from one mother to another—was jolting. Jennifer’s mind went back to an incident just last month that her own daughter had in school. Cathy Luetta was the spitting image of her father, with the exception of a few waves in her hair, a slight hint to the curly pattern that was typical of many African American hair patterns. Secretly, Jennifer was proud that she looked more Asian than she did Black because she would not have to deal with the trials that came with Black skin. After months of being called FOB (fresh off the boat) by a student in her class in the presence of a teacher who did nothing to stop it, Cathy Luetta socked the offending student in the eye. At that point, the teacher who had been silent all along shouted at Cathy Luetta and sent her to the principal’s office. Were it not for the lengthy and heated discussion with Ron and Jennifer, the principal was planning to expel Cathy Luetta for defending herself without any sanctions for the teacher or the student who had been harassing their daughter for months. One of the most painful things that Jennifer learned in the process was that Cathy Luetta had shared the issue with Ron, who had given her boxing lessons. Cathy Luetta asked Ron not to tell Jennifer because “she had always told her not to play the race card.” Until now, Jennifer had brushed Cathy Luetta’s incident off as a random event rather than something that was potentially systemic. In contrast, Ron immediately began to do research and he was sad to learn that Black girls were more likely than others, including Black boys, to be suspended from school. While Cathy Luetta did not look Black, the teachers and students knew that she had a Black momma. That research made Jennifer think differently about what was going on. Maybe this was not just an issue of bad people, but maybe unresponsive systems were at work too. But still, Jennifer did not know what to do with this information. Perhaps, Rosscoe’s letter would help to shed more light.

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References Bonilla-Silva, E. (2014). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in America. Rowman & Littlefield. Christensen, P., & Timmins, C. (2018). Sorting or steering: The effects of housing discrimination on neighborhood choice. National Bureau of Economic Research. https://www.nber.org/papers/w24826 Derricotte, T. (2014, October 28). From “The telly cycle.” Rattle. https://www. rattle.com/from-­the-­telly-­cycle-­by-­toi-­derricotte/ Hammond, Z. L. (2014). Culturally responsive teaching and the brain: Promoting authentic engagement and rigor among culturally and linguistically diverse students. Corwin. Hannah-Jones, N., Roper, C., Silverman, I., & Silverstein, J. (2021). The 1619 project: A new origin story. One World. Hoffman, K., Trawalter, S., Axt, J., & Oliver, M. (2016). Racial bias in pain assessment and treatment recommendations, and false beliefs about biological differences between blacks and whites. PNAS, 13(16), 4296–4301. Johnson, M. (2011). Pym. Speigel and Grau. Lazare, J. (2016). Beyond the whiteness of whiteness: Memoir of a white mother of black sons. Duke University Press. Matthew, P. (Ed.). (2016). Written/unwritten: Diversity and the hidden truths of tenure. University of North Carolina Press. McClain, D. (2019). We live for the we: The political power of black motherhood. Bold Type Books. Middendorf, J., & Shopkow, L. (2018). Overcoming student learning bottlenecks: Decode the critical thinking in your discipline. Stylus Press. Nadworny, E., & Turner, C. (2019, July 25). This supreme court case made school district lines a tool for segregation. NPR. https://www.npr. org/2019/07/25/739493839/this-­supreme-­court-­case-­made-­school-­district-­ lines-­a-­tool-­for-­segregation Perry, I. (2019). Breathe: A letter to my sons. Beacon. Sabzalian, L. (2019). Indigenous children’s survivance in public schools. Routledge. Stauffer, J. (2021, March 31). How to identify and combat racial steering in real estate. Next Advisor. TIME. https://time.com/nextadvisor/mortgages/ what-­is-­racial-­steering-­real-­estate/ Tatum, B. D. (2017). Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?: And other conversations about race. Basic Books. U.S.  Department of Education for Civil Rights. (2018). 2015–2016 civil rights data collection. School Climate & Safety. Wilkerson, I. (2020). Caste. Allen Lane.

An Act of Self-Preservation

May 1, 2021 Dear President Robinson and Provost Frank: Because of my 6 foot 5 frame, there is an assumption that I am safe from all types of harm, and that questions of safety are not about how safe I feel, but how safe others feel around me. However, everyone has the right to not only feel safe but to be safe, especially on a college campus. Unfortunately, the constant intrusions on my personal space, the minefield of the TU classrooms and the violence that I have experienced at the hands of the TU police have rendered me utterly unsafe mentally and physically. That is why I am resigning, effective July 1st. Below, I explain my journey to TU and TU’s inability to provide a safe environment for me.

The Road to TU I was recruited with great fanfare, and I had literally planned to spend the next 10 years of my life wrapping up my current book manuscript and writing the next two. My time here was to be the zenith of a career that had already been filled with awards from local, national and international organizations. My interest in architecture came from my grandmother, who owned businesses on Greenwood Avenue in Tulsa, on what is now known as Black Wall Street. Without any formal training in architecture, she designed the theater

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. M. Alex-Assensoh, The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the American Academy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39229-0_9

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and waffle house that she and my grandfather owned. In addition to those two businesses, she also designed a spectacular two-story house that was the official gathering place for the Black community at the time. It included a grand hall where she and my grandfather hosted lavish parties that provided Black people in Oklahoma and from the surrounding states with an opportunity to safely socialize and strategize about how to build other economic corridors for Black people across the country. The theater and her residential mansion were glorious inside and out, and when I learned that they were burned down by a mob of White people (Oklahoma Commission, 2001), I decided then and there that while I could not rebuild my grandparents’ businesses and home or get back any of the wealth that they had worked hard to acquire, I could study, become an expert in architecture, and use my talent to honor their memories. My baby sister took a different track. She earned a law degree—her weapon of choice for warring against the racism that had stolen our family’s wealth, broken my grandparents’ hearts and sent them to an early grave. I earned my bachelor’s degree at Dillard University, a private, Historically Black College in New Orleans, Louisiana. Dillard University affirmed my culture and provided me with a sense of pride in my identity as a Black man. Faculty, staff and administrators at Dillard understand that Black people literally come in all shapes, sizes and colors, and they worked hard to affirm every student regardless of socioeconomic status. As a Black Republican, whose family traces its party affiliation to the Party of Lincoln, I was often a political minority at Dillard, but I always felt loved and valued. At Dillard, we were taught to “live and breathe for the we.” That meant our degrees were not merely to help us to ascend higher on the socioeconomic ladder, but to help our families and the Black community build connections with other communities that had experienced oppression, develop co-­conspirators among the powerful, and to help make the world a better place. No matter what degree you earned at Dillard, the idea of linked fate (Dawson, 1995) and the collectivist notion that we are, in Dr. King’s eloquent words to the 1965 graduating class at Oberlin College, “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly was appreciated by all.” The final year of my education was completed at Columbia in a Dillard University-Columbia University partnership that provided students at Dillard and other HBCUs with an opportunity to study architecture in New York and Paris for a semester each. While I did well at Columbia, I struggled with the very individualistic culture that I found there because it

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was at odds with everything that I was and everything that I had been taught by my family and at Dillard. However, I did finish the program and graduated from Dillard in just three years, summa cum laude. I later went back to Columbia to earn a Ph.D. in Planning and Architecture. From there, I augmented the usual career path with scholarly writing, which brought me and my work to attention of several universities, including Towering. The joy that I initially felt about coming to this part of the country was like getting a balloon that is filled to the brim with air and is able to float in the skies, carefree. Too bad that joy was fleeting. Day after day, the joy diminished until there was no air left in the balloon, resulting in my freefall with no safe place to land. But in order for you to actually understand how I reached the decision to resign, it’s important for me to take you on the journey—an abbreviated one because some of the pain is still too tender to re-live. For explanatory purposes, I include references that provide access to additional descriptive details or scholarship on the topics that I share.

The Stress of Mistaken and Stigmatized Identities Imagine being invited to a Towering University Foundation dinner as an Endowed Faculty honoree and then being mistaken for “the help.” Imagine being mistaken for a student athlete, even when I am wearing the latest fashions from Kerby Jean-Raymond or Jerry Lorenzo. Imagine being asked to bend down so that they can rub your head because rubbing a Black man’s clean shaven head supposedly brings good luck. These are just a few of the indignities that I regularly experience as a Black man at Towering University and in the Towering University community (Assensoh, 2021). As I have talked with other Black people on campus, they have shared similar kinds of indignities of being stopped by the police for “walking in their own neighborhood while Black,” followed in upscale boutiques for “shopping while Black,” and misdiagnosed by doctors for “being ill while being Black”— the types of everyday as well as chronic racism (Barnes, 2000; Wilkerson, 2020; Metzl, 2019) that actually undermine Black people’s health (Hoffman et  al., 2016; Someashekhar, 2016; Bachynski, 2018), and it is especially problematic for our students as they try to overcome stigma, navigate around stereotype threat, study hard and earn degrees often as the first people from their families to attend college. As these issues continued unabated for me, I did what scholars are known to do. I began to dig around to see what the researchers were writing about. In the Harvard Business Review, an author shared, “Dealing with regular

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racial assaults and overt acts of racism on an individual level, while also living through the constant debates and discussions of systemic and institutional racism, can be sources of pain, trauma and stress” (Kelly et al., 2017; Cheeks, 2018). In fact, research by Harvard University professor David Williams showed that while health usually improves with socioeconomic status, the gains are significantly different for Black men, and the difference has been persistent. He attributes that gap to the ways in which racism robs Blacks of the health benefits that should come with class status and educational achievement (Anderson, 2021). While the two of you might argue that you and our colleagues at Towering have no control over the larger Towering community, I disagree (Västfjäll et al., 2014). Craig Wilder’s Ebony and Ivy documents the historical tentacles of the university to include church and state. Currently, TU has all kinds of arrangements and connections with officials in Towering. It regularly leverages those connections to purchase land, to find jobs for the spouses of wellconnected faculty and staff, to engage donors, to advocate for policies that are favorable to university interests, to support behind-the-scenes political maneuvering, to bring resources to town, to protect its most important donors from harm, and so much more. What would it look like for TU to leverage just a few of those connections to advocate for Black faculty as well as staff and protect the investment of heart, soul and talent that Black faculty have made to this place?

Fear and Intimidation in the Classroom Safety is not just an issue that relates to the larger community of Towering, but it is also a problem in the classroom where students are constantly questioning my credentials, my decisions and my appearance (Thomas, 2020; Viji et al., 2020). According to our TU students, my bow ties are too formal. I do not smile enough. After reading my evaluations, my department head, Seung Kim, recommended that I tell a few stories about myself and my background, that I purchase treats for the students, and that I require each student to come to office hours as part of an opportunity to “soften” my identity for them. When I asked about how my White male colleagues addressed these issues, Seung quickly responded that they did not have these problems (Heffernan). In fact, there is bona fide research demonstrating that students are biased in their evaluation of Black, Latin, Asian, Native, women scientists and faculty who were nonbinary, and universities are awarding tenure and

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promotion to people based on this research. Yet, the same universities refuse to use this research to intervene in racist structures that keep faculty like me at the mercy of biased students. Where was the justice or logic in all of that? Why can’t the university put systems in place to ferret out this racist nonsense so that I can focus my attention on teaching and not placating? But, in my effort to do my best, I swallowed my pride and incorporated the sharing of a few stories about myself into all of my classes even though, by nature, I am a very private person. Besides, I don’t really share the kind of political views that most students want to hear about, so I have to be careful about the kinds of issues that I talk about. I also told a few jokes, even though throughout life, I have always been careful to avoid any kind of behavior that casts me as a clown who shucks and jives for White people. The hardest part, however, was taking my hard-earned money and buying treats for the students, who were mostly White and male. It wasn’t the money per se. I was reared in an upper-middle-class family, and as a result of shrewd investments and my inheritance, I am actually quite wealthy. Instead, it was the principle of the matter. I was already dealing with a personal history of racism where white racial resentment (Metzl, 2019) had resulted in my grandparents losing all of their hard-earned wealth and money. Now, I was having to literally pay a tax—using my hard-earned money to buy treats to appease White students—too? Every time I think about student evaluations, I am reminded that being Black comes with unearned disadvantages that no amount of education or hard work will totally erase (Fasching-Varner, et al., 2015; Cose, 1993), and the more that I experienced these issues at TU, the more I realized that this was not about victimization, but about historical injustices that the Grand Ole Party was not dealing with at all and that the Democratic party was deficient in as well. Yet, the political dysfunction does not mean that TU is helpless. The two of you can change the experiences of students and faculty on campus, and if you are serious about keeping Black faculty, staff and students, and are serious about wanting to prepare students for leadership on a global stage, you will work to enact the necessary change. Beyond the disrespect of students is the fear that I will be accused of some wrongdoing or suffer the kind of violence that my grandparents faced in Tulsa. While you may perceive my fears to be hype or exaggeration, let me share an experience that happened last term with two White female students in my advanced undergraduate seminar. When I introduced a section on the intersection of race and architecture, two White female students, Karen and Amy,

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who were usually attentive and participative, raised their hands mid-lecture. I called on Karen, while promising Amy that she could go next. What they shared blew me away. They asked me what race had to do with architecture because they were “paying expensive tuition and they were not interested in my political opinions.” When I pointed out that we had studied faith, gender, and disability in the built environment and that race was the next social identity that we would focus on, Karen started bawling and crying like I had physically attacked her. Alarmed by her response, I physically backed away from the students’ desks and, without thinking, my hands went up. Her crying resembled the sound of a police siren, and all I could think of were the many times I had been stopped by the police because they assumed that a Black man driving a Jaguar was a drug dealer. Her tears startled me because throughout American history White women’s tears have often resulted in the mayhem and murder of Black people (Carrega, 2020; Astor, 2021; Smith, 2020). Space does not provide time for me to recount the names of the many Black people killed or the wealth and property loss because White women cried and lied. The atrocious Tulsa Race massacre of 1921, in which my grandparents lost their fortune and an aspect of their mental and physical health, was triggered by the false allegations of a White woman (Parshina-Kottas, et al., 2021; Lewis, 2020). The incident is 100 years old but still etched in the memory of many Black people across America, who also have memories of other racial trauma that they and their families have endured. That was why it was important for me to get Karen’s tears under control. But I did so with great fear and anxiety because every single person in the class looked White, and in America, White power has historically meant indifference or outright Black suffering. Since part of my survival as a Black man in America has always been about keeping White people, especially White women, comfortable with me, I am used to thinking quickly on my feet. It’s kind of like inadvertently walking upon a rattlesnake and doing everything that you can to back up before it strikes. I reached across my desk and got tissue for her, and then asked everyone to take five minutes and journal about what was happening at that moment and also end their reflection with a suggestion for next steps. I was hoping that by asking students to journal, I would have some record of the event, just in case my grandparents’ Tulsa history repeated itself with me. Eventually, Karen stopped crying. I also asked students to share their responses and to submit them for grading purposes. LaRosa, a student who usually says very little, volunteered to share.

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Professor Higginbotham was talking to us about race and architecture. I found it really fascinating because I am a senior and no professor has taken time to make sure that we know how to talk about race. We discussed Asian, Latino, Native and Black contributions to architecture. Since I am from Honduras, I am interested in learning about how American issues of race play out in this context. But, out of the blue, Karen and Amy asked a question about why we were learning about this. I thought that the professor was very respectful, seeing that they were interrupting the flow of his lecture. Next thing I see, Karen is having major waterworks and sobbing loudly. Again, the professor is patient. He hands her some tissue, and he gives the class a time-out to journal. To be honest, I am still wondering what the crying was all about. Maybe, we can talk about it in class. In terms of next steps, I say that we definitely return to the lecture.

LaRosa’s contribution lowered my own internal threat level, but the experience also made me aware of the need to re-examine some of my perceptions about who was in the class. Up until that time, LaRosa had not said or done anything to suggest that she was Latina. It made me think about my own blind spots and prejudices. Am I opening up opportunities for students who are not Black to be themselves, to see me as a mentor? Alternatively, I also need to ensure that I am not racializing people like LaRosa, who may have opportunities to live in ways where ethnic identity is not a priority for them. I had a sneaking suspicion that Karen and Amy were uncomfortable about learning the racialized history of architecture. Apparently, they had personalized the material in ways that made them uncomfortable. Interestingly, Karen and Amy had no trouble learning about how architecture was gendered and ableist, but for some reason, they could not bear to hear that it was racialized too. I was intent on making sure that Karen’s effort to silence me with tears would not work. But, that perseverance came at great sacrifice to me.

Racialized Trauma Even though I am full professor with an endowed chair, I left the class worried and stressed in ways that I had not felt professionally in my life. My hands shook for hours, so much so that I put them in my pocket for the rest of the day. Although I was looking forward to using the rest of the day to finish reading and correcting the proofs on my manuscript, I went home as soon as I had completed my other campus obligations and slept fitfully until the next morning. The only thing that helped me to make it through that very painful

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experience was a call from Bill, our diversity officer, who called out of the blue to check in on me. He encouraged me to document the experience and send a copy to him, which I did. Bill and I met for lunch later that day, and while I knew that Bill’s power to change my situation was minimal, I knew that he would do everything in his power to help. Our discussion was important. He affirmed me in two ways and then ended our conversation with an interesting note about his work to draw attention to the issue of student evaluations. First, he pointed out the issues that I and other faculty who did not match the students’ idea of what a real professor looks like are part and parcel of the Academy  (Heffernan, 2021). His argument was that Karen and Amy were acting out because this is likely the first time that they have encountered information about structural racism. That should not be the case. Every discipline and every instructor should be addressing how their work interfaces with issues of identity and structural discrimination. By incorporating these issues into every place that teaching occurs, we are not only providing our students with state-of-the-art education, but we are also helping them to be self-reflective, a tool that is crucial in nurturing deliberative democracy. Second, he encouraged me to take some time for self-care. Toward the end, he gave me a copy of My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem and promised that it was worth the read. It helped me to realize that my reaction to the stress was not merely perceptual, but actually rooted in my body. Menakem’s work builds on the science of stereotype threat: “The brain processes a provocation by a boss, competitive coworker, or dismissive subordinate as a life-or-death threat. The amygdala, the alarm bell in the brain, ignites the fight-or-flight response, hijacking higher brain centers. This ‘act first, think later’ brain structure shuts down perspective and analytical reasoning. Quite literally, just when we need it most, we lose our minds. While that fight-or-flight reaction may save us in life-or-death situations, it handicaps the strategic thinking needed in today’s workplace” (Delizonna, 2017). That is why I could do no work on my manuscript for some time after the racial assault, and the only thing that seemed to help was to sleep. What I did not share with Bill was that later that night, I received a call from a friend, and he told me that I had been doxed. Someone had taken pictures of my Jaguar and posted my home address. They attacked my research on anti-oppression in architecture and said that I was a nihilistic critical race theorist who was trying to force my ideas on students and needed to be stopped. I had to laugh at the idea that I, a card-carrying Republican, who shied away from talking about my own racial identity, would use the

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hallowed classroom space for this purpose. I reported the doxing to my department head. I also shared that this incident occurred right after a troubling issue in the classroom and that perhaps these incidents were related. His response was that the university did not have the resources to address personal issues and that I should report the incident to Google. What I did not know, however, was that my problems were about to get more serious than ever.

My Encounters with TU’s Campus Police My office and the building in which it is housed was a place of refuge for me. I loved the spaciousness of the building and the way that it blended architectural styles in eclectic ways. I used to work from that safe haven until the wee hours of the morning until my sense of safety was shattered by a police officer who had been surveilling me since my arrival on campus. On one occasion, he was following me so closely that our feet got entangled on the steps of student union. As I was struggling to catch my balance, he shouted that I needed to more careful. As I made my way from the restroom back to my office on the day of our final encounter, the hair on the back of my head stood at attention. Within seconds, he pulled his gun on me and was yelling that I should stand absolutely still, while punctuating his commands with expletives and threats of sending me “to kingdom come.” I told him that I was going to reach into my pocket and get my ID out for him to review. Before I knew it, he had used a takedown maneuver and flipped my six-foot-plus 210-pound body onto the ground. Stunned, with sharp pain radiating in my lower back and tailbone, I was doing my best to de-escalate the situation. I did not want to be next George Floyd or Ahmaud Arbery. With me on the floor, he grabbed found my ID, muttered, “Goddam niggers,” and walked out of the door as he threw my wallet down like it was poison (Takei, 2018). Stunned by sheer hatred that I had experienced on campus as well as the pain that was radiating from my backside, I eventually used my phone to call 911, and told them that I needed an ambulance to get to the hospital. While waiting, I decided that I had been quiet enough and maybe things would stop happening to me if I became more vocal. Even as the pain was threatening to take me out, I recorded the details of the assault so that I could file a complaint with my department head and our Office of Compliance. Imaging tests showed tailbone damage—bruising, swelling and dislocation. As a result, I am unable to walk without great pain, and if I want to

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move, I have to first sit in a wheelchair, which is almost as painful as walking. Because of the severity of the injury, I will need 12 weeks to healing and physical therapy.

Antidiscrimination at TU When I returned to email and read the department chair’s response to my complaint about the Towering University Police Department (TUPD), my encounter with Officer Friendly was, in his words, “surprising.” He went on to add that while they were super excited to recruit me, I had become a “problem” and a “magnet for trouble” who intimidated students in the classroom and made them cry. As I read those words, I resonated deeply with W. E. B. Du Bois’ Souls of Black Folk. There, he posed the question of what it feels like to be perceived as a societal problem. Seung copied Venisa Tran Egland, the Director of the Title IX office. An email from Venisa informed me that my complaint had been assigned to an investigator and that they would be in touch after the investigation was done, including an interview with Officer Friendly. In a separate email, Venisa explained that as a woman of color, she’d been on campus for almost two decades and that the way she survived was by keeping her head down and not being dramatic. She recommended that I do the same. In the interim, I focused on healing and reflecting on my experiences at TU. Being away from the TU environment—a place of unrequited love that had done so much harm to my body, mind and spirit—allowed me to think again about just how much I have given in the spirit of making TU a better place: the students that I mentored, the colleagues that I tried to treat well, the effort that I gave to publish in order to bring the department’s rankings up to the next level of success. The time away helped me to think clearly and to also consider my personal needs. But the thing that really brought everything into perspective was the investigator’s report that Venisa subsequently shared. The fact that they carried out the investigation without even interviewing me cast everything in a different light. In a nutshell, the investigator found that Officer Friendly was rude and that there was no TU policy violation. The report went on to say that it seemed like I startled the officer and that he was just trying to keep everyone safe. Venisa’s report also indicated that the university’s policy on personnel records would not allow her to provide any additional information about Officer Friendly and that she would be happy to have a follow-up conversation with me if I wanted to talk about the incident.

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The idea that the mere sight of an unarmed Black man can startle an armed police officer is infuriating, but it also aligns with a study by Brookings Institute on the unique perceptions that Black men as a group face: “Part of the cause is that Black men are ‘uniquely stigmatized,’ according to studies of implicit bias conducted by political scientists Ismail White and Corrine McConaughey: more than 40% of White respondents rank ‘many or almost all’ Black men as ‘violent.’ White men are less than half as likely to be described in this way, at about the same rates as for Black women, while White women are very unlikely to be labeled as violent. It’s no surprise, then, that Black men are also more likely to be stopped by the police, more likely to be frisked, more likely to be arrested, more likely to be convicted, and more likely to be killed by law enforcement” (Reeves et  al., 2020). As I read the research, I gave thanks—even in the midst of mind numbing pain—that I had not become a murder statistic. But the pain that I endured was not just physical. It was psychological, too. On a physical level, the racist police brutality was like blunt force. The worst part was the institutionalized pain: It’s like the phantom pains from an amputated limb. You know that you are hurting, but you can’t identify the source of the pain. As a result, I started to think that I was losing my mind or that I was actually the problem. Saddest of all is my lingering worry that if I speak of the pain, I will make other people uncomfortable. As my pain began to lessen, I did some reading on Black faculty and safety on campus. To my surprise, I learned that what happened to me is not unique. In most cases, the cases were explained as mistakes or individual bigotry rather than a systemic problem. That is the mistake that I was making, too— in thinking that it’s just me. It’s because I am a big Black man. It’s because I am new to the community. It’s because people aren’t used to Black men at the front of the room. On and on I rationalized. However, the more research that I have done, the more that I am realizing that these issues are much more than individual. This is a big leap for me, given my conservative background. My experiences here at TU have taught me that racism is not just about ignorant individuals, but that it is institutional and structural. That is exactly why the Academy as a whole, including campuses like ours, need to think again about the issue of safety and act differently too. For Black people in the Academy, safety is a matter of life and death— physically, relationally, emotionally, and spiritually. While I am leaving the university to regain my mental, physical and spiritual health, I implore you to do the work necessary to ensure that Black employees and students can depend on the safety that is commonplace for White men on campus. As part

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of my recuperation, I also plan to contemplate whether or not to take my sister—who is an employment lawyer—up on her offer to pursue a legal remedy. In the end, my resignation is not what I intended or expected. I deeply love many of the people that I met at TU, even now, after all that has happened. I learned from many of the colleagues and students that I met along the way. I came to make the university better, and I know that I have done some of that. The sad thing is that I am much worse because of it, and if I remain, I will be living the life of a slave. My ancestors and allies of all backgrounds shed blood for my freedom, and that is too precious a gift to sacrifice. For me, leaving is in the words of architecture dean Lesley Lokko, a “profound act of self-preservation.” Sincerely, Rosscoe Higginbotham Sighing and shaking her head, Jennifer went back and forth, arguing with herself in favor of and against Rosscoe’s claims. On the one hand, it seems like Rosscoe saw racism at every encounter—in the curiosity of Towering University residents, in the mistakes of service employees and in the classroom with students. Did he really expect the administration to change the teaching evaluation process? Who had time for all of that work and the resistance that was sure to come? Maybe, Rosscoe just needed to lighten up. On the other hand, he deserved to be safe on campus and there was no justification for the harm and violence that he faced at the hands of Officer Friendly. Clenching her teeth together as she continued to process Rosscoe’s letter, Jennifer also had to admit that some of the things that Rosscoe wrote about were not new to her. She had heard about the teaching incident. Someone from Rosscoe’s department mentioned that their executive committee had recommended that Seung talk to the students about their inappropriate behavior, but that the department head declined to do so and, instead, argued that Rosscoe was intimidating the students. Was she now going to be responsible for teaching department heads about safety? Where was she going to find the time, and how was she going to convince them that this should be an institutional priority (Garcia, et al., 2020)? Jennifer had also heard about the doxing incident, not from anyone on campus, but from the FBI. As it turned out, Rosscoe had called the city manager, who, in turn, put him in touch with the FBI agent who managed the Towering area. The agent shared their hunch that the attacker was someone on campus but that they could not really provide more

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information unless they worked through the existing university structure. However, when the Office for Civil Rights sent an email about the issue, Jennifer simply did not respond, which probably explained why nothing came of Rosscoe’s request for university assistance. She had not, however, heard anything about racist police encounters on campus, and they made her very uneasy, not to mention the three months of healing from the injury. As a lawyer, she wondered whether the various events that Rosscoe had experienced rose to actionable levels. As these thoughts crowded her mind, her eyes focused on the thick white book lying on her desk—Think Again. Then, the tug of war began in her mind. Before this moment, she believed she had done exactly what she was supposed to do in her position, but now, guilt chewed at her from her lack of concern over Rosscoe’s need for university support. “It’s like there is another dimension of reality that exists that I have access to, but have chosen to ignore,” Jennifer said to herself. “It’s not exactly comfortable, but it is necessary.” For a fleeting moment, she wondered, Am I part of the problem? Then she realized that now was the time for her to question all the assumptions and to, indeed, think again. Why did she assume TU and other institutions in the Academy were powerless in the face of these community issues? Quickly, she made note of several instances in Rosscoe’s letter that provided an opportunity to do just that. She was going to leverage the bright minds at TU to come up with options that brought their community together in service of one another. She did not know how, but if she and TU had the will, they could find their way (Kim, 2021).

References Anderson, V. (2021, May 18). Education usually improves health. But racism sabotages benefits for Black men. NPR Shots. https://www.npr.org/sections/ health-­shots/2021/05/18/996577905/racism-­derails-­black-­mens-­health-­ even-­as-­education-­levels-­rise Assensoh, K. (2021). Microaggressions: The hidden retention killer. Insight Into Diversity, 96(4 and 5), 16–17. Astor, M. (2021, May 28 updated). What to know about the Tulsa Greenwood Massacre. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/20/us/ tulsa-­greenwood-­massacre.html

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Bachynski, K. (2018). American medicine was built on the backs of slaves. And it still affects how doctors treat patients today. https://www.washingtonpost. com/news/made-­b y-­h istory/wp/2018/06/04/american-­m edicine-­w as-­ built-­o n-­t he-­b acks-­o f-­s laves-­a nd-­i t-­s till-­a f fects-­h ow-­d octors-­t reat-­ patients-­today/ Barnes, A. S. (2000). Everyday racism: A book for all Americans. Sourcebooks, Inc. Carrega, C. (2020, May 31). Because they can get away with it: Why African Americans are blamed for crimes they didn’t commit. https://abcnews.go.com/ US/african-­americans-­blamed-­crimes-­commit-­experts/story?id=7090682 Cheeks, M. (2018, March 16). How Black women describe navigating race and gender in the workplace. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2018/03/ how-­Black-­women-­describe-­navigating-­race-­and-­gender-­in-­the-­workplace Cose, E. (1993). The rage of a privileged class: Why are middle-class Blacks angry? Why should America care? Harper Collins. Dawson, M. C. (1995). Behind the mule: Race and class in African-American politics. Princeton University Press. Delizonna, L. (2017, August 24). High-performing teams need psychological safety. Here’s how to create it. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2017/08/ high-performing-teams-need-psychological-safety-heres-how-to-create-it Fasching-Varner, K. J., Albert, K., Mitchell, R. W., & Allen, C. M. (2015). Racial battle fatigue in higher education: Exposing the myth of post-racial America. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Garcia, C.  E., Arnberg, B., Weise, J., & Winbornana, M. (2020). Institutional responses to events challenging campus climates: Examining the power in language. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 13(4), 345–354. Heffernan, T. (2021). Sexism, racism, prejudice, and bias: A literature review and synthesis of research surrounding student evaluations of courses and teaching. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 02602938.2021.1888075 Hoffman, K., Trawalter, S., Axt, J., & Oliver, M. (2016, April 4). Racial bias in pain assessment and treatment recommendations, and false beliefs about biological differences between blacks and whites. PNAS, 13(16), 4296–4301. Kelly, B. T., Gayles, J. G., & Williams, C. D. (2017). Recruitment without retention: A critical case of Black faculty unrest. Journal of Negro Education, 86(3), 305–317. https://doi.org/10.7709/jnegroeducation.86.3.0305 Kim, J. (2021, February 21). Applying Adam Grant’s Think Again to the post-­ pandemic university. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/ blogs/learning-­i nnovation/applying-­a dam-­g rant%E2%80%99s-­% E2%80% 98think-­again%E2%80%99-­post-­pandemic-­university Lewis, H. (2020, August 19). The mythology of Karen: The meme is so powerful because of the awkward status of White women. The Atlantic. https://www. theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/08/karen-­meme-­coronavirus/ 615355/

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Metzl, J. M. (2019). Dying of whiteness: How the politics of racial resentment is killing America’s heartland. Basic Books. Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. (2001, February 28). Retrieved February 12, 2019, from https://www.okhistory.org/research/ forms/freport.pdf Parshina-Kottas, Y., Singhvi, A., Burch, A.  D. S., Griggs, T., Gröndahl, M., Huang, L., Wallace, T., White, J., & Williams, J. (2021, May 24). What the Tulsa Race Massacre destroyed. The New York Times. Retrieved from https:// www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/05/24/us/tulsa-­race-­massacre.html Reeves, R. V., Nzau, S., & Smith, E. (2020, November 19). The challenges facing Black men—And the case for action. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/ blog/up-­f ront/2020/11/19/the-­c hallenges-­f acing-­b lack-­m en-­a nd-­t he-­ case-­for-­action/ Smith, C. (2020, March 31). 3 Moments in history White women’s lies killed Black people. PushBlack Now. https://www.pushBlack.us/news/3-­moments­history-­White-­womens-­lies-­killed-­Black-­people Someashekhar, S. (2016, April 4). The disturbing reason some African American patients may be undertreated for pain. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ news/to-­your-­health/wp/2016/04/04/do-­blacks-­feel-­less-­pain-­than-­whites-­ their-­doctors-­may-­think-­so/ Takei, C. (2018, September 21). Colleges and universities have a racial profiling problem. https://www.aclu.org/blog/racial-­justice/race-­and-­inequality-­ education/colleges-­and-­universities-­have-­racial-­profiling Thomas, V. (2020). ‘How Dare You!’ African American faculty and the power struggle with white students. Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership, 23(4), 115–126. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555458920945762 Västfjäll, D., Slovic, P., Mayorga, M., & Peters, E. (2014). Compassion Fade: Affect and Charity Are Greatest for a Single Child in Need. PLOS ONE 9(6). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0100115 Viji, S., Kelly, A. H., & Calvin, M. S. (2020, July 1). A dozen plus ways to foster equity in your classroom. https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2020/07/01/listpractical-ways-non-black-faculty-members-can-help-dismantle-educational Wilkerson, I. (2020). Caste. Allen Lane.

Students Catalyzing Change

Jennifer’s phone buzzed with alerts from the campus response team: “Students with bullhorns and signs are gathered at the campus gates. They are headed toward the administration building.” A knock on the door brought news from Ubaldo that she had been invited to the check in meeting that the President regularly had with the board chair. Jennifer’s stomach quivered as she made her way out of the office and onto the steps of the administration building. Hundreds of people of all backgrounds with signs and placards were marching down the main corridor of campus. “What do we want?” one group shouted. Another group responded, “Our Black Faculty and Staff.” “When do we want them?” “Now!” As soon as that cycle finished, another refrain began, “No justice.” “No peace.” The protestors continued to the center of campus, stopping at the statue of Samuel Towering, the university’s founder and first President. “Can I even be mad at this?” she pondered aloud. “They are tired.” Just like the Towering Seven. By this time, the protestors had drawn faculty, staff and other onlookers out of their labs, classrooms, offices and elsewhere to watch.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. M. Alex-Assensoh, The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the American Academy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39229-0_10

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Ubaldo walked up next to her with a sad look on his face. “I brought a golf cart, so that we can get you to your next meeting with Austen and the President.” They made their way past the administration building, and Jennifer took in the large crowd that continued to grow in the quad. Nearly all with masks on, it was virtually impossible to identify any of the protestors, but Jennifer could guess that behind the masks people wore anger, sadness and rage upon their faces. Seeing a tall protestor with familiar braids, she turned to Ubaldo and asked, “Did you know this was going to happen?” Ubaldo closed his eyes pensively. “I knew nothing about it. I did know it was going to happen though.” Jennifer whipped her head in his direction. “How? And you—” “What happened with the Towering Seven is beyond anything I’ve ever seen or heard about at any university. People are pissed. Hell, I’m infuriated. I understand this. However, I also know that I can be more productive regarding this situation by offering assistance in the changes that need to be made—from the very core of the Academy.” Looking out toward the protestors, he added in a whisper, “We deserve this.” “Heave ho! Heave ho! Heave ho!” The voices grew louder until there was a huge thud. Jennifer and Ubaldo both looked, eyes wide and mouths open, as the larger-than-life statue of Samuel Towering fell to the ground. Immediately, someone with a welding torch rushed toward it, trying to decapitate his head. “Cut it off, cut it off, cut it off!” Sirens blared nearby, and in the forefront of the sound came the crackle of a bullhorn. “Students,” the VP for Student Life began, “please disperse now. If you fail to leave, you will suffer the penalty of expulsion.” After a few more statements, the protestors slowly began to leave, much to Jennifer’s surprise, but looking at the fallen statue, she realized they were leaving because they had accomplished what they had set out to do—tear down one of the most visible symbols of institutional racism at TU. And decapitate him to boot. It was apparent to Jennifer, as she reached Hillman’s office, that the President and Austen had their own meeting before the meeting that they scheduled with her. This was a maneuver that Jennifer often used. Her mind raced, thinking about why they needed to meet without her. Was she

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going to be fired? Had she done something that they did not like? Concerns about her own fate had taken her mind off of the student protest, but as she entered Hillman’s office and saw him and Austen looking out the window and shaking their heads in disbelief, Jennifer felt like she spinning out of control. Her equilibrium only became more erratic after she closed the door. Hillman spun to meet her gaze, pointed his finger at her and said, “Why are you here? You should be out there. Make them stop!” Slowly, Jennifer looked him up and down. “You are kidding, right?” “No, I am not kidding. This kind of lawlessness that these people, your people, bring into the Academy, has to go.” He’s got one more time to talk about the “these people,” Jennifer thought as she folded her arms and tapped her foot nervously. Jennifer’s neck jerked. The fury in Hillman’s voice shocked her, and, from the look of it, Austen, too. Jennifer had heard from others that Hillman said vile things about Black people behind closed doors. Since she had not experienced any of that herself, Jennifer had chalked those claims up to just hyperbole from other Black administrators who were jealous that she was the new Provost. But, perhaps, what they said was true. Hadn’t Hillman called her “his girl”? Hadn’t he also said a litany of “those people,” “these people” and “your people”? That was an interesting comment, especially since the student body at Towering was over 80 percent White. With tears threatening to break loose, Jennifer needed to get control of herself quick. As a woman, she did not want to be seen as the damsel in the distress, and as a Black person, she did not want to come off as too sensitive or too angry. “What exactly do you mean?” Jennifer asked. “You are the Provost, and you need to make them stop. The Towering family is still among this school’s largest donors. How am I going to explain that our students have knocked the founder’s statue down?” Jennifer smiled as she thought, And cut his racist head off. “What’s funny? I thought you were different—” A knock on the door preceded Ubaldo’s entry. “The VP for Student Life is dealing with the student crisis, and the crowd has been dispersed. Student Life is working with our maintenance staff to safeguard what is left of the statue and to keep it in storage until we can decide what to do with it.”

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“Thank you, Ubaldo,” Jennifer heard herself say. As Ubaldo walked out to the room, Jennifer looked at Hillman and asked, “Have you forgotten that I am not the VP for Student Life?” “Actually,” Austen said, finally entering the conversation, “that is a good segue into the conversation that we invited you to have with us—a conversation about roles and responsibilities.” Now, Jennifer’s stomach was really doing cartwheels. Was she about to be the Provost with the shortest tenure at TU, like what happened to Liz Truss’ fleeting tenure as UK prime minister? The three of them walked away from the window and to the conference table in the middle of the President’s palatial office. “Thank you, Hillman and Jennifer,” Austen began. “I have had an opportunity to read all the resignation letters, and I think that we need a better plan than what you’ve done in the past. As chair of the board, I have a fiduciary duty to safeguard the institution. I am concerned that the resignations portend deeper issues that we are overlooking. Hillman, have you had a chance to read Think Again and Ebony and Ivy? “Are you kidding me, right now, Austen? The Board hired me to lead, not read.” Without missing a beat, she said, “Well, until you leave this position, I am expecting you to do both—read and lead. You know, Hillman, pairing those two books together has helped me to think very differently about what we are doing at TU and the Academy. The resignation letters and the books have been a game changer for me.” Jennifer and Hillman were glued in. Before the pair could respond, Austen continued, “From our previous conversations about this issue, I am sensing that you see these resignations as a momentary issue, almost a distraction, but not something that is really problematic for the institution or even emblematic of deeper issues. I disagree.” “As I read through these letters, a lot of the things that our employees are talking about are issues that are problematic in the Academy. Before reading Think Again, I probably would’ve said that this is just not the right place for these faculty and let them go without any further discussion. But now, I see this as an opportunity to resurrect TU. I have invested a lot of money into this place, and I am not about to see it fail because we are standing on tradition. To hell with tradition, especially when money is at stake. As the student pointed out during our last Board meeting, the university is not on an upward trajectory. Our graduation rates are

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lackluster. While our donors are loyal, we are not recruiting newer people into the philanthropic ranks. Our faculty are threatening to unionize, and we don’t have good relationships with the leaders in the community.” Austen took a breath and sat back in her chair. She was not finished, though. “So, the resignation of these Black faculty is actually an opportunity to take a deep dive into our institutional processes, policies and norms and see where they lead us. We need to start playing to win the game of culture change, and I think that understanding why these Black employees are leaving is an important ingredient in our playbook. I also have a sneaking suspicion that we are not the only university facing these issues. I have calls into the Association of Governing Boards, AAC&U and APLU to better understand how other universities are addressing the constant resignations of Black people. I’ll let you know what I find out. My hunch is that if we can figure these issues out, we can be a leader in the Academy. All my life, I have been a leader and not a follower, and I don’t plan to have TU dragging me and my family’s name down. “How can we turn our current state of affairs on their heads and for us to not just create a path for TU, but a model the rest of the Academy can use. Maybe the sudden resignations of these Black employees is the kick in the pants that we need to stop following and start leading. We can make lots of money in the process. What do you think?” Hillman blanched as his eyes grew wide in stunned silence. Jennifer could see the edges of anger tighten around his mouth. “Austen, this sounds like a good idea, but I’m not sure I’m the right person to lead it,” Hillman said with a look of annoyance. “Is that your subtle way of telling me that you’re not interested in deep institutional change?” Austen inquired, leaning forward in her chair. “I’m not saying that directly.” Hillman continued, “But what I am saying is that we need to be clear about what we are doing.” “And, what I’m saying,” Austen retorted, “is that because this is a path that very few universities have chosen, there is no certainty. In the Academy, you’ll make an idol out of certainty, and that is a problem. But most things that are new, exciting, and different lack certainty. Isn’t that one of the things that you encourage researchers in the Academy to do— go where others have not been before in terms of new knowledge? God knows my recent successful business ventures came from a willingness to venture out in ways that other companies were afraid of. What I’m asking

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is if you are prepared to lead TU through this uncertainty as you have done effectively with other areas of uncertainty in the past?” Hillman was not happy about being put on the spot. His face turned a bright red, and his body stiffened. He opened his mouth, as if he wanted to speak, but nothing came out. “Look, Hillman,” Austen said with a smile, “let’s include Jennifer in on the discussion that we were having just before she joined. After all, she is your number two, so she should be trusted to keep things confidential until you are ready to share your news with others.” Jennifer’s chest tightened as she waited for what was coming next. Watching Hillman shift uncomfortably in his chair and listening to the nervous tap of his fingers only increased her anxiety. Clearing his throat, Hillman said, “I have decided that the next academic year will be my last year as President. I am getting too old for all of this.” He was clearly aggravated. “Oh?” Jennifer said tentatively, not sure how to react. “Since we are sharing things, let’s be sure that we share the whole story,” Austen said. “Jennifer, I also told Hillman that if he wishes to retire, perhaps the Board can simply buy out his contract and allow him to exit in the coming months. The issue is finding an effective replacement, while also not sending the message that Hillman has been ousted by the Board. Again, all of this is confidential as Hillman shared this news with me just before you arrived. This means that members of the Board are not aware, and he and I need to be the ones to let others know. Are we aligned on that, Jennifer?” Jennifer nodded, mind whirling as she tried to process the news. She was not getting fired, after all. After a moment of weighted silence, Hillman leaned forward and cleared his throat again. “Here is what I think we should do. All of us love TU, and I want to make sure that my exit helps to push us forward rather than destabilize us. It seems to me that since many of the people who resigned are on the academic side of the house, then this is a project that Jennifer can lead. She can help us to chart a path forward. I can continue to work on raising money for TU.” Before Jennifer could fully wrap her mind around that news, Hillman added, “I also want to be clear that I really do disagree with the idea that we need to pay any attention to the employees who are leaving or listen to very much of what they have to say.” Jennifer turned sharply to him, her lips burning. “I disa—”

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“But it seems that I am in the minority here,” Hillman continued. “To borrow the words of Adam Grant, maybe I am thinking more like a pastor or a lawyer than the scientist that I was trained to be. I also respect you, Austen, enough to listen and to give you the benefit of the doubt that you may be on to something. But I simply don’t have the heart, or the interest, in doing what it is going to take to go in the direction that you want us to go. Besides, my health is declining as a result of this drama. Jennifer is a real go-getter, and I know that she can work with you and investigate this issue as you think we need to.” Silently, Hillman also thought to himself, “She is also Black, which will help people give TU the benefit of the doubt, even if she chooses to do nothing at all.” “Jennifer, are you willing to take the lead on this?” Austen asked, agreeing with Hillman’s last comment about Jennifer being a go-getter. Jennifer’s mind was momentarily blank. Austen looked at her, yet she couldn’t speak. She heard Hillman’s deep breathing as she continued to struggle for words. She had no idea what this meeting would entail, but this news was the very last thing she thought would occur. “Jennifer?” both Austen and Hillman stated. She viewed them both and nodded slowly nodded—willing herself into the “fight” mode. “Well,” she began, “I hadn’t planned on doing that, but if you and President Robinson think that I can, I love TU enough to try. The only thing I would ask is that I am allowed to do this my way. Long before any of this happened, I hired an executive coach—a Black woman in fact—to help me think through some of these issues, and perhaps she can also consult with the university about some of the issues that she is seeing. For example, one of the things that she keeps encouraging me to do is to involve others in this work. So, I’ll also need to have the other vice Presidents’ willingness to listen and do this differently, and if President Robinson is willing to provide his support in those two ways, then I will do my best to create a new and different path forward.” “Well, I think we have a plan that is going to work,” Austen said, smiling and nodding. “Jennifer, I’d like to learn more about the coaching that you are receiving. In the business world, we use coaches, and a lot of them support leaders as they engage with change management.” “Her name is Marie Coleman,” Jennifer said. “Feel free to reach out to her directly for more information about the work that she does.”

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“Ok, thank you.” And with that, Austen rubbed her hands together, retrieved her belongings, and left the office, telling the pair to “Have a great rest of your day.” Hillman looked at Jennifer with a blank stare. She returned his stare with one of her own until he finally broke the silence. “This is not the way that the Academy traditionally works, and I don’t see how bucking tradition is going to get us anywhere that we really want to be.” “That may be so, but we must be willing to try, and I expect your support or at least your nonresistance as we move forward. Speaking of support, our first step is to convene a meeting of the Deans and vice presidents and get their assistance. I’ll craft the message, but I’ll need you to send it.” Jennifer gathered her things. “Ubaldo will work with your folks to get it dispatched,” she added. “Ok,” Hillman grudgingly agreed. * * * As she walked back to her office, Jennifer thought about the boldness that Austen used to set the path forward. It was that kind of boldness that it would take to move this work forward. On the other hand, Austen was clearly overreaching. She was acting like the President of TU, and under the current circumstances that was needed. Jennifer was also proud of herself too. For the first time in a long time, she had talked about another Black person in a positive light and recommended that TU use her services. Now, she needed to write the letter for Hillman to send to the Deans and vice presidents, and then she needed to move forward with reading the next letter on organizational accountability. The Fall board meeting was months away, and there was so much work to be done.

Our Shared Responsibility

As Hillman’s email bounced into her inbox, Jennifer pinched herself to make sure that she was not dreaming. Never in a million years would she have imagined a message like that coming from Hillman—it didn’t matter that she actually wrote the letter; he cosigned. He sent it under his name. This was huge. She read it again to see if he had made any changes. From: President Hillman Robinson To: bcc Subject: Moving Forward with TU Dear Deans and Vice Presidents: By now, you’ve had a chance to read about the resignation of seven Black colleagues on our campus. I am writing to invite you to work with Provost Frank as we look into the institutional and structural issues that led to this surprising turn of events. As you know, our usual approach is to respond with silence or provide a brief response. However, this time, we will respond differently. We plan to use this TU Seven exodus as an opportunity to learn more about ourselves as an institution, about our departing colleagues, and about how this issue fits into the larger agenda that higher education is currently facing. To perform this major undertaking, we will need to do some reading, thinking, contextualizing, discussing and implementing. In the next few hours, you will receive a document that lists the grievances that our Black faculty and staff raised. I am asking you to assume that all of the issues that they have raised are true. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. M. Alex-Assensoh, The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the American Academy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39229-0_11

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You will also receive copies of Victor Ray’s “A Theory of Racialized Organizations,” the first two chapters of Adam Grant’s book Think Again, chapter 6 of Claude Steele’s Whistling Vivaldi, Jennifer Eberhardt’s Biased and chapters 1 and 2 of Craig Steven Wilder’s Ebony and Ivy and Claire Jean Kim’s Racial Triangulation. My expectation is that you will read all of them. Then, I’d like you to develop a strategy for addressing safety, organizational accountability, unvarnished truth telling, love and spirituality in each of your departments and vice presidential portfolios. We will use the summer months to focus on each of these issues and then prepare a status update for the Board of Trustees meeting in the Fall. I am asking that you submit your individual recommendations to me and the provost 48 hours before our bi-­monthly meetings, and we will use the first half of our meetings as a leadership team to discuss and vet the work. In between meetings, you will work with the faculty, staff and graduate student employees as well as community partners to get input and ideas on how to proceed. Our work has to be a balance between grassroots, bottom-up demands for change as well as structural change from the top and change in the way that leadership occurs in departments and units. Energy has to flow from below, above and in the middle too. Before you begin reviewing the themes, I want to provide a little context. The first two letters address the issue of safety. To be honest, I bristle when I hear people of color say that they feel unsafe, but I must admit that the issues raised in these letters pushed me to at least broaden my sense of what safety means to different people on campus. Initially, I was very resistant to that idea. However, if we are going to make progress as a university and if our Academy is going to be relevant to the most pressing opportunities and problems of the twenty-first century, then we need to understand safety in terms of psychological safety and also safety that extends beyond our campus walls. I have similar reservations and curiosities about organizational accountability, unvarnished truth telling, love and spirituality. In my most ungenerous mind, it’s almost like the TU Seven is trying to turn the Academy into a cathedral. In my most generous mind, I am very curious. For example, what does it mean to create systems that encourage fair treatment of Black faculty teaching by students and peers? How do we recognize and put an end to norms and practices that turn a blind eye to racial assaults in our interpersonal engagements and department meetings? How can we ensure that the people that we hire on campus to protect TU from harm are not racially assaulting and discriminating against Black employees and students? Engaging these tough questions is vital to making necessary change at

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TU. We need to broaden our minds as well with the concepts of organizational accountability, unvarnished truth telling, love and spirituality. The resignation of our Black faculty and staff has created a great deal of reflection for me, the provost as well as our Board of Trustees. The work that we will undertake around these issues is unprecedented in the life of Towering University. That is why I am asking Provost Frank to lead this work. Provost Frank and I are working with a coach to ensure that we are moving this work forward at the deepest levels of the institution. Provost Frank is the lead on this, and if she asks for something from any of you, consider it a request from me. All hands-on deck is the mantra that we will use to get this work done. That means that every dean and every vice president and everyone on campus for that matter has a role to play in helping us to move this work forward. We are going to have to work collaboratively, perhaps initially identifying principles that we will use to guide our forward movement. At the end of the day, my hope is that this work will reach far beyond our campus to the highest levels of the Academy because higher education institutions are interlinked and work as a unit. If we want real change on these issues, we must work in tandem with other higher education institutions and with the organizations that lead our government, faith institutions, nonprofits and industry. I end with words of thanks to each and every one of you. Work of this kind is new to me, and, in many respects, new to TU. Although it is scary and a bit aggravating, I also think that it is necessary and vital to our existence. I’m looking forward to seeing you and to reading your ideas for moving forward. Yours sincerely, Hillman

Within minutes, she received messages from Deans and vice presidents. Some congratulated her on being asked to lead this work. Others asked cynical questions. “Who actually sent this message and what have they done with President Robinson?” Others simply asked for more details. There was also resistance. The General Counsel complained that TU’s plan to focus on Black faculty was unfair to other minority groups and that it exposed the university to legal challenges. The VP for Advancement complained that these plans might pose some problems for fundraising. A few minutes after Hillman’s email, a prominent donor, who learned about the proposed changes, announced his plans to withdraw his considerable financial support for a new science building on campus. The President’s

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office also shared several letters from faculty and staff, who were concerned about the uncompensated labor that they would now have to shoulder over the summer. In the past, resistance would have caused her to pause, but she refused to be deterred. Instead, she forwarded a copy of Hillman’s letter to Marie. It was Marie who had initially questioned Jennifer about the involvement of others in this process. She so badly wanted Marie to see that her coaching was having an impact on Jennifer and TU, too. She also sent a copy of the message to Austen, recalling her desire to be kept in the loop. * * * “Now, they are cooking with grease,” Austen said as she read Jennifer’s email. It also reminded her that she needed to follow-up about the coaching. She had already looked up Marie and she was top flight. Three days after Austen sent her email, Marie returned from a relaxing vacation at the Salamander Hotel in Virginia with her daughters. Reflecting on the years she spent, often unknowingly taking out the stress and trauma of her work on them, made her more understanding of Jennifer. Marie understood in a very personal way how issues can be painful and violent for people that you interact with daily, yet you miss the pain, the violence. She teared up as she thought about all the missed opportunities with her daughters, yet she remained hopeful that by doing her own personal work, she could turn things around. The relaxing weekend—filled with lots of opportunity to reflect—was just what she needed. Now, she was ready to approach the day ahead and answer the emails that piled up during the technology-free weekend retreat, including one from TU Board Chair Austen Astor Fuller. Dear Austen: Thank you so much for your very kind email. I’m happy to know that Jennifer is benefiting from our coaching and that she recommended me to you. I’m writing to learn more about your need for consultation. Let me begin first by complimenting you on spotting the possibility of a conflict. Ordinarily, I reject outright any consultation with a third party who is linked to an existing coaching relationship because I would not want to use any confidential information gained from a client in ways that would undermine my client’s success. At this point, my client is Jennifer. I will need to check in with her

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regarding what she thinks about your proposal for a three-way consultation. I’m assuming that you’ve already talked with her about it. However, because of the power differential, there may be issues that she is skittish to raise with you. That is why I need to speak with her directly. If she agrees, I’ll ask her to work with you to make an appointment for the three of us to meet to sort things out. If you don’t hear from Jennifer, that means we’ll need to find a different way to get the consultation that you need done. I really like the idea of helping TU not just recover from what you call “a horrible situation” but also establish it as a model for our country and world. Actually, that idea makes me even more interested in the possibility of working with you and Jennifer to bring about sustainable, world-­changing transformation. But, ethics are important, so let’s attend to these issues and then go from there. Yours sincerely, Marie She pressed send and then reached out to Jennifer. * * * Driving up, Jennifer noticed Austen stretching her legs on the outside of Marie’s office complex. “How are you, Madam Board Chair?” Jennifer said, saluting her with a smile and slight bow. “Oh, none of that,” Austen said, waving her hand at Jennifer. “We are partners in getting this work done. That is why I am eager to have this conversation with Marie. I think she might be just what we need—an outside perspective—as we work our way through to the other side.” Jennifer listened to Austen and thought about what she was saying. Initially, when Marie called to ask her about Austen’s suggestion, Jennifer had many questions. Now, listening to Austen, she realized that she didn’t have anything to worry about. In her experience, many of her colleagues were passive-­ aggressive, and they did things to carve out their territories and fiefdoms. She had thought that Austen’s efforts to engage with Marie were just that— an effort to demonstrate who was actually in charge. However, Austen’s explanation about an outside perspective was not about power. It was about understanding and clarity. Maybe, it was also a sign of real care and an offer to provide help and support in ways that others had not offered.

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“Marie is no cakewalk. The work that I have been doing with her is some of the hardest work that I’ve done in my life, and that includes three years of law school and passing the bar. She is, in the words of some of my students, ‘for real for real.’ So, don’t let her calm demeanor fool you.” “I certainly appreciate the warning,” replied Austen, “but what you’re doing is confirming my intuition—that she’s what we need. The good thing is that she’s not working as our adversary but as a member of the team. In fact, it seems like we’re what you might call the Three Musketeers.” Austen paused for a second before saying excitedly, “By the way, did you know that story was written by a Black man? He’s actually biracial, but by the American one-drop rule, he’s what we call Black.” “Okaaay,” Jennifer said, waiting to see if there was anything else that Austen wanted to share. “No, it’s just that the resignation letters have sensitized me to the ways that society tends to overlook the good things that Black, Native, and Latino people do, but pathologize their mistakes. In contrast, we valorize Asian Americans as a way of trying to keep Black, Latino, and Native people in line. It’s a very complicated system, and we need to dismantle it, not reinforce it. I was literally raised by a Black woman, and she always pointed out to me the ways that Black people’s contributions were largely erased or belittled. That information about Alexander Dumas came from her.” Just then, Marie appeared from her office. “I’m Marie. Welcome, Austen. Please have a seat. I’m all ears to learn more about what you have in mind for consulting.” Austen looked around the room carefully, taking in Marie’s taste in color and interior design. Then, she asked where Marie was going to sit. After Marie chose her seat, Austen selected a seat right next to her. Once she was comfortable, Austen shared her thoughts. She offered the opportunity to have separate meetings with Marie and Jennifer about each of the broad themes that the employees had raised, to meet separately with Marie to get her sense of next steps, or to perhaps join in via telephone or Zoom at the tail-end of coaching conversations. Marie nodded. “That all sounds good,” she said. “We’ll leave it to Jennifer to decide which type of consultation makes sense based on the issues.” “Okay,” Jennifer agreed.

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“The other thing that I had in mind,” Austen mentioned, “and it’s something that I have not yet talked with Jennifer about—is to see what you think about engaging with the employees that resigned.” “What do you mean, engage?” Marie said. “Well, you know, coach them like what you are doing with Jennifer.” “That depends on what you mean by coaching,” Marie replied. “Coaching is about unleashing brilliance and inspiring action in people, from a position of strength. I am not therapist.” “Ok, let me put my cards on the table,” said Austen. “It is obvious that the employees experienced harm at TU. For example, Rosscoe seems to have a good case for damages based not just on emotional distress, but physical harm. But it also seems like Wendy has a good idea for building a business that might be helpful to the university—especially with its focus on empowering children. There is also Rosscoe’s idea about how to get the university to better partner with local, state and national entities. There are also great ideas about organizational accountability and truth telling. Though I am still unclear about what Dante means about love and spirituality, I can tell you that I experienced real love and spirit from my Nana—a Black woman—and her love and spirit were more transformative for me in some ways than my own parents.” “So, are you asking me to meet with them and see what’s next and how the university might be helpful with next steps?” Marie asked. Austen smiled. “Yes, that is what I mean.” “Ok, I can add that to the scope of work that you are asking me to take care of, but there is one more thing. How am I to be in contact with the employees? Has the university reached out to them at all?” Marie asked. “Now that we have had this conversation, Jennifer and I will take care of that issue,” Austen assured her. “I am just so happy that you have agreed to serve as a go-between, so to speak.” “Happy to do that but know that some of the employees may not respond to your invitation,” Marie cautioned. “There might simply be too much water under the bridge or too much pain. I do hope Towering will continue with this work, despite the reaction from the faculty and staff who have had enough.” “Fair enough, but let’s try to reach out and make amends. I don’t want to get ahead of myself because I have not talked specifically with Jennifer about any of this, but it seems like we should try to do something with each of these employees to make things right.”

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“That is admirable, but”—Marie closed her eyes and thought for a moment—“in listening to you earlier, I feel that I must ask if it’s your intention to solely make things right with individual faculty and staff? What is your why for participating in this arduous endeavor?” Both Marie and Jennifer shifted their gaze to Austen who, momentarily, almost looked embarrassed. “I’m a businesswoman,” she finally spoke. “My life has been crafted to work to ensure that the businesses I run grow and thrive.” “I get that,” Marie nodded. “Do you also tend to the inner workings of those businesses, the people who work in them and the communities in which they reside, to ensure that the parts are as sound as the business as a whole?” “Let me answer your first question first. A few days ago, I probably would have said yes, out of ignorance of all that it takes to have a healthy business that includes healthy people and healthy relationships. Since I have been doing a lot of reading, most recently, Victor Ray’s work on racialized organizations, it’s helping me to think about systems and processes. I am not saying that I know how to fix them, but I do realize that the treatment that our TU Seven faced is not just the result of individual actors. No ma’am. Those actors are plugged into systems and processes that are also problematic. I am hoping that you can help us to untangle that, too.” Jennifer piped up. “Austen, yes, let’s discuss what you are seeing because there is definitely a different culture in the university, and I want to make sure that you are not merely being led by your heart rather than academic tradition.” “Yes, and that discussion will probably be one full of fireworks because I think that academic tradition—in some ways—led to some of this mess.” “Absolutely,” Marie said. “This is the kind of discussion that needs to be had. It probably does not feel comfortable, but neither is the day-to-­ day existence for many of the faculty, staff and students at TU.” “I also want to acknowledge that this work is forcing me to think again about what success means,” Austen said. “I want TU to survive, strive and thrive, but I know there is a lot of work to be done regarding the people within the university and how they are treated and why these systems and processes need revision.” Marie grinned and then nodded. Although Austen’s words did not say specifically the thought that was growing in her mind, Marie could infer. Austen was one who focused on winning and self, and a focus like that

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could leave others, especially those with less privilege, without. Marie believed that intellectually Austen knew that her family’s role as slave owners was what brought them wealth, knew that her Nana was an important part of her life, but was she truly empathetic toward marginalized people? Could she remove the layers of privilege to help in exacting a change that would not only right wrongs but improve the future for so many? What was Austen’s line in the sand beyond which she would not go? “One more question.” Austen pointed her attention on Marie. “I’ve done a little background reading on you, and my contacts tell me that you are a highly sought-after coach who turns down at least 60 percent of requests. Why did you agree to work with TU?” Austen then sat back and waited, eyes focused on Marie. Marie looked toward Austen and Jennifer and took a breath. “As a 17-year-old, I enrolled in Towering University for a year, and though I made good grades, the classes and environment literally made me sick. I was depressive and anxious, a deadly combination. My parents saw what was happening to me and worked with me to get a transfer to another college. “Since I am from Towering, I see the potential of the university, and I always wanted to have a hand in making it a place where everyone could not just succeed but thrive. That is why all of the letters, but especially the two letters on organizational accountability resonated with me. This is my chance to join the two of you in helping TU to be an institution that is holistically excellent because it treats people like people and it puts people first.” “You never mentioned that to me,” Jennifer noted, appearing wounded. “That’s because our coaching sessions are not about me. They are about you, my dear.” Smiling, Austen said, “Those words are music to my ears.” “Mine, too,” Jennifer said. “Let’s do this. I like the idea of having Austen join our meetings, but at the end of the session when we are thinking about action steps.” “Ok,” Marie said, “so our next meeting focuses on the letters from Aisha and JoWanda regarding organizational accountability. You and I will meet for about an hour, and then Austen will join for the last 30 minutes to discuss her own thoughts and action steps. Is that right?” On cue, both Austen and Jennifer offered a resounding yes. “Now, I am actually looking forward to rereading the next set of letters because I know that the two of you will be thinking alongside me.”

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“Yes, we are the three musketeers,” Austen said as she and Jennifer gathered their things and said their goodbyes. Marie breathed a deep sigh as she savored the idea of the three musketeers. Wistfully, she thought of another trio—she and her daughters—and smiled at the process of rebuilding their relationship so maybe she could have a three-musketeer group in her personal life too.

Passage Three: Organizational Accountability

Hillman’s email to the vice presidents and Deans encouraged them to read the TU Seven’s letters and to begin work in addressing the issues that they raised. The mere recognition that their concerns were valid and worthy of an institutional response is an important first step that so many institutions in the Academy decline to take. Yet, calling academic leaders to recognize harm and to establish principles to guide redress is a necessary but insufficient step (Laursen & Austin, 2020). Academic leaders must work indefatigably to create environments that welcome curiosity, change and new ways of carrying out the mission of the Academy. This is especially so because many Black faculty and staff are hired to push institutional boundaries of what teaching, scholarship, service and leadership look like (Allen et  al., 2002; Harris et al., 2017; Chavous, 2000). In this context, they sorely need a culture of organizational accountability that is committed to racial equity, including viable processes and norms that bring about repair when necessary. Passage Three focuses on organizational accountability, the processes, mechanisms and policies through which the Academy is explicit about the vision for change, identifies inappropriate resistance to change, incentivizes opportunities for institutional learning, movement and transformation, while repairing any harm that is done in meaningful and systematic ways. This includes interventions that transform resistance into opportunities for institutional learning, movement and transformation (Allen © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. M. Alex-Assensoh, The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the American Academy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39229-0_12

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et al., 2002; Butner et al., 2000). Effective organizational accountability recognizes that gender and racial discrimination are not random, but that organizations themselves are both gendered and racialized (Acker, 1990; Ray, 2019; Harris, 1993). As the Academy becomes more intentional in retaining Black faculty, it must anticipate resistance to the change that the very presence of Black people brings and to the changes that are necessary for them to be included in meaningful ways. Ideally, organizational accountability works hand in hand with individual accountability and interpersonal accountability because every member of the Academy contributes to the Academy’s culture. Individual accountability is about being self-aware and taking responsibility for one’s own ideas, beliefs and actions. Interpersonal accountability is about how individuals partner in co-creating accountability as part of a shared agenda in achieving institutional goals as well as practices that are antiracist (Anderson, 2021). Whereas accountability in other areas of higher education includes setting goals, evaluating performance and using the feedback to create ongoing improvement, there are very few structures in the Academy that formalize organizational accountability for Black faculty and staff (Zambrana et al., 2015; Carter, 2022). Indeed, at the heart of effective organizational accountability are two important factors: First, relationships are crucial as leaders engage with others to make decisions and explain or justify those decisions to others (Dill, 1999). Second, organizational accountability in the Academy is built on the premise that the Academy has the potential to become a learning organization, an “organization skilled at creating, acquiring, and transforming knowledge, and modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights” (Garvin, 1993). Yet, countless research has pointed out that Black faculty and staff generally lack the relationships with key campus administrators or other leaders in the Academy more broadly and also that most campuses and institutions in the Academy do not see themselves as learning institutions that should actually identify institutional mistakes transparently, redress them effectively at the personal and institutional levels and learn from them in ways that make the institutions more livable for Black faculty and staff (Matthew, 2016; Turner & Myers Jr, 2000). Yet, all is not lost. Organizational learning theory provides a clear mindset for organizational accountability (Garvin, 1993), while research on academic accountability provides templates for understanding how to

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leverage existing systems and create new systems that benefit Black faculty and staff (Dill, 1999). Moreover, UCI’s Black Thriving Initiative, which has embedded accountability for Black thriving “anywhere teaching and learning, discovery and healing and serving at the university or on its behalf are taking place” (Haynes, 2022), provides a good exemplar for other organizations in the Academy to explore and adopt. Additionally, Black feminist frameworks, as well as nonprofits focused on eradicating violence, continue to serve as a foundation for seeding organizational accountability (Russo, 2018; The Combahee River Collective Statement, 1977) because they are focused on addressing harm at the individual and institutional levels. Drawing from Anderson’s work on organizational accountability, we recommend the ideas from the INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence project that includes the following steps in outlining accountabilities (Anderson, 2021): • Provide safety and support for Black faculty and staff who are at the vanguard or who are leading change. • Create and affirm norms, policies and incentive structures that encourage safety, support and accountability while formally and clearly addressing all forms of resistance, indifference and discrimination. • Anticipate resistance, indifference and discrimination, including having processes that clearly identify problematic behavior, redress it in ways that encourage safety, achievement and transformation. • Incentivize individual learning among all members of the community, engage in individual learning in order to identify and eradicate oppression and nurture skills that build reciprocity and community. Passage Three explores what happens when leaders in higher education are formally accountable to a variety of stakeholders but lack any meaningful accountability to and for Black faculty and staff. These issues are unpacked through the stories of Aisha, a Black-Lebanese female Dean, who is also Muslim and navigates daily sexism, misogynoir and institutional resistance, as well as JoWanda, an advisor grappling with tragedy of one of her students taking his own life. The good news, however, is that viable interventions exist. What is needed now is the will to act in ways that make organizational accountability for Black people, who are leading change, a reality.

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References Acker, J. (1990). Hierarchies, jobs and bodies: A theory of gendered organizations. Gender & Society, 4(2), 139–158. https://doi.org/10.1177/089124 390004002002 Allen, W., et al. (2002). Outsiders within: Race, gender and faculty status in U.S. higher education. In W.  A. Smith, P.  G. Altbach, & K.  Lomotey (Eds.), The racial crisis in American Higher Education: Continuing challenges for the twenty-first century. State University of New York Press. Anderson, P. (2021). Building a culture of accountability. Stanford Social Innovation Review. https://doi.org/10.48558/9ea6-­r268 Butner, B. K., Burley, H., & Marbley, A. F. (2000). Coping with the unexpected: Black faculty in predominantly-white institutions. Journal of Black Studies, 30, 453–462. Carter, E. (2022, February 25). DEI initiatives are futile without accountability. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2022/02/dei-­initiatives-­are-­futile­without-­accountability Chavous, T. M. (2000). The relationships among racial identity, perceived ethnic fit, and organizational involvement for African American students at a predominantly White university. Journal of Black Psychology, 26(1), 79–100. https:// doi.org/10.1177/0095798400026001005 Dill, D. A. (1999). Academic accountability and university adaptation: The architecture of an academic learning environment. Higher Education, 38, 127–154. Garvin, D. (1993). Building a learning organization. Harvard Business Review, 71(4), 78–84. Harris, C.  I. (1993). Whiteness as property. Harvard Law Review, 106(8), 1707–1791. https://doi.org/10.2307/1341787 Harris, M., Sellers, S., Clerge, O., & Gooding, F., Jr. (2017). Stories from the front of the room: How higher education faculty of color overcome challenges and thrive in the academy. Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Co. Haynes, D. (2022). In M. Bonous-Hammarth (Ed.), Toward an inclusive excellence university: Building a culture where black people thrive in the University of California. Bridging marginality through inclusive excellence. Laursen, S., & Austin, A.  E. (2020). Building gender equity in the academy: Institutional strategies for change. Johns Hopkins University Press. Matthew, P. (Ed.). (2016). Written/Unwritten: Diversity and the hidden truths of tenure. University of North Carolina Press. Ray, V. (2019). A Theory of racialized organizations. American Sociological Review, 84(1), 26–53. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122418822335 Russo, Ann. (2018). Feminist accountability: Disrupting violence and transforming power disrupting violence and transforming power. https://doi.org/10.18574/ nun/9780814777169.001.0001

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The Combahee River Collective Statement. (1977). The Combahee River Collective Statement. https://www.loc.gov/item/lcwaN0028151/ Turner, C. S. V., & Myers, S., Jr. (2000). Faculty of color in Academe: Bittersweet success. Allyn and Bacon. Zambrana, R. E., Ray, R., Espino, M. M., Castro, C., Douthirt Cohen, B., & Eliason, J. (2015). “Don’t Leave Us Behind”: The Importance of Mentoring for Underrepresented Minority Faculty. American Educational Research Journal, 52(1), 40–72. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831214563063

The Heart Transplant

Jennifer had to force herself to pick up Aisha’s letter because she already knew that her own indifference played a role in Aisha’s resignation. This time, she tried a different stance—reading while pacing across her office. May 1, 2021 Dear President Robinson and Provost Frank: My journey to TU was a long one both figuratively and literally. You see, for as long as I can remember—even as a child—I told my dad (Blow, 2015), who raised me after my mom, a Muslim immigrant from Lebanon, passed away, that I was going to be a computer scientist. I was always playing around with electronics and old computers. I studied and worked so hard that I was offered a full ride to TU, but my dad said that I should, instead, get my degree from Spelman because it would provide me with an opportunity to be in a community with Black women and also an opportunity to practice Islam in a more diverse community. The year that I enrolled, the Spelman Robotics team competed in Osaka, Japan, and tied for first place with Fukuoka Institute of Technology in Japan in the humanoid robot category. My dad had a point. As someone born and bred a few hours from Towering, I was sometimes the only Black girl in my entire school, and I had very little experience with Black women, but I longed to be in their company because when that happened, I had the chance to think about my mom and imagine what it would have been like to have a relationship with her. Spelman was different. There, I found not only other Black © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. M. Alex-Assensoh, The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the American Academy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39229-0_13

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women, but also Black women who were Muslim as well as women from the Middle East, Asia and Africa. It was a dome of safety for me. I was working from acceptance and love, rather than striving to belong. For the first time in my life, I was not the only woman in my class with the hijab and there were others who went with me to the Masjid. Spelman provided an environment where I was free to be me—Black, Muslim and a scientist. After finishing my degree at Spelman, I once again applied to TU to get my M.S. and Ph.D., but Georgia Tech came calling and, once again, my dad’s advice prevailed. He reasoned that Georgia Tech had a better ranking than TU and that if I did well at Georgia Tech, then I could move back home, apply for a job at TU and live closer to him. He was also concerned that as he looked at the pictures of scientists at TU, there was not a single Black faculty member or post doc, and he had searched the website religiously for the last five years. He was playing the long game. He wanted me to return home, and I wanted to be near him as well. But, as I quickly learned from working at universities in the south and east, when it comes to Black employees, universities are usually long on recruitment and short on retention. I wanted to make sure that TU was the type of place that was ready for a Black person in the sciences, not to mention a Black woman who identifies as Muslim, first-­ generation and working class (Kelley, 2023). While TU reached out to me on several occasions to invite me to apply for positions, none of them actually scratched the dual itch that I have to simultaneously be a scholar and a change agent. I saw the deanship position as an opportunity to bring about organizational accountability while also working hard to elevate all of the scientific disciplines at TU. In my letter of application, I borrowed the words of Drew Gilpin Faust, then President of Harvard who said, “We’re accountable to the present and the instrumental view of education, and what jobs our students are going to get. Absolutely, we have to explain that.” Faust later said, “But we cannot abandon the notion of our accountability to the future, and to the big questions that will enable our societies to move from where they are today to where they need to be” (Merchant, 2017). I went on to explain that I saw organizational accountability as a way of collaborating with others to help shape TU into an institution that is accountable to the people who inhabit the Academy and also to our nation’s future. I talked so much about organizational accountability during my interview that one of our science colleagues asked me to explain what I meant by this during the all science department job talk.

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Here is how I responded: Think about organizational accountability like a heart transplant. You have a new healthy heart that is ready to bring new life and new vitality to a body that will die without it. The heart has already prepared itself to achieve, thrive and collaborate. However, if you don’t prepare the body for the arrival of the new heart, then the body will reject it. Both the body and the new heart will perish. Organizational accountability is putting in place the mechanisms, mindsets, policies and processes that the institution needs to receive the life-giving energy of newcomers like Black faculty, staff and students, as well as the ideas, innovations and insights that they bring. The current systems that are in place are akin to the body’s immune system. Our existing immune system sees the new heart as a threat and starts to attack it. Often resistance and rejection hid in plain sight, but the heart knows that it cannot function to its full capacity without a body and immune system that are ready to receive it. I went on to explain that the work of existing leaders at TU was to position the body and immune system to receive the new heart as life giving and vital to the body’s success. Leaders have to help the body and immune system to recognize the heart as a bona fide member. Leaders and all members of the Academy must assume responsibility for making sure that the heart survives because it is the key to survival of the entire body. Sometimes, organizational accountability means moving beyond antiquated systems and policies to ensure that the body and immune system are open to new ideas, insights, and contributions that newcomers—Black, Native, Latino, Asian and Pacific Islander—can bring. Organizational accountability is about making the systems and processes of TU accountable to including, in equitable and just ways, the talents, ideas, and ways of being that newcomers bring to the table and making those things a bona fide part of TU. I closed by saying that I am hoping all of us will be involved in this work through transparent communication, setting and meeting expectations, and holding one another accountable along the way. Science faculty, graduate students, staff and others in attendance responded with lots of smiles, nods and applause, leading me to believe that we were on the same page. In the end, you offered me the Deanship, with a good salary, support for my lab, modest teaching load and excellent benefits. I moved quickly to Towering for onboarding from you and the Provost, but it never transpired. Once it became clear that I would not receive onboarding from you, I used the time to get to know my colleagues across the sciences—including staff, faculty and graduate students who were willing to meet over the summer. During that summer, I asked each of the department chair people to work together on an

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agenda for the change that they said was needed. In my previous roles as a Department Chair, Director of Undergraduate Studies and Associate Dean, I had learned the hard way that transformation often works better from the bottom up rather than top down. While there were differences across the science departments, all of them had the following issues: (i) clarity in the tenure and promotion processes and (ii) service—both how it was defined and inequitable service contributions from women in the sciences. I pointed out that the recruitment of Black, Native and Latino faculty as well as the leadership  advancement of Asian scientists, who were better represented in the sciences, was not on the list, and that we should talk about making inclusive hiring a priority for the next round of changes. There was tacit agreement to do this as well. I was elated that we had reached some consensus on what needed to be changed. I thought that was going to be the hard part. Turns out that I was wrong. That was the easy part. It’s much easier to agree on what needs to be changed than to actually do the work necessary to bring change about. As I worked with my colleagues, I experienced a policy of containment. It was almost as if I were brought here to do a type of diversity work—to make the college feel good about hiring a Black woman and one who is Muslim to boot, but not to bring about any meaningful change. Despite all that we discussed during my recruitment process, there seemed to be real surprise by folks on campus about any effort to put in place policies, processes, and systems to bring about accountability, and little if any assistance from the two of you. At every turn, I was met with resistance. This is despite the fact that our own description for the position called for someone with an ability to bring about meaningful change at all levels of the college. Below, I share the details of our efforts. Against all odds, I have been successful in accomplishing almost all the change goals but at great sacrifice to my own health and relationships. That is why I am leaving the institution at the end of this academic year to spend time with my father and think carefully about next steps. My recounting of issues begins with the tenure and promotion, the Academy’s sacred and seemingly untouchable process.

Tenure and Promotion Everyone in my college agreed that we needed more transparency in the tenure and promotion process. I was hoping to begin there and, in the process, collaboratively reform the system to make it transparent and fair.

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When I reviewed the tenure and promotion processes in the science, math and technology departments, I literally wondered how anybody who does not come from or have access to a long academic pedigree could ever get tenure. Many of the requirements that are posted as part of the tenure and promotion process are not really requirements at all. They are opportunities for subjective evaluations (Matthew, 2016). In light of the situation, I worked to do three things. First, I talked with my colleagues about objectivity in the standards that we put in place. By objective, I meant a clear and common understanding by all parties of what is and is not acceptable for tenure and promotion in our departments. To be sure, there were standards that focused on grantsmanship and citation count, which are clear but not necessarily objective. Then, there were things like civility, which were just based on a general sense of whether or not the person was liked. In response to my concerns about indicators of civility, my colleagues provided reason upon reason it was important to have opaqueness in the process. They argued that tenure and promotion was an opportunity to “see if we really like the person.” If it’s only about meeting standards, then “we have no wiggle room to deny tenure to people who may be excellent at doing work but who are not good colleagues.” Now, of course, there are a lot of questions about what makes a good colleague. You see, as a Black Muslim woman who has made a choice to remain independent and single, I have suffered from the ability of non-Muslims to make the rules and then serve as judge and jury, regarding whether or not I have met the standards. And that is why I was so excited to accept the position of dean, especially once I understood that tenure and promotion clarity was part of the new dean’s charge. In an effort to build consensus for the new work, I invited colleagues from two of our aspirant peer institutions to come in and talk about their tenure and promotion processes. I felt that if our faculty understood how tenure and promotion worked at schools that we were trying to catch up with, then most certainly they would incorporate similar standards at TU. Wrong again! In response, the faculty countered that their standards were too high and that if we put them in place at TU, some of the existing professors might not have been promoted. By this time, I knew that my colleagues did not necessarily want excellence or objective standards; they simply wanted the power to deny people who did not “fit” or who they did not like. They wanted the ability to control the outcome. When I realized that a full-scale effort to overhaul the entire tenure and promotion process would not work in my department, I appealed to Provost Frank’s office. My strategy was to get higher standards put in place at the institutional level, which would then trickle down to the school and

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department level. I encouraged Provost Frank to read a recent essay that was published by an international team of scientists on how to make STEMM more inclusive throughout. “Promoting inclusive metrics of success and impact to dismantle a discriminatory reward system in science” provided an excellent roadmap to where we need to be as the College of Science and Technology, and I was hopeful that we could use the model to infuse change throughout the tenure and promotion systems on campus more generally (Davies et al., 2021). However, after many long discussions, including conversations with our aspirant peers, the Provost’s office joined the TU chorus of not being ready for the changes that it takes to be in the top 10 institutions of our kind. You, Provost Frank, urged me to let it drop because “we did not want to rock the boat too soon.” Disappointed, but not deterred, I returned to my science, math and technology colleagues, and offered an alternative opportunity to make our tenure and promotion processes clearer. I asked that we clarify the issue of citation counts, which is a big issue in the sciences. Scientists claim that citation counts are objective and find comfort in the numbers. However, there are a few problems with objectivity in citation counts. First, White men are more likely to cite themselves, their male colleagues, or their friends in keeping with the system that they have set up. Since there are more men and since men are more likely to be socialized in this way, their citation counts are usually higher than women’s counts, sometimes with a gap as large as 30 percent across the 13 STEM disciplines (Davies et  al., 2021; McGee, 2020). While the gap in citation counts is seen as evidence that men’s research is in higher demand and therefore more important, the sheer number of counts by themselves does not necessarily lead to this conclusion. Then, when it comes to issues of gender and scholarly activity, we know that women, during their childbearing years, are sometimes less likely to be available to engage in professional activities or collaborations that occur after the working day ends. Also, women are frequently called on to serve as caregivers for family members. As a result, they are less likely to be available to participate in some of the research opportunities that lead to publications, grants or other professional perks. For Black, Native, Latino and, to some extent, Asian faculty, these problems are sometimes starker because race and gender intersect to have multiplicative effects in undermining scholarship and productivity. In this way, the system not only perpetuates but rewards the collaborations within certain groups of people and, therefore, citations within those same groups of people (Davies et al., 2021). There was vigorous debate among my faculty colleagues about these issues, and I was optimistic that change would prevail. The final tally was close, but

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we did not get enough votes to change the rules for the entire college. However, after serious thought about my role as dean and the need for TU to be organizationally accountable to women scientists in ways that mattered, I made another decision for which several faculty members tried to get me removed. I decided that the majority in each department would determine how citations were valued for the purposes of tenure and promotion, but that as dean, I will be looking for additional evidence of impact, not just citation counts. Well, the senior professors in the college as well as men who were coming up for tenure in the next few years and a few women wrote a letter to the Office of Civil Rights claiming gender discrimination. I learned about this claim the very next week, and the Director of HR, the same director who refused to interview Rosscoe after he was assaulted by a campus police officer, called me into her office for a 90-minute interview. During that time, she asked pointed questions about whether or not I had made certain statements which she saw as discriminatory based on gender. She went on to point out that there was another investigation that was pending about racial discrimination. As I sat in front of her, I daydreamed about the ways that I was going to resign, even playing around with possible opening lines for my letter of resignation. Yet the call of duty—the desire to ensure that not only I, but others who had been marginalized, had a fighting chance—compelled me to fight on a little while longer. In this case, my resignation might have had negative consequences for a junior colleague’s tenure and promotion case, and I needed to stay in my position to ensure that, at least in Guadalupe’s case, fairness prevailed. Guadalupe was one of the few Pacific Islander faculty in the College. She and I met during my initial outreach to faculty during my first summer in Towering. A few months after our initial meeting, Guadalupe re-introduced herself to me while both of us were in the customer service line at a local grocery store. As I later observed, she was there sending money to her relatives in Samoa, and I was there sending money to my dad. We smiled at each other as we realized that pay day meant the same thing to both of us—sending remittances to our relatives before we took care of our bills and our retirement portfolios. In addition to sending remittances for relatives in Samoa, she also cared for her aging parents and her niece, whom she had adopted. Guadalupe was one of the hardest-working faculty members in the college. She came to faculty meetings on time and contributed. When asked to serve on committees outside of our college, she did so happily, and those with whom she served always sent back gracious comments about her responsible and thorough nature. She was a good teacher, but like most Black, Indigenous, Pacific

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Islander and Latino faculty, who taught in sciences, her expertise was constantly being questioned. She also had to deal with vicious and scurrilous attacks about her weight, her hair and her accent. In addition to several publications in solid academic and scientific venues, she had also published a book that communicated a new line of her research into accessible language. Not only was her work clear, scholarly and sophisticated at the same time, but it also discussed the impact of her scientific research in making our marginalized communities better. However, because most of the senior faculty had never published a book or even attempted to translate their science into language and venues that were accessible beyond the Academy, the faculty lobbied hard to have this important piece of scholarship classified as service, thus weakening the quantity of her research contributions. I was not going to let Guadalupe go down like that. When her department chair had the audacity to send a lukewarm tenure and promotion letter to me, with a regrettable, but negative tenure decision, despite Guadalupe’s solid publication record and raving reviews from scientists at elite institutions, I wrote a smoking endorsement that overturned the departmental decision. The controversy over Guadalupe’s research was at the very heart of how her department defined scholarship and excellence, but there were also concerns about her collegiality because she was not considered a real team player. When I dug further into the collegiality issue, I learned that her family obligations prevented her from being available for most of the weekend and evening social gatherings that some members of the department used to decide whether or not faculty members were team players or not. The department’s outrageous decision was a clarion call for organizational accountability. However, rather than deal with their own shortsighted and tradition bound ideas, our colleagues responded with attacks against me of cronyism and racial discrimination. Those criticisms were shaped into an effort to bring me up on charges of creating a hostile and toxic work environment. When I reached out for support from the two of you, I heard nothing for two days. On the third day, Provost Frank sent a note letting me know that I would have to go through the investigation processes. Thankfully, I saved all my documentation and hired an attorney, who charged me $3000 for a three-­ hour engagement. She sat with me through the meetings and was helpful in preventing the university from railroading me. Her presence sent a signal that I would sue the university if needed. In the end, the university sided with the department faculty, who said that I had created a toxic working environment. While they did not present any evidence of malfeasance or bullying, they included testimony from my

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secretary, who served as a witness and who helped to round up faculty to corroborate their stories. Included as part of the disciplinary remedy was a letter of reprimand as well as an order to get coaching for anger management because my colleagues felt that I was “an angry Black woman.” In the end, Guadalupe received tenure, making her the first Pacific Islander in the university’s history to be awarded tenure by TU. From that perspective, the fight was worth it. I seriously thought about quitting at that point, but if Black people quit or turned around at the sign of protest and resistance, we would, as my dad said when he was pissed, “still be picking cotton on the plantation.” “I have just begun to fight,” was what I told myself even through tears as I read the decision of the university’s Office of Civil Rights. Yet, my health was suffering. For the first time in my life, I had high blood pressure. Yet, I refused to be driven out of my position.

Service The second issue that all of the departments agreed to address is the inequity in service as well as the way that service is defined. Since most of our science faculty are White, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese and an increasing number of postdocs and graduate students are Black, Native, Latino, Vietnamese, and Pacific Islander, there is tension between the traditional definitions of service and the emerging definitions of service. For example, many—though not all—of our Black, Native, Latino, Vietnamese and Pacific Islander students and postdocs see their science as a tool for change in their communities. So, in addition to their lab work, students and postdocs are developing relationships with local elementary and high schools, partnering with the Black, Native, Asian, Desi, Pacific Islander (ADPI) and Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlán (MEChA) organizations to provide enrichment opportunities for science majors and also to encourage students to earn degrees in science and technology. In the spirit of knowledge production, they are writing stories about their research in popular magazines and local newspapers in order to translate what is going on in the lab into accessible knowledge. However, the students complained that this work was not only frowned upon by faculty, but actively discouraged. In some ways, the faculty saw it as their duty to warn their graduate students and postdoc about what is “valued” in the Academy and, in their minds, that kind of service is not valued or appreciated. When I talked with faculty, they saw this as their effort to really mentor students and show them the ropes.

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In bringing this tension to our faculty, I invited us to work together to do a short study of how science was being used and appreciated beyond the Academy. Many faculty in the college were still smarting over the changes that I ushered in about citations, Guadalupe’s tenure, or were just downright disgusted that I was still the dean. As a result, I needed to surround myself with allies. Since our Senate had already started working on this issue, I reached out to the TU Senate President and Vice President to advance this idea. We agreed to tackle the question of how to move the institution beyond its narrow understanding of service. I really yearned for TU to be a leader in the Academy. I wanted other institutions to look to us for standards and practices that are leading the way. For that to happen, we had to move beyond the notion of just studying the issue to actually doing the work of creating policies and procedures that recognized and valued the perspectives of Black, Native, Latino, Pacific Islander, biracial, Asian and women faculty, staff and students in the sciences. Historically Black Colleges and Universities, tribal universities, Latino, and Asian serving institutions model this work. In these institutions, the line between the Academy and society was much more creatively enacted based on issues, resources, needs and opportunities. My Senate colleagues were surprised at the work taking place at these institutions and also at the success of these institutions at producing some of the world’s most innovative and impactful scientists, humanists, and social scientists (Bradshaw, 2021). Rather than relying only on citations, we recommended that our departments and others also incorporate Altmetric (Hoffman, 2021) into our evaluation processes. That metric creates a numerical score for the impact of individual scholarly articles by linking their DOI numbers to data sources like Twitter, Facebook, traditional media, blogs and scholarly collaboration networks. Based on those conversations, we also incorporated a measure about the frequency of use—as measured by downloads, library holdings, video plays, captures, including bookmarks, code forks and favorites, mentions on blog posts, comments, reviews and news media as well as social media as measured by likes, comments and tweets. Although these metrics are still being developed, and some are also sensitive to manipulation, the raw citation count that is currently being used and that provides very narrow opportunities to reflect on broader impacts is also sensitive to the same issue. Defining what is meant by broader impact is vital because it has to ultimately extend beyond solely focusing on economics and jobs. In the end, my colleagues agreed that each department would work on this issue. Yet, the victory was bittersweet because while the research shows

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that Black and other marginalized faculty are just as likely to innovate, their innovations are often less likely to be attributed to them (Hofstra et al., 2020). In my case, working with white male colleagues increased the likelihood that others would listen to my ideas and eventually take them up or adopt them. As a result, Black employees and other racial newcomers often end up sharing or bestowing credit for their innovations on people who are already in leadership positions, folks who are usually male and White, in order to get the work done. What happens in the process is that Black employees, who are often the brains and or muscle behind the innovation, are not seen as important contributors. Ironically, the partners with whom Black thinkers engage are getting the credit not only for their Black colleagues’ brilliance but for being “sensitive” on issues of diversity. That is exactly what happened in this process. Our work was so well received that Provost Frank asked that the Senate president and vice president lead discussions about this with Deans Council without inviting me, the brain behind the work, to contribute. Had it not been for the Senate president, who acknowledged my thought leadership as well as the significant tactical role that I played, the usual erasure would have occurred. Still, as provost, you never acknowledged my role or work, even after you learned that it was my brain child. In the end, our innovative work on broadening our definitions of service and scholarship was so successful that it was picked up by the digital outlets in New York, D.C. and Los Angeles, and they had sense enough to give credit where credit was due. Buoyed by the win that my Senate partners and I had in broadening the definition of how academic scholars engage and render service, I now turned to the second aspect of the service issue: the disproportionate amount of service that women and some of our Chinese, Southeast Asian, Japanese, and Korean faculty, were asked to do without compensation or adequate recognition. A similar issue was happening in other Colleges among Black, Latin, LGBTQ, biracial and Native faculty. Of course, some departments in my own college provided an opportunity to recognize service by saying it’s about a third of the tenure and promotion process, or periodic merit review processes. But those designations did not remedy the inequities in service that we needed to tackle. For example, women scientists and Korean, Japanese and Chinese faculty in the sciences are often called on to help mentor undergraduate and graduate students. They are put on display as examples of the institution’s progressiveness. They are asked to sit on numerous university committees because there are not enough women “to go around.” They are often solicited by other

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women to provide guidance, support and succor as they battle institutional norms that are inequitable, discriminatory and inhumane. The aforementioned work is tedious, emotionally draining, undervalued, often invisible and extremely impactful for the institution. It takes time away from publishing, which undermines citations and citation counts. In the sciences, citation counts are the coin of the realm, but the service work is literally counting against women. It’s costing them in terms of having the mental clarity and space to write and produce. This time around, we reached out to colleagues in Women and Gender Studies who agreed to work on this issue and they came up with the idea of creating a scale for both traditional service work and service activities that had to do with institutional failure to address discrimination and equity. The committee, led by faculty in Women and Gender Studies offered five initial recommendations: (i) do an equity audit to understand what the committees do and whether or not the work is still necessary or if it can be accomplished in other ways; (ii) put in place university processes and systems that effectively redress the harassment, discrimination and inhumane treatment that women in the sciences were experiencing so that they were not trying to battle these issues as part of committee work and letter writing campaigns; (ii) devote a percentage of the recruitment budget to hiring female faculty, Black faculty and other underrepresented faculty until parity was reached across the university; (iii) include professional development for mentoring, mentoring awards and the expectation that all faculty are required to participate in mentoring networks to ensure that women were not engaged disproportionately in mentoring tasks; (iv) tenure revocation policies for faculty members whose inappropriate behavior is being shielded by tenured status; (v) ongoing onboarding that leans into the love ethic in ways that highlight the importance of ethical living, shared work and shared responsibilities for all faculty, staff and students. As President and Provost, you can lighten the load of service work that is devoted to addressing egregious and unethical behavior by doing a better job of making those things impermissible and unacceptable in the first place. As I thought about the foundation of organizational accountability that we were building in the sciences and all that remains to be done, I realized that I had done all that I could for my college. Without institutional support and partnership from you, I am wasting your time and you are certainly wasting mine. Yours sincerely, Aisha

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PS: The Administration Building and the Police Department smell like fish. As the daughter of a mechanic, the fishy odor is a sign that wires are burning somewhere in those buildings. I have reported it several times, but nothing is being done about it. Consider this my final word of warning. What an ingrate, Jennifer thought. When she looked up, Ubaldo was knocking while opening the door. “Is everything all right in here? I heard a crashing sound, and I wanted to make sure that you were okay.” Looking down, Jennifer saw the glass bottle that she had thrown. “Oh, sorry, Ubaldo. I am just being clumsy. My bottle of juice dropped out of my hand.” Smiling, he looked at the letter that was hanging from the wingback chair. “Did the letter take wings, too?” he asked. “Anger is not necessarily a bad thing.” Jennifer shrugged, a little less embarrassed by her anger. Without a word, Ubaldo left and returned with a broom, dustpan, and wet paper towels. Together, they cleaned up the mess. Ubaldo’s company and nonjudgment were just what the doctor ordered. “Wanna talk about it?” he asked. Ubaldo looked at her and decided to offer a bit of advice. “It seems like you are taking the letters personally.” Before Jennifer could respond, he added, “That is to be expected. I read Aisha’s letter, and she specifically addressed you. Despite that, try to see the letters as an invitation for you to get the Deans and other vice presidents to work together.” Jennifer fought the urge to whine. She was still angry at what Aisha had written in her letter, but as the heat wore off, her senses began to pose questions to her: How did you really help her? Why didn’t you respond each time she requested help, even with only an explanation of why you could not help? Why were you so quick to shut down Aisha’s forward movements? The questions left a bad taste in her mouth. She refocused on Ubaldo. “I am just reminding you that you are not alone,” he continued. “You and the President sent the message to the Deans and vice presidents to provide ideas about how to address these issues. The second meeting is scheduled for next week, but the emails are rolling in, and some of them are really interesting.”

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Jennifer looked up at Ubaldo, a smile taking shape on her face. “You always come in at the right time, Ubaldo,” she said, her hazel eyes sparkling. “Thank you for reminding me that I do have help, and that this is not all on me.” “You’re welcome, Jennifer,” he said with a smile. Here are some of the good things that your colleagues are already coming up with, and some of these things are happening organically: Det, the department head that supported and sponsored Wendy has organized a meeting with the Dean of the College of Education, Mayor and the CEO of the local hospital so they can start working on a partnership to address some of the community issues around safety that Rosscoe and Wendy brought up. The Chief Human Resource Officer is now including a Black therapist and other care providers on the list of employee assistance program providers. Bill, our VP for Diversity, is also working with the Chief Human Resource Officer to embed somatics training as part of the supervisor’s professional development series and an updated performance management process that asks all supervisors to discuss how they are using their understanding of somatics to improve their relationships with people in their units and to enhance the climate in their units. You also received an email message from Sandra Finley, CEO of the League of Black Women. She’s the brainchild of an accelerator program that connects Black Women with opportunities to purchase and own manufacturing companies. She asked you to consider passing the opportunity along to any of the TU Seven who are interested in owning viable manufacturing companies that are important contributors to the economy. There is also some resistance. We have letters of resignation from three department heads. The General Counsel and Secretary of the Board tendered his resignation, effective the end of this month. “So, I am now getting a taste of what Aisha had to deal with—resistance to change,” Jennifer said, as she blew out a breath of frustration. “But, It’s going to be ok.” “I am happy that our leaders are working. Resistance is to be expected. I just need to stop thinking about myself so much.” “Or,” Ubaldo said, “to put a more positive spin, maybe it’s just that you need to realize that there are others who are ready and willing to support you and TU to change.” “Or that,” Jennifer said, leaning over to pick up the letter that she had thrown. What Ubaldo did not see was her throwing the letter on the floor,

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stomping on it, picking it up and then throwing it across the room. Chuckling, she picked it up once more and said, “Onward.” “Onward,” Ubaldo agreed  as he shared, “La Esperanza es lo último que muere.” Yes, Jennifer translated: Hope is the last to die. Uplifted, Jennifer took a seat on the couch, slipped her legs under her and reached for the next letter from the Towering Seven. “This is not only about you,” she reminded herself. “This is about the bigger picture. The need for change.” With that, she flipped forward to the next letter, and when she saw that it was from JoWanda, her stomach dropped.

References Blow, C. (2015). Black dads are doing best of all. https://www.nytimes. com/2015/06/08/opinion/charles-­blow-­Black-­dads-­are-­doing-­the-­best-­ of-­all.html Bradshaw, L. (September 29, 2021). Noodle, The Most Interesting People in Higher Ed. Espisode 8: Featuring Yvette Alex-Assensoh. https://highered. noodle.com/insight/episode-­8-­yvette-­alex-­assensoh Davies, S. W., Putnam, H. M., Ainsworth, T., Baum, J. K., Bove, C. B., Crosby, S. C., et al. (2021). Promoting inclusive metrics of success and impact to dismantle a discriminatory reward system in science. PLoS Biol, 19(6), e3001282. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001282 Hoffman, A. J. (2021). The engaged scholar. Stanford University Press. Hofstra, B., Kulkarni, V. V., Galvez, S. M.-N., He, B., Jurafsky, D., & McFarland, D.  A. (2020, April 28). The diversity-innovation paradox in science. PNAS, 117(17), 9284–9291. https://www.pnas.org/content/117/17/9284 Kelley, B. (2023). Black folk: The roots of the Black working class. Liveright Publishing. Matthew, P. (ed.). (2016). Written/Unwritten: Diversity and the hidden truths of tenure. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. McGee, M.  O. (2020). Black, brown, bruised: How racialized STEM education stifles innovation. Harvard Education Press. Merchant, S. (2017, June 26). Higher ed leaders consider compact between universities, society. The University Record. https://record.umich.edu/articles/ higher-­ed-­leaders-­consider-­compact-­between-­universities-­society/

What About the Students?

Jennifer read the title of JoWanda’s letter, What About the Students, and her racing thoughts began doing cartwheels of defensiveness. Of all the constituencies on campus, Jennifer had a soft spot in her heart for students. They were an important factor in her decision to become a law professor. While students sometimes struggled with concepts of contract law, Jennifer loved the curiosity that students brought to the classroom and the way that they kept professors of all ages young at heart. At the same time, Jennifer was not looking forward to reading JoWanda’s letter because the two of them had bumped heads a few times over, ironically—how students were being treated on campus. Jennifer remembered taking great umbrage at the idea that, as Provost, she did not know how to treat students. No sooner had that thought passed through her mind did she look at the coffee table and see two books, Whistling Vivaldi and Biased, staring back at her. “Okay, okay,” Jennifer said to herself as she kicked off her shoes and unlatched her belt. Her clothes were getting tight, which was understandable since she had been using food to calm her nerves. Unlike Wendy and Austen who were comfortable in their plus-size bodies, she felt awkward. She should at least try to be comfortable as she read the tongue lashing she anticipated from JoWanda.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. M. Alex-Assensoh, The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the American Academy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39229-0_14

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May 1, 2021 Dear President Robinson and Provost Frank: I know that most of my colleagues have opened their letters with a big thank you. Many of them started off at TU with the desire to contribute and to stay. My story is different. I always felt unnerved about this place, and I should’ve used my intuition and body wisdom to steer me away from TU rather than toward it. Lest you be misguided by the thought that I am just superstitious, there is a solid body of scientific knowledge about the wisdom of our bodies and their ability to provide  important knowledge and guidance (Moreland-Capuia, 2019; Van der Kolk, 2015; Menakem, 2017). My initial uneasiness dates back to my initial job interview, in which I was asked the following questions: (i) whether or not I was pregnant; (ii) what I thought about a recent article that Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote about Black power; and my favorite (iii) how I would feel about being an advisor at an institution where very few of the students are Black? Rather than listening to my spirit and the wisdom of my body, I let myself be seduced by the possibility of making things better. Meeting with the Black faculty and staff employee resource group, where I found warm and kind people who I began to imagine as friends, also helped to convince me that I could not only make a difference but that I would be a part of a posse that was committed to this work. They told me that most of the students at TU were White, that some students were eager to learn from Black faculty and staff, and that there were Asian, Native, Latino, biracial, and a handful of Black students, too. Then, they went for the big guns and pointed to the research that showed that all students benefited from Black advisors and teachers. So, against my better judgment, I joined your university. As soon as I arrived on campus, I got to work on being the best advisor that I could be. Fortunately, the advisors at TU were empowered to really help students. We had early warning systems that helped us to track how students were doing in their classes and incentivize frequent engagement with advisors. We were also trained to focus on issues of accessibility and neurodiversity as we worked hard to help our students graduate, and also plan for life-long learning and societal impact. But no amount of holistic advising can counteract the pernicious climate that many of our students face in the classroom. In light of my own background as a proud, Black Lesbian, I took a special interest in Black Pride, a small group of LGBTQ students who were working hard to journey through the homophobia, misunderstanding, and hate on our

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campus. Though my family has always been loving to me, too many lesbians in communities of color face scorn and derision from the people who are supposed to love them. Too often at TU, I found myself crying in the bathroom as I tried to divest myself of the despair, self-hatred and disappointment that many students experienced and attached to themselves as a result of how they were treated in the classroom. While many of my advisees were Black, TU is an equal opportunity offender when it comes to a lack of care for students—racial assaults; unnecessary harshness in grading and responding to student inquiries; sexism, homophobia, microaggressions  and invisibility of contributions from Black people to knowledge across the disciplines were rampant across campus. To be sure, there were pockets of committed faculty who taught their students with empathy and diligence, some even in loving and caring ways. However, far too many of our faculty and some graduate student instructors were unable to give what they had not received. There is simply not enough focus on inclusive pedagogy in the Academy. Moreover, many of our faculty and graduate student instructors are beleaguered by low morale and limited trust. They are bereft of love—especially at TU and have little to give to others.

Misguided Paradigms and Schemas To complicate matters, instructors of all racial backgrounds were being misguided by paradigms and schemas that lowered the expectations that they set for Black students. Schemas differed across racial identities with Black exceptionalism, the idea that only a few Black students were exceptional and that the rest were disadvantaged at best and lazy at worse, being the predominant schema for Black students. In addition to being a myth, Black exceptionalism is also problematic because it is celebrating students for their ability to work through barriers that should not be there in the first place. Their ability to navigate through such barriers adds stress that others don’t have to deal with. As a group of advisors, we wrestled with the question of what it means for our institution to celebrate Black students for overcoming barriers that should not be there in the first place. Why doesn’t TU simply remove the barriers so that everyone can succeed? In addition to the pedagogical barriers that needed to be removed, there were also barriers around access to mental health resources. At the end of the meeting, another advisor put it this way: Isn’t our goal to educate all students so that they can reach their capacity for success? Or, are we simply like gladiators in the Roman theater, content to watch the carnage?

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Our diverse band of advisors which included advisors from all backgrounds shared articles about how students from different groups were impacted by different issues. All of us found guidance from Veratta Hammond’s book (Hammond, 2014) on culturally responsive teaching, as well as articles about growth mindset, labor-based grading, and the L.A.C.E.™ framework (Alex-Assensoh, 2021). We met with a group of Deans to get their input on how we can enhance pedagogical support for teaching in ways that made faculty and students better. At first, we agreed to try workshops and other incentives for faculty, but we quickly realized that we lacked the power for real change. Our associate provost eventually suggested that working with Provost Frank was more strategic in bringing about sustainable change instead of trying to convert individual faculty  members ourselves. She wrote to you with a list of possible recommendations, timelines and resources. She emailed the two of you and blind copied me, and we waited for a response from the two of you. I am so happy that I did not hold my breath while waiting because I surely would be dead. You never extended the simple courtesy of acknowledgment—let alone responding to our message in any meaningful way. Yet, I continued to do the work anyway because we were making a difference in the lives of individual students and that had to count for something. However, when the unimaginable happened to one of my students for whom all of this work was being done, I realized that TU gave not a care to the life (or death) of its most important constituency: the students.

The Unimaginable Dakota and I had struck up an almost immediate friendship. He was a third-generation college student and enrolled citizen of a federally recognized Tribe on whose lands on the university resides. He arrived in my office with his mother, father, aunties and cousins. I welcomed them into the tiny space, giving my chair so that his dad would have a seat. I joined other members of Dakota’s family around a conference table in the compact space. I shared that I was a first-generation college student and how disorienting that can be. I also acknowledged that this campus, like so many other colleges and universities, was located on land that had been stolen from Native people. His father nodded, and we made eye contact for the first time, something that he had avoided up until then. This is not the first time I had this thought, but as I am writing this, I see the painful irony of having one’s land stolen and consistently feeling responsible to educate and remind non-Native people of the inherent rights of treaties, sovereignty, reciprocity, and responsibility. Such

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a weight seems incredibly heavy, especially when non-Native institutions prosper from the arrangement either through benign neglect or willful ignorance. After the initial conversation, I took Dakota and the family on a small tour of campus, my primary intention being to ensure that they made it to the Native American Student Center so that I could introduce them to the coordinator, a brilliant young woman with an MPH and Ph.D. to boot, and who was a citizen of the Choctaw Nation. As I said my goodbyes and turned to leave them, Dakota’s father looked at me and said, “I am trusting you to support Dakota and then return him to the tribe. I am a college graduate and so were my parents, but we all returned home because that is where we are needed most.” “I will do my best,” I remember saying to him, looking back at Dakota to make sure that he had heard his father’s request. “Ok, Dakota, so that means that you and I are going to be meeting at least weekly so that I can learn from you, and you can get support where needed from me.” “I’ll be there,” he told me with a smile. The next week, and every week after that, Dakota was my first appointment on Monday mornings. While Mondays used to be days that I dreaded, for nearly two months, the thought that Dakota would be there made me eager to get into the office. Not only was he brilliant, earning a scholarship to TU based on his character, intellect and community work, but he was also funny and unassuming. As we got to know each other, our meetings moved from the office to campus, as we talked about everything from tribal politics to national politics to campus gossip. I learned that Dakota’s parents and grandparents were lawyers and that his goal to was to be a physician. Dakota and I talked about the way in which the entry courses were structured to weed people out, but that he had overheard a conversation that the new Muslim dean was working with science faculty to ensure that introductory courses remained rigorous, while also being welcoming to different learning styles and experiences. We often talked about how the material was less difficult for him than the attitudes that he faced from students, faculty and graduate students. He was tired of dealing with the jokes about his braid. Once, when he gave the wrong answer in class, the guy sitting next to him said, “I guess you should have stayed on the reservation,” to which the professor simply rolled her eyes and moved right along. Faculty were also not very understanding when he needed to travel home for sacred religious observances because they were not on the university’s list of observed practices. Also, since his father’s family was racially mixed-both Black and Native, some of his Native peers questioned whether or not he was really Native, and this feeling

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of not belonging in the classroom or in the Native American Student Center was troubling for him. When I arrived at my office on Monday, nearly eight weeks into the term, Dakota had not arrived, which was unusual. He usually arrived before I did. By mid-morning, I was beginning to worry, so I made my way to his dormitory, and my panic went up when the staff said that they had not seen him since the weekend. After knocking on Dakota’s door for a few minutes, a staff member tried her key, but the door would not budge and my mind began to wander, hoping that he was alright. Within minutes, firemen with axes were chopping through the door. Then, I heard one of them say, DOA, and all I can remember hearing was my own screaming. Dakota was dead. Our student who had so much life in front of him was gone, and it appeared that he had taken his own life. While the proximate cause of death may have been at his own hands, I could not help but think about the indirect causes. How did the treatment, the thousand barely noticeable, but soul-killing cuts that he experienced from people on our campus, maybe even me, impact him? How did the fact that he was one of so few biracial Native men on campus impact him? There were lots of unanswered questions. But one thing that was clear was that Dakota loved and felt loved by his parents. Before his death, he’d apparently written a note. And in it, he conveyed his deep love and appreciation for his mother, his father, his brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, grandparents and community on the Reservation who had done so much to make sure he had a chance. He said that they always made him feel like he could do anything in the world, but he felt that this place was just too hard. He was concerned that no matter how much he tried, he could never fit in, and he was just too tired and too sad to continue. He ended the letter with an apology for letting his parents down, but with a note that they would be reunited in the sky one day. He asked them to continue to live life to the fullest until that day came. I sat on the floor outside Dakota’s room, and a plethora of people—police, coroner, and firemen—walked in and out. As I sat there, I reflected on the absence of institutional proactive measures for our students, especially Native students where the higher levels of suicide are known. I wept as I thought about how Dakota’s death would be characterized as an individual choice when, in reality, it was a result of institutional neglect, historical legacies of colonization and erasure that diminished the importance of connection to community, faith, and spiritual practices. Together, this cocktail of neglect puts our students, especially our Black and Native students, their families and communities in great peril.

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I learned later that in the letter Dakota had written, he had also mentioned a few people on campus whom he had come to love, and I was included on the list. The news of Dakota’s death spread like wildfire on campus. People were shocked. Faculty now claimed that he was one of the brightest students that they had met. The students in the Native American Student Center and the Black Cultural Center, places where he never quite felt at home before, held a joint vigil to honor his memory, and students prepared letters that were gathered and sent to his parents and tribal community. Yet, no one talked about the classroom climate that made Dakota feel like he didn’t belong, or the racism that made biracial Natives feel like they were not authentic, or the lack of culturally relevant mental health resources on campus, especially considering the research on the ways in which historically White institutions impact their mental health. I spent most of that Monday catatonic. It hurt to think, move, do anything. My mind whirred through the hundreds of emails, texts, words spoken between me and Dakota. My entire being mourned him—who he was and who he was to become. He had a strong familial and community foundation of brilliant, loving people. It was no surprise that he, too, was both brilliant and loving. He had so much to give and would have succeeded in what he endeavored. But instead—he died. And the weight of that and my dark thoughts that I, somehow, didn’t do enough, or did something wrong, plagued me. In my office, with the lights off, door shut, window shades drawn, I simmered and wept until there was a knock at my door. A friend of Dakota’s—a Black student, first-generation, a big lover of people in general. Despite his grief, I could feel his big heart as soon as he marched into my office, his phone screen staring at me. “Thank you for trying to help Dakota,” he said through strangled sadness. “We were cool. I dug learning about his tribe, sharing our favorite music, and all that. We thought we could survive our time here and do something for our communities.” SURVIVE. This young Black man and Dakota wanted to SURVIVE TU. Not strive, flourish, or thrive, but SURVIVE. They wanted to scratch their tally marks onto the walls to mark their time for release because, aside from the few people on and off campus who showed interest in them, they ultimately felt alone and had no resources to succeed.

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According2Dakota 3 days ago I failed. #ToweringUniversity @ToweringUniversity #nofairness4me

“I tried calling him Friday after I saw this,” he said, flashing his screen to me. On it, four posts written by Dakota. Something had happened. Something had been the last straw for Dakota. Something or someone labeled him a failure, and after being tagged, that label and so many more provided him enough ammunition to believe he wasn’t worthy to live. According2Dakota 3 days ago Never helped me. Never answered questions. But III I’MMMM the failure. #ToweringUniversity @ToweringUniversity #nojustice4me

“He didn’t answer the phone,” the friend continued, fighting back tears. “I figured… I thought… he had gone home to get that fam love.” We both shook our heads—and wished beyond all wishes that Dakota had done exactly that. According2Dakota 3 days ago You can’t win if the game is set up for you to always lose. #ToweringUniversity @ToweringUniversity #noequity4me

I didn’t know what had harmed Dakota so deeply, so permanently, and I still don’t (and not knowing crushes me), but from these posts, which were so different from his typical posts about Native American facts, songs he enjoyed, and pictures of his family and tribal home, I can ascertain that something relating to the university sent Dakota into a downward spiral. Like Dakota’s last four posts, I was shown a thread with the #ToweringUniversity hashtag and a direct link to @ToweringUniversity. I am

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sure the social media strategist within the Office of University Communications read Dakota’s posts and this thread, and, at the very least, the president’s office was made aware of the situation. I wanted to leave you with a few of those messages—just in case they slipped by you like a few of my emails did. According2Dakota 3 days ago Can’t make it here w/o my fam. Can’t make it anywhere. #ToweringUniversity @ToweringUniversity #nochance4Dakota

2B4Real 6 hours ago @ToweringUniversity, is a student’s death worthy of you to come to us less fortunate and express sadness? #ToweringUniversity #RIPDakota

AintNevaMad 6 hours ago I didn’t know Dakota long, but I knew he was a good guy. Mad I wasn’t there to tell him that life was so much more than the ignorance within @ToweringUniversity! TU, do you even care!!!??? #ToweringUniversity #RIPDakota

AdriansWorld 4 hours ago #RIPDakota. Hey, @ToweringUniversity, how about you give love a chance and say something about Dakota’s death!?

#ToweringUniversity

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ASparkOfSUNshine 3 hours ago Take our land, take our youth, huh, @ToweringUniversity? #ToweringUniversity #RIPDakota

WellThankYouToo 2 hours ago 3… 2… 1… how long it will take for @ToweringUniversity to, yet again, make a mockery of a serious situation? #ToweringUniversity #RIPDakota

James Thomas (they/them) 2 hours

ago

WHY!? My heart is so heavy for this young man’s family. I only pray his death isn’t in vain. Have you seen his last posts? He was reaching out, @ToweringUniversity! #ToweringUniversity #RIPDakota

When I wrote to the two of you to share what happened with Dakota, and to once again plead with you to establish campus-wide structures of accountability for addressing faculty development, mental health and student belonging issues on our campus, you did not respond. That, for me, was the last straw. If a student’s death can’t help you to see the error of your ways, then nothing can. Dakota’s death was a sure sign to me that while working individually with students, faculty, staff, and even community members to change individual lives is important, life-­giving work, without system change, without organizational accountability, we are literally working in the valley of death. I refuse to settle for life in these dry bones. Also, I am developing a disdain for the two of you that I have to expunge from my system. While I have no idea what I’m going to do next, one thing is certain. Life is short, and I cannot waste any more time in this valley of death. I refuse to remain here any longer. JoWanda Sparten

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As Jennifer laid JoWanda’s missive on her desk, all she could do was shake her head. Is she seriously implying that the President and I were indirectly responsible for Dakota’s death? Well, if that’s what she thinks, she has another thing coming. “You refuse?” Jennifer whispered through tight lips. “Yeah, well, I refuse to allow you to make me the scapegoat for this.” With that, she stood and gathered her things to go home. As she walked from her office to her car, she watched the sun setting and thought about how she and Cathy Luetta often enjoyed watching the sunset. She could not help but be curious about what things Dakota’s parents missed most about him—the void that it created in their lives. Settling into her car for the ride home, tears slipped down her cheek. Jennifer didn’t think she could live without her daughter. The overwhelming ache of even thinking it followed her home.

References Alex-Assensoh, Y. (2021). Using neuroscience and positive psychology to enhance college teaching and learning. The National Teaching & Learning Forum. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ntlf.30268 Hammond, V. (2014). Culturally responsive teaching and the brain. Corwin. Menakem, R. (2017). My grandmother’s hands. Central Recovery Press. Moreland-Capuia, A. (2019). Training for change: Transforming systems to be trauma-informed, culturally-responsive and Neuroscientifically focused. Springer. Van der Kolk, B. A. (2015). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind and body in the healing of trauma. Penguin Books.

Culpability

Still heavy in thought about the letters from Aisha and JoWanda, Jennifer was eager for today’s coaching session. When she arrived home the night before, she watched Cathy Luetta make dinner—cereal and grilled cheese sandwiches—and this made her reflect even more on just how valuable and precious children are and how she wanted people who dealt with Cathy Luetta to treat her with dignity and like she mattered. Perhaps, this was all that JoWanda was trying to get across, though the tone of her letter did get in the way. On second thought, who was Jennifer to police JoWanda’s tone? As the anger moved into the background of her mind, Jennifer arrived at Marie’s office a few minutes early, hoping to check in with her before Austen arrived. That was not to be. As soon as Jennifer made her way through the door, Austen made a beeline to the chair closest to Marie, just as she had done before. She was confused because she thought Austen was supposed to join them via Zoom at the end of the session. “Good morning,” Austen said, looking happily at Marie and Jennifer. “We’ve got work to do, and since this is my first session, I am going to listen more than talk. By the way, I know that I was supposed to join at the end of the session and also via Zoom, but you’ve got to admit that those letters from Aisha and JoWanda are fireballs. I promise not to say anything, but I’d like to be here for the conversation at least.”

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. M. Alex-Assensoh, The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the American Academy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39229-0_15

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Jennifer winced slightly but nodded to acknowledge Austen’s good morning. Eager to get the work started, Jennifer responded with a simple, “Yes.” Marie stood and placed herself between the two women. “This is not what we discussed, Austen,” she said, “so I am going to ask you to step out for a few minutes while I have a conversation with Jennifer. I’ll come to get you as soon as we get our business settled, okay?” Austen was noticeably unsettled, but she followed Marie to the door. Before Marie could settle back in, Jennifer blurted out, “Yes, I did all of this,” and she raised a folded copy of Aisha’s and JoWanda’s letters. She slouched down in the favorite chair that she always occupied in Marie’s office, surprised at how quickly she had moved beyond the rage that had threatened to consume her. “Ok,” Marie said, taking her time to sit and get comfortable. “I am eager to hear all about your thoughts about Aisha’s and JoWanda’s letters. They put the business out on main street. However, we also need to figure out what we are doing with Austen.” “She’s here. Let’s go with the flow. My only request is that you ask her to allow us to talk without interruptions until we get to the part of the conversation where she was actually invited to participate.” “Ok,” and with that, Marie dialed Austen’s cell phone and invited her into the meeting. Austen walked back into the office and took the chair next to Marie, looking warily at her and now understanding why Jennifer had warned her that Marie was no cakewalk. At the same time, Austen had to smile. Marie reminded her of the Nana who had raised her—a Black woman who looked nice and sweet, and who also had a quiet strength and dignity that people often underestimated. A creature of habit, Jennifer not only sat in the same chair, but she decided that she would continue with the painfully honest truth telling that she had begun during their initial sessions. So rather than trying to Whitewash the letters from JoWanda and Aisha, Jennifer decided that she would just tell the unvarnished truth—the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. “So, continuing from where we left off, Jennifer, you said that you did all of this. What does all of this mean?” Marie smiled, awaiting Jennifer’s answer. Chuckling nervously, Jennifer replied, “So, you’re going to make me sort out the details, are you?” She looked over at Austen and thought, my

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father taught me to fight, not flee. I can do this. Jennifer remembered that Austen was her boss’ boss, and she was worried about what Austen would think about her performance as Provost, considering Aisha’s and JoWanda’s letters. After pulling strength from her father’s experiences, she took a cleansing breath and realized that it was too late to change her mind and have Austen leave. “But isn’t the devil and, often times, the deepest lessons in the details?” Marie asked. Jennifer shifted nervously in her chair. “That might be so, but I’m trying to escape the devil and not invite him in. Ok, I see where you’re headed, but at least let me put my seat belt on so that I can manage through the turbulence. Let’s get to work.” With that, Jennifer unfolded her copy of Aisha’s and JoWanda’s letters. “Ok, let’s begin with tenure and promotion, the golden ring that provides a lifetime appointment for faculty in the Academy,” Jennifer declared. Marie sat back while Jennifer forcefully argued that tenure and promotion standards and processes were sacred. For her, tenure and promotion were supposed to be difficult. If they were easy, then everybody would get tenure, and that would undermine the concept of meritocracy that was so important to the Academy. “Okay, so when you onboarded Aisha, did she understand your position about tenure and promotion?” Marie asked. “Excuse me,” Austen said. “I know that I am supposed to be quiet, and I will, but my pen is not working, and I need to take notes.” “Use your phone,” Marie said. “That way, you won’t lose the notes, and you will have them for future reference.” Jennifer’s stomach did a somersault as she began to deeply regret allowing Austen to sit in on her meeting with Marie. “Well, onboarding is not that big in the Academy,” Jennifer replied nonchalantly. “We focus on compliance and how to stay out of court. We usually select our department heads and Deans because they were good scholars. I just assumed that everyone who made it to her position understood and respected the standards.” “I’m detecting a bit of sarcasm in your tone and even in the way that you are holding your body,” she said. “What is that about?” Jennifer sat silently for a while before responding. “Well, come to think of it,” she began, “you are right. Think about it from my perspective. As a woman, the first Black woman to serve as Provost, I have my own battles to fight—people thinking that I was in over my head, or that the only

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reason I was hired was because I was a woman or Black or both. I felt I had to tread very carefully and send signals that I respected the most hallowed traditions of the Academy and that I was not going to rock the boat. But then, that is exactly what Aisha was set on doing. She was not just happy to be Dean. She wanted to change things.” Jennifer threw her hands up. With a nod, Marie said slowly, “Wow, that must have been really hard for you, and it seems like you tried to manage the stress by keeping everything the way it normally operates.” “Yeah, I guess so, because her presence as Dean was a big change in and of itself,” Jennifer said. “There are already so many things that are different about me. I am a woman. I am a single mother. My child is biracial, and most of the previous Provosts have come from the humanities or social sciences. I come from a professional school. All of these things make me stand out like a sore thumb, and so I try to color in the lines because being here is a lot of change in and of itself.” “Funny that you use color in the lines when you didn’t mention race being a difference of yours.” Lowering her eyes, Jennifer quietly said, “Even we can be colorblind.” A brief sadness washed over Marie’s eyes. “You’re right. I didn’t bring that up to make you feel worse. I really empathize with you about all that you carry on your shoulders. It must not feel good to be in a leadership position but still not belong. Can you say more about what you mean by changing things?” Jennifer then launched into her recollection of her third meeting with Aisha, where she came with a full list of items that she wanted to work on. At the top of the list was tenure and promotion (T and P). “When I saw T and P at the top of her list, my gut clenched,” Jennifer admitted, “which was my own personal signal that this was a problem.” She leaned forward in the chair, her fingers laced together in her lap. “So, how did you tell her that you thought it was not a good idea?” Marie asked. “Well, I did not actually tell her that it was not a good idea,” Jennifer responded. Thump. Austen was leaning over, picking up her phone from the floor. When Jennifer looked at Austen’s face, she saw it clouded over by disappointment, and she knew that the disappointment was not simply because she had dropped her phone. She wondered if she was going to have a job after this meeting ended.

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Noting that Jennifer was distracted, Marie sat forward and gestured with her hand to continue. “Now, I am really intrigued. Do say more.” Out of the corner of her eye, Marie noticed Austen leaning in, too. Jennifer explained that since she and Aisha were both new to the campus, she had to walk a tightrope. Aisha was the first biracial, Muslim and female Dean of science and technology at the university, and many people on campus, including the Black community and beyond, were eager to see her succeed. Jennifer was not sure what would happen if others felt that the Provost was holding her back from doing things that, in some respects, were within every Dean’s authority. Jennifer wanted to get off on a good foot with the Dean, and so she didn’t have the heart to tell her that she ultimately would not be approving any radical tenure and promotion changes. “But here is the catch,” Jennifer continued. “I really felt that the science faculty would not support any of the changes that she was pushing, so I figured that the ideas would die without me having to tell her. I know that this looks cowardly and selfish, but there is also another point. I figured that by allowing her to work with her faculty on these issues, this would provide her with an opportunity to get to know them better.” “So, let me get this straight,” Marie said as she pinched and then rubbed the bridge of her nose. “You had a sense that Aisha would not be supported by the faculty, but you allowed her to enter that battle anyway because you thought that she would benefit from getting to know them through this conflict-ridden process?” First and foremost, Marie had asked the question for clarification purposes, but she would be lying if she didn’t at least internally admit that she asked out of slight disbelief. In her position, Marie knew she needed to be as impartial as possible, but her need to be professional did not negate the sting of Jennifer’s selfishness and cowardice. “Yes, but the strangest thing happened, and this should have been a sign to me that Aisha was very persuasive, but I was so busy following my usual train of thought that I did not even consider it. Here is the thing. Almost a third of the faculty signed on to the need for organizational accountability around tenure and promotion, including a few of the senior, White male faculty.” “And so, what happened?” Jennifer admitted to Marie that she was also surprised that other colleges and universities were engaged in transformative projects around tenure and promotion, including having each department examine its

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processes and discuss how each of the indicators of success had been measured and whether or not those standards were inclusive of the types of excellence, scholarship and teaching found in the modern Academy. However, as a new Provost, she was unwilling to risk her political capital on something that was so volatile for many of the senior faculty and uncertain for the campus. She wanted to do what was safe for her and the university, and fooling around with tenure and promotion standards was definitely not safe. “But what about protecting the university?” Marie asked. “Doesn’t it also include offensive maneuvers like making sure it is functioning according to the most just and equitable standards?” “You know hindsight is 20/20, and looking back, how I treated Aisha was more about risk and comfort for me. As a result, I missed an opportunity to partner with a really dynamic Dean who could have probably helped me to get other things done. Truthfully, I did not even take the time to carefully review her vita. I just figured that Hillman adored her, and in light of all that was going on with Black Lives Matter, that Aisha was an opportunity to bring in another person of color, and that I, rather than she, would be the one providing support. I did not see us as possible partners, both having something to contribute to the other person’s success.” With that confession, Jennifer got up and began pacing. As a seasoned coach, Marie realized that this probably was not the time to intervene with questions. Rather, she simply watched as Jennifer walked back and forth and around the room. She observed the look in her eyes, the rhythm of her breathing, the burrow in her brow, the clenching of her fists and tightness in her jaws as signs of her effort to work through regret, like she was waging a battle with her past and trying to take words and actions back. Then, in the corner of her eyes, she saw Austen, head bowed and shaking in disbelief. When Austen looked up to see the look on Marie’s face, she sat up and put on her poker face. Marie smiled and turned her attention back to Jennifer. Running her fingers through her brown coils, Jennifer let out a breath. “Yep, this is embarrassing. I blew it, not just with this, but as I said, all of the stuff that she listed is pretty much as it happened.” “Umph, umph, umph,” Marie heard Austen say, but she chose to ignore it, hoping that Jennifer would, too. “So, do you have a plan in mind for all of it, or do you want to walk through it issue by issue?” Marie asked.

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“The situation with JoWanda’s call for organizational accountability was just as irritating to me as Aisha’s requests were. The difference is that JoWanda was working deeper in the institution, and she did not report directly to me.” “Why were her requests irritating to you?” Marie asked, truly intrigued by Jennifer’s unvarnished truth telling. She knew that Jennifer, with every word, was moving deeper into a level of trust with her. Trust is what typically allowed people to own up to their wrongs. “As a law professor, I know the classroom is supposed to be challenging, and some people are not going to make it through. We use pedagogy and toughness to separate the wheat from the chaff and to mold students into a particular way of thinking. At the time that all of this was going on, I was not persuaded by arguments that advise us to create classrooms that are nurturing. Students are here to learn, not to be coddled. And to suggest that Black, Native, Latino, Asian and biracial students need to be treated differently and in more culturally responsive ways is, in my way of thinking, almost racist or at least diminishing for them.” “And now?” Marie asked. “On so many levels, I am embarrassed because I have been truly blind and misinformed,” Jennifer looked to the floor. “My views have changed, as you know, and I wish that I could have a redo.” Biting her bottom lip and closing her eyes tight, she added, “I can’t help but wonder if I had taken JoWanda’s first message more seriously, would the situation had been different for Dakota.” “At the time, I felt that advisors should do what they were hired to do and leave the teaching to people with the Ph.D.s.” Her voice softened by quick, shallow breathing, Jennifer added, “You’ve got to remember, Marie, I am, at heart, a faculty member, and I am not eager to take authority, autonomy and power away from the faculty. But JoWanda’s persistence and Dakota’s death are making me think what accountability to students—all our students—means. Also, what does it mean to be a good teacher so that all students feel a sense of belonging in the classroom?” “It’s just that we expected Aisha to come and fit into the current structure, but she was always looking for ways to make things fair, just and kind for folks. Look at what she tried to do with the conversation around service—asking us to rethink why certain service requests were necessary in the first place. My God, that is a huge structural issue. She cannot

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possibly expect the Academy to wrestle with those questions. The bottom line is that, unlike me and Hillman, she came here to fight, not to fit in.” “You chose your own comfort over fairness. You chose the normal everyday racism, sexism, classism, homophobia over racial justice. You chose what was comfortable for you over true leadership. And if indeed institutional viability has to do with tenure and promotion, you chose something other than what is best for the institution despite the fact that all along you’ve argued that to pay too much attention to the concerns of Black faculty and staff who leave was to put the institution in jeopardy,” Marie stated. “But we did fight,” Jennifer insisted. “It was very, very difficult to get Aisha into the deanship position. Her letter describes the process from her perspective, but what that letter does not detail is all the shenanigans that we had to deal with behind the scenes. The sciences had never hired a senior Black person in any of their departments. We hired her to be Dean of all of the sciences.” “But Aisha is biracial. Why do you and the President keep referring to her as Black—which is only part of her identity? She is also Lebanese, Muslim and female.” “I agree and that reminds me of the other ways that we fought for her. When the recruitment committee found out that she was also Muslim, there were concerns about whether she was part of a sleeper cell and would do harm to the institution. Were it not for the Search Advocacy process that we were putting in place, and Tien, an assistant professor of chemistry who has advocated for hiring more Black and Native scientists, the President and I would never have known. But since the Search Advocate is not a faculty member in the sciences, she did not have to worry about blowback from colleagues. She took copious notes, which revealed numerous incidents of interrupting conversations that were explicitly racist, sexist or xenophobic. The Search Advocate’s notes also indicated that, after it was evident that Aisha’s credentials were far superior to any other, some of the senior faculty attempted to abandon the search, or to encourage people who were already on campus to put their hats in the ring at the last minute, which was totally unprofessional and unethical.” “We learned about the sabotage from a young Chinese American chemist, who heard search committee members talking about what they were doing to ‘keep the Taliban’ out of TU. Hillman immediately reached out to the senior faculty that he know and shared his enthusiasm about the candidate, without letting on that he know about their plans to

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undermine the search. Slowly, the tide changed when senior faculty revealed to other members of the committee that they had done some extensive background work on Alisha. She was not a threat because she was from a town a few miles from Towering, and their friends vouched that Aisha’s father was a good guy.” With beads of sweat dotting her forehead, Jennifer nearly pleaded, “I say all of this to say that we really did a lot to get her here, and it is disappointing that she could not just do what we asked her to do instead of trying to be so grand and revolutionary in the work.” “What does it look like to continue the fight once they get here?” Marie asked. “Isn’t that what Aisha meant when she wrote about the heart transplant—where, as the new heart, she needed you and the President to ensure that her presence and work were seen as legitimate and bona fide? Isn’t that what organizational accountability looks like too?” “Well, I think I was afraid. I also didn’t realize just how much power I had, and even if I had the power, I did not want to use it in this way because tenure and promotion works for people. I was concerned that if I used my authority to help Aisha to change systems that I generally think are really fair, then I’m kind of alienating the people who I may need in the future.” “So, it’s your sense that tenure and promotion systems generally work for all people in the Academy?” Marie asked. “Yes, around 85–90% of the people who apply for tenure or promotion are promoted.” “If we are telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” Marie said. “What you’re not saying is that many of our Black, Native, biracial, Latino and Pacific Islander faculty leave the institution before the tenure decision is made. For them, tenure and promotion processes are not working, and those departures are often not counted in tenure and promotion data. There are also countless studies of the ways in which Black, Latino, Native, Pacific Islander and Alaska native faculty have gone up for tenure and have been denied because, similar to what almost happened to Guadalupe, many senior faculty argue that the work published is service, not scholarship. So, by having the power to define what scholarship is, many of our senior faculty, who are most likely to be White and male, can exclude others based on so-called principles of meritocracy.” “So, when you suggest that the tenure and promotion system is not broken, what you’re really saying is that it’s not broken for White people and especially it’s not broken for White men or for people like you who are

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content to take the fairness of the system at face value. To be sure, I’m not saying that everyone who applies for tenure should get it. Neither am I saying that every White person and every White man has a rigid view of meritocracy. There are times when people across identities simply have not done the work necessary to earn tenure and promotion, and there are senior faculty across racial, gender, class and disciplinary boundaries that illustrate that. But what I am also saying is that the tenure and promotion incentives are skewed in favor of people who define what excellence looks like in ways that disproportionately advantage White people and traditional notions of what scholarship and knowledge look like in the Academy.” “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Austen said. “Not sure if it’s time for our threesome yet, Austen, but I don’t joke about issues like this,” Marie said, turning to look Austen squarely in the eyes. “That is borne out by the data and not just anecdote. So, when the Provost and President decided that Aisha’s efforts to revise the tenure and promotion process were not necessary, they were enforcing the current system that is notoriously problematic, especially for scientists who do not fit into the White, male, cis-gendered, heterosexual paradigm.” Marie could see the frustration build in Jennifer—the tightness around her eyes, the tick in her jaw. She was still trying to figure out where Austen was coming from. Was she frustrated by Jennifer’s handling of the situation, by Marie’s recitation of the data, both or something else altogether? “Well, I really need to read those data before jumping into changes that are likely to upend the university,” Jennifer said meekly. “Yes,” Marie nodded, “but those studies are almost as old as Methuselah. How were you able to get a job as Provost without having requisite knowledge of these issues? I am sorry to be blunt, but you and I agreed that I am here to coach and tell you the unvarnished truth, not to let you walk out of here exposed.” Marie ran a slender finger across her notes, skimming what she had written regarding Aisha’s letter. “There were two additional issues that Aisha mentioned,” she said, “her efforts to make service more equitable by actually getting to the root of the issue and her efforts to leverage racial data and the research on growth mindset and racially biased teaching to close the achievement gap.” “Race and intersectionality are blind spots for me,” Jennifer stated. “That is a revelation that is becoming clearer because I thought that I was actually a good ally. You know, all I can say is that I had never considered

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the real impact of race as a root cause of inequality. I understood correlation, but I had not gone as far as I needed to understand its role in facilitating opportunity, disadvantage or achievement gaps. Still, I am not sure that I have the power to do anything about that. It’s just too big.” “Is that so?” Marie responded. Jennifer looked at Marie with curiosity. “So, are you suggesting that I, as Provost, have the power to make those changes that Aisha was advocating for? Isn’t this something that I needed to check in with the President, faculty, university senate, other academic leaders and partners about, and even if they agreed to do it, what does it mean to change our tenure and promotion system and our way of assessing student success if all of the other higher education systems across the United States stay the way they are?” Maria chuckled as she observed the way that Jennifer was dealing with this issue. But it took everything in her to keep from having a deep belly laugh about Austen, who she was watching out of the corner of her eyes. Austen was about to blow a gasket. If Marie was following Austen’s reactions correctly, it seemed that she was disappointed at Jennifer’s underestimation of her own power to effect change. But, as a coach, Marie needed to focus on her client. Once again, Marie offered, “It seems like you are problematizing this issue rather than searching for a solution.” “How so?” Jennifer asked. “As Provost, you have the ability and the power over all academic functions in the institution. You know that. So, to suggest that you don’t is a waste of both of our time. Right? When it seems necessary to check with the President, I’m sure you do that just as you’ve done with other things. The issue here is that you chose not to even fight.” Still continuing to argue her point, Jennifer elaborated, “We’ve all done things to clarify tenure and promotion processes. It’s basically a question for procedure and thinking about what it is to make things clear. But that wasn’t the case for Aisha. She had to go deep into issues about citations, which is like the holy grail for scientists. If you want to pick a fight with a scientist, suggest that they use something other than citation count for tenure and promotion.” “I read the same letter that you read, Jennifer,” Marie said, “and that is not what I understood Aisha to say. To be clear, my understanding of Aisha’s letter was that she was asking for additional indicators of effectiveness—not to do away with citation counts.”

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“Be that as it may,” Jennifer said, “the scientists on our faculty took that as a signal that citation counts were not good enough.” “But that would’ve been your opportunity as Provost to simply signal that as the sciences evolve and especially in light of what is going on with COVID-19, where people are not even listening to scientists or taking their work into consideration as they make life decisions about pandemics and the environment. It is important to constantly evolve in ways that make the work of scientists relevant to the world’s most pressing problems.” “As you say that now, it seems so simple. But at the time, it literally seemed like I was defying senior faculty who had worked so long in the department.” “Ah, I see,” Marie said. “So, reading between the lines, it seems like you felt the need to pick a side, where the senior faculty were on one side and Aisha, who you brought here to bring about change, was on another. And rather than say we asked her to move forward with changes and were going to trust the work that she is collaboratively leading, you chose to continue on with the status quo. Is that right?” “Yeeeees,” Jennifer said slowly with a sober and somber voice. “It’s not what I’d like to actually believe about myself, but that’s what actually happened. I chose tradition over change even though we hired Aisha to specifically bring about change.” “May I jump in here?” Austen asked. Marie and Jennifer jumped. They had both been so engrossed in their conversation that they had forgotten Austen was present. When they nodded, Austen continued, “I really want to thank Jennifer for being as vulnerable and honest as she has been. Not so sure that I would have been able to be as honest when I was at that stage of my career, first starting out in leadership. But organizational accountability, especially the kind that Aisha and JoWanda write about in their letters, cannot take place without leaders like us taking a good hard look at the motives, assumptions and ideas that are underneath our actions.” “Thanks, Austen,” Jennifer said. “This is all very embarrassing to me. I can’t help but think that if I had just been more insightful about the racialized and gendered institutional context, as well as more responsive, more cognizant of my own identities and intersections and where I fit in, and how that relates to others and their life’s journey, perhaps some of these resignations would not have happened.” “That’s part of it, but not all of it,” Austen said. “Do the two of you remember what happened with Kodak?”

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Looking warily, Marie nodded while Jennifer said that she did not. “If you are going where I think that you are going, Austen,” Marie said quietly, “please do proceed.” Leaning back comfortably, Austen seemed to take a moment to consider where to begin before she provided Jennifer and Marie with a background on Kodak, the company in Rochester, New York, that everyone associated with photography. Kodak engineer Steve Stassen invented the first digital camera in 1975, and when he told the Kodak executives about the invention, their alleged response was that his invention was nice but don’t tell anybody. Eventually, Kodak went out of business because digital photography eclipsed the film technology that they were using. The irony is that Kodak engineers initially developed the digital photography, but the company refused to use it. “This actually lines up with what we all now know about intellectual arrogance and the unwillingness to rethink our approach,” Jennifer said, making connections. “Back then, digital technology was what we know today as ‘disruptive technology,’ but rather than leveraging it for their benefit and the benefit of society, Kodak tried to dominate through tradition rather than innovation.” “I am wondering,” Austen said, “if ten years from now will TU and others in higher education realize that they ignored what was key to our survival. Maybe, just maybe, safety, organizational accountability, unvarnished truth telling, love and spirituality represent the disruptive technology that Kodak missed and that  the Towering Seven so eloquently wrote about?” Jennifer winced. “Ouch.” Kodak was unable to see that digital photography was a disruptive technology and that this was not just an accidental fluke by one of their engineers but that it was technology that was coming. Rather than understanding that it was the wave of the future, they tried to bury it. “As I sat listening to the many times that we failed the Towering Seven, I was also thinking that for years, the Academy has had this turnstile of Black, Native, Latino, biracial and Asian faculty leaving the Academy, and we continue to turn a blind eye to it,” Austen said. “We have research on the impact of bias, racism, sexism, ableism and other forms of oppression, but we don’t give a lot of credence to that work. The books that I am reading about on Whiteness, structural violence and stereotype threat all suggest that we need to be teaching students using a whole-body approach. We have the knowledge, but rather than moving with the innovation, we

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are insisting on using tradition—and if we are not careful, we are going to have a Kodak moment.” “The other issue that I heard Jennifer raise is about power. I agree with Marie that Jennifer has more power than she thinks she has. But I also agree that organizational accountability is bigger than TU. We need to do what we can do, but we also need to inspire a movement that includes other universities, but most importantly, the organizations that underpin higher education. We need to make sure that the accreditors, the legislators, philanthropists, media, research institutes and the scholarly academies are in step with us.” As Austen talked, Marie was so grateful that Jennifer had agreed to include Austen in their sessions. She was adding fuel to the fire that Marie and Jennifer had started, and hopefully, this fire would inspire the kind of organizational accountability that TU needed, not just to keep its faculty, but to really contribute in the way that the Academy was intended. “I have a few connections that I am making with others on governing boards,” Austen said, “and through the Board, we have connections with state legislators, congressmen and the Department of Education. This is complex, but it is doable, and TU is going to lead the way.” “A few connections?” Marie laughed aloud as she thought about the manifold local, state, regional, national and international connections that Austen and other members of the TU Board of Trustees had. “Hillman and I are making good progress with our community partners on interventions, and it seems like Hillman is actually doing some of the reading and thinking again about the issues of safety. He brought together a group of CEOs in Towering and the surrounding communities, including for profit and not for profit entities. He shared the letters on safety and it led to some interesting conversations. After a few rocky meetings, the group decided to begin working together on addressing the issues that Black children are facing in the public schools. They are bringing in some of the researchers from TU along with parents and scholars who conduct research on partnerships between universities and public schools. They are also providing stipends for a few of the Black faculty and staff, who are remaining, to help frame the work. I am not sure about the details, but they are certain that they can work together using a primary school as a proof of concept,” Jennifer said. She felt a little lighter in her chest after Austen’s words. “I am impressed by their ideas for creating more of an enterprise mindset so that the university is actually using the

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knowledge that it is creating to be fair and excellent. This conversation has given me even more food for thought.” Austen and Jennifer looked at Marie. As their coach and consultant, she needed to affirm and encourage them to celebrate the progress that they were making as a way of inspiring resilience and pointing them toward truth telling. “You are doing hard work,” Marie said. “What does self-care look like as we wrap up this meeting?” After encouraging the two women to replenish themselves however they needed, Marie adjourned. “Right on,” Austen said as she and Jennifer walked out of Marie’s office and into the beginning of their weekend. Although the trio went their separate ways, they were equally hopeful about the progress made and the ongoing work of unvarnished truth telling that still needed to be done.

Passage Four: Unvarnished Truth Telling

The previous letters from Rosscoe, Wendy, Aisha and JoWanda are examples of what John Hope Franklin called unvarnished truth telling, or truth without embellishment. In reality, unvarnished truth telling, or stating the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is vastly different from framing, narrative building and branding that communication strategists use to paint institutions in the Academy in the most positive light. When it comes to the retention of Black faculty and staff in the Academy, unvarnished truth telling comes down to reconciling the past in ways that create a more hopeful future. Indeed, I argue that everybody in the Academy must engage in affirming  introspection and unvarnished truth telling about themselves (Glaude, 2021; Christopher, 2022), about America’s mixed record on racial equality with a focus on anti-Blackness (Hannah-­ Jones et al., 2021; Wilkerson, 2020; Cose, 2004) and about each institution’s historical and contemporary treatment of Black faculty, staff and students (White, 2023; Cole, 2020; Griffin, 2020). Indeed, the first step of unvarnished truth telling begins with shedding our false self and living authentically as  our true self (Arbinger Institute and EBSCOhost books, 2000).  To be clear, unvarnished truth telling is complicated under normal conditions, but it is much more so today, as there are political consequences for uttering truths about structural racism and the permanence of racism in American society. The power dynamics of truth telling, including but

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. M. Alex-Assensoh, The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the American Academy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39229-0_16

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not limited to race, appear to be even more perilous (Hannah-Jones et al., 2021; Bonhoffer, 1978). Yet, unvarnished truth telling emerges from unleashing different perspectives so that they can interact in relationship to one another. When unvarnished truth telling is heard and responded to appropriately, it provides a solid foundation for relationships that have the potential to bring about healing and reconciliation. These relationships form the building blocks of nurturing communities and an Academy that is relevant, humane and innovative. In the SOULS framework, truth telling must include the following three components: (i) introspection and life-long learning about racial equity, with a focus on thoughts and behaviors that support Black flourishing as well as  thriving, (ii) institutional truth telling about the history of the institution and how it has and is treating its Black faculty, staff, students and alumni, and (iii) truth telling about the dual and dueling history of racial equity, with a focus on Blackness, in America and the world. First, every member of the Academy, including Black people, must reckon with their own feelings of internalized inferiority and internalized superiority, respectively, as well as views about Blacks, the challenging history of Black people in America and where they are on the journey of self-­ awareness, racial equality and healing  (Palmer, 1993). In this regard, unvarnished truth telling involves seeing ourselves as we are rather than the way that we want to be. As bell hooks reminds us, unvarnished truth telling will look different for each individual and for each of the groups that have been sidelined and marginalized by White supremacist ideas and behaviors. Second, unvarnished truth telling must include an unembellished accounting of how academic institutions have treated current and former Black faculty, staff and students so that all parties can make an informed decision about whether or not to invest their talents and careers at the institution. Brown University, under the leadership of President Ruth Simmons, led the way in exploring the university’s historical relationship with slavery and enslaved people. Since that time, a consortium of institutions has continued to do an institutional self-examination of these issues. This work is especially important in higher education institutions where most of our mission and value statements are supposedly undergirded by the search for truth as well as light (Griffin, et al., 2011). Third, the Academy must be a mechanism for unvarnished truth telling about America and the world, especially through the curriculum, research,

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creative activities, policies and partnerships. From its inception, Black people have been a part of the American Academy—America’s network of colleges, universities, councils and associations responsible for educating, socializing and credentialing millions of students in America and beyond. Craig Wilder’s historical analysis of colleges and universities documented the use of slave corpses in scientific experiments, as well as the use of such data to rationalize race-based claims of racial inferiority. Furthermore, Wilder’s unvarnished truth telling about the roots of the Academy reminds us: American colleges and universities were not innocent or passive beneficiaries of conquest and colonial slavery. The European invasion of the Americas and the modern slave trade pulled peoples throughout the Atlantic world into each other’s lives and colleges were among the colonial institutions that braided their histories and rendered their fates dependent and antagonistic. The academy never stood apart from American slavery—in fact, it stood beside church and state and the third pillar of a civilization built on bondage. (Wilder, p. 11)

For example, the curriculum should point out that while America has made significant progress in addressing some of the most repugnant forms of racism, structural and institutional racism are often the rule that is manifested in daily life, rather than the exception. The Academy must also tell the truth about the contributions of Black people to societal progress above and beyond the arts and athletics, including STEM, social science, and diplomacy to name a few. Unvarnished truth telling provides information about the actual contributions of Black people, providing new knowledge that has the potential to illumine racialized stigmas that undermine full participation in the Academy. Passage Three explores two accounts of unvarnished truth telling: the experiences of a university communications director who has compromised truth in order to be accepted by the TU president and the experiences of a faculty member, who has been harmed by institutional deception. Here again, the research on truth telling provides some insight about how to move forward. For example, using a truth, racial healing and transformation framework, the W.W. Kellogg Foundation has worked with “176 leaders and scholars as representatives of more than 144 national TRHT individual and organizational partners, with a reach of more than 289 million people, to develop a framework and implementation guide for how

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communities could implement a TRHT process in a place—either a city, a region, a state—or a sector” (W.W.  Kellogg Foundation, 2016). Additionally indigenous practices in America and Africa around truth telling and restorative justice provide examples that can be adapted to the university (Leiner & Schliesser, 2018). Each group in the Academy deserves to have its unvarnished truth told as part of the larger American story. In the following two chapters, we focus on what truth telling looks like for Black faculty and staff.

References Arbinger Institute & EBSCOhost books. (2000). Leadership and self-deception: Getting out of the box. Berrett-Koehler. Bonhoffer, D. (1978). Ethics. Macmillan. Christopher, G. (2022). Rx racial healing: A guide to embracing humanity. AACU. Cole, E. (2020). The campus color line: College presidents and the struggle for Black freedom. Princeton University Press. Cose, E. (2004). Bone to pick: of forgiveness, reconciliation, reparation, and revenge. Atria Books. Glaude, E. S. (2021). Begin again: James Baldwin’s America and its urgent lessons for our own. Crown. Griffin, K. A. (2020). Looking behind the pipeline: Institutional barriers, strategies, and benefits to increasing the representation of women and men of color in the professoriate. In L. Perna (Ed.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research (Vol. 35). Springer. Griffin, K. A., Pifer, M. J., Humphrey, J. R., & Hazelwood, A. M. (2011). (Re) Defining departure: Exploring Black professors’ experiences with and responses to racism and racial climate. American Journal of Education., 117(4), 495–526. Hannah-Jones, N., Roper, C., Silverman, I., & Silverstein, J. (2021). The 1619 project: A new origin story. One World. Leiner, M., & Schliesser, C. (2018). Alternative approaches in conflict resolution. Palgrave Pivot. Palmer, P. J. (1993). To know as we are known: Education as a spiritual journey. Harper One. W.W.  Kellogg Foundation. (2016). https://www.wkkf.org/news-­and-­media/ article/2017/06/w-­k-­kellogg-­foundation-­announces-­14-­truth-­racial-­healing-­ transformation-­engagements-­throughout-­the-­united-­states/ White, K. (2023). Black voices from the ivory tower. Independently published. Wilkerson, I. (2020). Caste: The origins of our discontent. Random House.

“No Tea, No Shade”

Jennifer had been anticipating Tiffany’s letter as she was considered the “spokesperson” for the Towering Seven—despite the fact that none of the seven had said a word since the story broke. They did not need to. Aspects of the story were being kept alive in all of the Higher Education media, often in amazing and unsuspecting ways. She had to give it to Tiffany, she was an excellent strategist. With Tiffany being so directly connected to the President, Jennifer was sure her eyes would be open, yet again, to revelations about how the institution really worked. Dear President Robinson: In this digital age of ours, you probably don’t get a lot of handwritten letters. However, I am so grateful for what I have learned from you and Towering University over the past three years that I had to put pen to paper, even if the thank you is also for lessons that I have learned the hard way. Let me begin with the sweetness. After all, TU hired me even though I lacked formal experience in higher education. Coming from the nonprofit world, I was unfamiliar with the administrative cultures in higher education. Yet, you and others at TU looked at the other unusual assets that I brought to my work, including a Pulitzer Prize and degrees from the Ivy League. As a wheelchair rider, I appreciate the pivot that you and others at TU made to ensure that I had access to campus. Initially, it was no fun arriving at meetings where I literally had no place at the table or having to enter the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. M. Alex-Assensoh, The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the American Academy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39229-0_17

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Administration building through the back door because the front entrance had stairs, but no ramps. Then, there was the time that I overheard you lamenting that you had to walk across campus, while I had the luxury of riding in a motorized chair. Or the time when you asked me, in the presence of our full cabinet how I ended up in “my condition.” Those were rough days, but I am happy that you read the essays that I provided about ableism and apologized for your previous missteps. From my part, I was just delighted to contribute my best talents and expertise, unfettered by concerns about access. My parents made sure that I never felt diminished by my disability, and TU learned to affirm that. For all of this, I am very grateful. As a journalist, I am committed to the idea of truth-telling, and I figured that your commitment to free speech meant that you were as well. When I think about truth-telling and the university, I often recall and am empowered by something that Vice Chancellor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz at the University of Cambridge shared at a 2017 gathering of leaders from some of the world’s most recognized academic institutions. He stated, “Society gives universities their right or license to practice their work, universities in turn are charged with holding a mirror to society; a duty that sometimes requires institutions of higher learning to speak unpalatable truths that society might not want to hear” (Hoffman, 2021). Also, in the spirit of truth-telling, I was drawn to TU because of your commitment to free speech. Black people were definitely not on the Founding Father’s minds when they designed the First Amendment. Yet, fiery change agents like Ida B. Wells, Red Cloud (born Maȟ píya Lúta), Sojourner Truth, Malcolm X, Adela Sloss-Vento, Kiyoshi Kuromiya, Angela Davis, Winona LaDuke and Martin Luther King Jr. took ownership of doctrine and used it as a tool to secure rights and resources that were illegally denied. My father, a Ghanaian immigrant, was almost killed for speaking out against a Ghanaian governmental regime and my mother’s slave ancestry is rooted in prohibitions against unvarnished truth telling. As a result, I understand the importance of free speech in America even when the governments and the courts have not fairly provided access to its safe harbors. For this reason, free speech is my guiding light, not as an end unto itself but as a mechanism for greater truth, freedom and clarity for all. One of the reasons that I became a journalist was to ensure that I contributed to unvarnished truthtelling—in plain, direct, and intentional ways—that allowed individuals, organizations, and society at large to live free. Therefore, I was honored to work alongside you to ensure that TU was a place where free speech was uninhibited in the service of justice, freedom, and the production of new knowledge and art. That is why it is ironic that the beginning of my end at TU centers around free speech.

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Free Speech Is Not Free Prior to coming to TU, my understanding of free speech was primarily based on the experiences that my father had as a journalist, living in a society where certain types of expression could lead to death. In this sense, I thought about free speech as a bar against harming someone physically— even to the point of death—on the basis of expression. At TU, however, I came face to face with understanding that for many of our students on campus, the harm that comes from free speech is not physical but psychological. In the aftermath of the 2016 Presidential Election, Latino and Muslim students woke up to a TU campus that was filled with hateful messages and vile depictions. They were verbally assaulted by other students who felt that the 2016 election was an opportunity to use slurs in the classroom and to deface campus property with racist imagery. Our faculty were simply not prepared to address these issues, and their flat-footedness in the classroom made it even worse for our students. Almost immediately, your [email protected] was inundated with requests from student groups to meet with you, the telephone was ringing off the hook with concerned parents who were threatening to withdraw their students from campus, and the director of our counseling center called to say that they were inundated with students who needed support and care. As your communication director, I was on point to provide a communication plan for these crises, which were helping me to see that free speech is not really free. It has costs and, in most instances, groups that are least able to pay are being asked to bear the burden of those costs. As I walked across campus and saw the sadness on our Latino and Muslim students’ faces and also students of all racial backgrounds who stood in solidarity against hate and violence, as I watched our custodial staff paint over the vile words and trauma-inducing symbols, and as I walked past the counseling center to see lines of students waiting to get in, I came face to face with what those costs look like: time focusing on mental wellness at the expense of studying; fear of physical attacks; negative impact on grades and the ability to concentrate. As your primary communicator, I realized that our jobs are not to defend a constitutional principle per se but to demonstrate concern for all aspects of our students’ safety—physical and psychological, too. I carefully drafted a message that centered your care for our community of faculty, staff, and students, as well as your desire that every member of the campus community feel valued and safe while on campus. I went on to help people understand the history of racism as well as xenophobia and the importance of freedom of religion in our country, and the ways in which the

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campus was bringing curriculum online, hiring new faculty, building new community partnerships and seeking out new types of funding to make sure that all of our students felt cared for and were learning how to live in a multicultural society that is also just. I ended with an invitation for everyone on campus to engage in conversations, dialogue, panel discussions and debates across political and cultural identities to ensure that everyone on our campus was honing their interpersonal skills. I quickly sent the message to you, with a copy to our video folks, to ensure that they had the text for your teleprompter. Imagine my surprise, however, when I listened to the speech that you gave to our campus. Free Speech is essential to our American democracy and to our way of life at TU. For those of us who feel harmed by speech that we hate or feel is inappropriate, we must fight back with more speech. I am not happy about the unkind things that are being said, but we must not turn back from our commitment to free speech. I can reasonably say that the progress that we have made in this country has been because minority communities have argued toward the truth rather than trying to suppress the language that they did not like. I encourage all of us at TU to do the same.

Your message missed several larger truths: For example, as a White man with an illustrious academic pedigree and more money than you know what to do with, you have the social prestige and the financial capital to advocate for yourself. In contrast, our students find themselves in positions of limited power, where the very act of speaking out may undermine their grades or expose them to greater social exclusion at our historically White institution. It is intellectually dishonest of you to suggest that engaging in free speech is akin to engaging in an intellectual marketplace of ideas because such a depiction downplays the harm that our students face in this instance. Also, it is not up to others to decide whether the harm that is done to our students outweighs any possible benefits that accrue to free speech and its impacts. As president, it is crucial that you tell the unvarnished truth that free speech is not only about sharing ideas in the intellectual marketplace but that the marketplace extracts costs and wounds that are deeply impactful, even those that are unseen by the naked eye. As I continued to listen to students, faculty, and staff on campus, I came to realize that the racial assaults (including but not limited to microaggressions) that I had trained myself to overlook and write off as ignorant are actually harmful to the person uttering them as well as to the person

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receiving them. In fact, I came across an article that pointed out the correlation between microaggressions and racist ideology (Kanter et al., 2017). That is why TU needs to address the impact of harmful speech in terms of mental health resources, educational resources that educate, and, most importantly, support from the highest corridors of the university with strong arguments in support of the communities that are being traumatized and beleaguered by the harmful speech that you feel is so necessary to knowledge production and learning. Without addressing both sides of the free speech issue—usefulness and its harmful impact—we are neglecting to tell the unvarnished truth in ways that protect the most vulnerable elements of our campus community. Despite my disappointment, I pressed ahead hoping that there were other areas through which I could make an impact.

Where Are the Data? Initially, you and I found fast friendship in our love for evidence and data. Initially, your constant call for data and proof was reasonable to me. After all, as president, you must make important decisions, and you can’t do that on a whim. Data, facts and evidence are important; on that, we agree. However, over time, as I watched and listened to you and other senior leaders at TU ask for and then either dismiss or ignore data, I began to wonder whether you were asking for data out of a genuine need to know or as a delaying tactic. For example, almost three years ago, after the women scientists on our campus complained about the toxic climates in their departments, the diversity officer suggested that you speak with the dean of the college and hold him accountable for these issues. By accountability, the diversity officer was suggesting that you and the dean put in place a series of goals and standards for the purpose of calling him into alignment with higher expectations. Instead, you asked the diversity officer to hold focus groups with faculty because you needed actual data on the specific problems. Your diversity officer invited these women to a focus group with the promise of action being taken in the wake of the data collection. Your reaction to the data was that it amounted to little more than “he said, she said.” This left the diversity officer, who is Black and male, in a strange position. He had promised action based on your direction but was then left in the position of not being able to do a damn thing because you refused to act on the data that you asked to have collected. If that were the

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only example of the misuse of data, this letter might not be necessary. Unfortunately, it was not. In the wake of the public murder of George Floyd, I sat alongside you as we together listened to beleaguered Black faculty, staff and students recount demeaning and harmful experiences that they had in our classrooms, departmental meetings, research labs, and dance studios. You listened during the meeting, but I was shocked as I listened to your debrief of the meeting as “political.” When I pressed in to ask you what was political about “being called a monkey” or “being asked to show your ID to get into the residence hall when your two White roommates were not asked to do so” or when your colleagues tell you that “the only reason you were hired was because you were Black” or “when the police surveille you as you take pictures of the hummingbirds on campus” or when as a staff person, “the only time you hear about areas that need to be corrected is when you ask for a raise or a promotion”—your response was simply that you did not see how we can address any of those problems in a systemic way, which made them political rather than academic. The most egregious example of your duplicity occurred when I accompanied you to a meeting with the Director of Admissions, where you requested data about a financial aid program that was targeted to first generation, female students. We provided data that showed, because of the holistic advising that was available through the program, these students were out-performing other students on campus, including those from middle-class backgrounds. The program had increased the number of female science students on our campus. Yet, at the conclusion of the presentation and after everyone left the room, you told the director that you were planning to cut $1 million dollars from the program budget. In the spirit of integrity, a standard to which all of us work in unison, why are we asking our faculty, staff and students for data you do not intend to use? When people tell us the truth about what happened to them, why are we consistently dismissing it as hearsay, speculation, they said or he said, she said? What kind of data will be enough to motivate change in stopping the incivilities and indignities that our Black faculty, staff and students are receiving at the hands of colleagues on campus? From what I have encountered as the director of your communications team, the unvarnished truth is that concerns about the culture of TU are an inconvenience to you and that the request for data is just a convenient way of providing the illusion of engagement without really bringing about change.

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We Can’t Afford to Keep Them I also want to thank you and TU for reminding me of how distasteful halftruths are. In the journalism world, we call them truth sandwiches, where a lie is covered with two truths. We tell one truth: “We are very sad to learn that staff member X is leaving the university.” It is probably true that you are sad. Then, we add a statement that is often false or at least deceptive: “They are leaving to take advantage of an opportunity that is just too good to pass up.” Then, you follow that lie with a truthful statement: “They will be missed” because the truth is that even if you and others don’t miss them, there is a small community of people on campus and in the larger community who will. The most recent example of this occurred when you announced that our vice provost for information technology was leaving the institution. He was part of a small community of Black faculty and staff administrators. While his initial year on campus was upbeat and engaging, Mark began to face hurdles after his promotion to Associate Vice Provost. Although he had a doctorate in Astronomy, we suddenly started questioning his numeracy skills. When he eventually showed us that he was a whiz at quantitative analysis, we then questioned his managerial experience by micromanaging him. As if that were not enough, we forced Mark to fight tooth and nail for every penny of the raise that he eventually garnered, even after he pointed out that White women who were leading teams much smaller than his and who had less stellar qualifications were being paid more money. I know all of this because when I realized how sad he was about the situation at TU, I asked you to intervene, and you dismissed my suggestion with the response that the provost was handling the matter. Soon after, I learned Mark was being intermittently recruited by a headhunter and decided to accept a position at another institution, without entertaining a retention offer. Mark’s departure was an opportunity for deep reflection and unvarnished truth-telling, but neither happened. Instead, the two of you pulled out the traditional playbook used to explain the departure of Black faculty and staff. Indeed, when it comes to Black people leaving the university, you and our provost always frame their leaving as related to a better opportunity either in the form of pay or in the scope of the work. However, in order to discern why Black staff and faculty are leaving TU en masse, you need to ask what led them to apply for another position, not merely what led them to accept the offer. In asking about reasons for applying, you invite

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unvarnished truth telling. To be sure, a handful of Black staff and faculty do leave the institution because of better opportunities elsewhere. However, as the data from the TU listening sessions with faculty and staff clearly indicate, most leave the institution because they are undervalued, ignored, being harassed with impunity, underpaid and overmanaged. In many respects, the status of Black staff at TU is similar to what Black people in poor neighborhoods face—lack of access to equitable resources and over-policing—in our case—micromanaging. Unlike faculty, we don’t have the job security associated with tenure and many of us have no pathways to further job security or advancement. Imagine how different TU would be if we used every untimely departure by a Black staffer as a lesson on how to be a more humane university, a lesson in how to change our systems and policies in ways that induce people to stay rather than encourage them to leave. That starts with telling the unvarnished truth to ourselves and the campus that is trusting us to lead with integrity. That is why I am so grateful to you and TU. You helped me to really understand what happens when unvarnished truth is hidden, and we use subterfuge rather than unvarnished truth-telling to lead. We end up in a cycle of lost opportunities because the truth, no matter how difficult, eventually opens up forward movement, repair, reconciliation, trust-building, even if that path is laden with false starts, missteps, and lots of pain. One of America’s great prophets of truth was James Baldwin, who said that we need to tell the truth even when folks are not interested in hearing it. This is especially true for communicators. But it is especially important for you as the leaders because you represent truth for many people on our campus and in the larger community. In the end, there is nothing that you have done personally to me that makes it necessary to leave. I am well paid, and I have a position very close to the corridors of power. However, as I consider the important role that truthtelling—unvarnished truth-telling—has played in my life, the compromise of living a lie by helping you and TU evade and undermine the truth is much too big a price to pay. That is why this is not merely a letter of resignation, but a letter of thanks. Thanks for reminding me about the importance of unvarnished truth-telling, not just for my sake or yours, but because our university and the Academy to which it belongs, will never be great without it. Yours respectfully, Tiffany Gyasi

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“Wow,” Jennifer said, skimming through Tiffany’s letter again, “I can see now why Hillman hired her. She does have a way with words.” Tiffany’s letter was depressing, but it also reminded her of the work that was already under way to address some of the issues that she raised: For example, her Associate Provost had already prepared an analysis of faculty and staff attrition across identities, schools, colleges and administrative units for the last five years. Using this data, they were able to identify one unit that was doing a good job in retaining Black faculty, and they provided this unit with funding and additional resources to share their strategies and tactics with other units. The Associate Provost was also incorporating the tactics from the department that was successful into a list of expectations that she would use for the new onboarding process for supervisors. This was one small example of using the data to bring about institutional change, and she was excited that the idea came from her colleague without any request from Jennifer. Yet, Jennifer was conflicted. Was telling the unvarnished truth really something that they could do as an institution? What about the legal risks? Did people really want to hear the unvarnished truth? How can we help people to use the unvarnished truth to bring about healing? Jennifer was especially concerned about how unvarnished truth telling translates into the day-to-day aspects of campus life. In thinking about Mark, she wondered, “What would it have looked like for the former Provost to take Mark’s concerns seriously and to use them as learning moments in leadership, management, and institutional change?” “Hmm, but what about Mark’s issues? Surely, he is not free of blame in all of this. But then again,” she shook her head, “this is not about perfection, but unvarnished truth-telling, which has the ability to set everyone free.” Scrunching her face at the fishy smell that continued to grow in her office, she continued her internal dialogue. Did Aisha really need to know that Jennifer had been dealing with pushback from an older man, who thought that he knew more about the fishy smell than Jennifer, and that his boss promised to look into it, but that was almost a month ago. What good would unvarnished truth telling do in that situation, Jennifer said almost audibly and in frustration. As much as she liked the idea of unvarnished truth telling, she was still worried about how to get to a place where unvarnished truth telling was part of TU’s DNA.

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Maybe Antonio’s letter would help her to get closer. As she turned to start reading, her stomach growled in protest. She decided she would get her favorite comfort food—French fries with salt and Black pepper. Stretching her arms, Jennifer yawned and looked around to gather the essentials that she needed. She gave one more look around to make sure that everything was in place. Cathy Luetta was at a sleepover, which meant that she could spend as much time as she needed on Antonio’s letter. Rubbing her stomach, she made a promise that food and comfort were on the way. After waiting in line for her order, Jennifer made her way to a booth in the back of the cafeteria. During the day, the cafeteria was too noisy to hear herself think, but this time on a Friday night, the place was a few souls short of being literally deserted. Licking the last bit of salt and pepper off her fingers, Jennifer took a deep breath and steadied herself. If the title was any indication, this letter was not going to be pleasant. But she had to chuckle that Antonio would reference a Nina Simone song to characterize his time at TU. As a Simone fan herself, she had to give it to Antonio—he had good taste in music.

References Hoffman, A. (2021). The engaged scholar: Expanding the impact of academic research in today’s world. Stanford University Press. Kanter, J. W., Williams, M. T., Kuczynski, A. M., Manbeck, K. E., Debreaux, M., & Rosen, D.  C. (2017). A preliminary report on the relationship between microaggressions against Black people and racism among White college students. Race and Social Problems, 9(5), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-­ 017-­9214-­0

Towering University, Goddam

May 1, 2021 Dear President Robinson and Provost Frank: As I write this letter from my new place of employment, I do so without the quivers in my stomach, nerve-wracking headaches and overwhelming feelings of grief. I feel safe and secure for the first time in almost three years. That is because I am no longer at TU, where I was subjected to embarrassment, threats, racial assaults and unrelenting resistance to the work that you hired me to do. You recruited me under false pretenses, and I suffered because you refused to tell the unvarnished truth to yourself, to me and to others. I refuse to live a lie. I have returned to the university from which you recruited me, and though it too suffers from institutional racism, the leaders here listen and act rather than simply make statements that obfuscate the truth. I came to TU intent on contributing to making the university a shining star for the emerging discipline of Africana Studies. As the Senior Associate Director for Africana Studies at a reputable university in the northeast, I had considerable experience in the field of what was initially known as Black Studies. Since TU was, at that point, one of the few institutions of its size without a program or department that focused on Black people, I sincerely thought that the student protests of 2015 had catapulted TU into modern times, and that it was sincerely committed to a curriculum focused on preparing students and the surrounding community for the challenges and opportunities of the twenty-­first century, one where knowledge of the history, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. M. Alex-Assensoh, The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the American Academy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39229-0_18

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oppression and achievement of Black people in Africa and the diaspora is essential to success in everyday life. Instead, I realized that I was being “played” and that I was merely a pawn in the university’s larger chess game of appeasement of Black students rather than truly breaking down the barriers that made protest necessary in the first place. Time does not permit me to recite all the lies, half-truths and omissions that I was subjected to, but similar to Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam,” this letter, which is titled Towering University Goddam is my review of only three of the intolerable conditions that I endured because of deception and outright lies. To be sure, lying is not unique to TU. Indeed, though the Academy prides itself as a place that imparts truth, the foundation on which the Academy rests is built on Native-American land theft as well as genocide and AfricanAmerican slavery, which were rationalized through myths of White superiority and Indigenous as well as Black inferiority (Wilder, 2013). Those myths and lies were woven into the curriculum and ideas about society that were used to educate students, who in turn became politicians, lawyers, doctors and educators. In addition to the historical untruths, which some legislators are trying to bury underneath conjecture, myths and fear, a weekly scan of higher education online news venues reveals that some universities continue dishonesty as a matter of daily operation. Recently, there was a story about how universities lie when discussing the proportion of alumni giving to the university, while others lie about school rankings. There are also examples of athletic programs creating fake courses to enhance the academic standing of athletes not to mention the latest admissions scandals that have implicated a range of higher education institutions (Vedder, 2019; Craig, 2019). From my sensibilities, lying is generally wrong, and as an institution of higher learning, we must set the standard for how we want our students to behave. However, what TU did to me was not just wrong philosophically, it endangered me physically and psychologically, and it also undermined my reputation as a scholar.

TU Is Committed to Africana Studies The first lie was that the university was sincerely committed to Africana Studies. In addition to hiring me, you also hired a small cadre of Black, Latin, Asian and Native faculty in other departments, and you promised a budget with recurring funds, which would expand as the years progressed and the program grew. With those promises, I tendered a letter of resignation to the university that nurtured me from a newly minted Ph.D. to an associate

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professor. While they offered a sizable retention package, Towering University lured me away with the promise of an opportunity to create a program from scratch that would not merely teach and convey facts, but in the words of AACU President Lynne Pasquarelli, help students who later become our citizens discern the truth, recognize and digest narratives, and promote “an understanding that the world is a collection of interdependent yet inequitable systems,” among other aims. As part of our discussions during the recruitment phase, I made clear that I saw this program as an opportunity to connect and collaborate. In terms of connection, I wanted the department to connect with students, faculty, staff and alumni from all experiences and backgrounds. From the perspective of collaboration, I envisioned Africana Studies as a way of collaborating across the institution to give back to the community that was continuously investing in us. During my job talk, the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, as well as the provost, applauded my vision as expansive and bold, and I clearly communicated my plan to use this vision as a basis for Africana Studies’ three-­year plan. Upon my arrival on campus, I immediately started translating the vision that we had all agreed upon into a three-year strategy for our work. Within a short time, my work was being featured in many of the top-drawer higher education venues. Yet, the two of you were not pleased by the work that I was doing, and, consequently, the dean began to “rein me in.” From my recollection of the meeting that I had with the dean: “She wanted an Africana Studies program that was similar to history or sociology, where we taught the information, but in our case, with a focus on Black people.” She was concerned that I was turning an intellectual exercise into a “service-learning course” and that I just need to make sure that the Black students who enroll “get their tutors” and other support “so that they can graduate.” As I was about to continue on, the dean interrupted me and said that she needed to share the context that made the program possible and some adjustments that they were thinking about for the program. As the dean continued on, my mind was stuck on two words: context and adjustment. In terms of context, she shared that the Africana Studies effort was simply a response to the demands of Black students, and it was done reluctantly because the university has very little money. According to the dean, the president eventually “caved” because he wanted to make sure that what happened at Mizzou did not happen to him. He mentioned that the president was especially concerned because alum, who had originally made a similar demand in the 1960s, were adding their voices to the demands of current students.

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Since some of the alums were very powerful, he saw this as an opportunity to address a longstanding grievance, help the university create a different narrative around these issues and win supporters along the way. The dean told me, “Look, I have been reading Kendi’s book about what it means to be an antiracist, and I think that I now understand what you are trying to do, but take it from me, that is not what the president and provost had in mind.” What did they have in mind, I asked? “Well, they liked your academic pedigree—a graduate of a small liberal arts college, with a PhD from Harvard. You are very productive, and you have a good track record for mentoring students, so we figured that you would help us to build a solid academic program, not an incubator for social justice and community development.” When I asked what they heard when I specifically talked about social outreach and leveraging Africana Studies as a mechanism for change, he admitted, “We did not think you could do all of that with limited resources.” At that point, I seriously wondered whether or not I should cut my losses and go back on the job market. But, I felt a commitment to Towering University and the community that Wendy and I were trying to build. My wife and children are important to me, and I wanted to stick it out. Most of all, I felt a commitment to the students who had worked so hard and who had taken so much pride in actually bringing to past a dream that Black students, faculty and many in the broader community become a reality. In the end, I decided to do what my parents had said all along—to work even harder. I got in touch with leading programs at other universities for strategies about how to encourage student enrollment in our degree program. Their tactics worked. By the end of the first term, 40 students were enrolled—30 as majors and 10 as minors. Be careful what you ask for, though, because as student enrollment increased, I came face to face with the second lie—that Towering University would provide resources for program development and progress.

TU will Provide Funding to Support Program Development and Ongoing Maintenance The second lie was that there was funding to support the establishment of an African Diaspora Studies program, including money for programming, administrative support and faculty hiring. This lie was perhaps the most pernicious because it was on the basis of verbal promises that I left a tenured professorship as a computational linguist, and well-respected position as

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Executive Senior Director of Africana Studies at my previous university. But the good news is that TU taught me a lesson that I will never forget: Always ask for proof of the promises in the form of written documentation, with clear language about what happens if the promises are unfulfilled. However, I assumed that since the Provost was not only a “sister” but also a legal scholar, with expertise in contract law, that the promises were as good as gold. I was definitely wrong. For example, I assumed that similar to other departments on campus, the program would have office space and administrative support. As I looked around the institution, I saw other departments with administrative assistants, space for programming, connections with development officers and communication entities. As someone who brought considerable expertise and skills to the work, I expected all of these as an essential component of my appointment. Yet, when I arrived, there was nothing beyond my faculty office space. There were no computers, nothing actually established for the program. Refusing to be daunted by this, I continued to work from the space that I was given, but then I ran into another problem. My colleagues complained that the students who were waiting to see me about enrollment questions and other administrative issues were too noisy and were cramming and crowding the halls. At the next faculty meeting, the issue of students in the hall was on the agenda, and while I felt hyper-visible and put on the spot, the discussion resulted in a letter of support to the Dean with a request for the space that was promised along with administrative personnel to support our students who needed assistance to enroll in the program. Within days, I received an email from the dean with a picture of an office and directions about how to get the keys for it. The email depicted a large office with an alcove that provided space for administrative support. Space speaks, so the location of the office on the southern boundary of campus said a lot about where the program figured in TU’s calculus of its importance. Yet, the university had literally starved the program of space for so long that this beggar was certainly not going to be choosy. I thanked the Dean and attached the job description for my administrative support. In response, I was told that the university had not anticipated that the program would grow this quickly and that support for administrative assistance was not budgeted in the current biennium. I was also told that the $150,000 budget startup, which was given to match my endowed research package at my former institution, was also to be used to cover some of the administrative costs of the program.

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You and the provost were copied on that email message, and yet neither of you followed up with an intervention or explanation. Once again, I was left to fend for myself in the face of lies, unfulfilled promises and deception. So, I stuffed the anger and disappointment and continued my work. Still, the news literally knocked the wind out of me, and I was no good for the next three days—days that I took off as vacation days, even though the university literally made me sick. Unfortunately, that kind of sickness is not recognized as a legitimate illness, so I had to use scarce vacation time to recover and regroup. Since Wendy and our sons were experiencing their own difficulties, I felt bad that my own circumstance was just making everything worse. The interesting issue with respect to resources was that predominantly White institutions create the context over which Black, Native, Latino, multiracial and ADPI people in the Academy fight and wrestle over attention, resources, praise and legitimacy. Relatively speaking, there is a full banquet table from which traditional programs and people who have historically been in the Academy draw on, but when it comes to new programs and departments, there is a sense of hyper-scarcity, where these programs and their beneficiaries literally fight over the crumbs.

There Is Widespread Support for the Establishment of an Africana Studies Program at Towering University In reality, there was a long history of conflict over the establishment of this program, and what you failed to tell me was that there was not a consensus or goodwill in its favor. You were well aware of the two departments that were not at all in support of an Africana Studies program. The first was Anthropology, and the second was Women and Gender Studies. Indeed, what I learned after I arrived was that these two departments, which had very low records of recruitment of African Americans or Africans, were concerned that the university was overlooking them and not engaging them in this process. They had made their complaints to the university clear. You provided no onboarding or background information. Rather than dealing with these complaints or at least providing me with some onboarding about how to deal with these issues, you literally left me to fend for myself. As I learned after my arrival, the two of you and the dean had steamrolled my recruitment process, moving forward without the support of existing departments and brought us into the battle without any warning.

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My last three years have been a living hell. Not only have I been scrounging for resources and moral support, but I’ve actually been working to ensure that I am physically safe from the verbal and bodily assaults that had been waged against me and my family almost from the beginning of my tenure at the university. As an Afro-Latino with olive-colored skin and straight hair, my skin color and hair texture were weaponized. For some, Africana Studies needed to not just be taught by someone who identified as Black, but whose Blackness manifested in a specific way. For others, my skin color communicated that I was a team player despite the venue for my leadership. Yet, Blackness comes in different colors, shapes and ideologies. A descendant of the 4 million Africans who was forcibly removed from Africa and shipped to Brazil, my mother’s native tongue is Portuguese. My father is a second-generation African American, whose father immigrated from Guinea-Bissau, which was colonized by the Portuguese, and whose mother traces her own roots to African-American slavery. Although I am phenotypically White, I am a product of colonization and African-American slavery. By the American one-drop rule, I am certainly Black. While my African roots definitely shaped my consciousness, my parents also insisted that I understand and appreciate my Brazilian and Portuguese roots as well. Therefore, I grew up speaking Portuguese alongside English as well as Ebonics, and I learned to appreciate the intersections of Africa, Brazil and Portugal that lived inside of me. I might have looked White, but my words and actions were steeped in Africa and Latin America. While there are definite benefits to “passing” in America, for me, the advantages of being connected to my rich African and Portuguese cultures outweighed what Mat Johnson called the “doomed fruit of racial deception” (Johnson, 2019). But soon after I arrived at Towering University, I realized that my colleagues knew nothing about my background, even though it is a major part of my academic bio. TU’s history of dealing with Black people and also with Latino, Asian and Native people was getting in the way. Also, many of Black people on campus simply refused to give me the benefit of the doubt. There had been so much broken trust and so few resources devoted to their endeavors that, rather than working together, non-White faculty had been socialized to fight and scheme over the crumbs that the deans and vice presidents allowed to drop from the larger university budgets, all the while citing just how resource-constrained they were. Therefore, when the dean shared with me an email that she had received from 25 White, Black, Asian, Latino and Native scholars on campus,

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pointing out that I was hired as a compromise candidate—to make the alumni and the “good White folks” at TU feel comfortable, I shoved the embarrassment down and simply laughed it off. Privately, I wondered why people who I needed to be my allies were already positioning themselves as my adversaries and why, in your position, you chose to show the email to me rather than reach out to them yourself and find a way to invite collaboration instead of fighting. As I have learned from conversations with people in the community as well as the few faculty, staff and students who had not positioned themselves as my foes, I was actually not the issue. Rather, I was a representation of a broader pattern of institutional duplicity. In the past, many of the people who signed the letter of protest against me had been burned and pained by the university. Because TU leaders have not consistently treated faculty, staff and students with respect, the faculty and leaders in these two departments and their allies in other departments on campus have taken all of that internalized racism and oppression and launched it out on me. I’ve lost count of the number of emails, rude comments in campus settings, and even outrage as I walked across campus, where faculty, staff and students have stopped me as I walked about to give me “a piece of their mind” or their “advice.” I was accused of being xenophobic. Students wrote editorials about me and the program in the campus newspaper. Although I shared the emails and experiences with you, and although you witnessed a few of them, you refused to lead, hold people accountable, and at least call our students and colleagues to our so-called standards of civility that I have seen the dean and the two of you trot out on other occasions. The conflict was especially problematic because the people who were positioned as my enemies were the very people that I was counting on to build community and to help develop the program. But because you lied to me through omission, I was not even prepared to know that I had to do battle or engage differently with this group. My expectation was that they were already collaborators, but they saw themselves as warriors fighting a different war where I was the target. On many campuses, the story ends with Black, Native, Asian, Latino and biracial faculty, staff and students not getting along. University administrators shake their heads and lament how “people of color can’t get along” or “how Black people stand in the way of progress” or how “jealousy and pettiness” are always getting in the way of “these issues.” Rarely do these same administrators recount the ways in which they have created the contexts and conditions in which such conflict occurs or the ways in which departments that

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are bereft any Black people are also embattled. Ranging from conversations about what disciplines are legitimate, to who is getting recognized for excellent scholarship, to where different departments are located on campus, to how funding is allocated, to what departments and administrators are respected enough to be consulted—all set the stage for conflict or collaboration.

Unvarnished Truth-Telling as a Foundational Tool in the American Academy However, where the two of you, in your capacities as University President and University Provost faltered, I am grateful to Bill, the Chief Diversity Officer, one of the many underrecognized and underutilized leaders at TU (AlexAssensoh, 2018). He had relationships on all corners of campus as well as many in the community and was apprised of what was happening. He simultaneously reached out to me and the department chairpersons of Women’s and Gender Studies as well as Anthropology and asked us to meet. He wanted to understand what was going on and how he could help. At the initial meeting, I felt like my two colleagues from Women’s and Gender Studies and Anthropology blamed me for everything that had been done to oppress, undermine and discriminate against women and Black, Latino, Indigenous and biracial faculty, staff and students in the history of the university even though I had joined the university just a few years before. I listened and nodded, at one point allowing myself to shed tears as I listened to horrible stories of how they had been disrespected, underpaid and overlooked. By the time the two directors had shared their stories, we were 30 minutes beyond our previously agreed upon time to adjourn. Yet, at the end of the meeting, one of them asked me what I had to say in response? I perked up and asked if we could meet again soon for me to share what I had learned from them and also briefly to share my thoughts, and they agreed that Bill should set something up. Bill had reached out to me prior to the meeting and told me that rather than responding to the issues that they raised, I should simply share my story. I was glad that I listened. At our next meeting, it was my turn to share. I started from the beginning—how I was recruited, what I was promised, the disappointment that I felt at the unfulfilled promises, and the idea that I was hired as part of an effort to build a certain narrative rather than to actually help the university to become a place where Africa was celebrated as integral to the fabric of the Academy. I told them about what others on campus said to me, the types of

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messages that I received, what it felt like to get email messages that made fun of my skin color, and hair, and that questioned my identity. I conveyed how it felt to be stuck in a narrative that was totally untrue and how I blamed myself for coming to do work that was built on a lie. By the end of my meeting, everyone in the room was looking at me, not with the disdain that I previously felt, but from a place of knowing and empathy. We just sat there quietly as I finished sharing my experiences with puddles of tears on my face and a pool collecting on the table where I sat. I had taken the mask down—just a bit— and allowed people to see me. It felt scary but also liberating. As we sat there, all four of us realized that the wall that once sat between us, preventing us from seeing the other’s humanity, had gotten shorter. To be sure, it was not all kumbaya, but authenticity and courage had laid a good foundation for empathy. From there, Bill suggested that we gather our three units together and present each other’s stories. Initially, resistant, we talked through our respective fears and decided to tell each other’s stories through the following frame: “I used to think this about __________, but now I know ___________.” It was a good way to both acknowledge where we started and how we had traveled down the road toward mutual understanding. It was also difficult because the faculty, students and staff in each of our camps were prepared to do battle. Nonetheless, a sense of understanding and desire for peaceful coexistence prevailed. The prolific author and scholar bell hooks offered that desire may depend on illusion, but love comes only through painful truth-telling. Together, we had not only spoken our own individual truths, but we also took the time to truly listen and understand others’ stories so that we could tell those as well. But, for Bill, peaceful coexistence was not enough. We actually needed to be co-conspirators and to “have each other’s backs.” We agreed to meet over coffee, and my colleagues from Women’s and Gender Studies and Anthropology recommended that we prepare an Action Plan. Bill helped us to work on an action plan for each of our units that also identified areas for collaboration across. We came up with our own process for resolving conflict and a special committee that was charged with engagement and de-escalation as soon as there was evidence of brewing storm clouds. All of us felt pretty good about ourselves, but from Bill’s perspective, we still were not done. He suggested that we now needed to consider our plans from the perspective of the dean, president and provost. Bill and I were tight up until that point because my sense was that all of what we had encountered was because of the dean, president and provost. Why

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did we need to extend the olive branch to them, especially since they had caused so much damage? My colleagues in Women’s and Gender Studies as well as my colleagues in Anthropology enumerated the many ways in which they had been disrespected and discriminated against and that while the provost was Black, she had done very little to deviate from the status quo, and the dean and president had been on campus for ages and were not going to change. I had thought that we were gathering together to fight against the president, dean and provost. Now, Bill was asking us to invite them into our circle, or was he? We all sat there speechless until Matilda, the Director of Women’s and Gender Studies, offered an Indigenous saying about how even rocks change, so maybe the president, provost and dean could change, too. Then, Gavin, the head of Anthropology, who was himself, a White South African, said that while he did not think anything would come of it, he was open to a surprise. He would be there and bring the most positive attitude that he could to the meeting if we agreed to join. Gavin agreed to text Bill and share the good news with him. Our only caveat was that our meetings with the president, provost and dean were not going to be about the oppression Olympics in which each of us tried to outdo the other in terms of how much discrimination and disrespect we had encountered. Bill also volunteered to lead the first meeting with an overview of the data for our departments. He put a presentation together that compared faculty and staff hiring opportunities, the number of full-time versus part-time employees, professorial ranks, student enrollment hours, average GPA, service numbers, mentions in local newspapers and press about engaging the community, job placement for students in the Women’s and Gender Studies and Anthropology, and bullet points about how our alumni were changing the world. Since my department had only begun to thrive, much of Bill’s presentation focused on Women’s and Gender Studies and Anthropology. In response, the two of you looked genuinely interested and surprised at what you were seeing. There were clear patterns of gender and racial differences, and while the dean was defensive, it was nice to see Provost Frank asking good questions about the patterns that she was seeing, which indicated that she was interested in learning more. Unsurprisingly, the president said nothing and looked bored throughout the meeting. The evening after our meeting with the two of you and the dean, I got another call from the president of the university from which you recruited me, letting me know that I had been selected to serve as his next VP for Research. Given my background in computational linguistics, this was an unusual

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appointment, but I had a remarkably diverse array of funding and my President wanted to break the traditional mold and allow the university to experience a different kind of leadership in this area. While this news may be surprising to you, people from my former institution never actually lost touch with me. During the height of my difficulties with TU, I was invited to apply for the position, and I did, even though I did not expect to be selected. I told him that I would think about it and get back to him in a few days. Despite the trouble that I had encountered at TU, the progress that we were making with Anthropology and Women’s and Gender Studies was inspiring. Part of me wanted to stay to see where we would end up. The other part of me, however, saw this as an opportunity for our family to live in a community that wanted us. At my previous institution, the university president, mayor, chamber of commerce, police chief and superintendent of schools worked together on creating schools, parks and stores that were safe for Blacks. Many of the things that happened to our children would either not have happened there or would have been redressed straight away. Also, in my new role as VP for Research, I was already thinking about ways to help the university president at my former institution lean into the work of creating a safer community space. Yet, I wanted to just think about the offer for a minute and lean on Wendy for her advice about what to do. In the meantime, I decided that I would continue to engage with Bill, Matilda and Gavin to improve understanding and climate at the university. During the next meeting, Bill used the notes from our previous conversations that were collected by his special assistant, and with our approval, shared them with the president, dean and provost. In that presentation, he shared snippets and quotes from the accounts that Gavin, Allyson and I had shared earlier. When decisions implicating the dean were shared, her face either blanched or turned a bright crimson. Rather than offer any apology or reconciliation, she continued stridently in defense mode or arguing that “she simply did not know.” The two of you allowed her to behave this way. Provost Frank asked more questions, some of them sincere, but others that were almost an invitation for those assembled to solve the problem and figure out next steps. It was good that Bill stepped in and reminded the provost, president and dean of the enormous service burden that our colleagues were already carrying. At one point, Bill pointedly asked the question, “Certainly, Hillman and Jennifer, you aren’t asking our colleagues in Africana Studies, Anthropology or Women’s and Gender Studies to fix the barriers that were used to discount and oppress them, right?”

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With that, the provost asked for permission to take the data back to Deans council and to think about next steps. She asked for another meeting or two to share next steps with our group. It seems that she expected a lot of gratitude from our colleagues, but what she did not realize was that these people were tired of the unfulfilled promises. All of us were too tired, too fatigued to get our hopes up only to be disappointed once again. At the same time, I was optimistic that this was leading to something where change would come. But the invitation to return home to the institution that had loved and nurtured me, even as it dealt with the constancy of institutional racism, was too good to ignore. In the end, I accepted the offer to serve as VP of Research. My work here is done, but I hope that your work on this journey of unvarnished truth-telling is just beginning. Warmly, Antonio Mendes, VP for Research Almost as if on cue, Uberto knocked on her door. “Here are printed copies of the email messages, attached documents and other information that the Deans and vice presidents have submitted about unvarnished truth-telling.” Jennifer turned toward Uberto, smiling broadly. “Uberto, do you have secret cameras embedded in this office?” she laughed. “Your timing is uncanny. I just finished Antonio’s letter, and my mind is now lit up. What if we set up a kind of truth and reconciliation approach like what Ruth Simmons established at Brown?” “Anything that I can do to support you, Jennifer, I will.” Grinning, Uberto added, “Also, remember that you and Austen have a call later tonight to discuss your plan for addressing the mounting calls for interviews. In addition to inquiries from all of the higher education magazines, there are new requests from venues in New  York, D.C., Paris and Accra.” “Thank you, Uberto. I appreciate you.” With a nod and a grin, Uberto turned and left out the office. He smiled; he appreciated Jennifer, too. Over the past couple of months, he had seen her grow tremendously and the change was inspiring.

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References Alex-Assensoh, Y. (2018, June 8). Hiring a diversity officer is only the first step: Here are the next seven. https://www.chronicle.com/article/hiring-a-diversityofficer-is-only-the-first-step-here-are-the-next-7/ Craig, R. (2019, March 18). The admission scandal: A job for internal audit. Insider Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2019/03/18/ colleges-­s hould-­l et-­i nternal-­a uditors-­l oose-­a dmissions-­o f fices-­w ake-­ scandal-­opinion Johnson, M. (2019, July). Passing, in moments. Journeys. https://www.topic. com/passing-in-moments Vedder, R. (2019, June 3). Are universities increasingly liars and con artists? Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardvedder/2019/06/03/are-­universities-­ increasingly-­liars-­and-­con-­artists/?sh=27f5b0b06c45 Wilder, C.  S. (2013). Ebony and ivy: Race, slavery, and the troubled history of America’s universities (pp. 3–5). Bloomsbury Press.

Call and Response

The week after the Fourth of July, Austen and Jennifer headed into Marie’s office, and their usually reserved coach stood and gave them a rousing round of applause. “I watched your press conference on LinkedIn,” she said. “I am hoping that we can spend some time debriefing the press conference, and then I am happy to think alongside you in terms of next steps.” For Austen and Jennifer, Tiffany’s and Antonio’s letters spoke loud and clear about the need for unvarnished truth telling and they decided that the best thing to do was to tell as much of the truth that they could at this point. Austen’s powerful statement, which she read on behalf of the TU president, included apologies to the TU Seven. As soon she finished reading, there were questions about the circumstances that led to the Towering Seven’s resignation. There were also questions that focused on TU’s culpability. But for the most part, they were met with genuine curiosity and even a bit of appreciation from some that TU had dared to do something truly different. In response to questions about specific things they were going to do differently, Jennifer piped up that all of the vice presidents, Deans and directors had been empowered to come up with action steps to address the concerns. Those action steps included a requirement that all requests for hiring new faculty had to include an assessment of how their department was addressing the SOULS principles. The Chief Human Resource Officer © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. M. Alex-Assensoh, The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the American Academy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39229-0_19

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created a plan to incorporate scenarios about SOULS into professional development workshops for all managers and supervisors. The Dean of Students was working on how to incorporate SOULS into the campus code of conduct, especially since students were important allies in bringing about institutional change. Then, someone asked a question about how much money they were spending on these issues. Austen offered that doing the right thing is not as expensive as one thinks and that the changes they were undertaking cost more in courage and self-examination than in money. Austen tagged in to address the journalists. “A few of us were not seeing the need for change at all, while others were determined to get radical—in the words of Angela Davis—get to the root of what happened,” Austen said. “TU is also reworking our hiring requirements to hire people who already understand and have experience in how to make equity an imperative.” Of course, there were people who wanted to know more about the President and where he was on these issues. Jennifer could truthfully report that Hillman was out raising money, but that he had not been feeling well lately and that is why he missed the impromptu news conference. Jennifer smiled as she thought about how Hillman was becoming less resistant and, in some instances, he was downright helpful. Maybe, he was working with a coach. Or, perhaps, he was beginning to realize that the changes were not only helping Black employees but TU as well. Toward the end of the press conference, Austen thanked Jennifer for her work with campus leaders and then pointed out that members of the Board were at different places on this issue, and that is to be expected. “I am so proud of the two of you,” Marie affirmed. Austen was energized. “We should definitely invite the press to the portion of the Board meeting where we share the action steps that emerge from the work of our Deans, vice presidents and Directors. Going forward, though, we simply need to recruit people who already understand SOULS or who are open to the concept, and we can find folks across the political spectrum with this energy.” “That is definitely a first step,” Marie said, “and, at the same time, you have to constantly interrogate your motives behind the work. It is important to have accountability, but for what purpose and to whom.” “Underlying motivation is key,” Austen said, “and it’s very different from the kind of thinking that I usually do in my businesses, where the objective is always to provide good service to the customer so that you can dominate the market and make more money.”

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Then, Austen detailed the journey that she had been on to think differently. As Board Chair, her initial window into this work was purely about making TU a model for other universities around the world and making money for the university, and by extension, herself. That sounded like an admirable goal, but she realized that it was not people centered. If she were being really honest, money was still an important driver for her. At the same time, digging deeper into SOULS helped her embrace different values like collaboration, reciprocity and deep caring. “Are there issues that you need to think about as you move forward to the last letter and prepare for the board meeting?” Marie asked. “Yes,” Jennifer said, wincing. She went on to explain that a rising star on the higher education beat pointed out that even if TU were able to make all of the changes that it wanted, would it not just be an island unto itself, and given its size, have very little impact on higher education in general? What were TU’s plans for an actual sea change—a more profound and notable change for bringing the American Academy back into dialogue with the American citizenry, its institutions, and their most pressing challenges and opportunities? “But we have been working on that issue, almost from the time that we started to process the issues that Aisha and JoWanda raised,” Austen said. “The new TU Board Secretary and I have got things cooking with the Association of Governing Boards, AAC&U and ACE. They had already started on these issues, including reports from President Hrabowski at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County and others that laid a good foundation for the movement that we need to catalyze. But I realize that we are only scratching the surface, and so any thoughts that you have, Marie, will be helpful.” Handing Austen and Jennifer a notepad, Marie started to rattle off the organizations, entities, and people in the United States and beyond, who were pivotal players in higher education and whose involvement Austen, Jennifer, and TU needed to launch and sustain the movement they desired. “Thank you,” Jennifer said as she finished writing. Nodding, Marie smiled and replied, “No problem. I do have some news of my own for you two.” Marie continued, “I’ve heard from the Towering Seven.” “And?” Austen said in an uncharacteristically breathless tone. “Well,” Marie replied, “I talked for some time with Tiffany and she said that although she is pleased to hear about the serious discussions that are occurring regarding SOULS, she and the others prefer to remain silent

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until they see more actionable steps taken by TU. One or two did mention that actionable steps or no, they did not want to meet in person with anyone from TU, but they would consider talking with me.” Marie could tell from the pair’s expressions that they wanted to know who the two people were. Jennifer nodded. “This sounds similar to what I received when I reached out to the group.” “Tiffany’s response was that the group was pleased to learn about the progress that TU was making and that some of them were interested in meeting with me, Austen and other members of the board to learn more— again, once clear actionable steps have been taken.” “But none of that would have happened had you and Austen not taken the road less traveled to acknowledge your colleagues and the pain that they have experienced at TU,” Marie said. She ended the meeting as it had begun, applauding the difficult but necessary work that they had done and opening up the opportunity for all that was to come. Jennifer and Austen smiled at each other and then began clapping too before embracing Marie in a hug. They knew that they had her to thank for helping them to grow and to take risks that led them to this moment. Now, they were moving toward love and spirituality, two concepts and practices that they understood on a personal level. Hopefully, Dante’s letter would help them to understand how love and spirituality could be forces for good in the Academy.

Passage Five: Love and Spirituality

The purpose of Passage Five is to explore the meaning and work of love and spirituality in the Academy and to share its potential as connecting and transforming forces for good. Love is the selfless and intentional development of self and others in ways that add value (hooks, 2018). Spirituality includes the way that individuals relate to transcendent forces beyond themselves, the connections and the ongoing search for meaning in life beyond the pursuit of recognition, money and achievement (Morton, 2020). Indeed, Carlyle Fielding Stewart (Giles, 2010; Skarupski et al., 2013) argues that education and spiritual grounding for African Americans make up a “resistant soul force,” which is a “soul-sustaining God force that Black people use to protect their self worth and create, transform and transcend barriers” (Giles, 2010, p. 356). Spiritualty provides a connection with future possibilities for change that create the conditions for resilience and joy even in the midst of difficult circumstances (Patton & McClure, 2009). Indeed, much of the research on Black faculty and staff experiences in the Academy implicates a lack of love as well as an overriding focus on cognition that ignores spirituality as a bona fide form of experience and knowledge (Odozor, 2022; Lorde, 1984; McGee, 2020). Despite those trying conditions, Black faculty and staff, emboldened by spirituality have quietly turned classrooms, creative spaces and research labs into spaces of

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trust where love enables students to find freedom to explore their lived experiences as a bona fide category of knowledge. When love and spirituality bloom in higher education, students are equipped to “make noise and get into good trouble, necessary trouble” that changes the world for the better (Bote, 2020; Parker, 1993). Love and spirituality provide tools that can minimize mistreatment and help people move through and beyond difficulties (Byrne-Jimenez & Yoon, 2019; hooks, 2009). Indeed, Dr. King offered that “power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love” (Parker, 2010). The Academy, with its abundant resources of people, knowledge and skill, is an ideal place for the connections of love, spirituality and power to unfold in ways that transform society for the better (Freire, 1970). Drawing on this research, Passage Five explores what it means for the Academy to embrace love and spirituality as creative, transformative and transcendent forces that open up new avenues of learning, discovery, healing and connection. Taken together, love and spirituality create space for lifelong learning, life-giving connections and deep engagement that are often missing in the Academy. Connection and engagement provide a sure foundation through which learning, serving and working extend beyond the pursuit of individual achievement to add value to society in ways that uplift humanity and serve the commonweal. Indeed, love and spirituality are mechanisms for achieving the connection, impact and relevance that have gone missing between the Academy and American society. In The Engaged Scholar: Expanding the Impact of Academic Research in Today’s World, Andrew Hoffman shares that “the antidote to irrelevance is engagement of the university with the real needs and aspirations of the supporting society” (Hoffman, 2021, p. ix). Love and spirituality are important mechanisms through which the teaching, learning, knowledge production and service efforts of the Academy impact the daily lives of people and institutions in society. In the chapter that follows, the university contends with the tragic loss of life and cherished university property, stemming from its previous neglect. In this context, Dante shares a vision for TU and the Academy as a site that nurtures love and spirituality. In turn, love and spirituality are mechanisms for learning, leading and connecting students, faculty and staff with the broader society. His experiences shed light on the

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invincibility of love and spirituality, even when they are not formally sanctioned by university administrators. Indeed, love and spirituality are crucial SOULS principles upon which all of the other principles are based. In other words, without love and spirituality, there can be no safety, organizational accountability or unvarnished truth telling.

References Bote, J. (2020, July 18). Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, John Lewis in his own words. USA Today. Retrieved March 24, 2023, from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/07/18/rep-­john-­lewis-­most-­memorable­quotes-­get-­good-­trouble/5464148002/ Byrne-Jimenez, M. C., & Yoon, I. H. (2019). Leadership as an act of love: Leading in dangerous times. Frontiers in Education, 3(117), 1–9. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York. Bloomsbury Publishing. Giles, M. (2010). Howard Thurman, Black spirituality and critical race theory in higher education. The Journal of Negro Education, 79(3), 354–365. Hoffman, A. J. (2021). The engaged scholar. Stanford University Press. hooks, b. (2009). Belonging: a culture of place. Routledge. hooks, b. (2018). All About Love. William Morrow. Lorde, A. (1984). Sister outsider. Crossing Press. McGee, E. O. (2020). Black, brown, bruised: How racialized STEM education stifles innovation. Harvard University Press. Morton, C. S. (2020). Water from the rock: The role of spirituality in the lives of Black women in engineering doctoral programs. Dissertation. University of Michigan. Odozor, E. T. (2022). A Love ethic for Black feminisms: The necessity of love in Black feminist discourses and discoveries. Hypatia, 37, 241–256. Parker, C.  S. (2010, July 21). Power and love. Interaction institute for social change. Retrieved April 14, 2023, from https://interactionsinstittute.org/ power-­and-­love/ Parker, P.  J. (1993). To know as we are known: Education as a spiritual journey. Harper One. Patton, L.  D., & McClure, M.  L. (2009). Strength in the spirit: A qualitative examination of African American college women and the role of spirituality in college. Journal of Negro Education, 78(1), 42–54. Skarupski, K. A., Fitchett, G., Evans, D. A., & Mendes de Leon, C. F. (2013). Race differences in the association of spiritual experiences and life satisfaction in older age. Aging and Mental Health, 17 (7), 888–895. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/13607863.2013.793285. Epub 2013 Apr 29. PMID: 23627686; PMCID: PMC4545598.

A Change Is Gonna Come

Before Jennifer sat to read Dante’s letter, she took a moment to reflect. She understood that this was a journey without a destination; it was a lifelong endeavor to live and work within the heart of academia and to be on constant watch of its pulse, making sure the heart’s essence flowed through to every vital organ, to include faculty, staff, students, alum and the community—of Towering and beyond. She deemed it very important that Dante’s letter would be last. Before even reading it, she acknowledged that love and spirituality were the glue that helped things run, but you had to know what was broken first and discern how to fix those things to truly get to the heart of the matter. She walked over to the couch in her office, took off her shoes and sat, tucking her feet beneath her bottom. Her nose wrinkled as she, once again, took in the fishy odor. She was grateful for AC because, without it, the hot summer would have made the building unbearable. She had just pulled her coils up and used a pencil to bun them when a knock sounded at her door. “Come in, Ubaldo,” she said. Ubaldo walked in, chuckling. “Just knew it was me, eh?” he asked, passing her two neatly stacked folders. “No one else seems to like me enough this summer to show up at my office.” They both laughed and then grew quiet. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. M. Alex-Assensoh, The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the American Academy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39229-0_21

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“The Deans and VPs seem to be on it,” Ubaldo said. “These folders include emails, messages and questions regarding love and spirituality. The suggestion that I like best is the protocols that our own neuroscience faculty have come up with for leaders to help them better communicate and lead from a wellness perspective. The faculty said that Dante’s work inspired them.” She lifted Dante’s letter, “The last letter.” When Ubaldo left her office, Jennifer considered her relationship with him and how they worked so well together. There was mutual understanding, a desire to help each other and a spiritual connection that spanned their different gender, racial and linguistic differences. She thought about that and the missing element of love within the Academy. How might others feel about themselves and each other, she thought, how might they excel and encourage and empower others if they felt cared for, loved and connected spiritually with one another and with a higher purpose? She ruminated on that question as she lifted Dante’s letter. “Hey,” Ubaldo said, as he prepared to leave her office. “The smell is getting stronger by the minute. I’m thinking that we should get out of here, get some fresh air. Can’t you read Dante’s letter at home?” he asked more as a statement than a question. Jennifer looked determined to stay, but Ubaldo continued. “Aside from you and me, the building is empty. The maintenance supervisor called to say that they are coming first thing in the morning. There is definitely some arrogance and possibly  paternalism going on because he has not even stopped by to smell what we are complaining about. Anyway, I am going to leave for the day, but I don’t feel comfortable leaving you in this building, not with this smell. The library is still open. So is the Union. How about you go and get your reading done at one of those places?” Jennifer sniffed, winced, then stood to slip her shoes back on. “You don’t have to ask me three times,” she laughed. After grabbing her trusty backpack, she gathered the letter  along with an uplifting novella by Michelle Stimpson,  Mama B:  A Time To Embrace and walked out with Ubaldo. “On second thought, I think I’m going to head home and read,” Jennifer said when they stopped at her car. “Thanks for the heads-up about maintenance. I so hope they get this problem out of the way. We don’t have long before school starts back up in the fall, and I don’t want to go another month feeling like I’m living in a never-ending fish fry.”

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Ubaldo reared his head and laughed hard and long. “Truth,” he said, chuckling. “Be safe getting home, and—” A loud explosion blasted through the evening’s darkness, lighting the sky with bright fire. After recovering from the initial shock, Ubaldo reached out to steady Jennifer, and the pair turned to see the administration building engulfed in flames. Jennifer’s knees buckled. “We were,” she spoke, but her throat dried up, and she could speak no further. Ubaldo grabbed his phone to call 911, but he and Jennifer could hear fire trucks in the distance. They watched in mournful silence as the fire spread quickly, starting from the top of the building and making its way to the very floor that Jennifer and the President occupied. Within minutes, the grand building, one of the few that traced its history back to the founding of the university, had been reduced to charred remains. “We were in there,” Jennifer whispered, tears slipping down her face. Her silent tears turned into hiccupping sobs. “If we had listened,” she coughed out. A fifth explosion blasted not far behind them, rocking Ubaldo and Jennifer off their feet. On the ground, they watched as the building that housed the police department and building maintenance also caught fire. It was the second oldest building on campus. The pair watched as bit by bit, the building was reduced to white ash, the fire spreading just as quickly as the one that destroyed the administration building. By the time the fire trucks arrived, both buildings were no more. On shaky legs and with Ubaldo’s help, Jennifer walked up to the fire chief to let him know that they had exited the administration  building minutes before it exploded and that it was empty. “Chief?” She called to him. When he turned around, she asked, “What’s your opinion—opinion on this? Why the fires?” “We made it here in record time,” he replied. “There isn’t much here to salvage. A fire with a spread that fast? An electrical fire—not uncommon in old buildings or in places that have been recently rewired. Sometimes, the electrical fires can smolder in the walls undetected, but usually, there is a fishy smell, a telltale warning.” “We have been reporting a fishy smell for months,” Ubaldo said, “and our maintenance folks did not take our complaints seriously.” “Well, let’s not jump to conclusions,” the fire chief said. “We want to get an investigator out to look at the fire.” The pair watched as the fire chief walked toward a truck.

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“Are you okay, Jennifer?” he asked. “I am not.” “Look, I will drive you home, and I’ll come pick you up tomorrow to get your car, okay?” Jennifer didn’t have the energy to argue, so she followed Ubaldo to his jeep. As he opened the door for her, she turned to him and said, “Your kindness saved my life.” He shook his head. “I just suggested we go to a safer location because the smell was not healthy.” “Thus, saving my life.” She hiccupped as another round of tears fell. “Thank you.” Ubaldo smiled sadly as his own tears threatened to fall. “You’re welcome.” After a long cry, a warm bath and even warmer pajamas, Jennifer climbed into bed with Mama B and Dante’s letter. Her mind wandered back to Ubaldo, their spiritual connection and his kindness that saved her life. As Provost, she yearned for a way of ensuring that the campus was filled with people who were connected on a deep spiritual level and who loved and cared for others. As she saw tonight, sometimes that care can be the difference between life and death.

Out of the Ashes

May 1, 2021 Dear President Robinson and Provost Frank: Consider the following: A once ebullient and vibrant scholar is now sitting in a wheelchair, recovering from violence at the hands of the TU campus police. Rex’s and Malcolm’s innocence is stolen by racism in which TU is complicit, but refuses to acknowledge and intervene. A gifted administrator, hired to bring about organizational accountability, but forced to do so without support from you resigns in frustration. A senior advisor and student advocate, whose warnings about the need for better student support to ensure inclusive and equitable learning environments for all students sadly fall on deaf ears, while a brilliant student takes his life. A celebrated storyteller, who felt pressure to gloss over and hide the truth, leaves her job in order to maintain her integrity. A highly sought-after scholar, recruited under false pretenses, suffers backlash from other Black, Latino, Native, biracial and Asian faculty, staff and students and eventually decides that it is better to return to his previous institution than to suffer alienation and abuse at Towering University. How are these resignations impacting the two of you, especially given the number and timing of our resignations? What, if anything, can I do to help you and TU before Isaiah and I leave for our new adventure?

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. M. Alex-Assensoh, The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the American Academy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39229-0_22

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In contrast to other members of the TU Seven, I felt loved and cared for by my colleagues in TU’s Center for Teaching Excellence from the moment that I stepped on campus. In fact, my 10-year-old son, Isaiah, and I arrived pretty depressed and shaken. Dani, the love of my life, died of uterine cancer just a few months before. However, our colleagues wrapped their arms around us. They loved us from the very beginning, prioritizing our needs, demonstrating concern for our well-being. They invited Isaiah and me to their homes for the holidays, to accompany them on outings around the State, and they shared information about hobbies, food and events that they thought we would like. Because they dared to treat us like people, rather than objects, we were able to develop a connection that made it possible to work through difficult discussions about anti-Blackness, the inequities in academic outcomes for Black students and even controversial topics like politics and religion. They demonstrated love by prioritizing our needs and demonstrating concern for our well-being (Mohammad et al., 2021). In return, I gave my all to ensure that I developed the best tools and resources to help every student, staff and faculty member experience TU through the lens of love and spirituality. That is why it is  very difficult for me to move to another institution. However, the opportunity to spread the good news of love and spirituality throughout higher education in America and abroad is just too good to pass up, especially since the two of you remain unenthusiastic about our work and unconvinced that love and spirituality are important factors for learning, growth and leadership in the Academy. The nice thing is that you did not prevent me from doing my job, even though your unwillingness to vocally and tangibly support the work was a salient factor in my decision to move on. As disappointed as I feel about your lack of interest in love and spirituality as tools to better serve our students, to better connect them with meaningful contributions to the world and to better equip our leaders to serve with humility and integrity, I also empathize with your caution and reluctance. I have not always been a drum major for love, and I have not always understood the ways in which human beings, as spiritual beings, are wired for connection. I had a longer love journey than most, but that journey, oddly enough, has convinced me that love and spirituality are the only way forward. Below, I share the contours of my journey with you. Then, I share a few of the ways in which love and spirituality have made a difference on our campus. Armed with those insights and perspectives, I am hopeful that you will become champions for embracing the work of love and spirituality at TU.

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The Road to Love and Spirituality I grew up in a home where love and spirit were all around. My parents often reminded us that we were spiritual beings in a human body and that our spirits had the potential to connect with others across man-made boundaries. There was not a day that went by when my parents did not say, “I love you,” or that they used their gut, instincts and emotions to drink deeply from the bounty of life. Beyond that, I knew my parents loved me because they did a lot to show it. Still, there are many ways in which I did not feel loved. I felt different from other boys growing up in the late 1990s before it was fully possible, in a public sense, for little boys to love dressing up, fashion and dolls without people thinking that they were “problematic” or “confused.” My parents had a limited sense of what boys liked, did, and how they behaved, and though they never said it to me personally, I felt like they were always trying to make the parts of me that did not conform to their image of maleness go away. I felt that those parts of me, which I truly believe that God stitched into my DNA, are part of who I am. They make me authentically Dante, and without them, I am incomplete. My father was born in the late 1920s, just a decade before the Great Depression. To put himself through college, he worked construction and cleaned hotel rooms. After college, he established a few small businesses and taught math in the local high school. My mother was also a teacher. For her, learning was the constant focus. Both eventually went back to school and earned their PhDs, got jobs in the Academy and were tenured professors in their fields. My older sister loved sports. I, on the other hand, loved movement and beauty. My earliest memories were of having fun with my dolls and playing dress-up with my mom and my sister. My mom hired a tutor to nurture my artistic talent, and the tutor and I became fast friends. My mom also found a fashion museum about an hour away from our house, and she and I would go there from time to time to look at beautiful dresses. As I grew older, however, I noticed that my parents were becoming increasingly concerned about my interests. While my father continued to buy every doll he thought I would like, including fragile porcelain dolls, and my mother, sister and I continued to play dress up, I noticed that they were also interested in having me play with trucks, and they tried to get me involved with soccer. I found no real use for either. Trucks sometimes didn’t work. Wheels got stuck, or the batteries died, and that made me sad. Soccer always needed another

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player, and sometimes, I got kicked in the process, and that hurt. With my dolls, I could do what I wanted. I could dress them up and cut their hair. I could make them play with each other and create opportunities for dialogue. They were my friends when my parents or sister were doing other things. I was what many people call effeminate because we have such rigid and strident descriptions of what men and women can do and be. I walked gently. I never developed the really deep voice that a lot of boys developed. And rather than going out in the rough-and-tumble, I liked drawing and hanging out in the kitchen with my mom. But over time, people intimated that the way I was walking and talking was not quite right. I took these things as a criticism of me because that is the only way that I knew how to be. One day, my mother asked me to put all of my dolls in a bag and give them away to a girl that we knew. Since those dolls were truly a part of me, I thought that she hated me, and that everything I liked she disliked. I felt unloved. On her part, she was navigating through fear, which is the opposite of love. Although I was quite young at the time, not even at puberty, she explained later that she was concerned about anything that would put me in a position to get HIV/AIDS. As I think about the timeline of HIV/AIDs, the information that was out at the time and the death toll that it took on the Black community, it seems that her concerns about HIV/AIDS made some sense, but were borne of ignorance, homophobia and misinformation. Also, as much as I love my mom, she was also vain, and I know that she was also concerned about what other people would think about me, her and my dad. Interestingly enough, it was my family’s insistence on living an embodied experience that included spirit, gut, instincts and heart that allowed me to sense the ways in which people were judging me—their eyes, the energy that flowed from their faces, tone and bodily movements allowed me to know if I was safe or not. Through many, many years of self-doubt, self-hatred and self-condemnation, and thoughts of suicide, I’ve come to learn that my parents never, ever stopped loving me. Rather, motivated by the cruel hand of fear, they were trying to protect me from anything that they felt would lead me to pain, but they did so out of a limited lens of what a Black male child can be—soft as well as hard; creative as well as kinesthetic, introverted as well as extroverted. By raising me partially through a lens of fear rather than possibility, they were in fact erasing who God made me to be. My elegant and smooth voice that turns heads has more tenor than bass. God gave me the inclination to favor

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gentleness over firmness. He gave me the eyes to see beauty where few even stopped to pay attention. He also gave me a triple dose of empathy that is both a gift and a burden because I feel so deeply all that is transpiring around me. He made me deeply, and intricately, myself. Ironically, while my parents professed faith in Christ, some aspects of how my parents raised me showed that they needed more faith and less fear. And as a result, their efforts to love me showed up for me as hatred, violence and oppression. After high school, I enrolled in college and dropped out after two years because too many of the professors that I encountered were arrogant, selfish and bent on putting students through manifold indignities. Perhaps, this is what happened with our dear Dakota, a brilliant and gentle soul, who did not experience the love and spirituality, or connection that we owe to each and every student. As a psychologist, I now understand that some of the arrogance that I experienced at the hands of faculty members was a mask. They were not as confident as they appeared to be, and all their attempts at hiding vulnerability manifested as big egos with minimal care. The fear masqueraded as a commitment to rigor and tradition when it was actually rooted in avoiding the risk of failure or embarrassment. It was just too much, and rather than learning, I found myself constantly hurt, depressed and angry so much so that it was difficult to learn. The final straw was when a history professor intentionally gave me grades on essays in the low 90s range and then gave me a mid-range B on my final paper so that he could give me a B+ rather than an A for my final grade. It was the only B that I earned at college, including courses in physics, calculus, and English. While it was a White man who cast the final straw, I certainly experienced fear at the front of the classroom from Black women, Asian women and Latino women, too. Unhealthy fear was not restricted to Whiteness and maleness, but rather a condition that permeates the Academy. The one exception was an English teacher, an elderly, strawberry blond, bespeckled woman, whose whole purpose was not just to nurture the highest level of academic achievement, but to do so in ways that helped her students to love ourselves and others and to build a community of learners based on mutual well-being, where everyone counted. Yet, in two years at the university, I encountered very few of those professors, and that was not enough. The history teacher’s manipulative engagement with me was the final straw.

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I was done, and I told my parents that I needed to take a break from college. Since both had terminal college degrees, they tried to convince me otherwise. They trotted out all the statistics about how Black men with Ph.D.s and M.D.s could not land the jobs that they deserved and that I certainly needed to just suck it up and get my degree. While I listened politely, I could give a flying fig about all of that. What I knew for myself was that I had enough. Eventually, my parents relented. As I saw them let up, I realized that they were learning how to parent me—with kindness and patience. It seems that they were also trying to align their faith talk with their faith walk rather than caving into “what other people think” or what “Black men should be doing at my age” or the “fear that I would never find a job.” Their love showed up by finding a therapist for me and paying for it out of their own pockets, by writing letters of apology where they actually listed what they did wrong and apologized for all of it, by trying to make up for the things that went wrong in the past and for just letting me be. Over time, I began to heal. Slowly but surely, I regained an interest in learning, and eventually, I finished my B.A. and then went on to earn an M.S. and a Ph.D. That is why love is so important to me. Without it, I would be dead because I tried suicide a number of times, but none of my attempts worked. I am so grateful for life—even with all its imperfections, and it is love that got me to this place of realization, and spirituality helped me to see myself beyond the initial barriers that were placed on me. Without love, the person who is most well educated and financially secure is nothing. With it, the person living on financial tenterhooks has opportunity and access that is unimaginable. Love is the opposite of fear. It has the power to open up endless possibilities. I want every person who earns a TU degree and who works here to know the power of love as well as the connective tissue of spirituality and to understand that even when they don’t feel loved by others that they can love themselves and open themselves up to give and receive love. That is why I leveraged my neuroscience degree to better understand the role of the brain and the heart in facilitating learning and growth. Interestingly, science verified what I already knew about love, spirituality and fear. When people feel threatened, their brains focus on fear rather than learning (Menakem, 2017; Moreland-Capuia, 2019; Rock, 2008; Hasson et al., 2012; Steele, 2011). Did you know that sensations of fear reach the amygdala hundreds of milliseconds before other parts of the brain can process it as fear? This

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undermines the ability to think clearly (Arnsten, 1998). However, complementary research has demonstrated the beneficial impact of positive emotions on the human brain (Machado & Cantilino, 2017), including increased dopamine levels and positive changes in cognition, especially when people are in positive moods (Yin, 2019). Specifically, positive emotions loosen the hold of negative ones, while building resonance (Fredrickson, 2014). As a result, social neuroscience research encourages incorporating social-emotional processes to create more expansive, connected and transformational learning experiences (Rock, 2008; Canning et  al., 2019; Binning, 2019). Yet, because much of our higher education focuses on the mind, our abilities to lean into our bodies and listen to our spirits are underdeveloped. This is where love and spirituality come in—as what I have devised to be the L.A.C.E.™ Framework. Consistent with the scholarship on positive psychology, the components of L.A.C.E.™ are interconnected, but each component of L.A.C.E.™ has a special role to play. Love is, in fact, what positive psychologist Barbara Fredrickson calls the master emotion. In the L.A.C.E.™ framework, love is the value through which authenticity, courage and empathy are fully realized. In other words, authenticity, courage and empathy when expressed most positively are ways of loving self and others  (Fredrickson, 2013). Authenticity is loving sincerely, courage is loving boldly and empathy is loving interpersonally.

Here is What Students, Faculty and Administrators Have Said About L.A.C.E.™ • “In the beginning of class, I had just learned what LACE™ was and I didn’t really want anything to do with it. Honestly, it sounded like complete bogus and stuff that I didn’t care about. However, as the class continued, I started to learn a little more about L.A.C.E.™ I saw how I was starting to use it in my everyday life, and how this concept was greatly influencing me as a person. Throughout the term, L.A.C.E.™ started to really help me care for myself and others in ways that I hadn’t thought about before. I am now truly grateful to have this tool in my back pocket and to be able to use it whenever I need to.” (Junior, Biology Student)

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• “L.A.C.E.™ helped me to jumpstart my research again. It helped me to rethink the kinds of questions I was asking and I am now publishing more than I did when I was working toward tenure.” (Associate Professor, Sociology) • “L.A.C.E.™ forces me to think about how the systems are working—the day-to-day policies that make people want to scream. It’s hard work but we are looking at each and every one of our policies to interrogate how love is showing up or not.” (Human Resource Director) • “It’s a little audacious, transgressive even to me at first because it centers love. That’s awesome. It’s showing up for me in my leadership. I used to think of the department chair role as an opportunity to ‘get mine.’ With L.A.C.E.™, I am now focused on how to make sure that everybody’s needs are being met.” (Department Head) • “L.A.C.E.™ is like a lens for me. As a teacher, it helps me to see things clearer, including myself and my own hangups. It also helps me to think about whether or not the spirit and substance of my syllabus are loving or fear based. Are the students able to see themselves in my curriculum and so much more. It seems like something new is always coming up about how to improve my teaching. The result is improved teaching evaluations and much better relationships with my students.” (Faculty Member, Political Science) • “L.A.C.E.™ is a framework by which you live life, including social encounters, leadership, behaviors, personality traits and in other ways. In the end, it is up to you how you choose to incorporate these ideas into your life. However, learning and building these skills into your daily routine has the potential to change your life, the lives of your friends and family, peers and coworkers, professors, pets, and beyond, so why not embrace them?” (Sophomore, Environmental Studies) I came to TU with a broken heart, but the love and spirit that my team showed to me lifted me and Isaiah. Now, I am overflowing with joy because love and spirit are blooming across this campus. As I think about the end game, I have to agree with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who said: “The end is reconciliation, the end is redemption, the end is the creation of the beloved community.” With love, Dante

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Jennifer read the end of Dante’s letter and said, “Let it be so,” smiling as she inched off to sleep. Her last thought before falling under, We need the power and connection that love and spirituality offer. A few mornings later, Marie sat on her porch, rocking and holding the newspaper. “Um, um, um,” she muttered while reading about the TU fire investigation. There had been much speculation that the Black faculty who resigned were behind the fires or that the same group of students who tore down the statue of the university founder and then decapitated him firebombed the administration building and the Police Department, the two oldest buildings on campus which sat next to each other. When the fire officials found Officer Friendly’s body in the Police building, the stakes got even higher, members of the TU community were quick call for the death penalty for whoever was involved. “Thank God,” she whispered as she continued to read that the investigator found that there was actually no foul play. All along various aspects of both buildings were small fires; some had burned out, while others served as the ignition for additional fires. The electrical fires were symbolic of the issues that the TU Seven had endured during their time on campus—little fires that had burned through their hearts, damaged their marriages, disrupted their children’s innocence. As these fires went untended, they often kindled other fires until everything in their path was destroyed. Marie continued reading, learning that even though the investigator turned his report over to the insurance company, the company threatened not to pay because they considered the wiring issue a problem with poor maintenance, especially since they learned that others had complained of the fishy odor for months. In their minds, any maintenance person worth their salt should have called in the fire department or electricians on staff to investigate. Closing the newspaper shut, Marie thought about the sadness and loss that could have been prevented had the people in charge moved beyond their assumptions to think again about other possibilities. Now, the two oldest buildings on campus were mere dust, a police officer had lost his life, and his family was left to deal with his death. Searching for hope in the despair, Marie wondered what possibilities this tragedy would birth.

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References Arnsten, A. F. T. (1998). The biology of being frazzled. Science, 280, 1711–1712. Binning, K. (2019, October). Fostering a sense of belonging in the college classroom: Peer interactions that Improve student success. Sloan Equity and Inclusion in STEM Introductory Courses (SEISMIC) event, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. Canning, E. A., Muenks, K., Green, D. J., & Murphy, M. (2019). STEM Faculty who believe ability is fixed have larger racial achievement gaps and inspire less student motivation in their classes. Science Advances, 5(2), eaau4734. Fredrickson, B. (2013). Love 2.0.: How our super emotion affects everything we do, feel, think and become. Hudson Street Press. Fredrickson, B. (2014). Love 2.0.: Creating happiness and health in moments of connection. Plume. Hasson, U., Ghazanfar, A., Galantucci, B., Garrod, S., & Keysers, C. (2012). Brain-to-brain coupling: mechanism for creating and sharing a social world. Trends in Cognitive Science, 16(2), 114–121. Machado, L., & Cantilino, A. (2017, April-June). A systematic review of the neural correlates of positive emotions. Brazilian Journal of Psychiatry, 39 (2), 172–179. https://doi.org/10.1590/1516-­4446-­2016-­1988. Epub 2016 Nov 24. PMID: 27901215; PMCID: PMC7111451. Menakem, R. (2017). My grandmother’s hands. Central Recovery Press. Mohammad, F. A., Danna, F. E., Ma, J. F., & Pitre, C. J. (2021). Love as a business strategy: resilience, belonging and success. Nevada. Moreland-Capuia, A. (2019). Training for change: Transforming systems to be trauma-informed, culturally-responsive and Neuroscientifically focused. Springer. Rock, D. (2008). Scarf: A brain-based model for collaborating with and influencing others. Neuroleadership Journal, 1, 1–9. https://education.nsw.gov.au/ content/dam/main-­education/en/home/school-­leadership-­institute/pllr-­ pdfs/SCARF_Model.pdf Steele, C. (2011). Whistling vivaldi: How stereotypes affect us and what we can do. W.W. Norton andCompany. Yin, J. (2019, April 23). Study on the progress of neural mechanism of positive emotions. Translational Neuroscience, 10, 93–98. https://doi.org/10.1515/ tnsci-­2019-­0016

From Farewell Again to SOULS Celebration

“The Spring meeting of the TU Board of Trustees is now called to order,” Austen announced. But while her tone and demeanor reflected confidence, her stomach was whirling and twirling. Not only was she presiding over a campus that had sustained millions of dollars in loss due to a preventable electrical fire, but she was also moving TU into a place that it had never been before. In one sense, the fire was almost poetic justice. This was an opportunity to begin again (Glaude, 2020). After months of reading, listening, debating, planning, discretely managing crises and stretching herself to think about universities and possibilities in a different way, she found herself and the university at an important decision-making juncture. She felt buoyed by the presence of Jennifer and Marie, which steadied her nerves. The first few hours of the board meeting were dedicated to business items. However, before she knew it, Deans and vice presidents, directors, department heads and members of the TU Senate were lining up to share lessons learned and new beginnings that were already unfolding at TU. First, they shared the set of principles that they had come up with based on the insights from the TU Seven’s letters and the research that was contained therein:

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. M. Alex-Assensoh, The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the American Academy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39229-0_23

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• Safety: Acknowledge and address the unique systems of historical and contemporary harms that render Black people vulnerable in the Academy and its surrounding communities. Work with campus and community partners to cultivate environments and practices that are safe to and for Black people. • Organizational Accountability: Design context-specific processes and structures for supporting innovative research, transformational leadership, creative activity and teaching that Black faculty and staff bring the Academy while intervening in the resistance and indifference. • Unvarnished Truth Telling: Tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about America’s dual and dueling history of racial progress and racial inequality and the institution’s treatment of Black faculty as well as staff. Create opportunities for members of the Academic community to interrogate and positively transform their consciousness regarding Black experiences. Build unvarnished truth telling into workplace policies and processes. • Love: Align university processes, mindsets and reward structures with a love ethic to empower learning, working and engagement in the Academy and beyond. • Spirituality: Nourish spirit in the Academy as a bona fide form of knowing and being that recognizes the transcendent in ordinary Academic life and that opens up opportunities for connection and growth. She listened as Jennifer, who had become more self-aware, confident and knowledgeable about how anti-Blackness operated over the last few months, presented the SOULS principles as the basis for the work that the chief diversity officer, department heads, Deans and vice presidents were recommending and, in some cases, carrying out. Among the highlights was a total overhaul of the complaint process to include unvarnished truth telling circles, where faculty, staff and students, who were trained in histories of anti-Black racism and stigma, received specific professional development and compensation to serve on a confidential review panel that acted in partnership with the newly hired General Counsel to create a robust and just process for redressing bias, discrimination and harassment in the classroom, research labs and workspaces. There were also curriculum grants that provided faculty in all departments with an opportunity to incorporate unvarnished truth telling about Black people into the curriculum.

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The School of Education unveiled plans to revamp their teaching curriculum to ensure that all teachers were equipped with the L.A.C.E.™ framework and NADOHE’s strategies for antiracism as tools for intervening in their own bias and for creating classrooms that were rich with love and spiritual connection. In partnership with the new vice president for Advancement, the Dean also unveiled plans to become the nation’s top source of Black school teachers, principals and superintendents, an effort to directly intervene in the anti-Black practices in TU public schools. Jennifer joined the reporting as she shared additions to the hiring process: a SOULS retention plan for every new hire and essays that allowed candidates to explore their own work in anti-Blackness as well as how they will contribute to TU’s SOULS principles in their research, classroom and service. She noted that a recent job candidate had filed a complaint with the Department of Education and the Department of Justice that TU was using criteria that discriminated against non-Blacks, but Jennifer was not deterred by litigious efforts to undermine progress. Even if the suit grew legs, TU’s new GC had pledged to litigate and defend this important policy rather than back away from this courageous and important work. Hillman, who had been busy raising money for TU was the last to share his thoughts and work. It was to be his final report as President of the University. Though cynical and bombastic from the very beginning, Hillman had definitely grown over the last few months; he even looked more pleasant and thoughtful. As he explained during his remarks, he picked up Think Again and Biased, initially out of curiosity, but then he could not stop reading until he had worked his way through all of the books on the list. As Hillman processed ideas about rethinking, bias, historical trauma and anti-Blackness, sometimes with the help of Perry Rhue, whose coaching and consulting techniques helped him to move through his own fears and also with the support of The LACE™-Hearted Way, a coaching and consulting firm that uses a research-informed approach and tender-loving care  to inspire personal as well as organizational change, Hillman was moved to personally apologize to Wendy, Rosscoe, Aisha, JoWanda, Tiffany, Antonio and Dante for all that he and TU had put them through. He had also contacted Bill, TU’s diversity officer, to learn more about how to talk to donors about funding equity initiatives as a key factor in institutional success. As part of Hillman’s final report to the Board, he shared that an anonymous donor and a handful of longstanding contributors had granted the

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university a large sum of money to further develop the SOULS principles and share them with other institutions in the Academy, with the proviso that credit for the ideas be attributed to the TU Seven. Austen suspected that Hillman was the anonymous donor. As the presentations were being made, Austen was also monitoring the room to see how her Board colleagues and members of the public were responding. She saw head nods from Garret, the outgoing student body President, who was now on his way to graduate school at the University of Ghana. He seemed to be cautiously optimistic about what he was hearing. But what did the furrowed brows that she saw on some board members’ faces mean? Did the smiles mean that they liked what they were hearing or that they had found an entry point for disagreement? Then, there were the notes that were being passed between Board members that she knew were sitting on the fence. What did that mean, and what was being communicated in private that they were clearly not comfortable sharing with the larger group? Austen was hopeful that engaging with these new ideas would allow the people who already had power to relax and understand that there were things more important than control. She was especially happy to see that members of the Board were asking questions about the process and how the ideas were going to be executed. This must mean that, at least for some Board members, they were actually leaning toward the idea of a university that rested on the foundation of love rather than lovelessness. This was a radical change that she would never have anticipated when she began her term as chair. Three hours later, the board went into Executive Session, where they would eventually vote on whether or not to move forward with reimagining TU based on SOULS principles. They would also be voting on an interim President as Hillman’s retirement was to be effective on June 30. While uncertainty loomed as the executive session occurred, Austen knew that she, Marie and Jennifer, inspired by the Towering Seven’s courage, had lit the fuse for transforming TU. Her heart was also warmed by Hillman’s ongoing evolution, including his recommendation of the newly recreated Jennifer as TU’s next president. Just as important was the collaboration of the Deans, vice Presidents, TU senate, students and community members, working together to make TU all that it could be. With all of this, a renewed, relevant and collaborative TU, was definitely on its way. * * *

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As part of the renewal, “Farewell Again” is now “SOULS Celebration” a celebration of emerging transformation at TU and across the Academy. People from community colleges, independent colleges, minority-serving colleges and universities, regional campuses, accrediting agencies and many of the Academy’s leadership organizations make the annual trek to TU to celebrate and to share knowledge and insight about the latest strategies for embedding SOULS’ principles in the lives of their organizations. TU has been the recipient of annual awards from leadership organizations in the Academy, which inspires other universities to adopt the SOULS principles and provides additional recognition for its work. Tiffany, who now owns her own international communications and marketing firm, is helping TU rebrand itself as a destination, where Black people thrive and where students, faculty and staff from all backgrounds endeavor to change the world for the better. Rosscoe is now CEO of his own architecture firm and was hired to design the new administration and police  buildings, which are not only LEED certified, but innovative in attention to detail around disability and comfort for people of all body types. Now observed as a two-day gathering, SOULS Celebration is so large that it is held in the basketball arena, TU’s biggest indoor space. It continues to feature a United Nations-like palate, but it’s catered by local restaurant owners of all backgrounds. The celebration is particularly popular among students whose enrollment has increased annually since TU adopted the SOULS principles. Jennifer reflects on how, in the initial year of holding the event at the arena, staff and volunteers scrambled to find seating for elders and community members with disabilities. Now, students without disabilities make their way to the bleachers, thereby making room for wheelchair users to have comfortable accommodations. The L.A.C.E.™ values that Dante shared are resulting in employees flocking to TU to hire students who not only have intercultural sophistication, but who are ambassadors for love in the workplace. TU’s faculty Senate President  was recently recruited to develop professional development resources for an organization that trains new Presidents because of the way that love and courage are building trust and better cooperation for all campus leaders. Along with students in the bleachers, Cathy Luetta, who is sporting a Black Lives Matter t-shirt, is playing with Rex and Malcolm, whose parents visit TU to reconnect with friends. Wendy is now in the third year of home schooling her children, as she works on a business plan to coach Black faculty and staff in designing home schooling co-ops for their

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children that take advantage of university and community resources. Shortly after leaving TU, JoWanda and her wife worked with the League of Black Women’s Accelerator Program to purchase a candy manufacturing company from its third-generation owner. But JoWanda was not simply content to bask in the profits of this company, she also used them to develop social entrepreneur labs where college students worked alongside community members, policymakers, technology experts and bankers to empower Black people in communities that had suffered from the redlining and political neglect that she lived through as a child. Since the event has become very popular to the entire Towering community, it has also turned into an informal but formidable new source of corporate sponsorship and fundraising. The attendance, like the campus-­ wide hires of the last four years, is visibly as diverse as it’s ever been. Rather than leaving after the first two or so years, the SOULS departmental protocols are creating nurturing spaces, which have enhanced rates of scholarship, creative activity as well as mutually beneficial partnerships with the TU community. Hiring protocols, which require that candidates for all positions are evaluated with SOULS principles in mind have created an engaged leadership who envisions TU as a learning organization. A new faculty hire stops Jennifer to reintroduce herself and congratulates her on the coverage of TU’s transformative work over the past few years. They both greet Provost Aisha, who served two years as TU’s Muslim interim Provost before she was selected in a national search to be the substantive Provost. The new faculty member tells Jennifer how it has positively impacted her first year on campus as a Black woman to have two Black women leading the institution who understand love as well as equity and are working hard to create a nurturing environment for everyone. Jennifer and Aisha run into Austen, Marie and her daughters, who are VIP community invitees. They talk about the exciting event that is taking place a few weeks away, where TU’s work was being honored at a White House Ceremony. * * * As they made their way through the multiple points of security at the White House, Jennifer Frank, Marie Coleman, Austen Astor Fuller and Tiffany Gyasi took turns holding hands and giving fleeting, nervous smiles to each other while they followed their point of contact. Despite their nerves, the quartet portrayed jewels of strength and confidence. Together,

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they had decided to wear suits, complete with jacket, pants and white shirt, but it was the colors they chose that drew the eye to them: Jennifer in sapphire blue to represent her journey to understanding; Marie in royal purple amethyst that reflected her wisdom, creativity and ability to encourage; Austen in earthy emerald that spoke of her desire for growth and renewal; and Tiffany in vibrant ruby that visualized the strength, power and passion she had to share her voice to exact change. Even her wheelchair was fashioned with shimmery red fabric to coordinate with her outfit. They moved closer to the room that would forever change how they were seen in the world, a room in which they would become recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in America. Seven years earlier, all four women would have scoffed at the thought of them being honored in such high regard, especially in light of the crisis that had brought them together. What they had done was pretty unusual—the first of its kind in academia. Rather than following the traditional university playbook, each of them wrote her own respective story and played audacious roles in steering Towering University (TU) in a bold and previously unheralded direction. Where in the past TU was known for graduating average students, today’s students and alumni not only have a good commanding grasp of their fields but also have been trained across the disciplines, and every class includes concepts and opportunities to practice cultural humility and love, authenticity, courage and empathy. By the time TU students graduated, they were not just effectively prepared for their futures, but also humbled and oriented to take good care of themselves, others, and the plant and animal environments to boot. Where TU used to focus on getting faculty and staff who were go-­ getters with high citation counts, publications and performance records, they were now equally as focused on go-givers—faculty, staff and students—who understood that excellence was also about giving. In doing so, TU had a community of faculty, staff and students who were much more emotionally healthy and who were developing symbiotic relationships with local, regional, national and international communities. Where the joke about the university was that it was not a place to stay but to “do time,” it was now bursting with vibrant energy, contentment and teaming—even as people with ideologically different views debated, challenged and engaged each other in search of solutions to the world’s myriad pressing problems and opportunities.

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Where TU used to be a monocultural institution, where Black, Indigenous, Pacific Islander, Latino and biracial faculty, staff and students were rare, it was now teeming with inclusive excellence—a really different positive campus. It was not that Tiffany, Jennifer, Marie and Austen were fearless. In fact, fear threatened to sabotage this momentous occasion more times than they could count. Rather, they merely insisted that going through the conflict was the pathway to a better university and, ultimately, a better community and world outside the Academy. In the process, they rescued TU from its downward trajectory and, in the process, lit a fire of radical transformation that, literally, revolutionized the Academy. In the words of the late British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Tiffany, Jennifer, Marie and Austen—four unlikely co-conspirators—refused to let a good crisis go to waste. In the essence of the late John Lewis, they exemplified “good trouble.” Now, they sat in the White House on July 4, just minutes away from receiving the highest honor to be given to civilians. As they looked out onto the audience, Jennifer, Marie, Tiffany and Austen recognized the other six members of the Towering Seven. Encouraged by a plan that Tiffany devised, the Towering faculty and staff, who comprised the Towering Seven, were the original catalysts for the work that began at TU, but that impacted all of the American Academy as illustrated by the audience that included Presidents of community colleges, liberal arts, research, Ivy League and other higher education institutions. Leaders of the American Council on Education as well as Learned Societies, American Association of Colleges and Universities, Mobility International USA, American Association of Community Colleges, NAACP, the Urban League, League of United Latin American Citizens, Association of American Universities, Parents and Families of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), Association of American Governing Boards, Tribal Leaders from across the country, the Asian American Defense League and, indeed, so many more waved, nodded and smiled across the room. Then, there were Congressional leaders of the House Committee on Education as well as the Secretary of Education—all looked truly elated to be in the room where the radical quartet was being honored. Suddenly, the audience grew quiet, signaling the ceremony’s opening— even though it was happening almost 30 minutes later than expected. The lights went dark for a minute, and when they returned, President Liana Martinez was at the podium, telling jokes and welcoming everyone

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gathered. She was the first woman and the first person of Latino and Asian ancestry to be elected to the American Presidency, which made the Medal even more meaningful to Tiffany, Marie, Jennifer and Austen. Liana’s grandfather began his immigration to America from China just before the enactment of the Chinese Exclusion Act. By the time the boat landed, they were refused entry to the United States because of their Chinese ancestry. The ship made its way to Mexico, where Liana’s grandfather disembarked, found work and eventually married a woman of Mexican ancestry. They had ten children, and one of them—Liana’s father—made his way to the United States as part of the Bracero program and began a new life in America of which Liana was a part. President Martinez was, in so many ways, the embodiment of immigrant America and a visual representation of the two fastest growing racial, ethnic groups on American shores. Madam President transitioned to her formal welcome, which was the foursome’s cue to make their way to the stage. Then, on cue, the President began her prepared remarks: And now, it is my pleasure to introduce honorees that I am calling—the fabulous foursome of the Academy—through their work, courage and vision for a better world, they literally turned the Academy on its head—for the better. Their work reminds me of what the indomitable Nelson Mandela once said about the importance of vision coupled with action: ‘Action without vision is only passing time. Vision without action is daydreaming, but vision with action can change the world.’ Tiffany Gyasi, Jennifer Frank, Marie Coleman and Austen Astor Fuller have matched bold vision and creative action to change the world. It is my pleasure to bestow upon each of you the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The award recognizes people who have made ‘an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.’ As we thank you for your courage and work, I would be remiss if I did not also acknowledge the bravery and love of the Towering University Seven—of which Tiffany is a part—whose care and concern for Towering University was the impetus for this world-­ changing work.

Tiffany, Marie, Austen and Jennifer grabbed each other’s hands as they smiled through tears of joy, amazed by the thunderous applause and the people on their feet saluting their work and courage. Jennifer was especially happy to notice that Rosscoe was now able to stand just as he had when he arrived at TU. They bowed to receive the awards, rubbing the medals with admiration and wonder.

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As they walked back to their seats, the President offered one final remark, “And, lest I forget … the story of the change that they led has been documented for all the world to read. The pages of their story show that change, though not easy, is possible. The book is called The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the Academy: Principles for Transformation and Retention. In the name of unvarnished truth-telling, I am going to ‘tell the truth and shame the devil.’” The audience leaned in to listen to what President Martinez was going to say: “The reason that we had a late start is because I lost track of time while I was reading it.” More thunderous applause and lots of laughter followed the President’s remarks as Jennifer, Marie, Tiffany and Austen, each still reveling in what had been achieved through sacrifice, collaboration, resources and fierce determination for positive change and by leaning into the principles of SOULS.

Reference Glaude, E. (2020). James Baldwin’s America and urgent lessons for our own. Crown Publishing.

Implications, Resources and Exemplars

Now that you have reached the end of this book, you have a choice to make. You can continue on either your current path or choose a different one that is informed by the SOULS’ principles. As you contemplate your choice, I offer below some takeaways for the next leg of your SOULS’ journey. Love is the foundation for everything that is honorable as well as worthwhile in the Academy and beyond. The changes that occurred at Towering University (TU) happened only after each character, including President Hillman Robinson, did the inner work, over time, that brought clarity and light. Love, indeed, is the genesis of all ongoing and lasting change. As demonstrated throughout SOULS, love and mistreatment of any kind, including, but not limited to, anti-Blackness cannot co-exist. Where one thrives, the other dies. Therefore, choose love, which brings about light and freedom. As the TU Seven challenged anti-Blackness, discrimination and indifference, there were opportunities for them to become hateful and vengeful. They chose not to imitate the oppressor. Their attention to their own inner work is an important reminder that while external oppression is unjust, even greater harm arises when we become consumed by contempt for others.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. M. Alex-Assensoh, The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the American Academy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39229-0_24

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TU’s transformation was propelled and amplified by people from all walks of life who leaned in together to bring about change. In deep cultural and transformative change, there are no lone rangers. TU’s transformation reveals a multi-dimensional and multi-year approach to change that draws on the heart as well as the head, the body, wisdom from the community, lived experience alongside research, scholarship and the appropriate incorporation of history as well as academic traditions that are equitable and inclusive. Implicit in SOULS is an invitation to experience failure, not as defeat, but as a midwife to transformative change. SOULS was developed—in essence “birthed”—as a tool to address the national crises of Black faculty and staff retention. SOULS is also a tool for embedding humane, impactful and loving culture in any organizational environment. As such, it is a resource in designing and revamping policies, processes, programs and mindsets that make the Academy more relevant, humane and impactful for all. For additional support on your SOULS journey, please find below a few reflective questions, resources and exemplars. As you reflect on each chapter, please consider the following: • If you applied Adam Grant’s concept of “thinking again” to your life in the Academy, what do you need to rethink? What changes? What remains the same? What new possibilities emerge for you, your loved ones, your coworkers and the institutions to which you belong? • For each of the SOULS’ principles and characters, what issues are coming up and why? • How would TU be different if the chief diversity officers and other diversity officers on campus were empowered to embed racial equity and healing appropriately into all campus programming and processes? • What existing policies, norms, programs and practices can I leverage immediately to put the SOULS principles in place? • Use the bibliography found in the introduction and each Passage for additional reading and also for connection to organizations and exemplars that are doing interesting work. • Several of the chapters provide pointed examples of action steps that reflect the SOULS’ principles. Think about how these actions might work and unfold—with modification—in your organization.

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• Since change must occur within us before it can properly take place in the relationships, organizations and systems that we inhabit, each component of SOULS provides an opportunity for individual work, especially in ridding ourselves of the harmful mythologies of inferiority that are characterized in much of anti-Black racism and stigmatization. What specific individual work does SOULS inspire in you? • Remember that while many Black faculty and staff are connected through the concepts of double consciousness and linked fate, they are also very diverse in employee category, personal interests and expertise. Respect their diverse needs and agency in all that you do. How are you respecting the uniqueness that Black faculty and staff bring to your organization? • Understand that failing and failing better are important parts of the transformational process. Be sure to nurture and shield Black faculty and staff from fallout along the way. How are you dealing with past failures, and in what ways are you using them as stepping stones to your next level of success?

Passage One: Institutional Responsiveness Without SOULS Jennifer pointed out that the proposed language provided to explain the departure of the TU Seven was strikingly similar to stories that she had read in a leading higher education magazine. Take a look at the following stories, which were offered by two different universities. What comes up for you? How has your institution responded to the resignation of Black faculty and staff? What did you learn? How are you using what you learned to improve the climate and culture of your campus? A similar letter was issued in response to the 2021 resignation of a Dean at Spitzer. Retrieved from https://www.architecturalrecord.com/ articles/14831-­l esley-­l okko-­e xplains-­h er-­r esignation-­f rom-­c ity-­ college-­of-­new-­yorks-­spitzer-­school-­of-­architecture A similar letter was issued in response to a 2021 resignation of a staff person at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. Retrieved from https://www.edsurge.com/news/2021-­02-­17-­citing-­racism-­and-­years-­ of-­bullying-­dena-­simmons-­r esigns-­from-­yale-­center-­for-­emotional-­ intelligence

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Reflection Questions: What do you make of the different interpretations of institutional silence? The President and institutional leaders see silence as a tool for protecting the institution. In contrast, some community members see silence as a decision in and of itself. How has your institution used silence in contending with issues and groups that challenge the status quo? Jennifer, who is relatively new to senior leadership in the Academy, is now responsible for cleaning up the institution’s 200-year-old mess that she did not make or benefit from, and one that the President, the board chair and General Counsel were increasingly comfortable with putting on her shoulders. What are the psychological, emotional, relational consequences for Jennifer, as a Black woman to carry such a heavy burden? Academic leaders in the Academy sometimes have a “know it all” attitude, without listening to those who bring different types of expertise from business, faith, art and other kinds of institutions. This was evident when Austin suggested that TU should prepare for the resignation story to go viral and the President shut that suggestion down. What skills, resources and ways of knowing do non-Academics bring to transforming the Academy? In several places, the President and the General Counsel talk about the Provost as if she were absent even though she is sitting at the table with them. What does it feel like to experience invisibility? What is the impact, on one’s own humanity, of rendering someone invisible and inaudible? To what extent does the ability to ignore, and not see people, impair one’s own ability to be human? Jennifer struggles with racist, sexist and ableist statements that she knows are wrong and yet, speaking out may impair her standing with the President. What are the mind, body, spirit impacts on Jennifer and Hillman? What role can the Academy play in ensuring that its leadership understands the key foundational issues of the Academy’s founding and how those issues continue to shape the tenor and the climate of the institutions that they lead? How do internal oppression and lateral oppression play into the way that Jennifer first approaches the letters? What do you make of Jennifer’s discomfort with Black people, especially since she is Black. What does this discomfort suggest as universities hire Black people and other non-­ Whites to lead in the Academy?

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Resources: Check out the work that UC-Irvine is doing toward building an environment where Black people thrive: UCI Black Thriving Initiative is grounded in four university-wide priorities: • Improving campus culture by intentionally confronting anti-Blackness. • Intensifying recruitment and improving success of Black undergraduate and graduate students in academic and professional programs. • Leveraging the research and teaching mission to advance understanding of the Black experience and advance drivers of well-being in support of Black communities. • Engage Black communities by linking UCI’s future to the success of Black people. Further Reading https://inclusion.uci.edu/action-­p lan/msi/uci-­b lack-­t hriving-­ initiative/

Passage Two: Safety Rosscoe says that he was recruited with fanfare. And yet that fanfare did not extend far beyond employment. How does a transformed Academy incorporate safety into its daily practices and procedures, especially the safety of black faculty and staff who face unique kinds of dangers internal and external to campus? If you applied Grant’s concept of “thinking again,” how will issues of safety be different on your campus? What is the role of political ideology at TU and on your campus? What blind spots do we have about partisan ideology and what does SOULS suggest about the role of partisan identification as an identity in the Academy? Black people must be able to look squarely at their scars without making them the sum total of their lives. Part of that project is also a healing project that is ongoing. What is the role of the Academy in this project?

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Further Reading Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem “Current Understandings of Microaggressions: Impacts on Individuals and Society” https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/ 2021-­sept-­microaggressions.html https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/learning-­innovation/applying-­ a d a m -­g r a n t % E 2 % 8 0 % 9 9 s -­% E 2 % 8 0 % 9 8 t h i n k -­a g a i n % E2%80%99-­post-­pandemic-­university Delizonna, L. (2017, August 24). High-performing teams need psychological safety. Here’s how to create it. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2017/08/high-­performing-­teams-­need-­psychological-­ safety-­heres-­how-­to-­create-­it Artze-Vega, I., Darby, F., Dewsbury, B., & Imad, M. (2023). The Norton guide to equity-minded teaching. W.W. Norton and Company. Lara, A., & Brown, D. (2021). Teaching Black: The craft of teaching on Black life and literature. University of Pittsburg Press. Agbanobi, A., & Asmelash, T. V. (2023, May 23). Creating psychological safety for Black women at your company. Harvard Business Review. Safety is a multidimensional issue that includes structural discrimination. The colleges and universities below are engaging in scholarship and service in ways that address structural racism: • Initiatives led by colleges and universities that are focused on addressing anti-Black structural violence in education and the criminal justice system, including initiatives at University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Rutgers. • CUPA-HR’s focus on trauma-informed manager training, https:// www.higheredtoday.org/2022/03/14/trauma-­informed-­colleges-­begin-­ with-­trauma-­informed-­leaders/

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Passage Three: Organizational Accountability Reflection Questions: The National Science Foundation responded to the chronic disenfranchisement of women in the sciences by launching the ADVANCE program, whereby social science research was used to redesign institutions in ways that allowed them to nurture talent and brilliance of women scientists. What would be possible if the National Science Foundation launched an ADVANCE program that inspires institutions to create environments that empowered Black faculty and staff to achieve, unfettered by institutional barriers and anti-Black racism? Or, how can your campus or a community of campuses pool resources to engage in ADVANCE-like structural changes focused on anti-Blackness? What do you make of Marie’s question about the Academy hiring people who are ill prepared to lead it? In previous decades, racial literacy was seen as an add-on or bonus. Why is it now crucial for leaders in the Academy to have a deep and thorough understanding of how race and other identities are embedded in structures, processes and norms? What do you make of the tension between proceeding in the usual way or engaging in institutional learning to determine a new approach? Samuel Towering, the founder of Towering University, was a complicated figure who simultaneously wrote editorials against the KKK but clearly stood as a sexist, segregationist, anti-Semite. As institutions work hard to transform themselves and as the Academy moves toward transformation, what is the role of history in the University’s narrative as well as in its future? What does Austen mean when she says that the Academy makes an idol of certainty? In what ways has your institution taken on risks related to the welfare and well-being of Black employees? What kinds of risks are the University willing to tolerate? When Pres. Robinson acknowledges the need for change, he credits the idea to Austen rather than Jennifer. Yet, it was Jennifer who initially suggested the need to pay attention to the letters. Research suggests that this kind of misattribution occurs often in the Academy especially for Black people but also women in science, and other groups. In an Academy where people actually lose their jobs for plagiarism and non-­ attribution, what can leaders do to ensure that they are attributing and crediting ideas to the people who were bold and brave enough to share them?

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Exemplars AAAS Sea Change https://seachange.aaas.org National Association of Diversity Officer’s (NADOHE)  Antiracism Framework, https://nadohe.org Victoria M. Massey’s Georgetown University Takes Unprecedented Step to Make Amends for Slavery, https://www.vox.com/2016/9/2/ 12768304/georgetown-­university-­slavery. Coaching by Selected Black Coaches: https://www.thelaceheartedway.com https://www.transformingmoments.co.za/ www.newdawnconsulting.com www.carolinecolleen.com https://www.forcoachesbycoaches.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/bonitamackey/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/rashad-­nelms/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/kwasiowusuasomaning/

Passage Four: Unvarnished Truth Telling Reflection Questions: How can librarians and archivists play a role in unearthing your institution’s history with respect to Black faculty, students and staff? How can such information be used to connect, heal and transform your institution’s culture for the better? How does institutional deception influence the ways in which marginalized groups get along, collaborate or engage? Exemplars W.K.  Kellogg Foundation’s Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Initiative (TRHT). Gillian B.  White’s “How Money from Slave Trading Helped Start Columbia,” January 25, 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/01/columbia-­university-­ slavery/514412/ https://www.aacu.org/initiatives/truth-­racial-­healing-­transformation-­ campus-­centers

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Members of the Academy often use rankings as a rationale for how resources are utilized. The two-part podcast provides a new understanding of biases in the ranking process. Part 1: https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-­history/lord-­of-­ the-­rankings Part 2: https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-­history/project-­ dillard Words of Wisdom Brown University’s Committee on Slavery and Justice offered: “We cannot change the past. But an institution can hold itself accountable for the past, accepting its burdens and responsibilities along with its benefits and privileges.”

Passage Five: Love and Spirituality What do you make of Hillman’s evolution? What role did love and spirituality play in this process? One of Austen’s overriding motivations for transforming the Academy is money. In fact she goes as for saying that she’s invested too much money in TU to have it fall into irrelevance. While in the short term this concern about her investment is helpful in moving the institution beyond tradition, what are the long-term consequences of Austen’s focus on money as the primary focus of transforming the Academy? What other values, principles, ideas and concerns should drive the need for transformation in the Academy? In the book Love as a Business Strategy, the authors outline the following individual efforts and behavior. How do these ideas translate into your own personal leadership style, into your organization and into the Academy as a whole (Mohammad, p. 43): Love means doing things out of care for others and with the intent of helping others, even if those things aren’t easy. Love means not sweeping problems under the rug. Love means working toward inclusion rather than reinforcing hierarchy. Love means embracing the hard conversations rather than avoiding them. Love means building processes, tools and policies that align people with profit. Love means support, accountability, and trust, which leads to innovation, efficiency and measurable business outcomes.

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The L.A.C.E.™ framework L.A.C.E.™—Modalities, meanings and moves Modalities

Meanings

Moves for self and others

Love:

Intentionally nurturing growth and development in self and others.

Self: Consistently developing yourself while being hopeful about who you are becoming. Others: Altruistic development of others in hopeful ways. Self: Developing, telling and living out your personal narrative. Others: Living, learning and leading in ways that allow others to develop, tell and live their own personal narratives. Self: Consciously choosing and enacting attitudes, words and actions that move beyond what is holding you back. Others: Moving beyond assumptions and comfort zones; paying attention in ways that empower and free others. Self: Noticing and recognizing what is happening to your mind, body, spirit and emotions. Others: Listening compassionately to the experiences of others and being moved to think and behave differently because of it.

Authenticity: Having a clear and accurate sense of who you are, the people and influences that shape you, and where you are going. Aligning your values with your behavior. Courage: Moving through fear, tradition, comfort or the status quo to be who you need to be and do what you need to do.

Empathy:

Appropriately holding space to notice and recognize what is happening; recognizing and valuing other people’s feelings, perspectives, needs and experiences.

© 2021 Yvette Alex-Assensoh, The L.A.C.E.™-Hearted Way, All Rights Reserved

Further Reading and Listening Love as a business strategy: Resilience, belonging and success by Mohammad Anwar, Frank Danna, Jeffrey Ma and Christopher Pitre. https://www.opb.org/article/2023/04/26/nike-­founder-­phil-­knight-­ donations-­portland-­neighborhoods-­black-­community-­leaders/ https://partners.noodle.com/blog-­p osts/interesting-­p odcast-­e p2; https://anchor.fm/noodlepodcasts/episodes/Episode-­8-­Dr%2D% 2DYvette-­Alex-­Assensoh-­e181add Alex-Assensoh, Y. (2021, February). Using neuroscience and positive psychology to enhance college teaching and learning. National Teaching and Learning Forum, 30 (2), 1–3.

Index1

A AAU, see Association of American Universities Academic, 3, 5–7, 10, 18, 25, 31, 35, 36, 50, 54, 65–66, 100, 110, 113, 114, 122, 123, 126, 129, 157, 164, 168, 170, 172, 178, 180, 183, 204, 207, 214, 224, 226, 227 Accountability, 6, 8, 10, 24, 26, 34, 54, 68, 76, 102, 104, 105, 109, 111, 113–115, 120–122, 126, 130, 144, 151, 153, 155, 158–160, 171, 192, 197, 214, 229, 231 Accrediting agencies, 217 Achievement gap, 50, 51, 156, 157 Achievement of Black faculty, 60 African Americans, 8, 77, 182, 183, 195

African-American slavery, 178, 183 African-American studies, 25 Africana Studies, 8, 65, 177, 178, 180–183 Afro-Portuguese heritage, 17 Agency, 20, 59, 76, 217, 225 Ahmaud Arbery, 44, 87 Aisha Jackson, 8, 18–20, 111, 115, 119, 130–132, 147–158, 163, 175, 193, 215, 218 Alex-Assensoh, Yvette, 138 Alienating classroom structures, 24 American Academy, 24, 34, 37, 165, 193, 220 American colleges and universities, 165 American Council on Education, 19, 220 American slavery, 59, 165 American society, 163, 196 Amygdala, 86, 208

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. M. Alex-Assensoh, The SOULS of Black Faculty and Staff in the American Academy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39229-0

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INDEX

Angela Davis, 168, 192 Antagonistic, 165 Anthropology, 182, 185–188 Anti-Blackness, 75, 204, 214, 215, 223 Antidiscrimination, 88 Antiracist, 68, 114, 180 Antonio Mendes, 8, 17, 19, 21, 67, 69, 70, 74, 176, 189, 191, 215 Asian American, 108 Association of American Universities (AAU), 1, 19 Association of Governing Boards, 19, 99, 193 Austen Fuller, 8, 20, 36–43, 45, 96–102, 106–112, 135, 147–152, 156–161, 189, 191–194, 213, 216, 218–222, 231 B Banda-Hansmann, Althea, 55, 109 Barriers that black faculty and staff face in terms of safety, 24 Belonging, 24, 36, 104, 142, 148, 157, 220, 242 Black advisors and teachers, 136 Black and White students, 51 Black Exodus at TU, 47 Black experience, 21, 214, 227 Black faculty and staff retention, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, 24, 28, 163, 224 Black Lives Matter, 39, 152, 217 Black migration from the South, 58 Black psyche and experiences, 4 Black staff, 1, 60, 173, 174 Black students, 2, 42, 45, 61, 67, 75, 136, 137, 141, 178–180, 204 Black Wall Street, 58, 79 Black woman, 28, 35, 45, 49, 50, 53, 54, 65, 74, 89, 101, 108, 109, 119, 120, 122, 148, 149, 207, 218, 226

Boards of Trustee, 8, 18, 40, 41, 104, 105, 160, 213 Bonilla-Silva, E., 60, 73 Borysiewicz, Leszek Sir, 168 C Campus community, 169, 171 Campuses, 1, 10, 19, 23, 25, 31, 32, 42, 48, 50, 51, 53, 61, 65, 66, 68, 71, 79, 81, 83, 85, 87–91, 95, 103–105, 114, 122, 124, 125, 135–141, 151, 152, 154, 167–175, 179, 181, 183–185, 187, 192, 201, 202, 204, 210, 211, 213, 214, 217, 218, 220, 225, 227, 229 Challenges and opportunities of the 21st century, 177 Chief of Staff, 8, 32, 53 Children, 3, 8, 44, 55, 56, 60, 65–77, 109, 119, 129, 147, 150, 160, 180, 188, 206, 211, 217, 218, 221 Chinese American, 45, 154 Choctaw Nation, 139 Church, 82, 165 Civil Rights Movement, 26 Classrooms, 24, 51, 70, 71, 79, 82, 87, 88, 90, 95, 135–137, 140, 141, 153, 169, 172, 195, 207, 214, 215 Coaching, 11, 33, 34, 44, 57, 103, 108, 109, 111, 114, 129, 151, 225, 240 Coates, Ta-Nehisi, 136 Co-conspirators, 186, 220 Code for Black, 39 Colleen, Caroline, 55 College presidents, 31 Collegiality, 126 Colonization, 50, 75, 140, 183 Colorblind racism, 60

 INDEX 

Community colleges, 217, 220 Conservative, 8, 17, 89 Consistent mentoring, 24 Crenshaw, Kimberle, 61 Crime, 59 Crime statistics, 59 Critical mass of Black faculty, 25 Culpability, 147–161, 191 Culture of the Academy, 7 Curiosity, 27, 90, 104, 113, 135, 157, 191, 215 Curriculum, 35, 76, 164, 165, 170, 177, 178, 210, 214, 215 D Data, 7, 33, 38, 59, 128, 155, 156, 165, 171, 174, 175, 187, 189 Dean, 2, 5, 7, 10, 39, 40n1, 44, 45, 53, 55, 60, 66, 90, 102, 105, 113, 115, 123, 125, 128, 131, 138, 139, 149–152, 154, 171, 179–184, 186–189, 191, 192, 200, 213–216, 225 Dehumanizing messages about Blackness, 60 De jure racial segregation, 59 Democrats, 68 Departmental meetings, 9, 172 Department of Education, 70, 160, 215 Dillard, 80, 81 Disability gadgets, 36 Discrimination, 5, 35, 36, 49, 51, 57, 61, 73, 75, 86, 114, 115, 125, 126, 130, 187, 214, 223, 228 Disproportionality in service, 129 DNA, 58, 175, 205 Documentaries, 44 Double consciousness, 4, 5, 225 Dual and dueling experiences of black people, 58

235

DuBois, W.E.B., 4, 5, 7 Dumas, Alexander, 108 Duties in classrooms, 9 E Eberhardt, Jennifer, 34, 59, 61, 104 Emancipation from slavery, 58 Empathy, 6, 11, 19, 137, 186, 207, 209, 219 Employee resource groups, 20, 53, 136 Employees, 21, 32, 34, 35, 38, 39, 42, 52–56, 73, 75, 76, 89, 90, 98–100, 104, 108, 109, 120, 129, 132, 187, 192, 217, 225, 229 Enrollment, 32, 42, 72, 180, 181, 217 Equity, 1, 10, 20, 24, 27, 115, 129, 132, 168, 200, 225, 228, 234 Ethic of love, 130, 214 Ethnic studies, 25 European immigrant, 59 F Fairness, 1, 3, 58, 66, 125, 154, 156 Faust, Drew Gilpin, 120 Fear and intimidation in the classroom, 82 Feminist, 115 Fictional accounts, 7 Finley, Sandra, 134 Flourishing, 26, 55, 168 Floyd, George, 44, 87, 172 Fredrickson, Barbara, 209 Freedom, 9, 58, 70, 90, 168, 169, 196, 223 Free speech, 168, 169 Futurists, 23

236 

INDEX

G Gender studies, 50 Ghanaian, 8, 18, 168 Governing boards, 5, 160 Grant, Adam, 6, 26–28, 34, 54, 55, 101, 104, 227 Great Depression, 205 Greenwood, 58 H Harm, 9–11, 49, 51, 57–61, 68, 72–74, 79, 82, 88, 90, 104, 109, 113, 115, 154, 169, 170, 214, 223 Harmony, 20 Harris, Cheryl, 59, 116 Hateful messages, 169 Heterosexual, 56, 76, 156 Higher Education, 1, 2, 19, 57, 58, 103, 105, 114, 115, 157, 159, 160, 164, 167, 178, 179, 193, 196, 204, 209, 220, 225 High profile black administrators, 38 Hillman Robinson, 7, 31, 32, 34–40, 42, 43, 45, 57, 96–103, 105, 106, 113, 152, 154, 160, 175, 188, 192, 215, 216, 223, 226, 229, 231 Hills, Dante, 9 Historically Black Colleges and Universities, 128 History of racialized practices, 59 History of racism, 83, 169 Hoffman, Andrew, 128, 168, 196 Homeownership, 58 Homophobia, 136, 137, 154, 206 hooks, bell, 6, 164, 186, 195 Hrabowski, Freeman, 23, 193 Humanists, 128 Human Resources, 73 Humility, 27, 54, 204, 219

I Indicators, 25, 76, 123, 152, 157 Inequality, 58, 157, 214 Inhumane, 24, 59, 130 Inhumane policies, 24 Innovation, 1, 41, 53, 121, 129, 159, 231 Inside Higher Ed, 31, 39 Insidious barriers, 50 Institution, 3–5, 10, 11, 17, 20, 21, 23–26, 28, 31, 32, 35, 41, 45, 49–54, 57, 61, 68, 75, 76, 91, 98, 103, 105, 111, 113, 114, 120–124, 126, 128–130, 136, 137, 139, 141, 153–155, 157, 163–165, 167, 168, 170, 173–175, 177–179, 181, 182, 188, 189, 193, 196, 204, 214, 216, 218, 220, 225, 226, 229–231 Institutional arrangements, 139 Institutional change, 21, 99, 175, 192 Institutional context, 158 Institutional discrimination, 49 Institutional fairness, 66 Institutional learning, 8, 10, 11, 113, 229 Institutional narratives, 51 Institutional power, 49 Institutional resources, 75, 128, 182 Institutional responsibility, 60 Institutional responsiveness, 9, 225–227 Institutional risks, 36, 38 Institutional transformation, 8, 24, 25 Intellect, 10, 50, 70, 139 Interest convergence, 26 Intersectionality, 50, 156 Investment of heart, 82 Ivy League, 167

 INDEX 

J Japanese, 127, 129 Jim Crow, 58, 59 Johnson, Kim, 47 Jones-Roger, Stephanie, 38 JoWanda Sparten, 8, 18, 20, 111, 115, 133, 135, 144, 145, 147–149, 153, 163, 193, 215, 218 K Kier, Dawn, 55, 109 King, Martin Luther Jr., 80, 168, 196, 210 Kodak, 158–160 L LACE, 218 The L.A.C.E.-Hearted Way, 225 Lateral oppression, 226 Latino, 42, 67, 75, 76, 85, 108, 121, 122, 124, 126–128, 136, 153, 155, 159, 169, 182–185, 203, 207, 221 Law, 6, 39, 44, 45, 55, 73, 80, 89, 108, 135, 153, 181 Leadership, 6, 7, 9, 25, 43, 50, 83, 104, 113, 129, 150, 154, 158, 164, 175, 183, 188, 204, 210, 214, 217, 218, 226, 231 League of Black Women, 134, 228 Learning, 3, 8, 10, 11, 20, 27, 28, 31, 39, 40, 42, 44, 51, 66, 85, 113–115, 141, 164, 168, 170, 171, 175, 178, 187, 196, 203–205, 207–211, 214, 218, 229 Legal issues, 36 Legalized racism, 58 Legitimacy, 182 Liberal, 220

237

Liberation, 58 Lived experiences, 4, 6, 7, 28, 136, 196, 224 Local communities, 219 Los Angeles, 129 Love, 3, 5–7, 10, 11, 20, 21, 24, 34, 45, 60, 66, 67, 88, 90, 100, 101, 104, 105, 109, 120, 130, 137, 140–142, 159, 171, 186, 194, 199, 200, 204, 205, 214–219, 221, 223, 231 Love and spirituality, 10, 24, 34, 104, 105, 109, 194–197, 199, 200, 204, 205, 231 Lovelessness, 216 Lukewarm, 35, 126 Lynne Pasquarelli, 179 M Maintenance staff, 33, 97 Malcolm X, 168 Management strategies, 50, 60 Marginalization, 35 Marie Coleman, 8, 33, 34, 44, 45, 47–57, 101, 106–112, 147–161, 191–194, 211, 213, 216, 218–222, 229 Mask, 48, 55, 96, 207 Mechanism for change, 180 Menakem, Resmaa, 9, 58, 86, 228 Mental health, 42, 137, 141, 144, 171 Meritocracy, 27, 149, 155, 156 Milliken decision, 59, 67 Mind numbing pain, 89 Minoritized groups, 44 Minority, 50, 75, 80, 101, 105 Minority communities, 170 Mississippi Goddam, 178 Model minority, 75 Movement and transformation, 113 Muhammad, Khalil Gibran, 34, 59

238 

INDEX

Multiracial, 182 Muslim, 115, 119, 120, 122, 123, 139, 151, 154, 169, 218 Mutual accountability, 10 Myths of White superiority, 178 N National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE), 5, 19, 45, 215 National Center for Education Statistics, 3 Native Americans, 41, 142, 178 Native American Student Center, 139–141 Neighborhood, 45, 69, 74, 81, 174 Nervous system, 50 Neuroscience, 6, 61, 200, 208, 209 New Deal policies, 58 Non-Black groups, 60 Normal channels, 37 O Omissions, 8, 178, 184 Onboarding processes, 51, 175 Oneself through the eyes of others, 5 Oppression, 9, 20, 50, 57, 80, 115, 159, 178, 184, 187, 196, 207, 223, 226 Organizational accountability, 6, 10, 24, 26, 34, 68, 102, 104, 105, 109, 111, 113–115, 120, 121, 126, 130, 151, 153, 155, 158–160, 197, 214, 229 Organizational learning, 28, 114 Organizational psychology, 28 P Pacific Islander, 42, 67, 121, 125–128, 155

Partnerships, 80, 130, 132, 160, 165, 170, 214, 215, 218 Pedagogy, 137, 153 Period of Black hope and liberation, 58 Physical safety, 58 Physiological stressors, 60 Plessy v. Ferguson, 58 Police, 26, 27, 58, 59, 79, 81, 84, 87, 89, 91, 125, 131, 140, 147, 172, 188, 201, 203, 211 Policies, 1, 11, 23–25, 35, 38, 58, 59, 61, 74, 76, 82, 88, 99, 113, 115, 121, 122, 128, 130, 165, 174, 210, 214, 215, 218, 224, 231 Positive emotions, 209 Positive psychology, 45, 209 Prejudice, 27, 69, 73, 85 Presidents, 2, 5, 7, 10, 18, 19, 23, 28, 31, 34–37, 40–42, 48, 52, 53, 56, 60, 61, 66, 79, 95, 96, 98, 100–103, 105, 119, 120, 128–131, 136, 145, 154–157, 164, 165, 167, 170, 171, 177, 179, 180, 185–189, 191–193, 201, 203, 215–217, 220–223, 226 Pressure for change, 26 Professional development, 66, 130, 132, 192 Professorial ranks, 187 Program development, 180 Promotion policies, 25 Property, 58, 84, 169, 196 Protocols, 61, 200, 218 Provost, 2, 5, 7, 8, 18, 19, 28, 31, 33–35, 42, 44, 45, 47, 48, 50, 53, 56, 60, 65, 79, 97, 98, 103–105, 119, 121, 123, 124, 126, 129, 130, 135, 136, 138, 149–152, 156–158, 173, 175, 177, 179–182, 185–189, 202, 203, 218, 226

 INDEX 

Psychology, 6 Public schools, 73, 160, 215 Pulitzer Prize, 8, 39, 167 R Race, 8, 36, 44, 48–50, 65, 66, 74, 77, 83–86, 124, 150, 156, 157, 164, 229 Race riots, 58 Racial assaults, 82, 86, 104, 137, 170, 177 Racial backgrounds, 137, 169 Racial change, 51 Racial discrimination, 73, 114, 125, 126 Racial equality, 20, 163, 164 Racial equity, 10, 27, 113, 164 Racial harm, 73 Racial histories, 58, 59, 83, 85, 164, 169, 183, 214 Racial inequality, 58, 214 Racial injustice, 44 Racialized discrimination, 5 Racialized nature of Academic organization, 7, 34, 50, 67, 165 Racialized organizations, 7, 110 Racialized trauma, 85 Racial justice, 154 Racial newcomers, 129 Racial profiling, 60 Racial reckoning, 44 Racial school desegregation, 55, 59 Racial segregation, 4, 5, 59 Racial stigma, 57, 59 Racial violence, 58 Racism, 8, 20, 50, 58, 60, 68–75, 80–83, 86, 89, 90, 96, 141, 154, 159, 163, 165, 169, 177, 184, 189, 203, 214, 225, 228, 229 Ray, Victor, 7 Reconstruction, 58 Republicans, 65, 68, 80, 86

239

Research, 4–9, 24, 25, 31, 41, 42, 45, 51, 52, 61, 66, 67, 74–77, 82, 83, 86, 89, 114, 124, 126–128, 136, 141, 156, 159, 160, 164, 165, 181, 187–189, 195, 196, 209, 210, 213–215, 220, 224, 227, 229 Research labs, 9, 172, 195, 214 Resignations, 9, 17, 18, 23, 31, 34, 35, 37, 38, 40n1, 40n2, 52, 53, 68, 90, 98, 99, 103, 105, 108, 119, 125, 132, 158, 174, 178, 191, 203, 225, 226 Resistance to change, 10, 113, 132 Resource allocation, 25 Retention and care of Black employees, 60 Retention of Black faculty and staff, 4, 163 Reward structures, 23, 50, 214 Rhue, Perry, 225 Robin Littlefoot, 42 Ron Chew, 8, 45, 77 Rosscoe Higginbotham, 8, 17, 18, 21, 60, 77, 90, 91, 109, 125, 132, 163, 215, 217, 221, 227 S Safety, 6, 8, 9, 18, 24, 34, 36, 54, 57–61, 65, 68, 69, 73–77, 79, 82, 87, 89, 104, 115, 120, 132, 159, 160, 169, 197, 214, 227–228 Sarcasm, 53, 149 Saving Our Children, 65–77 School rankings, 178 Scientific knowledge, 136 Scientists, 4, 59, 89, 101, 119, 120, 122, 124, 128, 154, 156–158 Self-examination, 164, 192 Self-Preservation, 79–91 Senate, 35, 53, 128, 129, 157, 213, 216, 217 Sexism, 115, 137, 154, 159

240 

INDEX

Sexist, 41, 49, 154, 226, 229 Sexuality, 65, 67 Shame, 49, 51, 222 Skin tone, 67 Slavery, 45, 58, 59, 74, 75, 164, 165, 178, 183 Social identities, 49, 84 Social media, 19, 34, 128, 143 Social psychologist, 49, 61 Social science, 150, 165, 229 Sociology, 179, 210 Sojourner Truth, 168 SOULS, 2, 4–11, 18, 23–28, 32, 34, 35, 164, 191–193, 197, 213–225, 227–228 The Souls of Black Folk, 4, 88 Southeast Asian, 129 Spirituality, 6, 10, 24, 34, 67, 104, 105, 109, 194–197, 199, 200, 204, 205, 207–209, 211, 214, 231 Staff, 1–11, 23–26, 28, 31–33, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40n2, 42, 45, 48, 49, 52, 53, 57, 59–61, 68, 69, 80, 82, 83, 95, 97, 103–106, 109, 110, 113–115, 121, 128, 130, 136, 140, 144, 154, 160, 163, 164, 166, 169, 170, 172–175, 179, 184–187, 195, 196, 199, 203, 204, 211, 214, 217, 219, 220, 222, 224, 225, 227, 229, 230 Steele, Claude, 34, 49, 50, 60, 61, 104, 208 STEM, 51, 124, 165 Stereotype threat, 49–51, 54, 61, 81, 86, 159 Stigmatization of Black people, 59 Stimpson, Michelle, 208 Strategies for embedding SOULS principles, 217 Structural changes, 25, 104, 229 Structural racism, 20, 86, 163, 228 Structural violence, 159, 228

Student enrollment, 180 Student government, 41, 42, 53 Student success, 157 Suburbanization, 58 Superwoman, 53, 55 Systemic Black oppression, 9 T Taylor, Breonna, 44 Teaching, 6, 27, 42, 66, 83, 86, 90, 104, 113, 115, 121, 126, 138, 152, 153, 156, 159, 196, 210, 214, 215, 227 Technology, 24, 106, 123, 124, 127, 159, 173, 218 Tenure and promotion, 54, 82–83, 122–125, 129, 149–152, 154–157 Territories, 107 Theorist, 86 Think Again, 34, 39, 54, 55, 91, 98, 104, 215 Thriving, 59, 168 Tiffany Gyasi, 8, 18–21, 36, 39, 167, 174, 175, 191, 193, 194, 215, 217–222 Title IX office, 88 Towering, Samuel, 41, 42, 95, 96, 229 Towering Seven, 17, 18, 21, 31, 34, 44, 52, 54, 55, 95, 96, 133, 159, 167, 191, 193, 216, 220 Towering University (TU), 7, 8, 17–21, 28, 31–42, 44, 45, 47–50, 52, 54–57, 65–71, 73–76, 79, 81–83, 87–91, 96, 98–107, 109–111, 113, 119–121, 123–125, 127, 128, 132, 136–139, 154, 159, 160, 165, 167–189, 191–194, 196, 203, 204, 208, 210, 211, 213, 215–221, 223–225, 227, 229

 INDEX 

Toxic departments, 24 Transformation in the Academy, 23, 24, 55, 231 Transparency in the tenure and promotion, 122 Trust, 45, 69, 137, 153, 158, 183, 196, 217, 231 TU Board of Trustees, 8, 40, 41, 160, 213, 229 Tulsa, 79, 83, 84 Turnover quotient data, 25 U Unearned advantages to Whites, 60 Unearned disadvantages to Blacks, 5, 59, 83 Unique form of racial stigma, 59 Universities and colleges across America, 23 Unvarnished truth telling, 6, 8, 10, 24, 34, 104, 105, 153, 159, 161, 163–166, 173–175, 185, 189, 214 V The veil, 4, 5 The veil of racial segregation, 5 Venisa Tran Egland, 88 Verbal assaults, 9, 49 Vietnamese, 3, 127 Violence, 2, 57, 58, 79, 83, 90, 106, 115, 159, 169, 203, 207

241

W Wealth, 58, 80, 83, 84, 111 Wellbeing, 9, 57, 60, 204, 207 Wells, Ida B., 168 Wendy Williams, 8, 17, 20, 60, 77, 109, 132, 135, 163, 180, 182, 188, 215, 217 Whistling Vivaldi, 34, 104, 135 White faculty and staff, 82 Whiteness, 70, 159, 207 White people, 5, 44, 56, 80, 83, 84, 123, 155, 156 Whites and white adjacent groups, 5 White skin, 73 White supremist ideas and behaviors, 164 Wilder, Craig, 6, 34, 57, 82, 104, 165, 178 Winona LaDuke, 168 Wisdom, 23, 136, 219, 224, 231 Women, 20, 27, 38, 42, 49, 51, 54, 57, 58, 65, 74, 84, 89, 119, 120, 122, 124, 125, 128–130, 132, 148, 161, 171, 173, 185, 206, 207, 218, 219, 229 Women and Gender Studies, 130, 182, 185–188 Women scientists, 82, 125, 129, 171, 229 Women studies, 25 X Xenophobia, 169