Fight the Tower: Asian American Women Scholars’ Resistance and Renewal in the Academy 9781978806405

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Fight the Tower

Fight the Tower Asian American ­Women Scholars’ Re­sis­tance and Renewal in the Acad­emy

EDITED BY KIEU LINH CAROLINE VALVERDE AND WEI MING DARIOTIS

Rutgers University Press New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Valverde, Kieu Linh Caroline, 1969– editor. | Dariotis, Wei Ming, editor. Title: Fight the tower : Asian American women scholars’ resistance and renewal   in the academy / edited by Kieu Linh Caroline Valverde and Wei Ming Dariotis. Description: New Brunswick, New Jersey : Rutgers University Press, [2019] |   Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018057058 | ISBN 9781978806368 (pbk. : alk. paper) |   ISBN 9781978806375 (hc-plc : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781978806382 (epub) |   ISBN 9781978806399 | ISBN 9781978806405 (web PDF) Subjects: LCSH: Asian American women college teachers—Social conditions. |   College teachers—Tenure—United States. | Discrimination in higher education—   United States. Classification: LCC LC2633.6 .F54 2019 | DDC 378.1/982995073—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018057058 A British Cataloging-­in-­Publication rec­ord for this book is available from the British Library. This collection copyright © 2020 by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Individual chapters copyright © 2020 in the names of their authors All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—­Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. www​.­r utgersuniversitypress​.­org Manufactured in the United States of Amer­i­ca

Contents



Fight the Tower: W ­ omen of Color in Academia Manifesto

ix

Prologue. Taking Action: Asian American Faculty against Injustices in the Acad­emy

1

SHIRL E Y HUNE

Part I “Fear Is the Path to the Dark Side”: Introducing the Fight Waking

31

W. P.



Introduction. “The Time to Fight Is Now”: Asian American ­Women, Academia’s Socially Engineered “Privileged Oppressed,” Go Rogue

33

Part II  “That’s No Moon!”: Attack of the Institution

Who Killed Soek-­Fang Sim?

77

W. P.

1

Unpacking the Master’s Plan: Asian American ­Women Resisting the Language of Academic Imperialism

83

EL IZ A NOH

2

Investigating Discrimination: Injustice against W ­ omen of Color in the Acad­emy

96

JA NE JUNN A ND M A I’A K . DAV IS CROS S

v

vi  •  Contents

3

Killing Machine: Exposing the Health Threats to Asian American W ­ omen Scholars in Academia

110

K IE U L INH C A ROL INE VA LV ERDE , C A R A M A F F INI PH A M, MELODY Y EE, A ND JING M A I

Part III “You Are Unwise to Lower Your Defenses”: The Phantom Menace

The Cost of Speaking

161

W. P.

4

Precariously Positioned: Asian American ­Women Students’ Negotiating Power in Academia

165

SH A NNON DELOSO

5

Hmong Does Not Mean F ­ ree: The Miseducation of and by Hmong Americans

189

K AOZONG N. MOUAVA NG SOU

6

An Offering: Healing the Wounds and Ruptures of Gradu­ate School

219

CINDY NHI HU Y NH

7

Opening the Box: An International Asian W ­ oman Scholar’s Fight

234

A K IKO TA K E YA M A

8

How to Leave Academia

255

R A NI NE U T IL L

Part IV “Do. Or Do Not. ­There Is No Try”: Radical Love as Pedagogy and Practice

She S­ hall Not Be Moved

273

W. P.

9

Attack on the Spirit by the “Rational World” (and Spiritual Recovery from It)

275

BRE T T J. E S A K I

10

Care Work: The Invisible L ­ abor of Asian American ­Women in Academia

300

WEI MING DA RIOT IS A ND GR ACE J. YOO

11

Pain + Love = Growth: The ­Labor of Pinayist Pedagogical Praxis MEL IS S A-­A NN NIE V ER A-­L OZ A NO

325

Contents • vii

12

Mothering Is Liberation: Giving Birth to Alagaan Pedagogy (Pedagogy of Care)

350

A L LYSON T IN T I ANGC O -­C UB AL E S

13

Re­sis­tance Is Not Futile: From #adjuncthustle to Hell Yeah!

365

GENE V IE V E ERIN O’BRIEN

14

Academic Symbiosis: A Manifesto on Tenure and Promotion in Asian American Studies

382

WEI MING DA RIOT IS

Part V The Academic Awakens: “We Are One with the Force and the Force Is One with Us”

My Kintsuki

419

W. P.



Conclusion: Academics Awaken: Power, Re­sis­tance, and Being Woke

423



Epilogue. Upward and Onward: Asian American ­Women’s L ­ egal Re­sis­tance

443

ROBY N M AG AL IT RODRIGUE Z

Acknowl­edgments 451 Notes on Contributors 455 Index 463

Fight the Tower ­ omen of Color in Academia W Manifesto As w ­ omen of color in academia, we are often presumed incompetent, not ­because of our teaching, scholarship, or ser­vice, but ­because of the biased presumptions associated with our gender, sex, sexual orientation, color, race, national origin, ethnic group identification, citizenship status, accent, age, disability, religion, marital status, motherhood, and personhood. We are perceived as easy targets for discrimination and dismissal based on ­these assumptions, and b­ ecause our numbers are still kept disproportionately low in academic institutions, many wrongly surmise we are not capable of collective action. We stand ­today to say we are united in our strug­gles to fight off the institutional violent attacks against our personhood, work, and well-­being, and vow to connect with ­others to assist and unite in raising our voices and demanding equal rights and justice. This is what we know. We know meritocracy in academia is a myth that is promoted by the dominant group to perpetuate a status quo that protects their own inadequacies. The real­ity is we are expected to produce beyond the standards set out by and for the institutional establishment. But even when we exceed ­those standards and excel, that does not guarantee equitable pay, promotion, tenure, maintenance of tenure, or equality. We call out the power holders for their lack of real commitment to rigorous scholarship and demand our earned place in the acad­emy beyond token appointments.

ix

x  •  Fight the Tower

We know the academic c­ areer pipeline does not exist for us. Academic institutions create barriers for w ­ omen of color to prevent our admission to gradu­ate programs, access to tenure-­track positions, tenure, administrative power, professional success, and advancement—­especially in top-­tier universities. Th ­ ose of us who make it through the system are constantly ­under scrutiny, and this makes work pro­gress difficult and ­every advancement effort a ­battle. We speak truth to power to expose the unjust and discriminatory practices aimed at us and demand fair repre­sen­ta­tion and access to all levels of the acad­emy. We know ­there is ­little civility in academia. We are often abused, bullied, humiliated, subordinated, silenced, isolated, and made to feel inferior. The constant macro-­and micro-­aggressions serve to sabotage our work and deplete our much-­needed time and energies. Th ­ ese types of violent assaults almost always result in m ­ ental, emotional, and physical harm. They sometimes even kill us. We vow to stand strong in unity against the many ­faces of oppression and w ­ ill never sit idle while our s­ isters face beat-­downs and deaths in the institution. We know that even ­those that look like us can also hurt us. ­People of color that subjugate their own are the co-­opted tokens and opportunists that believe they w ­ ill avoid victimization and be included in the establishment if they conform, go along with the oppressors, and sometimes act as oppressors themselves. They do not realize they have no immunity and may find themselves the targets of discrimination in due time. We w ­ ill make known their actions and protect ourselves from their treachery. We know that deceit and unlawful biases are protected u­ nder shrouds of “confidentiality” and “anonymity.” Perpetrators are not accountable for defamatory statements made during discussions of our rec­ords. We insist upon due pro­cess, including open, honest, and truthful deliberations of our rec­ords. We demand the opportunity to speak on our own per­for­mance and directly answer concerns during the pro­cess surrounding decisions about our f­ uture in the acad­emy. We know that our associations and collaborations threaten the establishment and thus concerted efforts are made to isolate and weaken our connections to t­ hose inside and outside of the acad­emy. We move forward with our mobilizing while rejecting the divide-­and-­ conquer strategies that are self-­defeating.

­Women of Color in Academia Manifesto • xi

We know that due to gender, racial, ethnic, and cultural ste­reo­types we are expected, and at times explic­itly asked, to remain s­ ilent and blindly adhere to the power hierarchy. We defy the ste­reo­types and bravely use our voices for truth-­telling, give our testimonials, scream of the injustices we endure, broadcast our achievements, and vow to never, ever remain ­silent. We know a misperception exists that we lack the resources to defend ourselves against unjust attacks and to fight for our rights to remain and thrive in academia. We work tirelessly to mobilize and consolidate our power and resources to advance our individual and collective strug­gles to fight. In solidarity and unity for justice, join us to Fight the Tower.1

1 This manifesto first appeared publicly in 2013 on the Fight the Tower website, www​ .­fighttower​.­com. The same year, it was published in the Seattle Journal for Social Justice 12, no. 2, article 10.

Fight the Tower

Prologue Taking Action: Asian American Faculty against Injustices in the Acad­emy SHIRLE Y HUNE

Abstract This study contextualizes the acad­emy as a site of social change pressed to de­moc­ra­tize through diversity, while at the same time the status quo of racism, sexism, xenophobia, and other inequities persists in and outside of its institutions. From the mid-­nineteenth ­century to the pre­sent, Asian Americans have carried out a long historic strug­gle for educational rights, access, and equal treatment through kindergarten through twelfth grade and higher education institutions in the United States. Focusing on the experiences of Asian American academic ­women since the 1970s as they oppose being construed as incompetent and strive to be treated justly and to advance through the faculty ranks, this prologue highlights their biased treatment as “other” faculty and not “real” academics, like white males, which contributes to their negative evaluations. ­These analyses provide a backdrop to examining the current strug­gles of Asian American w ­ omen faculty for a more just acad­emy. It features key pioneering Asian American faculty warriors of the 1980s, whose actions, such as litigating against their tenure and promotion denials, have forever changed how the acad­emy must respond to racial and gender discrimination. The prologue brings to light Asian American contributions, including landmark U.S. Supreme 1

2  •  Shirley Hune

Court decisions, to advance civil and educational rights that benefit Americans and academics in general.

Misguided Ste­reo­t ypes ­Peoples of Asian descent, hereafter referred to as “Asian Americans,”1 are presently the fastest growing racial or ethnic group in the United States. Even so, they are only about 6 ­percent of the nation’s population at pre­sent. Through mainstream culture, Asian Americans are ste­reo­typed as hard workers, high achievers, and eco­nom­ically successful—­a model minority group that, in this view, no longer encounters the racial discrimination of the past. In practice, this purportedly positive label is a double-­edged sword. Asian Americans dispute being socially constructed as a model minority ­because of the characterization’s intended negative, divisive, and harmful consequences and in light of the enduring racism t­ oward them, now often found in subtle forms of microaggressions instead of overt discrimination (Sue, Bucceri, et  al., 2007). In addition, the ste­reo­type can lead any group in the United States to consider all Asian Americans to be “successful.” In so ­doing, American society denies the realities of poor, underserved, and educationally disadvantaged Asian Americans, who may as a result experience disruptions to their civil rights and their access to opportunities, ser­vices, and resources. For example, many Asian American students are not provided with academic supports and ser­vices ­because educators perceive them as a model minority without academic needs, issues, or concerns (Lee & Zhou, 2015). The bigoted view from a previous era of Asian Americans as a “Yellow Peril” and threat to U.S. society also continues in a more muted form (E. D. Wu, 2014). Still ­today many Asian Americans are treated as undeserving permanent foreigners and second-­class citizens despite their birthright, citizenship, and contributions to the nation. The dominant group’s efforts to reframe Asian Americans as “honorary” or “near whites” does not make that true nor has the model minority ste­reo­t ype ended racist policies and practices against them (Chou & Feagin, 2008; G. Li & Wang, 2008; F. H. Wu, 2002). Asian Americans find they are triangulated between Blacks (and other minority groups) and whites and oppose being pitted against other minorities with whom they share much in common in regard to social justice issues. This buffer position, they argue, serves to solidify the prevailing power structure as it manages majority–­ minority group relations to maintain racial and other hierarchies and is a detriment to Asian Americans in their everyday lives (Kim, 1999; Ng, Pak, & Hernandez, 2016). The idea that Asian Americans are a quiet, hard-­working, and docile p­ eople who do not “rock the boat” is a gross misunderstanding of their realities. Mostly, it is a narrow pigeonhole of desired be­hav­ior for employees that ­those in power

Prologue • 3

prefer and reward in both educational and cap­i­tal­ist institutions, thus securing the privileged status of ­those at the top. Sometimes such be­hav­ior is a necessary strategy of minority groups and w ­ omen for them to survive and persist in racialized and gendered situations where they have less power and are outnumbered (Banaji & Greenwald, 2013; Berdahl & Min, 2012). A fuller story of Asian American agency against injustice must include an analy­sis of Asian Americans’ oppositions to racism, sexism, xenophobia, and other inequities. This chapter highlights the Asian American fight for equity as part of a larger strug­gle for transforming educational institutions.

Fighting against Racism and Xenophobia for Educational Access and Rights Asian Americans are a historically disadvantaged racial minority group. The discrimination that they face in education has a long and ugly history grounded in racism and xenophobia. Their educational environment has been consistently inhospitable, oftentimes hostile, and in stark contrast to the common belief that Asian Americans are somewhat advantaged in the education sphere. Early examples from kindergarten through twelfth grade (K–12) education shed light on racist practices and help explain the anger that Asian Americans feel when they are ceaselessly deprived of their dignity, civil rights, and access to education. The historic but less known contribution of Asian Americans to the strug­ gle of ­people of color to desegregate schools in the United States precedes the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision initiated by African Americans, as illustrated by examples from the efforts of Chinese Americans. From the mid-­nineteenth through the early twentieth c­ entury, while Chinese immigrant parents contributed to the nation’s development and paid taxes to support public schools, their American-­born c­ hildren ­were being denied access to them. Despite having l­ imited civil rights as foreigners prevented from naturalizing as U.S. citizens, Chinese parents fought for de­cades to have their ­children educated by petitioning school boards and retaining ­lawyers to contest the legality of segregated schools. In a California Supreme Court decision (Tape v. Hurley, 1885), the middle-­class Tape ­family in San Francisco won the right for their d­ aughter Mamie to attend a public school with whites, but state officials and the local school board circumvented implementing the decision. Instead, by establishing the Chinese Primary School2 that year for Chinese ­children, they ­were able to maintain racial separation in public schools for de­cades (Kuo, 1998; Ngai, 2010). In the Mississippi Delta, the numbers of Chinese ­were very small; nonetheless, being neither Black nor white, they w ­ ere caught in a dilemma in the Black/ white binary of U.S. race relations. Which school could they attend? Schools

4  •  Shirley Hune

for white ­children ­were accredited; schools for Black ­children ­were lacking by many standards. Jeu Gong Lum’s petition in 1924 for his d­ aughters to attend the white school eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1927 Gong Lum v. Rice, the Court determined that ­because the Chinese could attend the public school for “colored” students, they ­were not being denied public schooling. With this decision, the U.S. Supreme Court expanded de jure racial segregation beyond African Americans to the Chinese, and another effort led by the Chinese to break school segregation by race failed (Berard, 2017). In both cases in two dif­fer­ent parts of the country and de­cades apart, officials based their findings on the “separate but equal” doctrine of the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court Plessy v. Ferguson decision that justified and reinforced Black–­ white segregation in public venues as part of Jim Crow practices. Th ­ ese landmark decisions reveal the willingness of Chinese immigrant parents to fight for their ­children’s education through the U.S. courts. (Cases involving other Asian groups followed.) They also exposed the extent to which American society sought to maintain and expand a policy of segregated schools by treating the Chinese, and subsequently other Asian groups, including the U.S.-­born and hence citizens, as inferior and a danger to the nation, requiring racial separation from whites (Kuo, 1998; Low, 1982). Only the reluctance of many communities to fund separate schools allowed Asian Americans to attend schools with whites. Nonetheless, some remained in segregated schools in parts of California and in Mississippi ­until the 1930s and 1950, respectively. Although school desegregation existed in princi­ple a­ fter the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision, still ­today de facto racial segregation continues in practice, with many Asian Americans and other students of color attending predominantly minority public schools with low funding and poorly prepared teachers b­ ecause of residential segregation based on income while wealthier and white parents choose to send their c­ hildren to private schools (Lorgerie & Smith, 2015). In 1970, Chinese Americans filed a class action suit in federal courts arguing that ­limited En­glish proficient students ­were being denied equal opportunities to an education. It resulted in the 1974 U.S. Supreme Court Lau v. Nichols decision that recognized the rights of linguistic minorities to equal treatment in facilities, teachers, and curriculum. This groundbreaking ruling led to the establishment of bilingual and En­g lish learner programs in schools and was subsequently extended to ­people with disabilities and ­those requiring language assistance with social ser­vices, in voting, and in other areas to the benefit of Americans overall (Wang, 1976). Consistently in the past and t­ oday, Asian American K–12 students, families, and community organ­izations raise their voices to teachers and school and public officials to address bullying, ­limited resources for En­glish learners, the lack of culturally competent teachers, overly Eurocentric curriculum

Prologue • 5

materials, too few Asian American teachers and staff, and the low priority given to school-­community engagement, but their concerns are rarely heard and addressed (Co­ali­tion for Asian American ­Children and Families, 2004; Hune & Takeuchi, 2008; Pang & Cheng, 1998; Park, Endo, & Rong, 2009; Soodjinda, 2014). They also oppose Asian American youths being treated as model minorities with higher standards expected of them instead of recognizing student individuality and differences in abilities, interests, and be­hav­iors. This stereotyping particularly fails to acknowledge disparities of f­ amily support given wide variances in income, parental education, and knowledge of the U.S. education system, especially among new Asian immigrants and refugees3 (Hune, 2015; Hune & Takeuchi, 2008; Lew, 2006; Louie, 2004; Park, Goodwin, & Lee, 2003). Asian American educators call for recognition of socioeconomic differences among Asian Americans by ethnic group and within each ethnic group to enable eco­nom­ically and academically disadvantaged Asian American students, who tend to live in low-­income communities with underfunded schools and staffing, to receive academic and financial supports. Moreover, many youths whose working-­class parents have ­limited resources, En­glish skills, and education have multiple f­ amily responsibilities unlike most middle-­class families, such as baby­sitting, elder care support, translating for adults, and even helping out in small ­family businesses ­after school (Lew, 2006, Louie, 2004; Park et al., 2003). Asian American demands for fair and unbiased treatment and to be viewed as individuals rather than as a falsely presumed homogeneous group and a model minority extends beyond K–12. They are also making known their anger and frustrations at having their inequities and concerns per­sis­tently ignored by authorities in higher education institutions and other entities.

The Acad­emy in the Context of Social Change From the 1880s u­ ntil the mid-1940s, anti-­Asian immigration restriction laws ­adopted by the U.S. government primarily against Asian male workers, and also categories of Asian ­women, ­limited new migration from Asia and curtailed ­family formation and new births as wives could not join husbands, and w ­ omen tended not to migrate in­de­pen­dently. Consequently, the Asian population in the United States diminished in the years prior to World War II. Given the small number of U.S.-­born second-­generation youths, poverty, racism, and the need for many of them to work to help support their families, t­ here ­were few college-­going Asian Americans before the 1960s, despite some who attended through the GI Bill as veterans. In contrast, the highly vis­i­ble population growth of Asian Americans in recent de­cades and their diversity in national origin, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background are largely a result of more

6  •  Shirley Hune

open U.S. immigration laws ­after 1965 and legislation ­after 1975 that assisted refugees from the U.S. wars in Southeast Asia to resettle in the United States. ­These ­legal changes over the past five de­cades have brought large numbers of Asians and Latinos into the country, and many of their youths are in t­ oday’s colleges and universities (E. Lee, 2015). Asian Americans strive to achieve academically and to attend college both to fulfill their parents’ aspirations and sacrifices to make a better life for their families and to pursue the American Dream for themselves, like other Americans. Most Americans t­ oday view college as a necessary step to enter the m ­ iddle class, and for racial minority groups, college degrees are even more impor­tant. Education is viewed by many ­people of color as a hedge against the per­sis­tent racism and xenophobia that continue to block their opportunities in the larger society; they may assume that additional degrees are essential if they are to be considered for the same position in the workforce held by whites with less education. For low-­income Asian Americans, especially, some of whose parents came as refugees, ­limited economic resources and the lack of social networks can be debilitating. Th ­ ese conditions often contribute to students experiencing physical and ­mental health issues and poor academic per­for­mance and may lead them to decide not to attend college and, in some instances, to drop out of college. In short, first-­generation college goers generally face more challenges in achieving academic success than the U.S.-­born population and students from middle-­and upper-­class backgrounds (J. Lee & Zhou, 2015; Teranishi, 2010). Nearly 20 ­percent of Asian American and Pacific Islander first-­time freshman students in the California State University system drop out before their third year of college (CSU Office of the Chancellor, 2016). Like students of all backgrounds, many Asian American college students from the 1970s to the pre­sent day have been actively engaged in social justice strug­gles on and off campus. ­These include fighting for Asian American studies and more student diversity; for the rights of immigrants and the undocumented; against racial stereotyping and hate crimes; in support of faculty diversity hires and tenure; and for other issues (see chapter 4 of this volume; Ching & Agbayani, 2012; Museus, Maramba, & Teranishi, 2013; McEwen, Kodama, et al., 2001; on student support for faculty tenure, see Katayama, 2009; Matsuda, 2009; and Valverde, 2013). Increasingly, some faculty, including Asian American faculty, are documenting the challenges they face as first-­generation academics, namely, being the first of their f­ amily or ethnic group to obtain a doctorate and to work in the acad­emy (Berry & Mizelle, 2006; Stockdill & Danico, 2012). Being “the first” and other f­ actors affect Asian American w ­ omen faculty as they navigate institutions whose campus cultures devalue them, privilege white male faculty, and normalize middle-­and upper middle-­class Eurocentric norms and mores.

Prologue • 7

My experience in the acad­emy as a faculty member and academic administrator spans four de­cades. As a third-­generation Chinese American, and the first member of my ­family to go to college, I met few Asian Americans who ­were undergraduates and even fewer who w ­ ere gradu­ate students in the 1960s and 1970s. It was a period of social activism and diversity efforts that included implementing affirmative action. Even as new campuses ­were being built during this time to incorporate the large numbers of baby boomers and to broaden access for ­women and minorities, ­there w ­ ere few female and minority faculty, a result in part of the small numbers of ­those with doctorates who would be eligible for faculty positions. The post–­Civil Rights era on campuses was marked by antiwar protests against the U.S. militarization and bombing of Southeast Asia, student rallies against racism, and a feminist movement among gradu­ate students and faculty. Demands for higher education reform focused on diversifying the acad­emy through student admissions’ policies and practices, minority faculty hiring and retention, and new curriculum and degree-­granting programs. ­People of color and w ­ omen called for new methodologies, such as ethnic studies, w ­ omen’s studies, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies, for example, to ensure that the views and experiences of marginalized groups w ­ ere justly incorporated into mainstream teaching, courses, and research to diversify learning and to be more inclusive of the history and experiences of dif­fer­ent communities within the nation’s heterogeneous population (Maher & Tetreault, 2007; Stockdill & Danico, 2012). Not all Asian or Asian American faculty are scientists and engineers whose fields garner more ac­cep­tance in the acad­emy than ­those in humanities and social science fields. In the groundswell of social change in the 1960s and 1970s, Asian Americans like myself and other faculty of color sought to make a difference through ethnic studies, w ­ omen’s studies, and other interdisciplinary fields ­because t­ hese fields represent new ways of knowing, being, and ­doing that challenge dominant group approaches to knowledge and research. ­Others sought to change traditional disciplines to be more inclusive from within. Accordingly, Asian Americans view themselves and their scholarship as assets and not deficits in the acad­emy. None are immune to being challenged as au­then­tic scholars; however, ­those in the newer interdisciplinary fields (like Asian American studies) tend to face more scrutiny from “traditional” academics, as do Asian American scholars in traditional disciplines who may also find their research invalidated (Hune, 2011; G. Li & Beckett, 2006). Likewise, Asian American administrators, even at the highest level of president or chancellor, value their leadership skills and the ser­vices they provide to their institutions, which are too often questioned and underrecognized (Chen & Hune, 2011; Ching & Agbayani, 2012; Davis, Huang, et al., 2013).

8  •  Shirley Hune

­There remains an ideal that higher education institutions function as a beacon of hope for the common good and the disadvantaged and as tools for expanding American democracy, but this ideal has yet to be met. Nonetheless, then as now, ­there w ­ ere change agents, among them distinguished white male campus leaders, seeking to transform the acad­emy into a more diverse, caring, and just place (Kerr, 1994).

The Acad­emy as a Workplace and Pipeline Higher education institutions are not simply places of learning. They are workplaces that mirror social hierarchies and contested politics. Global competition and the adoption of corporate models a­fter the 1990s are having a noticeable impact on the academic workplace environment. Asking some faculty to do more with fewer resources, while retaining the power and privilege of ­others, has strained campus relations and governance. Wide-­ranging demands from dif­fer­ent groups of students, the public, and legislators are also disrupting institutions as administrators, students, faculty, and staff b­ attle among themselves and with external po­liti­cal, economic, and social entities (Mettler, 2014; Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004). ­These additional pressures can exacerbate the negatives of the academic workplace environment for all faculty. Asian Americans are among the gradu­ ate students, postdocs, adjuncts, tenure-­track and tenured faculty, and staff members who have supported tenure, ­unionization, and more family-­friendly policies. To ensure a more humane acad­emy, they have also challenged the unfair wage structure, especially for contingent faculty; resource allocation practices; deteriorating work conditions; and efforts to diminish health and retirement benefits (see, for example, chapters 2, 7, 8, and 13 in this volume; and Woo, 2000). What has happened to the goals of creating more access and diversity and demo­cratizing the acad­emy in the con­temporary po­liti­cal and fiscal climate? How have Asian American w ­ omen been affected? T ­ oday’s campus b­ attles suggest that as ­things change, much remains the same. Given the slow pro­gress of campus diversification, many studies have questioned the lack of sincerity and the disingenuous practices on the part of institutions to increase the numbers of faculty of color and especially to retain them (Aguirre, 2000; De Welde & Stepnick, 2015; Gainen & Boice, 1993; Smith, Wolf, & Busenberg, 1996). Educators often use the term “pipeline” as a meta­phor to describe the progression of students as they move from K–12 to college and beyond. The major concern for the f­ uture of the workforce and the nation’s economy, as well as for individual gains, is that the large numbers of young ­people at the beginning of the pipeline are reduced significantly, being “leaked out” along the way, most notably at the points of college entry and completion. The term “pipeline” is

Prologue • 9

also applied to faculty who also “leak out” as they advance through the ranks. This can begin with undergraduate and gradu­ate students when a lack of courses pertaining to their interests and ­limited faculty support can marginalize Asian Americans and discourage them from pursuing a faculty ­career (see chapters 4, 5, and 6 of this volume). More leakage occurs at the faculty hiring stage, and ­later at the critical junctures of tenure and promotion, and beyond, resulting in few Asian American w ­ omen full professors (Chen & Hune, 2011; Woo, 2000). Pipeline data on faculty by race and by gender separately are easily available, but intersectional data by both race and gender are necessary to analyze the status of Asian American w ­ omen, and t­ hese are not generally reported or even collected. Moreover, intersectional data would be most meaningful at the individual campus level, where advancement (or the lack of it) through the faculty ranks can be more precisely assessed, but institutions are reluctant to provide this information. Intersectional faculty data findings raise questions of minimal advancement for Asian American w ­ omen that demand investigation. In 2013, Asian American and Pacific Islander w ­ omen faculty4 comprised 6 ­percent of assistant professors, 4 ­percent of associate professors, and 2 ­percent of full professors,5 compared with their Asian American male counter­parts at 7, 7, and 7 ­percent, respectively. White w ­ omen have made gains and ­were 38 ­percent of assistant professors (2 ­percent higher than white men), 34 ­percent of associate professors, and 26 ­percent of full professors. In contrast, white males ­were 36 ­percent of assistant professors but 44 ­percent and 58 ­percent of associate professors and full professors, respectively (National Center for Education Statistics, 2016). ­These statistics demonstrate that white men still dominate the professoriate as in the past, notably at the se­nior ranks. Other studies show that given the relatively higher rate of achieving tenure by white men than other groups, most of them are likely to continue to meet ­little re­sis­tance in the tenure and promotion pro­cess (chapter 2, this volume; Chen & Hune, 2011; Matthew, 2016). As noted above, more Asian American men than Asian American ­women are tenured and eventually promoted to full professor. While white w ­ omen show a decline in repre­sen­ta­tion in rank from assistant to full professor (38 to 26 ­percent), the rate of decline is far more severe for Asian American w ­ omen. Their repre­sen­ta­tion was two-­thirds less at the se­nior level, being 6 ­percent of assistant professors but only 2 ­percent of full professors in 2013 (National Center for Education Statistics, 2016). This suggests that Asian American ­women are underrepresented by race and by gender as faculty and that tenure denial is a critical juncture point where their pipeline is severely constricted.6 This is consistent with other findings (Chen & Hune, 2011; Yeung, 2015). Given that since the 1980s, w ­ omen students are matriculating in college at higher rates than their male counter­parts, can it be that w ­ omen, including w ­ omen of color, such

10  •  Shirley Hune

as Asian Americans, are that much less competent than white males? Or are ­there systematic biases and barriers that “structurally engineer” this leakage of qualified ­women in the faculty pipeline? I expand further in the next section. Asian Americans, like other ­women faculty of color, seek a permanent place in the acad­emy. They oppose being treated as expendable (part of the revolving door of diversity hires who are not retained). They also reject their critical leakage from the pipeline, while being faulted for not being good enough to be tenured (Gutiérrez y Muhs, Niemann, et al., 2012; Huang, 2013; Woo, 2000). Without a firm footing in the institution in numbers or power, Asian American ­women are seen as more easily disposable than nonminority faculty at any time (chapter 2, this volume; Huang, 2013). Faculty diversity is about both repre­sen­ta­tion and the many ways that a diverse faculty contribute to academe. It is also about faculty of color and ­women enjoying the same kinds of support and resources that dominant group members experience daily to succeed. Asian American ­women are not an anomaly in the acad­emy but an integral and impor­tant component of educational institutions.

The Per­sis­tent Adverse Campus Climate for Asian American ­Women ­ ere have been more than four de­cades of analyses of gender discrimination Th in the acad­emy. The groundbreaking “chilly climate” studies of the 1980s identified gender biases and patterns of be­hav­ior that isolated w ­ omen in the acad­ emy (Hall & Sandler, 1984; Sandler & Hall, 1986). Peggy McIntosh’s (1988/1997) account of “white privilege and male privilege” that diminishes ­women’s hiring, advancement, and well-­being is regularly taught in many disciplines on campuses still t­ oday. Th ­ ese studies reveal discriminatory actions that mirror ­those documented throughout the history of U.S. education, although current exclusionary tactics, such as racial and gender microaggressions, are often subtler and hence require dif­fer­ent approaches to prove (Lin, 2010; Sue et al., 2007). Studies on Asian American ­women faculty have discussed how their experiences differ from ­those of white ­women faculty.7 Asian American ­women are constantly navigating multiple intersecting hierarchies of race, ethnicity, nationality, class, skin color, accent, and other biases with gender ste­reo­types. They are seen in personal terms as racialized sexual ste­reo­t ypes: “passive/demure” (good worker) or “exotic/erotic” (sexual objects subject to sexual harassment) or a “dragon lady,” a negative term to stigmatize strong, confident females, often in leadership positions, who are viewed as too assertive and hence dangerous to the status quo (Cho, 1997; Hune, 1998, 2011; P. Li, 2014;). ­These images have been pop­u­lar­ized and amplified in theater productions, films, and tele­vi­sion (Parreñas Shimizu, 2007).

Prologue • 11

The model minority and perpetual foreigner ste­reo­t ypes further define Asian American w ­ omen as dif­fer­ent and heighten both their invisibility and hypervisibility. When white male peers are considered “traditional,” “normal,” or “real” faculty, Asian American w ­ omen, even t­ hose who may be second-­or third-­generation American and speak only En­glish, are deemed foreign. When their race and ethnicity are considered liabilities in the classroom rather than as assets to be valued for the expertise they bring, Asian American ­women are marginalized as “other” or not “regular” faculty (Ho, 2002; G. Li & Beckett, 2006; TuSmith, 2002). Faculty who are deemed “other” report that their teaching, research interests, and publications are severely scrutinized. They and their scholarship are often delegitimized by being termed “nontraditional” (chapter 7, this volume; De Welde & Stepnick 2015; Fryberg & Martínez, 2014; Gutiérrez y Muhs et al., 2012; Hune, 2011; Vargas, 2002). Departments can be dismissive of the scholarly work of faculty of color ­because it is less known to so-­called traditional faculty, despite being positively recognized by other experts in and outside of their disciplines. This has been shown to be harmful to Asian American ­women in tenure and promotion reviews. Also, institutions still rarely compensate faculty of color for assisting their campuses with diversity work. Such ser­vices, often mandated by law and campus mission statements, are extra demands on them and more accurately seen as unpaid ­labor (chapter 10, this volume). This practice only advantages the far more numerous “regular” (white male) faculty, giving them more time to develop their c­ areers. Asian American w ­ omen faculty, then as now, are suspect b­ ecause their racialized, ethnic, and gendered persons, teaching, research interests, and commitment to use their expertise to benefit their communities differ from what supposedly “real” faculty do and, therefore, are considered less significant (Ho, 2002; Hune, 1998, 2011; G. Li & Beckett, 2006; TuSmith, 2002). Research lit­er­a­ture on Asian American ­women rec­ords their efforts to be taken seriously as academics. How is it that they are judged to be less competent and unworthy of being hired, tenured, or promoted when their academic credentials and scholarly work are comparable to and, many times, even superior to ­those of their white male and female peers? Why is it acceptable to view them as sexual objects and not as subjects with intellect? (Cho, 1997; Hune, 1998, 2011; G. Li & Beckett, 2006). Some findings also document their denigration and abuse by colleagues and campus authorities when Asian American ­women seek fair, equal, and transparent treatment in review pro­cesses (Cho, 1997; Duncan, 2014; Loo & Ho, 2006; Valverde, 2013). Quality of teaching is often used in cases of tenure and promotion denials. However, the primary sources to assess teaching are evaluations by peers and students, both of which have been shown to be problematic in general but especially in terms of their gender bias (Flaherty, 2016; MacNell, Driscoll, &

12  •  Shirley Hune

Hunt, 2014; Subtirelu, 2015). Yet, despite research that shows the unreliability of student evaluations, institutions still weigh them heavi­ly in tenure and promotion reviews when they are a known detriment to a fair faculty review for ­women overall and notably for ­women of color. For example, students have been known to penalize “Asian” faculty with mixed or low ratings when the instructor is not behaving in ways that fit their ste­reo­type of Asian American w ­ omen, such as being compliant8 (Boring, Ottoboni, & Stark, 2016; Flaherty, 2016; Hune, 2011; G. Li & Beckett, 2006). Asian American ­women are similarly penalized in a range of administrative positions, including serving on university committees. ­Those who speak out, critique, or voice an opinion are often dismissed and even punished, while the same critique or opinion expressed by a white man or ­woman or a man of color would be seen as a demonstration of leadership qualities. ­These experiences have a chilling effect on Asian American ­women and other w ­ omen of color seeking positions of responsibility in academia and are further examples of how the existing power structure confirms the Western, white, and male manner of communicating and leading as the norm and diminishes w ­ omen’s ways and contributions. An American Council on Education report (Davis et al., 2013) has called attention to the scarcity of Asian American and Pacific Islander Americans in higher education leadership and how their leadership qualities (falsely presumed to be too dif­f er­ent from the white male norm to be effective) go unrecognized. It also highlights the ways in which both groups can be undervalued and undermined in the hierarchical path in the acad­emy ­toward administrative leadership and even within campus presidencies (chapter 14, this volume). ­Here again is evidence of a leaky pipeline and glass or bamboo ceiling that Asian Americans face in the acad­emy, challenging the assumption that they are a success story and a model minority (Woo, 2000). What has changed, if anything, ­after de­cades of studies detailing ­women’s unequal treatment in the acad­emy? As noted in the previous section, the gender gap for white ­women faculty is closing, but the gains are modest for Asian American w ­ omen, especially given the roadblock at tenure and again at promotion to full professor. Overt racism and sexism have been replaced by subtle nuances of discriminatory be­hav­ior. Research studies on microaggressions, for example, explain some of the less vis­i­ble insults and inequities that Asian Americans experience with regularity, but the overall unwelcoming campus culture remains the primary prob­lem (Guzman, Trevino, et al., 2010; Lin, 2010; Sue et al., 2007). New terminology also seeks to justify unequal treatment. The concept that bias is unconscious or implicit has gained ­favor to explain away discriminatory actions. The term “unconscious bias” implies that dominant group members are not necessarily biased against an outgroup, that is, they are not racist,

Prologue • 13

sexist, or xenophobic; they are simply unintentionally favoring their own ingroup (Banaji & Greenwald, 2013; Greenwald & Pettigrew, 2014). Regardless of the explanations, the consequences are the same for faculty of color: “real” faculty are privileged, advantaged, and advanced. In their positions of power, they determine the fate of ­others. In turn, Asian American ­women are too often judged unacceptable to be hired, tenured, and further advanced in the pipeline, and the status quo is preserved (Chen & Hune, 2011; Woo, 2000).

Faculty Warriors: Breaking the Silence, Fighting against Injustices My (very small) generation of Asian American faculty are retired or near retiring; a few have died. Some w ­ ere forced out in tenure denials. O ­ thers left pre-­ tenure, and some even left post-­tenure. Some found productive academic lives at more supportive institutions. ­Others chose ­careers outside of academe. But ­there ­were and continue to be a special group of bold and brave faculty warriors who resist their campus efforts to deny them tenure, promotion, and other opportunities to advance. In pursuing l­egal action against the acad­emy with its significant financial and ­legal resources, time on its side, and a tradition of defending its practices, including denying the possibility of bias and unjust treatment even when presented with evidence to the contrary, faculty warriors face formidable challenges. They jeopardize their professional mobility and bear monetary and emotional costs to their c­ areers, families, and personal lives, including their health. In some cases, the administration may claim that any denial or other lack of advancement, including merit recognition, with their concomitant financial remuneration, is based on the faculty member’s failure or incompetence and may exert shaming and even labeling someone as “crazy” for standing up for themselves or o­ thers (Duncan, 2014; Loo & Chun, 2002; Loo & Ho, 2006; Nakanishi, 2009; Valverde, 2013). They are, therefore, courageous to do so. The hiring and retaining of Asian American faculty have been a concern of Asian Americans since they first entered the professoriate. While ­there are many cases of Asian American faculty who are fighting for their rights presently or whose cases have been recently resolved, for this study I have chosen to focus on four historic cases from the 1980s that (1) show that Asian Americans have long been faculty warriors who fight for their rights and are not passive nor ­silent; (2) reflect biases and structural issues that continue to plague Asian American faculty t­ oday; (3) highlight how their strug­gles have laid significant groundwork for the rights and benefit of all faculty; and (4) bring attention to continuing injustices despite more than four de­cades of diversity and other reform efforts in higher education institutions.

14  •  Shirley Hune

The tenure and promotion cases of Jean Jew, Rosalie Tung, Marcy Wang, and Don Nakanishi (three w ­ omen and a man) w ­ ere highly publicized at the time and resonate with similar cases t­ oday.9 They demonstrate that l­ittle has changed for current faculty in terms of bias ­toward the individual, the subjectivity of many departmental and institutional reviewers, violations in procedures, and abusive actions ­toward Asian American academics in their reviews. They also reveal the inclination of institutions to stonewall and drag out l­ egal actions even as it becomes increasingly apparent that the Asian American scholar has been wronged in her or his tenure and promotion denial. Most impor­tant, the cases show the willingness and bravery of Asian Americans to fight back against recalcitrant se­nior faculty and administrators and their power­f ul, well-­f unded institutions that aim to punish them for seeking to advance and even to reject them from the acad­emy through negative tenure and promotion decisions. In each case, the institution concluded that the faculty member’s national origin, race, gender, research focus, community interests, demeanor, and other personal attributes and their publications, professional activities, and reputation w ­ ere inappropriate and inadequate for tenure or promotion and lacked importance. In each case, the faculty member was the solo or among the very few Asian Americans or females in the department during all or most of their time t­ here. Being marginalized and tokenized, they ­were more easily disposable. In each case, the faculty member challenged the decision knowing that their scholarly rec­ord deserved tenure or promotion, had the support of external reviewers, and w ­ ere comparable to or even exceeded the cases of their white male peers. The l­ egal actions of the four Asian American faculty discussed subsequently reveal institutional biases against them based on race, sex, or their research interests, methodologies, and publications. Their original research, even t­ hose studies funded by federal grants, largely b­ ecause they pertained to racial and ethnic communities or other nonmainstream or less valued topics, ­were deemed not of significance. In addition to secrecy and a lack of transparency in the review pro­cess, ­there ­were major procedural errors in the ways in which campuses handled the reviews. The Asian American faculty in ­these historic instances and their dossiers w ­ ere treated differently, more critically, from t­ hose of white male faculty, similar to what present-­day faculty often find in their recent and current evaluations. Each case took years to finalize, and took a toll on the faculty member, but ultimately was de­cided in each faculty person’s ­favor or was concluded with a substantial financial settlement. Jean Jew was tenured in the Anatomy Department at the University of Iowa in 1978 and was the only female faculty for many years but was turned down for promotion to professor in 1983. She had endured years of a fractured department where some faculty, especially a se­nior member, w ­ ere actively hostile to

Prologue • 15

her, in part, ­because she was a productive scholar and sought to advance. She was also demeaned and referred to in racist sexualized terms (“stupid slut,” “whore,” “Chinese pussy”), and negative comments w ­ ere written about her on the wall of the faculty men’s room. Such hostile actions sought to keep Jew in a more submissive place (Cho, 1997; Woo, 2000). She pursued actions against the university through the U.S. District Court of Southern Iowa and other courts. In 1990, the institution was ordered to promote her to full professor retroactively (relatively unpre­ce­dented) with back pay and benefits and to pay her attorney fees ($895,000). But it was only ­after community outrage and a national appeal effort by the Jean Jew Justice Committee or­ga­nized primarily by ­women colleagues to publicize her abusive work environment that the university fi­nally ceased defending her harassers and paying for their l­egal expenses. Jean Jew stayed at the University of Iowa. As part of her settlement, it was required that the university administration meet with Jew annually to ensure that her work conditions ­were acceptable to her (Cho, 1997; Woo, 2000). Jean Jew brought into the open one of the first cases of a hostile work environment in academe, a situation generally grounded in white male privilege and norms. She also exposed a level of race hate and misogyny against an Asian American ­woman that exceeded so-­called locker room be­hav­ior. Her case also showed the power of ­going public and that the support of colleagues is meaningful to achieve justice. It also revealed, however, the willingness of administrators to use university funds to continue to defend perpetrators, thus reinforcing their privilege and prolonging injustice. Hostile work environments and sexual harassment for ­women, especially for ­women of color, remain far too common in any workplace and are ­under addressed by campus administrators. With the #MeToo movement, more ­women are speaking out and are being believed. Hence, greater attention is being given to sexual harassment and assaults primarily against w ­ omen in all spheres of life, locally and globally, carried out mainly by power­ful men who are protected by institutional and gendered practices. Nonetheless, the grievances of Asian American and other ­women of unacceptable mistreatment aimed at driving them out of the acad­emy are still mired in secrecy. For them, justice is slow and delayed. Justice for all faculty would be even more difficult to achieve w ­ ere it not for Rosalie Tung, whose case has forever changed how the acad­emy operates its tenure practices. Initially, her tenure review in the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business was proceeding well given her strong rec­ord and distinguished reputation, but it became mired in additional procedures beyond what was considered normal. Subsequently, Tung was denied tenure in 1984, and she concluded that the denial could not have been caused by her scholarly work. She took an unpre­ce­dented action and filed a charge of discrimination

16  •  Shirley Hune

with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission based on race, sex, and national origin as a Chinese American ­woman (Cho, 1997; Woo, 2000). Prior to Rosalie Tung’s action, tenure decisions throughout academe ­were held in secret, with confidential materials compiled by the department; the faculty member was denied access to her or his own file. Some items in the dossier could be false, unsolicited, missing, and even added or deleted ­a fter the submission deadline. ­Because Tung’s charge was one of discriminatory or differential treatment, the U.S. Supreme Court opposed the university’s argument of the need to preserve confidentiality. In its 1990 decision (University of Pennsylvania v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), the university was required to release to Tung her confidential file, ­those of five white male faculty subsequently tenured in her department for comparison, committee deliberations, and related documents for any appeal. Henceforth, all universities must disclose the confidential tenure materials of a complainant and other faculty for “comparability” in an employment discrimination charge (Cho, 1997; Minami, 2009; Woo, 2000). In gaining access to her dossier, Tung found it to be fraught with procedural violations and distorted with added negative letters and inappropriate comments about her race, gender, and national origin, part of a backlash from the chair (another case of sexual harassment), who was rebuffed by Tung when he sought a personal relationship with her. In short, her file had been manipulated to boost the department’s tenure denial decision without her knowledge. ­Later Tung uncovered evidence suggesting that the Wharton School did not value research work on China, an area of her expertise, despite the recognition of the importance of her work by other scholars. She concluded that ­people of Asian descent and research pertaining to Asia, despite being impor­tant elsewhere, ­were considered expendable in her department. Before the Supreme Court decision was concluded, however, Tung had been terminated. She was immediately hired by the University of Wisconsin–­Madison in 1986, where her research was recognized, and she has continued an outstanding ­career t­ here and elsewhere (Cho, 1997; Woo, 2000). In seeking justice through the courts, Rosalie Tung forced universities to adopt more open, impartial, and consistent review pro­cesses that benefit all faculty (see subsequent discussion about Nakanishi). Academics in general have yet to fully recognize how Tung’s actions have gained them more rights and transparency in decision making in the acad­emy. Although this ruling set a pre­ ce­dent in faculty rights of access and procedures, institutions can still find ways to include biased materials in their review files. Marcy Wang joined the Department of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1979 and soon learned it had a reputation of sexism and favoritism that isolated minority and female faculty and created a chilly climate for both students and faculty. B ­ ecause she supported minority and w ­ omen

Prologue • 17

students and their issues, some of her colleagues determined Wang to be uncollegial, a highly subjective and politicized term in academia that is too often used to justify termination. The department declared she lacked “presence” or “leadership skills,” despite strong and verified documentation of her professional and research distinction on and off the campus.10 The evidence in her dossier, only ­later disclosed to her as part of her ­legal action, demonstrated to the contrary and that the department’s views of Wang as lacking w ­ ere unsubstantiated and even biased. As with Jew and Tung, Wang’s solid rec­ord, positive external letters of accomplishments, and grants did not ­matter. Instead her file was deliberately skewed with questionable unsolicited letters to defend the department’s decision to dismiss her (Cho, 1997; Woo, 2000). Marcy Wang was denied tenure in 1986. Her appeal was rife with obstructionist procedural errors. She waged a decade-­long strug­gle for justice involving seven years of grievance procedures through university channels to no avail. During this time, she left academe for private practice and pursued action in the courts for another three years, with the goal of changing the institution’s hostile work environment, declaring it was the worst she had ever experienced. Like Jew, Wang eventually won a court victory in 1995 and a rec­ord $1 million settlement in a lawsuit based on race and gender discrimination as an Asian American w ­ oman (Cho, 1997; Woo, 2000). Marcy Wang’s decision to leave the acad­emy was a loss given the few Asian Americans in her field, but her substantial financial settlement was a clear indication that the campus was in error in her regard. The campus had gambled on winning by dragging out her appeal but ultimately lost and paid a penalty in compensation, a lesson for all institutions, who apparently are willing to expend their financial resources in defending their evaluation pro­cess and the status quo of racial and gender bias, although retaining talented faculty o­ ught to be in their best interest for students, teaching, and research. Jew, Tung, and Wang fought their ­battles within established disciplines in the acad­emy. In contrast, Don Nakanishi’s11 three-­year (1986–1989) fight against his tenure denial at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), became a landmark case for the institutional recognition of the interdisciplinary field of Asian American studies. B ­ ecause he was an academic leader in an emerging field, which some still t­ oday find less worthy than older disciplines, had Nakanishi been denied tenure, it would have jeopardized the legitimacy of Asian American studies and pre­sent and f­uture students and faculty. Although ­others before him in Asian American studies (and other ethnic studies programs) at UCLA and elsewhere had been denied tenure and left academe, Nakanishi took on the risky challenge not to be the next one and fought back (Minami, 2009; Nakanishi, 2009). Nakanishi came to UCLA in the mid-1970s as a national leader of the emerging Asian American studies field at a time when campus leadership had stated

18  •  Shirley Hune

its support for student and faculty diversity publicly and was dedicating resources to develop four ethnic studies centers to support research on African Americans, American Indians, Asian Americans, and Chicanos. With degrees from Yale and Harvard (including a doctorate in po­liti­cal science), he first held vari­ous staff, teaching, and researcher positions in the 1970s through which he supported the development of Asian American studies on campus and nationally (Ishizuka, 2009). Nakanishi was an activist as well as a scholar reflecting the social activism of the day. Using his expertise, he challenged the campus on equity and diversity ­matters—­for example, its admission practices ­toward Asian Americans that he suggested l­ imited their numbers.12 This brought unwanted attention to UCLA and complicated his relationship with campus leaders and many faculty. Subsequently, he was appointed to a tenure-­track position in education and Asian American studies in the Gradu­ate School of Education. He was recommended for tenure by his department in 1986 but was denied by the dean the next year. The chancellor defended the dean’s decision, despite the overtly positive votes of Nakanishi’s department in support of his tenure and promotion through five grievance procedures (Ishizuka, 2009; Nakanishi, 2009). A civil rights advocate (his Japa­nese American parents ­were in internment camps during World War II), Nakanishi and his l­egal team launched both a ­legal case and a national po­liti­cal campaign of letters and petitions to oppose his tenure denial.13 Rosalie Tung’s Supreme Court ruling enabled Nakanishi to gain access to his dossier. It revealed racial bias against his person (“fat Jap,” “dumb Jap”) and procedural errors. The national campaign in his defense was a testament to Asian American po­liti­cal empowerment. The size, scope, and collective actions across the country of Asian American studies faculty and students, community organ­izations, the media, California state legislators, local officials, alumni, and donors (some aimed to withhold large sums of funds from UCLA) ­were unpre­ce­dented (Ishizuka, 2009; Katayama, 2009; Matsuda, 2009; Minami, 2009; Nakanishi, 2009). With this mounting pressure, the UCLA chancellor in 1989 promoted Don Nakanishi to associate professor with retroactive tenure to July 1988, providing him with back pay and benefits, a recognition of unjust be­hav­ior on the part of the institution. In so ­doing, UCLA acknowledged the validity and worth of the new interdisciplinary field of Asian American studies. It also recognized Nakanishi as a positive campus force, one whose ideas and actions on behalf of Asian American issues, greater inclusion for all racial and ethnic groups, and related social justice issues ­were not to be feared. Sadly, ­after Nakanishi’s case was settled, many on campus acted as if all the abusive efforts to exclude him had not happened. And, ironically, as a tenured associate professor, he was eligible for an administrative position. The campus now recognized his

Prologue • 19

leadership and the potential of Asian American studies and appointed Nakanishi the director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center (AASC).14 Over two de­cades (1990–2010), he developed the center into the largest teaching and research unit of its kind in the nation and raised millions of dollars in endowment, research, and scholarship funds for UCLA and the AASC. His leadership and contributions would have been lost to UCLA had he been denied tenure and forced to leave (Amerasia Journal, 2009). Despite the demonstrated value of Asian American faculty to their institutions and the actions of many faculty warriors, ­little has changed over four de­cades. Asian American ­women faculty (and men) still seek to be viewed as real and au­then­tic academics like their white male counter­parts (and, increasingly, their white female colleagues) and to have their person and scholarship respected. When Asian American w ­ omen are eliminated as competitors and pushed out of academe, o­ thers, namely, majority group members, are most likely to benefit, as evident in the U.S. Department of Education statistics (National Center for Education Statistics, 2016) that I provided ­earlier. Restricting the number of Asian American tenured faculty has repercussions further along the pipeline. Fewer of them are eligible to assume administrative positions where they can provide insights, expertise, and leadership. In 2016, of the more than 4,000 U.S. campuses, only seventeen w ­ ere led by Asian American female chancellors or presidents, and they ­were almost exclusively at two-­ year institutions.15 The impediments that Asian Americans encounter have been termed a “glass” or a “bamboo” ceiling with institutional and systemic barriers that severely block their ­career mobility in the acad­emy and other professions (Gee & Yamagata-­Noji, 2016; Huang & Yamagata-­Noji, 2010; Woo, 2000). Fight the Tower: Asian American W ­ omen Scholar’s Resistance and Renewal in the Academy, edited by Kieu Linh Caroline Valverde and Wei Ming Dariotis, provides a fresh framework, empirical studies, narratives, and poetry on the con­ temporary experiences and strug­gles of Asian American academic w ­ omen. The authors represent a generation of scholars who entered the acad­emy following de­cades of endeavors to diversify the student body, faculty, curriculum, and fields of study, yet they find l­ittle pro­gress. They are the new Jean Jew, Rosalie Tung, Marcy Wang, and Don Nakanishi. For the most part, they have only known a retreat from support for equity issues, shrinking fiscal resources, and a po­liti­cally contested campus environment that questions the demo­cratic ideal of greater inclusion of disadvantaged groups and the value of courses, pedagogy, and research that seek to rebalance biases and omissions in mainstream studies. In a power­ful introduction chapter, Kieu Linh Valverde and Wei Ming Dariotis provide a new theoretical model—­social engineering—to explain the per­sis­tence of the socially constructed model minority ste­reo­t ype and other

20  •  Shirley Hune

biases and actions that harm Asian American w ­ omen and their academic ­careers. Their analy­sis of Asian American ­women scholars as the “privileged oppressed,” that is, viewed as successful from outside the acad­emy given their education and titles but rendered as less competent as well as subjugated and sometimes harassed within it, expands the discussion on how and why talented ­women can be positioned to be disposable in the revolving door of institutional diversity. Identifying their actions to fight back for justice and equity is a “woke moment” for Asian American ­women, the editors explain, and is exemplified in this volume and other venues. The anthology is rich in details of and by courageous Asian American ­women. They include students who protest, or­ga­nize, and even hold hunger strikes, to get their campus to respond to their grievances, and faculty who are emboldened to take ­legal action to be treated fairly in tenure and promotion cases to gain their rightful place in the acad­emy. As a new group of warriors speaking out and fighting back against ste­reo­types, unjust policies and practices, and institutional violations that seek to derail their goals and success, they challenge the image of Asian American w ­ omen as docile. Dif­fer­ent groups of Asian American ­women share their strategies and choices for more fulfilling lives and make recommendations for a humane academic environment for ­women faculty and students overall. Fight the Tower is also a wake-up call to academia. It offers alternatives for building higher education institutions that ­will treat the intellectual ­labor of faculty and students with dignity and humanity, especially that of t­ hose most marginalized in academe. It also calls on institutions to hear and act on their concerns. The acad­emy needs to listen to students who seek courses, degree-­ granting programs, and faculty that are inclusive of the nation’s diversity and a fair allocation of institutional resources to which they and their families directly and indirectly through taxes have contributed tuition funds. And, given the investment made in gradu­ate training, the revolving door of female faculty of color is a waste of institutional resources and a loss of a valuable talent pool. Moreover, ­great professional and personal harm is done to too many distinguished scholars who are required to jump over high hurdles. ­Those who choose other ­careers or who are ­limited in advancement deprive the acad­emy and the nation of their contributions as teachers, researchers, and leaders. This volume is a significant contribution to the study of Asian Americans taking action against inequalities in the U.S. educational system. The chapters call for new research and policies to reform the acad­emy and to address biases, penalizing practices, and the high cost of litigation for persons involved and their institutions in light of the many cases of tenure and promotion denial that are clearly unjust and are ­later overturned. Most impor­tant, in raising the level of analy­sis, Fight the Tower powerfully breaks the silence of the mistreatment of Asian American academics as students and faculty and demonstrates the

Prologue • 21

agency of Asian American ­women in defying injustices in higher education institutions.

Notes 1 Asian Americans are “persons who call the United States their home and trace their ancestry to countries from the Asian continent and subcontinents and islands within the Pacific Rim” (Hune & Chan, 1997, p. 39). They comprise a wide variety of countries of origin and differ in cultural backgrounds, citizenship status, socioeconomic characteristics, religions, po­liti­cal views, and much more. Many are several generations U.S.-­born; more are recent immigrants or refugees; ­others first came as international students; and some are multiracial and identify with other racial and ethnic groups as well. U.S. policy makers use the term “Asian American” as a racial classification, that is, a socially constructed single racialized category that they have co-­opted to facilitate data collection through the U.S. Census and to allocate resources for minority group concerns (Espiritu & Omi, 2000). Currently, the U.S. Census also collects disaggregated data on twenty-­ three specific Asian groups, with many more groups lumped together u­ nder “Other Asian” as a twenty-­fourth category. Since 2000, mixed-­race Asians can check more than one racial or ethnic box in the census. I use the term “Asian American” ­here in its original usage by Asian American communities to denote a po­liti­cal entity, not just a racial category. In this context, Asian Americans of many national origins and ethnic groups have come together to advocate for social justice and policy changes in multiple arenas. Since the 1970s, they have worked together through broad pan-­Asian co­a li­tions, oftentimes with Pacific Islander American groups, against racism and other inequities. In their everyday lives, many Asian Americans, especially t­ hose who are first-­ generation immigrants, may identify themselves and interact with o­ thers along their national origin or ethnic lines, for example, as Korean, Cambodian/Khmer, or Punjabi Americans. 2 Editor’s note: Co-­editor Wei Ming Dariotis attended this school, renamed Commodore Stockton Elementary School, in San Francisco’s Chinatown. It has since been renamed Gordon J. Lau Elementary, in honor of the former San Francisco supervisor and l­ awyer and civil rights pioneer (1941–1998) who advocated for social justice in employment, education, and housing. Dariotis also attended Spring Valley Elementary School, which was the school Mamie Tape was prevented from attending. 3 Of the Asian American K–12 students in Washington State in 2007, 40 ­percent spoke a language other than En­g lish as their primary language; 30 ­percent w ­ ere receiving ­free or reduced-­price lunch, an indication of ­family poverty level; and 68.9 ­percent ­were foreign-­born and the first generation to attend U.S. schools (Hune & Takeuchi, 2008, pp. x, 11, and 61, respectively). More recent data confirm the challenges facing Asian immigrant ­children and their families in navigating U.S. society, including schooling, medical care, and employment. In New York City, the Asian American child poverty rate (24 ­percent) was lower than that of Black (31.3 ­percent) and Hispanic (38.4 ­percent) ­children, but it was higher than that of non-­Hispanic whites (18.6 ­percent). Asian c­ hildren in poverty w ­ ere more likely to live in linguistically isolated immigrant ­house­holds whose poor but working parents had l­ imited En­g lish skills and education and held very

22  •  Shirley Hune

low-­paying jobs (Asian American Federation, 2018, pp. 16, 18–19). Th ­ ese aggregate data on Asians, however, hide wide variances across Asian ethnic groups. 4 Federal data ­here (and often institutional data) combine Asian Americans with Pacific Islanders (AAPI). Pacific Islander Americans are a small diverse community with one of the lowest higher educational attainment rates among minority groups (Hune & Yeo, 2010). Consequently, almost all AAPI faculty are Asian Americans. In the AAPI data cited h ­ ere, AAPI ­women who are Pacific Islander American ­women are numerically almost negligible (National Center for Education Statistics, 2016). I thank Jeom Ja Yeo and Kenyon S. Chan for assistance in federal data analyses. 5 Editors’ note: This statistical drop is consistent with the study conducted at the University of Southern California by Junn and Davis Cross, published for the first time in this volume (chapter 2). They show a 40 ­percent tenure and promotion success rate for Asian American ­women hired on the tenure track at that university during the fourteen years that they studied. 6 ­Women faculty of all racial and ethnic groups are facing being forced out of academia both passively (for example, by learning that one is paid less than male faculty of similar rank and experience, experiencing sexual and racial harassment, not being supported with campus child care or a child care–­friendly schedule, being underrecognized and undersupported despite academic achievements of grants and other awards, and through per­sis­tent marginalization) and aggressively (through tenure and promotion denials). Although many issues may lead w ­ omen to leave the professoriate before facing tenure and promotion ­battles and even ­a fter gaining tenure, male faculty generally have more and dif­fer­ent options and choices (De Welde & Stepnick, 2015; Fryberg & Martinez, 2014; Gutiérrez y Muhs et al., 2012). The answer is likely to be a confluence of many ­factors. The fact remains: Asian American ­women are being forced out of the acad­emy at rates higher than ­those of white ­women. The hostile campus environment they face is further documented l­ ater in this chapter, in other studies (Hune, 2011; G. Li & Beckett, 2006; Loo & Chun, 2002; Loo & Ho, 2006; Yeung, 2015), and elsewhere in this volume. 7 For studies on ­women faculty of color in general, see De Welde and Stepnick (2015), Fryberg and Martinez (2014), Gutiérrez y Muhs et al. (2012), Johnsrud and Sadao (1998), Turner (2002), and Vargas (2002). 8 Students bring societal biases to the classroom. Just as white male faculty are considered “real” faculty, female faculty generally are seen as less knowledgeable and are often contested in the classroom. Faculty of “Asian” background are suspect when teaching in areas other than about Asia. Being “foreign looking” to many students and hence considered permanent foreigners, Asian American faculty are presumed to have an accent, although many are U.S.-­born, and En­glish may be their only language. ­Those who do have accents are heavi­ly penalized (see chapter 7, this volume). White male students, in par­tic­u­lar, expect Asian American w ­ omen faculty to be more accommodating when confronted about course requirements, assignments, and grading. Students tend to rate Asian American ­women faculty more harshly in courses that challenge the students’ knowledge base, such as ethnic studies and ­women’s studies, although science and engineering faculty are not immune to this bias. When their academic abilities are in dispute, students have been known to shift the fault of not performing well to the faculty of color instructor in negative evaluations (Hune, 2011; Subtirelu, 2015).

Prologue • 23

9 ­These four cases are considered watershed moments and are well documented. For fuller details on Jew, Tung, and Wang beyond this chapter, see the cited references, especially chapter 4 in Woo (2000): “The Educational Pipeline.” For more on Nakanishi, see Amerasia Journal, v. 35, no. 3, 2009, a tribute to Nakanishi and his work. The citations in this chapter pertaining to his case and student activism are part of that special issue. 10 This is consistent with the ste­reo­t ype that Asians are submissive and cannot be leaders, which is the presumption that leads to their bamboo (glass) ceiling in all professions (Gee & Yamagata-­Noji, 2016; Ong, 2001). 11 I include Nakanishi in this chapter on Asian American w ­ omen faculty b­ ecause he mentored many Asian American ­women who have become faculty and advised many through their tenure strug­g les. He is one of the few men to come forward about their obstacles to advance. Although Asian American men are advanced at higher rates than their female counter­parts, they, too, are rejected for tenure and promotion for racist reasons and oftentimes for their research interests, especially when they focus on minority group policies, issues, and communities. 12 Some campuses have been alleged to apply specific criteria to Asian American students aimed at restricting their admission. Th ­ ese include requiring higher academic standards of them than for all other racial and ethnic groups, including whites, and other f­ actors, such as downgrading them for personal qualities that are ste­reo­t ypical and subjective (Takagi, 1990). This ­matter of limiting their numbers remains a hotly contested issue in higher education t­ oday (Hartocollis, 2018). 13 In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I was part of the national letter writing campaign of Asian American scholars, students, community leaders, and supporters from other racial and ethnic groups to protest Nakanishi’s tenure denial. At the time, I was at Hunter College, City University of New York. As one of the few tenured Asian American associate professors in his field, I wrote a letter to the dean in support of Nakanishi’s tenure documenting his scholarly contributions. I also was serving as the president of the Association for Asian American Studies and sent a letter to the dean and UCLA chancellor expressing the concerns of the association in regard to his tenure denial and called for an unbiased evaluation that would incorporate and value Nakanishi’s Asian American studies scholarship and related activities. 14 From 1992 to 2007, I was the executive committee chair of the UCLA Institute of American Cultures (IAC). The IAC is the umbrella organ­ization of four research centers: the American Indian Studies Center, the Asian American Studies Center, the Chicano Studies Research Center, and the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies. I worked closely with the four center directors, including Don Nakanishi, to support students, faculty, and visiting postdocs and scholars in their research endeavors through an extensive program of fellowships, research grants, and events. 15 In 2016, Asian Americans and Pacific Islander Americans (data ­were combined but most are Asian Americans) ­were about 1.2 ­percent of all chancellors or presidents of over 4,000 U.S. degree-­granting institutions. They numbered fifty-­t wo that year, a decline from fifty-­six in 2013–2014, the highest to date. Of the fifty-­t wo chancellors or presidents, twenty-­nine led community colleges and twenty-­three headed four-­year institutions. Seventeen w ­ ere ­women, with the majority of the w ­ omen (thirteen) leading community colleges (Gee &

24  •  Shirley Hune

Yamagata-­Noji, 2016). This gender gap reflects the challenges Asian American ­women experience to reach the highest levels of academe. Such data change rapidly with new appointments, retirements, resignations, and deaths.

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MacNell, L., Driscoll, A., & Hunt, A. N. (2014). What’s in a name: Exposing gender bias in student ratings of teaching. Innovative Higher Education, 40, 291–303. Maher, F. A., & Tetreault, M.K.T. (2007). Privilege and diversity in the acad­emy. New York: Routledge. Matthew, P. A. (Ed.). (2016). Written/unwritten: Diversity and the hidden truths of tenure. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina. Matsuda, G. (2009). “Only the beginning”: Continuing our ­battle for empowerment. Amerasia Journal, 35, 177–189. McEwen, M. K., Kodama, C. M., Alvarez et al. (Eds.). (2002, Spring). Working with Asian American college students (report no. 97). San Francisco: Jossey-­Bass. McIntosh, P. (1997). White privilege and male privilege: A personal account of coming to see correspondences through work in ­women’s studies. In R. Delgado & J. Stefancic (Eds.), Critical white studies (pp. 291–299). Philadelphia: T ­ emple University Press. (Original work published 1988.) Mettler, S. (2014). Degrees of in­equality: How the politics of higher education sabotaged the American dream. New York: Basic Books. Minami, D. (2009). Guerrilla war at UCLA: Po­liti­cal and l­ egal dimensions of the tenure ­battle. Amerasia Journal, 35, 143–166. Museus, S. D., Maramba, D. C., & Teranishi, R. T. (Eds.). (2013). The misrepresented minority: New insights on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and the implications for higher education. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing. Nakanishi, D. T. (2009). Why I fought. Amerasia Journal, 35, 191–207. National Center for Education Statistics. (2016). The condition of education 2016: Characteristics of postsecondary faculty (NCES 2016-144). Retrieved from https://­nces​ .­ed​.­gov​/­fastfacts​/­display​.­asp​?­id​=­61 Ng, J., Pak, Y., & Hernandez, X. (2016). Beyond the perpetual foreigner and model minority ste­reo­t ypes: A critical examination of how Asian Americans are framed. In M. Zhou & A. C. Ocampo (Eds.), Con­temporary Asian Amer­i­ca: A multidisciplinary reader (3rd ed., pp. 576–599). New York: New York University Press. Ngai, M. (2010). The lucky ones: One f­ amily and the extraordinary invention of Chinese Amer­i­ca. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Ong, E. (2001). Transcending the bamboo and glass ceilings: Defining the trajectory to empower Asian Pacific American w ­ omen in politics. In D. Nanakishi & J. La (Eds.), 2001–02 National Asian Pacific American po­liti­cal almanac (10th ed., pp. 96–129). Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press. Pang, V. O., & Cheng, L.R.L. (Eds.). (1998). Struggling to be heard: The unmet needs of Asian Pacific American c­ hildren. Albany: State University of New York Press. Park, C. C., Endo, R., & Rong, X. L. (Eds.). (2009). New perspectives on Asian American parents, students, and teacher recruitment. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Park, C. C., Goodwin, A. L., & Lee, S. J. (Eds.). (2003). Asian American identities, families, and schooling. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing. Parreñas Shimizu, C. (2007). The hypersexuality of race: Performing Asian/American ­women on the screen and scene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Sandler, B., & Hall, R. M. (1986). The campus climate revisited: Chilly for w ­ omen faculty, administrators, and gradu­ate students. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges. Slaughter, S., & Rhoades, G. (2004). Academic capitalism and the new economy: Markets, state, and higher education. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

28  •  Shirley Hune

Smith, D.G., Wolf, L. E., & Busenberg, B. E. (1996). Achieving faculty diversity: Debunking the Myths. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities. Soodjinda, D. (2014). Education. In M. Y. Danico (Ed.), Asian American society: An encyclopedia (Vol. 1, pp. 293–300). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Stockdill, B. C., & Danico, M. Y. (Eds.). (2012). Transforming the Ivory tower: Challenging racism, sexism, and homophobia in the acad­emy. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Subtirelu, N. C. (2015). “She does have an accent but . . .”: Race and language ideology in students’ evaluations of mathe­matics instructors on RateMyProfessors​.­com. Language in Society, 44(1), 36–62. Sue, D. W., Bucceri, J., Lin, A. I., et al. (2007). Racial microaggressions and the Asian American experience. Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psy­chol­ogy, 13, 72–81. Takagi, D. Y. (1990). From discrimination to affirmative Action: Facts in the Asian American admissions controversy. Social Prob­lems, 37, 578–592. Teranishi, R. T. (2010). Asians in the ivory tower: Dilemmas of racial in­equality in American higher education. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University. Turner, C. S. (2002). W ­ omen of Color in Academe: Living with Multiple Marginality. The Journal of Higher Education, 73(1), 74–93. TuSmith, B. (2002). Out on a limb: Race and the evaluation of frontline teaching. In B. TuSmith & M. T. Reddy (Eds.), Race in the college classroom: Pedagogy and politics (pp. 112–125). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Valverde, K.-­L .C. (2013). Fight the tower: A call to action for ­women of color in academia. Seattle Journal for Social Justice, 12(2), 1–54. Vargas, L. (Ed.). (2002). ­Women faculty of color in the white classroom. New York: Peter Lang. Wang, L.L.-­C . (1976). Lau v. Nichols: History of a strug­g le for equal and quality education. In E. Gee (Ed.), Counterpoint: Perspectives of Asian Amer­i­ca (pp. 240–259). Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center. Woo, D. (2000). Glass ceilings and Asian Americans: The new face of workplace barriers. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press. Wu, E. D. (2014). The color of success: Asian Americans and the origins of the model minority. Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press. Wu, F. H. (2002). Yellow: Race in Amer­i­ca beyond black and white. New York: Basic Books. Yeung, F.P.F. (2015). Strug­g les for professional and intellectual legitimacy: Experiences of Asian and Asian American female faculty members. In S. D. Museus, D. C. Maramba, & R. T. Teranishi (Eds.), The misrepresented minority (pp. 281–293). Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.

Part I

“Fear Is the Path to the Dark Side” Introducing the Fight In the first of the book’s five sections, the emotional tenor of this proj­ect is established, as is the historical l­egal context and the current intellectual and structural climate of academia. When Yoda, the Orientalist caricature of male Asian wisdom, that is, the Mr. Miyagi of Star Wars, says, “fear is the path to the dark side,” he is trying to teach his student, Anakin, that when wrestling with power, one cannot be ruled by fear, or power ­will oppress us. Eventually, Anakin becomes so ruled by fear that he becomes the ultimate embodiment of fear: Darth Vader. In gathering the wisdom of the Asian American academic ­women and one man represented in this volume, it was our hope that collectivizing this knowledge would lead to a release from the suffering of fear, through an awakening. Introducing the first section of this book is a poem by W. P., “Waking,” in which the poet describes a white w ­ oman science professor who was deeply aware of male sexism but was unaware of her own racism when faced with the strug­ gles of her Asian female colleague. To be “woke” is to be more than aware; it means to be willing to take action; the narrator of “Waking” asks her white female professor to awaken beyond her own experience of injustice to recognize that even the oppressed can be an oppressor.1 To us, this is what it means to “#StayWoke.”2

29

30  •  Part I

Following W. P.’s invocation to “wokeness,” the book as a ­whole is contextualized by the co-­editors’ introductory essay, in which Valverde and Dariotis provide the historical, structural, and personal intersectionalities that have coalesced to bring forth this proj­ect at this time. In this introduction, we discuss concepts of “social engineering” and the “privileged oppressed,” while applying the Lordian theory of anger to shift the constructed inequalities and intersectional oppressions of academia.

Notes Part title: Yoda makes this prophesy to young Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: Episode I—­The Phantom Menace (McCallum & Lucas, 1999). 1 This poem and attendant narrative demonstrate the moment of awakening, the moment of realizing that ­those one has seen as allies w ­ ill not support you in your moment of ­great need. This is the moment of realizing you ­will have to protect yourself and that you may need to prepare to protect o­ thers. 2 Being “woke” refers to having a self-­awareness that involves questioning and challenging dominant paradigms and narratives. “Stay woke” refers to the need to remain vigilant in light of oppressions that are supported by the false narratives in our society. The #StayWoke movement deploys t­ hese ideas and aligns with other movements like #BlackLivesMatter, which also serves to bring to light dif­fer­ent forms of discrimination faced by oppressed groups in our society.

Reference McCallum, R. (Producer), & Lucas, G. (Director). (1999). Star Wars: Episode I—­The Phantom Menace [Motion Picture]. United States: Lucasfilm.

Waking BY W. P. “It was a turning point for me,” said the biologist to the class, “when my professor grabbed the lab mouse and flung it against the wall.”

And you had tears in your eyes As you depicted the hand, pale, hairy Unapologetic, the hand of a master And the lab mouse, blind, cancer-­ridden Yet happy to be a mouse, still alive Then the rage, the fling against the wall And the spine, the brain, the heart Splashing like asteroids It awakened something in me, you say Tears in your eyes, I’m no longer the same As you watch the ­human “mouse” In the teeth of the revenge machine Invisible, raged, raging The same spine, muscle, limbs The same brain, bones, spirits Flung across your path 31

32  •  W. P.

As you stand in the ruins As you walk through this razor sharp silence As you wade into the sea of bloody sacrifice Are you willing to say: it awakens something? And say: this hand, this yellow, brown, black hand Makes the same delicious meals Makes the same beautiful sonnets, art, songs Splits cells with the same precision? Are you willing to acknowledge Our milk is just as white and nourishing Our blood just as red with boiling spirit And our need to be h ­ uman or mice is just as legit? How do you keep the same as you watch This h ­ uman mouse, this yellow faced colleague Who has broken bread and words with you Three days a week through the semester Flung against your wall of conscience Over and over and over . . .

Narrative During my eigh­teen years of teaching at the college, I made many connections with my colleagues across all races and genders and disciplines. I designed classes to co-­teach and cross-­list with American studies, environmental studies, and the biology and philosophy departments. I made many dinners for my colleagues whom I consider friends. When the college filed the lawsuit, the entire campus turned off the light. Nobody talked to, looked at, or knew me. Including the biologist who considers herself a scientist with high ethical and moral standards, who spent a ­whole semester co-­teaching a class I had initiated, designed, and got several grants for; a class that bridged science and art, material and spiritual worlds. It was a g­ reat success. The college scheduled us to do a co-­presentation. Then the suit burst, and I became a stranger overnight, a pariah. I was removed from the pre­sen­ta­tion. The biologist became the solo presenter. So I wrote this poem for her, who still tells to e­ very student her mouse story about the responsibility to animal rights as a scientist, tears in her eyes. I won­der if she ever sees us, w ­ omen of color, flung and splattered against the wall of academia, by the pale hands of the masters and mistresses.

Introduction “The Time to Fight Is Now”: Asian American W ­ omen, Academia’s Socially Engineered “Privileged Oppressed,” Go Rogue Abstract Our perception of higher education as the pillar of intellectual thought and meritocracy masks the real­ity that academia has been used to cultivate and disseminate ideas of difference to suppress dissent while advancing oppressive forms of capitalism and imperialism through “social engineering” proj­ects. This social engineering of superior and inferior categories that serves to divide and conquer objectors is particularly apparent in the case of Asian American ­women scholars, who have long occupied the socially constructed role of the privileged oppressed—­perceived as advantaged but actually positioned to be disposable. The growing accounts of t­ hese injustices and re­sis­tance to them, presented in this anthology and elsewhere, exemplify how Asian American ­women are increasingly woke to the realities of academia and are ready to work together with ­others for positive change. Studies in this anthology challenge “socially engineered” systems by employing methods of what we term reverse social ­engineering. It involves deconstructing systems of oppression to reveal the real motivations b­ ehind the actions of power holders and the (un)intended effects of their proj­ects on society. From this knowledge point, we can better 33

34  •  Introduction

determine what to resist and how to exact change. Th ­ ese collective actions, and the promise of more to come, give much hope for a truly inclusive, equitable, and dynamic academia.

“­Under the Control of a Dark Lord of the Sith?”1: Academia Revealed Student occupations and hunger strikes; faculty protests; firings of tenured faculty; votes of no confidence in top administrators; external audits; forced resignations of se­nior leadership; anti-­education stances by po­liti­cal leaders; threats to academic freedom; student activism around tuition hikes, student debt, hunger, and homelessness; and similar high-­stakes actions overtly signal a dramatic reaction to the current state of higher education.2 It may appear to the sympathetic public that a few corrupt administrators, bud­getary cuts caused by an unstable economy, and increasingly aggressive anti-­education policies are mostly to blame for ­these failings. Although ­these ­factors clearly play a significant role in the current situation, we argue that academia in the United States has been structured—­from its inception—as integral to the engineering of this society’s concentration of wealth and the power to oppress in very few hands, while excluding ­these commodities from ­others.3 Over the past fifty years, since the founding of the disciplines of ethnic studies and w ­ omen and gender studies, academia has opened to increasing numbers of w ­ omen and ­people of color and ­others seeking social justice through the promise of liberatory education; however, the overarching oppressive structure of academia remains, causing a disjunctive identity crisis between what academia actually is and what it envisions itself to be. Academia, though it often appears to be the location of critiques of the social order, also functions as the mechanism through which mass social engineering proj­ects—­based on the artificial structuring of race, gender, and class—­have delineated hierarchies of power and abuse through notions of inherent superiority and inferiority. We define social engineering as the intellectual, physical, and psychological manipulation of populations involving centralized planning and modification of the environment in order to shape and control be­hav­iors and ideas that do not exist inherently or naturally within individuals or cultures. In systematized social engineering, ­humans—as individuals or groups—­are perceived and treated as animals or machines, to be controlled and molded to desired specifications in order to fulfill specific functions. Common methods of social engineering include social construction of ideas and concepts; control of laws, policies, and institutions; and behavioral experimentation (Duff, 2005). Social engineering can and has been utilized by and on governments, corporations, private groups, and individuals. It is most power­ful when applied

Introduction • 35

in and through vari­ous institutions, particularly ­those pertaining to media, health, military, corrections, and education. Knowing this, we approach unearthing the truth of academia by using interdisciplinary methods to investigate the origins and evolution of the issues we face ­today. Though progressive scholarship has recognized and resisted social injustice by critiquing patriarchy, heteronormativity, racism, and classism, we ask to move further beyond ­these frameworks. It is to explore and investigate the deeper roots of oppression in order to fight against it and grow a liberatory educational system. We call this unpacking of prevalent social oppression in education reverse social engineering. We directly question accepted norms regarding some of the most commonly recognized and yet complicated notions in our society ­today, including race, class, and gender. The premise of this methodological approach uses investigative research with logic, observation, and intuition as the basis for analy­sis. We turn social engineering on its head; in essence, reverse social engineering occurs through the re-­examining of the construction and composition that makes up our understanding of ­these concepts in the first place and the insidious ways they are deployed to control us. Through unravelling the components of the concepts, we are able to answer questions such as: Who engineered our pre­sent understanding of social ideas and norms? What ­were the motivations of their actions in creating ­these impactful concepts? How have they been successful over time? Who has complied with their ideas? Where has ­there been re­sis­tance? How can we change this course? We do not aim to dismantle institutions like academia to only learn how to replicate detrimental models that have served to destroy society and ­people. We dismantle to build tools for change, healing, and knowledge. The external image of academia as a locus of academic freedom, rigorously logical intellectual analy­sis, and merit-­based reward is deeply inconsistent with academia’s a­ ctual function as a mechanism of oppressive power structures, which operate to protect themselves within larger cap­i­tal­ist and imperialist aims. Asian American ­women4 in the acad­emy can experience this disjunction as a kind of vio­lence that can lead to extreme results such as ­those documented in this volume, including physical and m ­ ental health consequences and shockingly low rates of tenure and promotion. Asian American w ­ omen5 are both privileged and oppressed in this system in a way that ­causes them to be particularly vulnerable, especially when they awaken to and become active against the structural illogic and inequities of academia. Asian American ­women academics are our focus b­ ecause of the par­tic­u­lar ways they are marginalized by intersectionalities of race and gender in academia. Asian American ­women are seen by academic administrators as ideal repre­sen­ta­tions of diversity ­because of assumptions that they ­will pre­sent exotic f­aces while remaining ­silent.

36  •  Introduction

Although Asian American studies critics have long since debunked the model minority myth that constructs Asian Americans as the ideal academic subject, university administrators still treat Asian American ­women in academia as though they w ­ ill simply show up and shut up.6 Consequently, b­ ecause ­silent complicity is expected, power holders ­will punish and oppress Asian American w ­ omen severely7 when they question or critique the system. However, thus situated as the privileged oppressed of the acad­emy, Asian American w ­ omen are also uniquely positioned to offer re­sis­tance to such forces8 and have made unique and power­ful contributions to the collective empowerment of faculty as a w ­ hole.9 This volume addresses the current crisis by reframing the realm of academia not as the universal equalizer or “idyllic” haven of intellectual discourse creating thoughtful members of society but rather as an institution teeming with ­labor, civil, and ­human rights abuses as part of a long legacy of intentional suppression and control.10 Asian American ­women academics, far from succeeding in academia as it would appear—­via the model minority myth—­that they are destined to do, in fact find themselves dangerously imperiled. Our term privileged oppressed describes the idea that we, as Asian American ­women, are given false privilege as “model minorities,” yet we serve a specific role as pacified workers that it is assumed ­will comply to hegemonic mandates of control and oppression of o­ thers and ourselves. The shock comes when we swallow every­ thing that was fed to us and then we are not rewarded, or, at worst, we are discarded. When this realization comes, we may not understand how and why it is happening to us, of all ­people. When ­those who have been told they are privileged realize that they are in fact oppressed, then they can see their way to taking action t­ oward equity and justice. This is the “woke moment.”11 The culturally specific, racially charged, and gendered nature of Asian American ­women’s experience in the acad­emy is due to social engineering and social constructions of difference. Thus, the specific example of Asian American ­women in the acad­emy provides an opportunity for a detailed analy­sis of the ways in which university power structures have evolved to control specific groups as an integral part of the system of global capitalism and imperialism. In addition to examining the ways in which t­ hese structures have been used to maintain a social structure of difference and oppression, this study begins to map Asian American ­women’s rejection of this systemic oppression in academia. This book is also a cautionary tale that explic­itly asks the following: If a group that by all mea­sures should be excelling within the acad­emy is in fact deeply harmed both as individuals and as a class, is any group safe, or is academia itself even safe? Other groups, including white males, have also been constructed in par­tic­u­lar ways to appear as if their whiteness and their gender mean they have the ultimate power, when in real­ity they too are dispensable as a group and only a very small core of elites actually dominate over all ­others.

Introduction • 37

As intersectional American Indian, Black, Latinx, Asian American, mixed race, poor, undocumented, variously abled, LGBTQIA+, and diversely gendered ­people, academics are oppressed in varying degrees and in specific, nuanced ways. Understanding t­ hese nuances while piecing together incomplete narratives of vari­ous populations in academia, including their unique histories, is crucial in the analy­sis. Knowing the history of how we have been socially engineered and oppressed, and how acts of re­sis­tance have been erased, ­will help us break down artificial barriers and create meaningful solidarities for positive transformations. Each section of this book pre­sents how intersections of engineered differences serve to divide, corral, and even kill intellectual critique—­ushering in an era of much discontent and possibly the destruction of the acad­emy as we know it.12 Even as the contributors of this volume bravely expose the inner workings of a failing/failed institution, this is done at the risk of c­ areers and reputations in order to shield the most vulnerable and to rebuild a more intellectually honest, fair, and inclusive academia.13 The critiques offered ­here intend to demonstrate one way (we imagine ­there may be many ways) in which academia can be made safe by bringing into alignment its stated goals and a­ ctual practices.

“Never Tell Me the Odds!”14: Statistics of Asian American ­Women in the Acad­emy Though Asian Americans are thought to be a somewhat privileged group characterized as “overrepresented”15 in the acad­emy, Asian American ­women, constituting approximately 3.55 ­percent of the professoriate nationally in 2013 (Hune, this volume), are positioned poorly in the academic power hierarchy (Aguirre, 2000; Chen & Hune, 2011; U.S. Department of Education, 2015; Wu & Jing, 2011). As shown by Junn and Davis Cross in chapter 2 of this volume, in their study of tenure and promotion at the University of Southern California, Asian American ­women are tenured and promoted16 at a rate of 40 ­percent of ­those who apply for tenure and promotion, while white men are tenured and promoted at a rate of 92 ­percent. Seen as passive, docile, and lacking certain resources17 and general institutional support to advance in the acad­emy, Asian American w ­ omen are perceived as easy targets for some of the most brutal attacks within their institutions (Gutiérrez y Muhs, Niemann, et al., 2012; Valverde, 2013). Sometimes as a direct result of unjust treatment in the acad­emy, individuals develop serious and chronic medical ailments. Valverde and coauthors in chapter 3 of this volume found that 74.4 ­percent of several hundred Asian American w ­ omen scholars surveyed disclosed having health prob­lems that they associated with the stresses they faced within the acad­emy; this percentage of work-­related negative health impacts would be considered a crisis in any other working environment.

38  •  Introduction

­These phenomena, ­until now, have largely gone undetected in part ­because of the lack of scholarship focusing on Asian American ­women academics18 and in part ­because of the model minority–­based presumption of the “success” of Asian American ­women. In fact, the dynamics between dominant and oppressed racial groups are typically conceptualized predominantly within a black/white paradigm, which renders Asian Americans invisible as ­either honorary whites or middlemen buffers (Dhingra, 2003). Reframing Asian Americans as not merely a model minority nor as honorary whites but instead as the privileged oppressed of academia, we are arguing for a new way of understanding the situation of Asian Americans, especially Asian American ­women in relation to academic hierarchies of power.

“The Power of the Dark Side”19: Social Engineering and the Construction of Power Hierarchies Power in and of itself need not be oppressive; it can be the power to heal, the power to support, the power to enable, or the power to inspire change (Lorde, 1983). However, in the United States, “industrial ­giants” have perverted power through the integrated control of institutions like government, media, medicine, law, the correctional system, military, art, and education in order to manipulate and influence the general population (Duff, 2005). Altering the lives and mind-­sets of entire ­peoples through social engineering in order to concentrate power and wealth in the hands of the few has historically been the proj­ect of the elites, and over the past several hundred years, educational institutions have served as a venue to develop, test, and disseminate ­these ideas. ­A fter hundreds of years marked by laws prohibiting the education of enslaved African Americans, mandating the forced Christianification of American Indians, Pacific Islanders, and other indigenous p­ eoples, and both de facto and de jure educational segregation of white ­women and p­ eople of color, including Asian Americans and Latinx p­ eople, the late twentieth ­century fi­nally saw public education slowly opening up to diverse students. However, when disenfranchised populations fi­nally gained access to education by per­sis­tent direct action, including seeking l­egal remedy through the courts, the public education that they accessed was not designed to liberate them but rather to control them. As described in 1906 by the J. D. Rockefeller–­endowed General Education Board, the nation’s corporate leaders envisioned an educational system that would create a population of domesticated working drones. The first mission statement declares: In our dreams, p­ eople yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The pre­sent education conventions of intellectual and character education fade from their minds and unhampered by tradition we work our

Introduction • 39

own good ­will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We s­ hall not try to make ­these ­people or any of their ­children into men of learning or phi­los­o­phers, or men of science. We have not to raise up from them authors, educators, poets or men of letters, ­great artists, paint­ers, musicians, nor l­ awyers, doctors, statesmen, politicians, creatures of whom we have ample supply. The task is s­ imple. We ­will or­ga­nize ­children and teach them in a perfect way the t­ hings their f­ athers and ­mothers are d­ oing in an imperfect way. (J. Lee, 2014, emphasis added)

The message is clear: education of the masses is a “­simple task” of creating drones, while the life of learning, creativity, and profession are reserved for the elites. Just as colonial masters sought to curtail indigenous ­people and enslaved African ­people in U.S. colonies from forming co­ali­tions and uprising, within the United States, wealthy families with names such as Rocke­fel­ler, Mellon, Guggenheim, Morgan, Stanford, and Car­ne­gie20 control society by shaping the education of its members.21 The use of propaganda and social engineering was identified as a means to an end to achieve globalist goals. In 1932, the president of the Rocke­fel­ler Foundation, Max Mason, stated that “The social sciences . . . ​ ­will concern themselves with the rationalization of social control.” This chilling statement may seem foreign to the image of the acad­emy as a bastion of liberation and innovative thinking; but it is exactly this image that needs to be confronted in order to see the insidious oppressive nature of social engineering via educational institutions. Educational systems in the United States have supplied the intellectual underpinning of social engineering since late nineteenth-­and early twentieth-­ century globalists supported the building of much of the educational infrastructure in the United States. This also includes the construction of the narrative of nation and how subjects w ­ ere to be controlled u­ nder t­ hese socially engineered ideas. Th ­ ese narratives are in line with Orientalist thinking as articulated by Edward Said and are specifically rooted in Germany’s New Psy­chol­ ogy of the late nineteenth ­century. Wilhelm Maximilia Wundt’s New Psy­chol­ogy movement began at Leipzig University in Germany; the first American student was G. Stanley Hall, who would ­later mentor John Dewey, one of the most influential figures in modern U.S. education. Psychologist John B. Watson, inspired by the works of Pavlov on dogs, de­cided that he would extend it to ­people. Behaviorism emerged from Watson’s theory that h ­ umans could be deliberately s­ haped or socially engineered.22 The language and logic structures upon which the hierarchies used to oppress con­temporary society are based are constructed within elite institutions. The students learning to become social leaders in lawmaking and capitalism utilize ­these constructed “logic” structures of hierarchy ­because they have been trained by academia to believe in their “scientific” veracity and rationality. This system is trickled down through middle-­class public education as well, ­until social

40  •  Introduction

engineering and its resulting systems of oppression have become both normalized and internalized. Through this system, the oppressed become a­ dept at self-­ regulating and even learn to oppress ­those like them. The success of ­these endeavors comes from methodical, long-­term planning and implementation stemming from a long history of misinformation and (c)overt oppression. Race and gender hierarchies are at the core of ­these strategies for control, which is why the positioning of Asian American w ­ omen in academia is so revealing. ­Those with the most resources, wealth, and power are not only concerned with accumulating more wealth; rather, the goal is to dictate how the world operates and how p­ eople function in this world (Ntsonta, 2012). Power holders recognize that controlling individuals or small groups can happen in a relatively short amount of time, especially through vio­lence23 affecting larger populations, and even ultimately converting them requires long-­term strategies and support from diverse institutions. A logical strategy of mass control, therefore, is not necessarily to oppress and dominate entire populations directly through force and war but rather to influence them through methodical social engineering tactics. One of the earliest, most effective, and longest lasting of ­these tactics involves creating hierarchical differences—­for example, through race, gender, and culture. This is done by privileging one group and taking away power from o­ thers to form new hierarchies of power.24 Bolstered by the United States as the premier cap­i­tal­ist society, and underscored through the demise of competing economic systems, global cap­i­tal­ist plans for imperial power and global control have been moving along with relatively l­ ittle public suspicion or outrage.

“Luminous Beings Are We”25: From White Supremacy to the Model Minority Myth Race and racism, as we know them in the United States, are often seen as inherent to ­human social interactions but ­were actually constructed over hundreds of years not as an end to themselves but as a means of social control. Martinot argues, for example, that the racialization of slavery in the United States came about when indentured blacks and whites, led by Nathaniel Bacon in 1676, came together in solidarity and demanded protection and better treatment ­under colonial rule (Martinot, 2000). The rebellion was crushed within several years,26 but it signaled to colonial powers that a co­a li­tion of indentured blacks and whites threatened stability and order. As a result, V ­ irginia power holders ended indentured servitude, thus constructing Blacks as a slave class and forever dividing poor whites from their natu­ral class allies (Alexander, 2011). By the end of the nineteenth ­century, expansionists ­were employing quasi-­ Darwinist reasoning to argue that ­because its “Anglo-­Saxon heritage” made Amer­i­ca supremely fit, it had become the nation’s “manifest destiny” to extend

Introduction • 41

its influence beyond its continental bound­aries into the Pacific and Ca­rib­bean basins (Foner & Garraty, 1991). One of the most enduring methods of social engineering is the control of ideas through the construction of terms and concepts such as “manifest destiny.” Originated in the 1840s, this phrase expressed the belief that it was the providential mission of Anglo-­Saxon Americans to expand their civilization and institutions across the breadth of North Amer­ i­ca.27 Eu­ro­pe­ans and Eu­ro­pean Americans ­were seen as made in the image of God, closest to his likeness in contrast to Africans, who w ­ ere (and often still are) seen as subhumans or even animals (Bankole, 1998; Daniels, 1993; Mahmud, 2013; Mellinger, 1992). This differentiation and hierarchicalization of racialized groupings as though they are separate species justified colonial or imperial domination over ­these “lesser” groups for the purpose of extracting resources and utilizing exploited ­labor.28 With the rise of capitalism and industrialization in the United States (1870– 1916) came the need for resource and labor-­generating colonialism and imperialism, primarily focusing on Asia and the Pacific (Mahmud, 2013). What had begun with the U.S. intervention in China during the Opium Wars (marked by the Treaty of Wangxia in 1844) developed through the annexation of Hawai’i and of Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines ­after the Spanish American War (1898); continued through the U.S.–­Philippines War (1898– 1902 officially, 1912 unofficially29); and expanded to include Wake Island, American Samoa (1899), and then the Trust Territories of the Pacific Islands (1944). For the remainder of the twentieth ­century, U.S. wars in Asia (World War II in Japan, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War) further served the goals of imperialism and global capital, while also generating Asian immigration to the United States. During colonialism and imperialism in Asia and the Pacific, Asian w ­ omen ­were already being used as the privileged oppressed30 both through their “hypersexualization”31 and through some of the earliest constructions as a “model minority,” presumed to be both intelligent and docile. Lisa Lowe’s research, for example, uncovered the deliberate use of Chinese as “a stable racial ‘barrier’ between the colonial whites and the enslaved blacks” (Lowe, 2015, p. 198). Asian ­women played a unique role in the British colonial proj­ect in contrast to immigration policies in the United States, which l­imited the migration of Asian ­women; the British colonial strategy emphasized that the “fantasy of Chinese ­family civility was a way of marking a racial difference between ‘Chinese f­ ree ­labor’ and ‘Negro slaves’, through imagining the Chinese as closer to liberal ideas of h ­ uman person and society” (Lowe, 2015, p. 198; emphasis in original). The early nineteenth-­century British attorney general Archibald Gloster emphasized the importation of Chinese families as a strategy to form “a barrier between us and the Negroes with whom they do not associate; & consequently to whom they ­will always offer formidable opposition” (Lowe, 2015,

42  •  Introduction

p. 31; emphasis in original). This deliberate use of Asian w ­ omen as a buffer between white elites and t­ hose they enslaved was the norm throughout U.S. colonialism in Asia, and it served to establish a structure for the role of Asian American w ­ omen within the United States. Colonization fueled the growth of industry in the United States as it had in Britain and other colonizer countries. By the mid-1800s, the Industrial Revolution, which had come to Britain a ­century ­earlier, was in full swing in the United States, and so was the use of enslaved ­people and the increased use of low-­wage child laborers, though the rise of industrialization was not completely dependent on e­ ither form of l­ abor (Harley, 2015). Although many individuals profited greatly through the exploitation of ­these forms of coerced ­labor,32 arguably they w ­ ere only marginally more profitable than more equitable l­ abor, and some have noted that, when considering the society as a ­whole, they w ­ ere even relatively unprofitable in comparison to egalitarian ­labor systems. Although historians and economists continue to debate the exact profitability of child ­labor and slavery, it is clear that ­these institutions functioned to provide something in addition to profit or they would not have been so slow to be reformed: more than profit, the purpose child l­abor and slavery served was control, not only over ­those populations directly affected, but also of ­those at risk of falling into similar circumstances (Doherty, 2006; Edmonds & Pavcnik, 2005).33 Control is also gained by limiting movement in the form of regulating immigration and limiting opportunities for work as well as education, residence, and even marriage.34 As the Industrial Revolution advanced into the twentieth ­century, so too did social engineering, through both educational and l­ egal institutions, in the form of eugenics. Names associated with the Industrial Revolution, like the Car­ne­gie Institution, the Rocke­fel­ler Foundation, and the Harriman railroad fortune, supported scientists from Stanford, Yale, Harvard, Prince­ton, the University of Chicago, Car­ne­gie Mellon, and other academic institutions to advance the study of eugenics and lend it credibility in the United States and internationally (G. Allen, 1986; Black, 2003). Based on this false science, eugenics posited that so-­called Anglo-­Saxons35 came from superior ge­ne­tic stock with optimal health and intellect. By the logic of maintaining and procreating a “master race,” at the height of the eugenics movement, researchers and scientists recommended the extermination of groups such as “emancipated Negroes,” immigrant Asian laborers, Indians, Hispanics, East Eu­ro­pe­ans, Jews, dark-­ haired hill folk, poor ­people, the infirm, and anyone classified as “unfit” in the new schema set out by American raceologists (Dorr, 2008; Kluchin, 2009). ­Those that had once been allies found themselves set at odds as certain groups ­were deemed superior to the rest, effectively breaking up impor­tant diverse l­ abor co­ali­tions.

Introduction • 43

Asian American ­women are particularly significant in understanding how successful power holders have been in suppressing, isolating, and dividing groups. Part of ­these tactics include employing a hierarchical academic system falsely positioning Asian American men and ­women between dominant and minority positions as the idealized worker, aka the “model minority”36 or what we would more specifically call the “privileged oppressed.” In the early twentieth c­ entury, Asian Americans w ­ ere seen as the Yellow Peril, an artifact of American colonialism and imperialism that ­imagined a horde of Asian male invaders from the “Orient” as a kind of “return of the repressed” or a subconsciously feared retribution for American aggression abroad (Chon-­Smith, 2006). Similarly, now in the early twenty-­first c­ entury, Asian American ­women function as a “phantom peril” in the university: despite our very small faculty numbers, we must be attacked and l­imited. However, t­ hese forms of oppression come not only from outside but also from within ourselves as part of the devastating legacy of colonialism and imperialism in which native subjects, suppressed for so long, internalize ideas of their own inferiority. Not only do we express this against ourselves, sometimes this history of oppression is expressed against each other. Neo-­imperialism and the residuals of colonialism in the university t­oday employ similar tactics of domination, requiring conformity to the mandates of the victors. This is now disguised as a form of neoliberalism, in which the promise of modernity (or what Brett Esaki in chapter 9 of this volume terms the falsely “rational world” of academia) is often perverted by economic servitude and threat of displacement. For example, adjunct faculty and tenure-­track faculty who “fail” to attain tenure are often faced with geographic dislocation, while lecturers often have to drive unreasonable distances or relocate frequently (see chapters 7, 8, and 13 of this volume). Much of this colonial and imperial history is internalized and imported by Asian American diasporic communities building lives over generations as new arrivals in places like the United States. Once ­here, their treatment would mirror what existed in the old colonial order.37 Explicit policies of exclusion, educational segregation, denial of citizenship, mass incarceration, the burning down of ­whole towns, anti-­miscegenation laws, and massacres have characterized Asian American lives since they first set foot in the United States. However, this terrible history remains largely unknown, despite the efforts of Asian American historians and communities who enact such proj­ects as the Japa­nese American Day of Remembrance and marches for the rights of Pilipino veteranos (Hatamiya, 1993). The construction of Asian Americans as the model minority was developed through terror: through the military subjugation of Filipinos during the U.S.–­Philippines War (1898–1902) and the subsequent colonization of the Philippines—­with an emphasis on indoctrination through education; and

44  •  Introduction

similarly through the military subjugation of numerous other Asian and Pacific Islander populations throughout the twentieth ­century. One of the most extreme, large-­scale examples in the twentieth ­century of this use of terror for social engineering was the internment of Japa­nese Americans in concentration camps. Despite the re­sis­tance of many Japa­nese Americans, the majority ­were psychologically terrorized through their removal and relocation. They ­were stripped of their property, dignity, and identity. Proving their worth required the ultimate sacrifice of the lives of many Japa­nese Americans through military ser­vice. With their ­people suppressed and history of re­sis­ tance ­later erased, Japa­nese Americans ­were perceived as the perfect subject to be exploited through the presumption of their silence and conformity; eventually, they would be used as a wedge to divide groups that garnered power during the civil rights movement, as exemplified by the appointment of S. I. Hayakawa as campus president during the Third World Liberation Front Strike at San Francisco State University in 1968. Fifteen years l­ater, a similar characterization was built around Viet­nam­ese Americans, who ­were constructed as the new model Asian ethnic group (Espiritu, 2014; M. A. Li, 1993), in ways that have been similarly damaging in all directions. The celebratory model minority narrative is meant to focus attention away from social injustice. Through this narrative, Asians have been characterized as having good cultural values that stress f­ amily and education, which is manifested as studious be­hav­ior at school and docility at work (S. J. Lee, Wong, & Alvarez, 2009; G. Li, 2005; Yee, 1992). By first victimizing a selected population in an extreme manner, then by exploiting them, the model minority myth was created and effectively internalized. Through the model minority myth, Asian American history has been re-­narrated by the dominant culture to erase ­whole histories of oppression and of cross-­ethnic and cross-­racial solidarity movements. Asian Americans may seem to benefit from the positive ste­reo­type of model minority myth, but a “positive ste­reo­type” is an oxymoron,38 and the cost of this false image has been higher than some may realize (Gupta, Szymanski, & Leong, 2011; Shin, 2004). For Asian and Asian American faculty, the irony is that demonstrating greater achievement39 ­causes a negative perception of Asians as overintellectual (even within academia), while African American faculty predominate in areas of ser­vice (but rarely leadership); comparatively, white male academics are positioned as well balanced: the ideal academic. Despite the lack of reward, achieving this “success” within the logic of the racial hierarchy has required Asian Americans to cut off associations and alliances, not only with other oppressed groups but also with themselves. Asian Americans are falsely perceived as passive and without the desire, ability, or resources to advocate for themselves (Kang, 2002). When Asian American w ­ omen, in par­tic­u ­lar, raise complaints about their workplace, their grievances often go unheard or are dismissed as unwarranted, with

Introduction • 45

serious consequences. But while Asian American w ­ omen occupy vulnerable positions within the academic corporatized industry, ­these ­women are not passively accepting of their fate.40 When they come u­ nder fire, many challenge not only their ill-­defined insider/outsider status but also the systemic forces that have positioned them (Hune, 2011; Valverde, 2013). We seek to expand and deepen the discourse around social inequalities by investigating the role marginally privileged minority groups play in maintaining and creating social hierarchies, especially in academia. Furthermore, we seek to investigate how t­ hese groups may be uniquely situated to create change (Pratto, Sidanius, & Levin, 2006). Thus, Asian American w ­ omen are both invited in as the model minority and quickly evicted when they fail to conform to that ste­reo­type by “breaking the silence.”41 This volume shows why Asian American w ­ omen have been willing to fight—­not only to save individual lives and livelihoods but also to save the promise of liberation through education. This promise is worth preserving for the betterment of society as a ­whole, but it can be fulfilled only if ­there is a radical shift in the way the university functions.42 Asian American w ­ omen are an impor­tant part of making that shift happen ­because of how they are structurally positioned, often at the bottom of the university hierarchy, a position from which they can—­ironically—­perceive many injustices and structural inequities.43 They also occupy a liminal position: considered, strategically, to be “honorary whites,”44 while also being seen and treated as providers of ser­vice, rather than as intellectual innovators and as campus leaders. Th ­ ese gendered and racialized roles are a source of much conflict for Asian American ­women academics. ­Because of ­these unique positions, if we are willing to speak out, Asian American w ­ omen may effect profound structural change, but we may also face heavy penalties. However, given the vulnerable position of Asian American ­women in the acad­emy, we are perceived as easy targets for larger forces engaged in power plays, and our abilities and willingness to fight back against unjust attacks are underestimated. If Asians and especially Asian American ­women are ­going to be utilized as a wedge to maintain oppression, then it is incumbent on Asian American w ­ omen to resist and to call out our re­sis­tance in recognition of the work that has already been done by our Asian American activist forebears. The awakening45—­the questioning of and re­sis­tance against oppressive systems—­happens when we recognize the abuses against us as a deliberate structure of the system rather than being caused by what they claim to be our weakness; the awakening is sustained through our righ­teous anger in response to the oppression not only of ourselves and our academic colleagues but of our students, families, and communities. ­These oppressions may seem dif­fer­ent b­ ecause of our perceived privilege as academic workers, but they are all connected. The oppression we study in society is the oppression we experience in academia; it is the same oppression.

46  •  Introduction

“You ­Were the Chosen One”46: Reframing the Model Minority Myth This historical construction of the current racial hierarchy demonstrates a new way of thinking about Asian Americans and the model minority myth. Previous views of the model minority myth emphasized historical events of the mid-­ to late twentieth ­century: Asian American success a­ fter World War II, especially Japa­nese American military ser­vice; the 1965 immigration act, which emphasized both elite education and needed skill sets (as well as f­ amily reunification); and, perhaps most of all, the relationship of Asian Americans to the perceived strug­gle of African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement via which Asian Americans ­were deliberately positioned to function as a buffer, despite the actuality of Asian American solidarity with African Americans. L ­ ater, the early 1980s emergence of the “Asian whiz kid” trope must also be seen as part of the “new Yellow Peril” in relationship to the perceived threat of the resurging Japa­nese economy and the post–­Cold War Chinese economic juggernaut. More recently, the increased presence of Asian American college students and their high achievements have contributed to a backlash against them as unfair competition taking seats away from white students (Allred, 2007; Dong, 1995). Inversely, Asian American parents have been exceedingly vocal against affirmative action–­inspired programs, believing falsely it would let in unqualified students of color while keeping out qualified Asian American candidates (Poon, 2017). Being perceived as an easily controlled population in all institutions— in this case, in higher education—­allows Asian Americans to be used as a significant buffer against would-be objectors or dissenters just as they can be used as the scapegoat for economic or social woes. As Asian Americans and other ­people of color began to make significant inroads in the acad­emy, the 1980s saw the reengineered higher education system come to be increasingly dominated by corporatization.47 Using outdated business models has had deleterious effects: prioritizing private gains over public good, a ballooning administrative class, rampant incivility within the academic workplace, heightened tokenism, and the overprivileging of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields at the expense of the humanities and social sciences (Etzkowitz, Webster, & Gebhardt, 2000; Faria, Mixon, & Salter, 2012; Green, Kisida, & Mills, 2010; Newfield, 2011; Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004; Twale & De Luca, 2008). Within this neoliberal academic system, ­those who have historically been marginalized are positioned to be abused and used for the maintenance of systems of unequal power relations (Treitler, 2016). Some who enter the acad­emy do so well aware of the oppression of the system, but for o­ thers, the awakening happens through bearing witness to their own oppression or that of ­others. We have seen so many Asian American

Introduction • 47

­ omen academics whose voices are silenced forever through death, extreme illw ness, retreat from the acad­emy, or being shamed into silence. It is ­because of ­these silences that we must question and resist the oppression of the system. The daring ones that dissent or even speak up for themselves are labeled as “troublemakers” or “pariahs,” and they face isolation, sanctioning, and dismissal. They are made to feel their situation is an anomaly, one-­of-­a-­kind, and their actions are narrated as radical, uncivilized, and crazy (Noyoo & Campus, 2017; Parkinson, 2017; Sadi & Clive, 2017). Si­mul­ta­neously, their scholarship may go through unfair scrutiny and be dismissed as nonacademic, while they face harassment and retaliation at e­ very turn, including when they seek support, proj­ect funding, and promotions (Christou, 2016; Do Mar Pereira, 2016; Wånggren, 2016). Sometimes t­ hose—­including staff, students, and faculty—­ who choose to affiliate with the “pariah” or take up c­ auses critiquing the university, as pointed out in the Deloso chapter on student activism in this volume (chapter 4), may also find themselves u­ nder attack and subject to retaliation themselves (Shulevitz, 2015).48

“You Are Unwise to Lower Your Defenses!”49: The False Meritocracy In this volume, we argue that no demographic is safe in this constructed academic order, especially ­those that adopt the corporatized, false meritocracy model uncritically. ­These structural failures in academia are becoming a vis­i­ ble crisis even to ­those faculty positioned at the top of the academic hierarchy. The point we are trying to make is that the system is not designed to protect the merit or accomplishments of individuals; the system is designed to protect itself for its benefactors. Anyone could be vulnerable. Every­one is vulnerable.50 This failure has been manifested through the deconstruction of tenure, the increasing proportion of temporary adjunct faculty to full-­time faculty, the erosion of academic freedom, the recharacterization of faculty as ser­vice providers, and the dehumanization that occurs through the mass production of education (Barkawi, 2013; Chomsky, 2014; Ginsberg, 2011). Universities are also like corporations in that whistle­-­blowers and grievants alike are shunned and silenced rather than appreciated for exposing misdeed within the acad­emy (Block Joy, 2010). Similar to Amy Block Joy’s experience with facing retaliation for whistle-­blowing, the case of Scott Kurashige and Emily P. Lawsin against the University of Michigan alleges that this married Asian American (Japa­nese American and Filipina American) ­couple have faced retaliation for highlighting the university’s failure to retain, promote, and tenure a significant number of faculty of color; loss of significant percentages of students of color in all ethnic and racial categories; huge increases in student-­ family income levels; and other failures to conform to its own social justice

48  •  Introduction

rhe­toric (Flaherty, 2017). This “cover up and retaliate” mentality is embedded in the dominant culture in academia, creating a chilling environment around speaking out against specific issues of oppression or bullying.51 In this context, putting together this volume involved learning about and reaching out to ­people who we knew had compelling stories and strategies for re­sis­tance to share and then convincing them to speak out openly. ­There are many experiences we have learned of that could not be put into print for fear of retaliation, and this book is as much for t­ hose who feared to speak out as it is for t­ hose who are ready to speak.

“­Don’t Do That.” “Do What?” “Anything”52: The Perils of D ­ oing Nothing The contributors to this book have come together ­because of their varying viewpoints and intensive research to repudiate the damaging status quo and increasing psychological (and in some cases physical) vio­lence in higher education. ­These dif­fer­ent perspectives from undergraduate student to se­nior faculty to administrator, from immigrant to fourth-­generation Asian American, create a gestalt of wisdom and knowledge to uncover systemic prob­lems in academia. Silenced for too long, ­there is now a critical mass within academe who are airing their grievances and demanding dramatic changes for all. The health of the university and the well-­being of its ­people are in crisis. We persist ­because teaching is indeed our deepest calling. We are called to teach, to create knowledge and wisdom, to be in a community of learners. We are called like most teachers to help students reach their full potential in a society shifted t­ oward social justice. We cannot easily just let this go or turn elsewhere. The university is our university. This call to action commands us to undertake this proj­ect to expose the injustices and create real change to heal that community. We do so at ­great risk of retaliation, but we overcome this fear knowing what the impact of our collective courage represents for so many that are in crisis and who also wish to fight.

“The Time to Fight Is Now”53: A Call to Action Having experienced—­personally—­harrowing ­battles within the acad­emy, and then hearing the many stories of sorrow, defeat, and even unsatisfactory victories that Kieu Linh Caroline Valverde, Jennifer Lisa Vest, Ping Wang, and ­others experienced, we formed the Fight the Tower movement.54 The Fight the Tower movement was created by individuals who believe that ­women of color in academia—­and the acad­emy itself—­are at a crucial crossroads. With the infiltration of the practice and language of industry, massive bud­getary cuts at universities nationwide, and other trends ­toward corporatization, what had

Introduction • 49

been a professoriate that has slowly diversified since the late 1960s finds itself experiencing increasing backlash. Th ­ ose faculty belonging to the most marginalized groups find themselves increasingly vulnerable to dismissals or co-­ optive tokenization and other divide-­and-­conquer tactics. Although many w ­ omen of color, including Asian American w ­ omen, view themselves as isolated and alone, unable and sometimes unwilling to seek assistance or to fight against unfair treatment, ­there is a growing movement of scholars speaking up against the injustices in academe. This was led in part by the ­women b­ ehind the seminal anthology Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for ­Women in Academia. The conversation started by Presumed Incompetent was extended in two special journal issues, the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice (vol. 20, issue 2, Summer 2014) and the Seattle Journal for Social Justice (vol. 12, issue. 2, Summer 2014). In t­ hese publications, ­women of color from diverse fields of study (including Kieu Linh Caroline Valverde) shared their deeply personal stories and provided empirical data that exposed systemic wrongdoings. Reading their testimonials strikes a nerve with us; and, in solidarity with them, we carry on the fight. Beyond telling our stories, this work holds the educational system accountable for the continuation of discriminatory practices con­ve­niently targeting w ­ omen of color. Ultimately, the Fight the Tower movement supports ­women standing up for their rights and fighting the tower to claim their earned place in academia and to change the oppressive systems that structure it. To articulate the main points of the movement, the found­ers of the movement developed the Fight the Tower Manifesto,55 which includes the following core statements about the structure of the acad­emy: Academic institutions create barriers for w ­ omen of color to prevent our admission to gradu­ate programs, access to tenure-­track positions, tenure, administrative power, professional success, and advancement—­especially in top tier universities. ­Those of us that make it through the system are constantly ­under scrutiny and this makes work pro­gress difficult and ­every advancement effort a ­battle. We speak truth to power to expose the unjust and discriminatory practices aimed at us and demand fair repre­sen­ta­tion and access to all levels of the acad­emy. (Valverde, 2013)

We stand strong with ­women in academia and want them to understand they are not alone in their experiences with discrimination nor when they choose to fight for justice. To address the issue of isolation and provide resources for ­battle, in 2013 the Fight the Tower movement found­ers developed the Fight the Tower Web site to serve as a clearing­house of information. We anticipated this site would assist ­women in understanding that their individual cases are part

50  •  Introduction

of a larger pattern of abuse in academia and that this knowledge would assist them in better arming themselves with information for the many ­battles ahead. ­Later in 2013, the Web site was supplemented by a heavi­ly trafficked Fight the Tower Facebook page featuring daily posts regarding ­women of color in the acad­emy. This edited volume, Fight the Tower: Asian American W ­ omen Scholars’ Re­sis­tance and Renewal in the Acad­emy, signals the evolution of the Fight the Tower movement based in the princi­ples articulated in the Fight the Tower Manifesto. Naming the prob­lems has been the first step; now it is time to take dramatic action to bring about justice for the individuals and groups ­under attack. This includes keeping safe all ­others in the university not yet targeted and even preserving the good values that remain in the acad­emy itself. Fight the Tower, as a movement and now as this anthology, builds on the foundations laid by Presumed Incompetent’s extensive testimonials, which show how w ­ omen of color faculty can function within the system of the acad­emy by leveraging the power of community. Presumed Incompetent is an impor­tant text ­because it allowed other faculty of color and ­women to recognize that their experiences are not unique but rather are part of a larger pattern. This pattern recognition is a tremendous gift ­because it helps ­women of color in the acad­ emy to know that we are not alone and that what is happening to us is systemic.56 In the spring of 2015, Valverde started to develop an Asian American–­focused anthology inspired by and building on the work of Presumed Incompetent. In the spring of 2016, she invited Wei Ming Dariotis to co-­edit the volume b­ ecause of Dariotis’s own complicated relationship with her university, including a troubled promotion pro­cess, her experience with the shared governance pro­cess as a member of the Academic Senate Executive Committee, and her subsequent work as the president of the San Francisco State University chapter of the California Faculty Association in order to help ­those dealing with ­labor abuses within the university.57

“I Could Show You the Ways of the Force”58: Evidence-­Based or Nonbinary Research In the framework of the argument of this book, we wish to highlight and underscore Shirley Hune’s research on the case of Rosalie Tung, presented in the prologue to this book. Tung was denied tenure in 1984 by the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business, a­ fter which her fight changed the tenure pro­cess for faculty across the nation. Tung won a 1990 U.S. Supreme Court decision in which in which the court de­cided that the university’s need for “confidentiality” did not override issues of racism and sexism in employment. Like so many other ­battles fought by Asian Americans, Tung’s case is not well known, even by t­ hose who benefit from it, which is e­ very faculty member in the United States who joined the tenure track ­a fter 1990. The

Introduction • 51

invisibility of Rosalie Tung and the absence of her fight from the dominant narrative of faculty rights is part of the prob­lem that this volume seeks to solve: Asian American w ­ omen are seen as both privileged and passive in academia; as Tung’s case demonstrates, this could not be further from the truth. ­A fter her tenure denial, Tung complained to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that she had been discriminated against b­ ecause of her race, sex, and national origin. Trying to prove this required gaining access to her personnel file to see what had been written in confidential tenure evaluations submitted by five male faculty members. The university argued that princi­ ples of “academic freedom” provided a unique justification for maintaining secrecy in its internal deliberations. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), a body founded to support academic freedom and that often functions, to a l­ imited extent, in the place of a faculty u­ nion when t­ here is none available, supported the University of Pennsylvania’s argument, effectively pitting the interests of se­nior faculty over ­those of ju­nior faculty (Baez, 2001). In his majority decision on University of Pennsylvania v. EEOC, US Supreme Court Case # 88-493, Justice Harry A. Blackmun wrote, “Other businesses, including law and accounting firms, must divulge their internal evaluations of candidates for promotion in similar situations, and universities ‘do not enjoy a special privilege’ that makes them exempt” (Savage & Gordon, 1990). The argument is made from an awareness that the nature of institutionalized power is to abuse it; thus, according to critical ­legal studies scholar Mari Matsuda in her analy­sis of Tung’s case, Following Foucault (1977), we see norms such as confidentiality, which function through secret judgement, as allowing faculty to “discipline” themselves. In other words, faculty internalize norms about what constitutes “excellence” with regard to promotion even when ­these norms promote race and gender discrimination, and vote accordingly. ­These norms have such a strong hold on faculty that the AAUP, which has traditionally defended individual faculty rights over institutional interests,59 filed a brief essentially siding with the University of Pennsylvania in support of confidentiality. In so d­ oing, the AAUP supported one set of faculty interests, the se­nior peer reviewer’s over another set of faculty interest, the ju­nior, female candidate’s. (Baez 2001, p. 83)

Tung’s fight made the tenure and promotion pro­cess more transparent, and it is this kind of structural change that we hope the work in this volume, and the research inspired by it, ­will support. It is thus critical to this proj­ect that we provide well-­researched evidentiary-­based research. To that end, this volume includes chapters designed as studies of tenure and promotion numbers of Asian American w ­ omen both nationally (prologue) and at a specific institution (chapter  2); a survey of health effects on Asian American ­women in academia

52  •  Introduction

(chapter  3); a narrative on the health effects of the stress of gradu­ate school (chapter  6); a close reading of the bureaucratic language of “success” and its effects on Asian American studies (chapter 1); an investigation of the institutionalization and neutralization of student activism (chapter 4); a critique of the way Hmong American history, culture, and identity is both made invisible and mistaught (chapter 5); a survey-­based study of the care work performed by Asian American ­women academics (chapter 10); a survey-­based analy­sis of the spiritual healing practices of Asian American ­women academics (chapter 9); and a narrative-­healing oral history–­based study of Filipina academics (chapter 11). In addition to t­ hese evidentiary-­based chapters, we also ensured that each of the chapters rooted in personal narratives is substantiated through meticulous and thorough research, such as two critiques of the adjunct lecturer system (chapters 8 and 13); an analy­sis of employment issues par­tic­u­lar to Asian international scholars (chapter 7); an argument for seeing scholarship, teaching, and mothering as richly integrated rather than as oppositional and isolated work spheres (chapter 12); a call to consider academia symbiosis as a new model for academic relationships (chapter 14); and a reflection on multisited activism for Asian American w ­ omen academics and Asian American studies as a field (epilogue). The poems by W.  P. that preface each section include illuminating narratives in order to communicate critical data beyond traditional bound­aries of poetry as art that reflects life; rather, what the additional narratives affirm is that ­these poems function as manifestos based on ­actual events. Although the pro­cess of pulling together the research represented in this volume revealed how much more has to be done, what is provided ­here is a critical starting point for f­uture research providing comparative analyses of gradu­ate education; hiring, tenure, and promotion; the academic promotion pipeline; as well as the structure of adjunct hiring and ­careers. Much more work also needs to be done on specific Asian American and Pacific Islander American experiences, by ethnicity, sexuality, class, physical and ­mental ability, religion, immigration and citizenship status, language, and other categories. This compilation is significant ­because it provides data on Asian American and Pacific Islander American ­women faculty as an aggregated group and it also provides specific groundbreaking research on underrepresented groups such as Hmong Americans, Filipina Americans, Viet­nam­ese Americans, queer Asian American ­women, mixed-­race Asian American ­women, and Asian immigrant ­women scholars.

“Search Your Feelings”60: Anger as Form and Function The discourse of critical academia studies, or the critique of the university as empire, can be—­and, we would argue, should be—­emotionally charged as well

Introduction • 53

as thoroughly researched. This balanced approach is part of what is needed to heal or grow beyond the wounds and limitations of the current destructive structure of the acad­emy. Personal, emotional narratives by ­women of color scholars are too often easily dismissed by being reduced to a “temper tantrum.” As Audre Lorde argues in “The Uses of Anger: ­Women Responding to Racism,”61 “My response to racism is anger. I have lived with that anger, ignoring it, feeding upon it, learning to use it before it laid my visions to waste, for most of my life. Once I did it in silence, afraid of the weight. My fear of anger taught me nothing. Your fear of that anger ­will teach you nothing, also” (Lorde, 2007). Anger is coded as anti-­intellectual; anger is coded as “black,” while being intellectual is coded as “white,” and being “over-­intellectual” is coded as “Asian” (Lomax, 2015; Patton, 2014; Suebsaeng, 2014). This coding renders Asian American anger almost impossible. Fears of looking unprofessional, of seeming untheoretical, and of being noticed as stepping out of place have kept too many of us too s­ ilent for too long. Fierce Asian American and Pacific Islander American forebears argue that fear teaches inaction, while anger, directed appropriately, leads to action. Describing native Hawaiian indigenous activist Haunani-­Kay Trask, Mari Matsuda writes, “­There is a politics of anger: who is allowed to get angry, whose anger goes unseen, and who seems angry when they are not” (Matsuda, 1991). B ­ ecause of overwhelming ste­reo­t ypes associating Asians with meekness, weakness, and silence, “Asian American anger” almost seems like an oxymoron. As Angry ­Little Asian Girl comix creator Lela Lee reminds us with her bold cartoon depictions of an unabashed, po­liti­cally incorrect, and foul-­mouthed Asian American female character, we know we are expected to go along to get along and play the demure Asian female infantilized role, while, r­ eally, we just want to say, “fuck off!” (http://­angrylittlegirls​ .­com). Our power begins when we use our voices to transform our grief to grievance (Lorde, 2007), which aids in dispelling the perceptions of our anger as “female hysteria” and brings to light our real po­liti­cal concerns (Davé, Nishime, & Oren, 2005). For us, “Asian American anger” is not the punch line to a joke but a match to light a cleansing and illuminating fire. Our Asian American anger is our torch. However, Asian American ­women pay a special penalty for showing their anger ­because of the presumption of their docility and idea that as the “model minority,” they have been given certain privileges and should not bite the hand that feeds them but that is actually always ready to slap them.62 In contrast, Lordian anger theory teaches us that anger is an appropriate response to racism and sexism. The purpose of this anger is constructive, corrective, generative, and instructive rather than destructive, for “Guilt and defensiveness are bricks in a wall against which we all flounder; they serve none of our ­futures” (Lorde, 2007, p. 124). Guilt has been the traditional response of white liberals, both male and female, and Lorde particularly addresses her

54  •  Introduction

speech to white ­women, asking them not only to be allies but also to take responsibility for the harm they cause both through their racism and through their guilt. Asian Americans, especially Asian American ­women, have felt caught in between anger and guilt where anger is a response to relationships of oppression, guilt is a recognition of one’s complicity in oppression, and defensiveness is an unwillingness to take responsibility for rectifying that complicity. Where do Asian American w ­ omen, as the privileged oppressed, fit between anger and guilt? We need to learn from Lorde’s version of anger, which is “loaded with information and energy.” This energy can serve “pro­g ress and change” (Lorde, 2007, p. 124) if it is correctly focused, but also only if our allies do not allow themselves to use it as an excuse to dismiss us. Rather, we all need to use the anger to light the fire against “­those oppressions, personal and institutional, which brought that anger into being” (Lorde, 2007, p. 127). We must welcome the fire into our hearts, for what are we if we are not made angry by oppression? What are we if we allow ourselves to be cowed by fear? We are not safe; no ­matter what position we take, the university is designed not for our safety and survival but for its own.63 Like Audre Lorde, our goal is not “a ­simple switch of positions or a temporary lessening of tensions, nor the ability to smile or feel good. I am speaking of a basic and radical alteration in t­ hose assumptions underlining our lives” (Lorde, 2007, p. 127). Although we make much of the small percentage of Asian American w ­ omen in academic positions of power (see prologue, Hune, chapter 11, and chapter 14), we understand that the solution is not only to have more Asian American ­women in ­those positions but rather, also, a restructuring of the university such that merit rather than power is the defining ­factor in success. Lorde would have us see the nature of power differently. Rather than power being dependent on having someone upon whom to exercise that power, Lorde’s definition of power is defined internally and communally. She celebrates “our power to examine and to redefine the terms upon which we w ­ ill live and work; our power to envision and to reconstruct, anger by painful anger, stone upon heavy stone, a f­ uture of pollinating difference and the earth to support our choices” (Lorde, 2007, p.133; emphasis added). Power, like anger, in Lordian terms is generative, not simply reproductive but productive of diversity and difference. Power can be reborn as supportive rather than judgmental (see discussion in the conclusion to this book). Power can be that which pollinates difference rather than enforcing restrictive normative ideologies. Imagine, for example, a university in which the professor who has supported the most students and colleagues is celebrated, valued, and rewarded as much as the professor who has published the most or gotten the most grant money. The contributions to this volume tell us that our anger and pain are instructive when we share them shamelessly. We cannot legitimately investigate the

Introduction • 55

meaning of t­ hese stories without attending to this anger. But b­ ecause we have been taught to fear anger and pain, we run the risk of enforcing a false and dehumanizing clinical detachment that itself reproduces the very ­thing we intend to critique: what Brett Esaki names in his contribution to this volume (chapter 9), as “academic rationality,” which he describes as “an attack on the spirit.” Instead, the works in this volume each find their own balance and even emerge beyond the false dichotomy that pits the intellectual against the emotional. Th ­ ere is an emotional intellectualism at work h ­ ere, one which allows us to feel our own pain and empathize with ­others as a way of knowing, as a form of wisdom. Having hard data is also valuable as a conduit for emotion. Who feels it knows it. And perhaps, if we have gathered the data and presented it with enough testimonial context, who knows it can also feel it. Without this feeling, of what value is the knowledge? Academia, in its current configuration, goes against how we, the co-­editors and contributors, think, teach, research, and engage with the world. Thus, we chose to deliberately encourage our contributors to speak about their own experiences and also understand, through research, how their experiences are part of a larger structural flaw in academic institutions. Our anger gives us voice, and this voice is our power.

“Stay on Target!”:64 The Goal While ambitious publications speak to the changes within academia, none attribute the restructuring of the university to the intentional exploitation of marginalized groups in order to create an academic caste system for external corporate control and gain. To the best of our knowledge, t­ here is only one anthology, G. Li and Beckett’s “Strangers”of the Acad­emy: Asian ­Women Scholars in Higher Education (2006), that places the experiences of Asian American ­women faculty at the center of the discourse. Our anthology builds on this work by including evidentiary-­based research studies; narratives based on personal experiences and closely made observations; structural analyses in which authors investigate and analyze the deep systems of academia as a ­whole; and calls to action in which contributors illuminate their pathways t­ oward enacting equity for themselves and o­ thers. Further, we make suggestions for deeper structural changes to save the acad­emy while fighting the injustices that come from outside and within the acad­emy. The book is composed of five sections. Each of ­these five sections is introduced by a relevant poem written by W. P.,65 a concise, impactful narrative that provides the emotional context for the analytical, evidentiary-­based essays that follow in each section. Th ­ ese chapters provide a power­ful portrait, reflection, and analy­sis of a population often rendered invisible by the lies that sustain the model minority myth in order to operate an oppressive system.

56  •  Introduction

In the conclusion, Dariotis and Valverde offer an understanding of how that which has been broken can be repaired. To do this, we must be willing to make new tools—­even, perhaps, to remake ourselves. The editors articulate in the conclusion approaches for Asian American w ­ omen in the acad­emy to awaken themselves and their colleagues to be empowered to restructure the acad­emy not only to demand fair treatment for themselves but ultimately to fight for a larger movement t­ oward social justice in higher education. In the poem that concludes the book, “My Kintsuki,” W. P. describes the pro­cess by which repairing the breaks caused by academic institutions can result in something that is not only more beautiful but that can actually be sustained. Written as a pledge to His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, this poem states that she w ­ ill not give up, even if she is “a pariah playing a magic flute from the bottom of the snake pit.”66 The system is broken in a way that ultimately harms not only ­those individuals who are marginalized within it but also the very structure itself and needs to be put back together differently. Robyn Rodriguez’s epilogue situates Fight the Tower within the context of risky protests, highlighting both the Third World Liberation Front Strike at San Francisco State University and Sunera Thobani, an Asian North American scholar who spoke against U.S. imperialism during the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. ­These contexts underscore the connection between what happens within the acad­emy and what happens outside it, rendering the strug­gle over the f­ uture of academia far more impor­tant than being merely academic.

Conclusion Fight the Tower describes the complexity and diversity within the Asian American community in higher education and discusses ways to challenge a problematic set of racial, sexual, and social ste­reo­t ypes. It explains how Asian American w ­ omen from vari­ous backgrounds, including students, teachers, and faculty, experience and resist intersectional racism and sexism via anger, wokeness, and a redefinition of power. The book offers recommendations for improving campus climate for diversity and inclusion, broadening access for Asian American w ­ omen, and reforming institutional policies and practices. This volume spans the positions of Asian American ­women along the academic pipeline from undergraduates to administrative leadership. Contributors include multigenerational, refugee, immigrant, and international students and faculty navigating the institution and fighting for relevant, liberatory, and transformative education. Chapters address academic Asian American w ­ omen’s lives holistically and critically, covering topics including physical and m ­ ental health, spirituality, parenthood, community building, adjuncting, advocating,

Introduction • 57

organ­izing, strategizing, resisting, and protesting. Contributors share their tales of loss, defeat, victory, and even the tough choice to leave academia entirely. This anthology serves as a resource for ­future researchers and administrators to address and redress the injustices experienced by w ­ omen of color in the acad­emy. The intended audience includes scholars from the fields of higher education, Asian American studies, gender studies, ethnic studies, anthropology, sociology, and ­legal studies. Ultimately, this anthology reveals disturbing trends in universities across the nation and alerts ­those within the system that ­unless changes are made, Asian American ­women ­will not be the only victims, nor ­will they be alone in their strug­gles for dramatic reforms to the working conditions of educational institutions. “Fight the Tower” is a movement,67 and the scholarship in this volume needs to move p­ eople. A ­ fter having been partially indoctrinated in academic rationalism, we have had to learn to value our ways of being, teaching, learning, and understanding that are rooted in ­those ­things demonized by the institution: caring, mothering, crying, belly-­laughing, sharing. We have chosen strategically, thoughtfully, and deliberately to allow ourselves to be emotionally vulnerable while writing b­ ecause this research is not just an intellectual exercise—it is a form of risk taking, a form of activism for positive change. Our authors utilize all the relevant academic methodologies and research skills; among t­ hese, one of the most impor­tant is testimonial storytelling, which is the po­liti­cal action of speaking truth to power. We thank our f­ amily, friends, colleagues, and you for being a part of the strug­gle and journey to demand justice in the acad­emy. Such efforts are almost impossible to tackle alone, and hence we see our work as a collective effort and an ongoing strug­gle. In this regards, we are indebted to the amazing ­women that came before us, ­those that paved the way for us to think critically about ­women of color and the acad­emy, including Carmen González and Shirley Hune. We also recognize the many that literally lost their lives continuing to serve their institutions, colleagues, and students, committed to the mission ­behind higher education to the very end; they include Barbara Christian, June Jordan, Soek-­Fang Sim, and Iris Chang. We are inspired by t­ hose who have fought fearlessly and w ­ ere even able to make higher education more equitable for all, including Martha West, Zulma Toro, Adrienne Dixson, Sylvia Hurtado, and Tanya Figueroa. We represent the legacy of the ­women mentioned. We are honored to have worked with the contributors to this volume. They understand all too well the urgency of their work and have generously given their sweat, hearts, and souls into this volume. We are indebted to them for their commitment for social change and willingness to give forward for ­those still in the trenches and for the generations that come ­after us. We are grateful to ­those coming up for inspiring us to do this this work, for showing that t­ here is hope,

58  •  Introduction

and for being creative, playful, and energetic. We dedicate this work —­this ­labor of love, community, and friendship—to the Force of our collective ­will to make change and our ­sister colleagues who fight alongside us e­ very day.

Notes Chapter title: We are grateful for this and other quotes sourced from the Star Wars movie franchise. It is especially poignant that George Lucas, creator of Star Wars, saw the film as a Việt Nam War allegory with U.S. imperialist proj­ects, military occupations, and a corrupt leader on one side, and the seemingly much weaker rebel force on the other side. As we worked through our ideas, the use of this par­tic­u­lar cultural reference often proved almost too apt in conveying the machinations of academic structures, including a now pop­u­lar­ized trope of an imperial force seeking galactic domination while fending off lower-­resourced rebels that are repeatedly underestimated. For more discussion of the Việt Nam War meta­phor in Star Wars, see Smith, 2014 and Rothman, 2014. We are further impressed by the introduction of a strong, non-­sexualized, Asian American ­woman hero, Rose, played by Viet­nam­ese American actor Kelly Marie Tran, in Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017). 1 Count Dooku says t­ hese words in an attempt to bring Obi-­Wan Kenobi to the dark side (McCallum and Lucas, 2002). 2 We want to acknowledge that society also mirrors ­these types of discontents with movements, like Black Lives M ­ atter calling out overt and institutionalized racism, particularly in a law enforcement system that appears to devalue black lives. ­There is also the #MeToo cause, empowering a collective voice of w ­ omen everywhere who have experienced sexual harassment and assault, and Time’s Up, which demands an end to sexism as it exists, while also raising millions for a ­legal fund to assist ­women in finding justice. We feel our anthology is part of this swelling of re­sis­tance and action, with our focus particularly on higher education (Goldstene, n.d.). See Friedersdorf, 2016; Li, 2016; and McGreevy, 2017. For readings on campus climate, see Markow, 2011. 3 Also, in the deep crevices of university interactions, much of the blame for the decline of the university has often been laid at the feet of liberal and progressive academics. The blaming of liberal scholars for the ills of academia has become ever more pronounced, particularly since the publication of Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind (1987). More current reports such as “The Crisis of Competence: The Corrupting Effect of Po­liti­cal Activism in the University of California,” put out by the California Association of Scholars: A Division of the National Association of Scholars (2012), go so far as to blame radical activism that comes from liberal professors’ curriculums as the cause of an overall academic decline in U.S. universities. 4 We recognize, as editors Guofang Li and Gulbahar H. Beckett do in their 2006 anthology, “Strangers” of the Acad­emy: Asian American Scholars in Higher Education, the slipperiness of the subject “Asian American ­women.” 5 Both of us are highly aware that being ­women of mixed Eu­ro­pean and Asian heritage within Asian American studies positions us precariously between the Eurocentric-­dominated acad­emy and the idealized “safe space” of Asian American studies. It is a discipline founded not only to further research by and about Asian

Introduction • 59

Americans but also to create secure faculty positions to provide mentoring for Asian American students. Being thus situated has afforded us both benefits and disadvantages in terms of our interactions with mostly white or white-­cultured administrators and with our Asian American departmental colleagues of vari­ous cultural backgrounds. As both Asian and white, we have been seen by both sides as bridges and as potential traitors. We are marked as potential traitors when we expose the serious wrongdoings of not only ­those in the white-­dominated academic establishment but also ­people of color within our fields, including ethnic studies and gender studies. This includes the p­ eople of color who occupy administrative positions as heads of university diversity programs, centers, and organ­izations. As mixed-­race ­women, we have had to thoughtfully become Asian American. We have been challenged by ­others on our authenticity as Asian Americans; we have had to fight for this identity. In d­ oing so, however, we both began to see being Asian American as beyond individual or private identity; being Asian American in this sense means something more than just a racial identifier. Rather, to us, being Asian American means what it was initially intended to mean: making a conscious commitment to community. To be Asian American in this sense is to be committed to the community of o­ thers who also identify as Asian American and also to the larger community of p­ eople of color—­and ­others who face oppression—in the United States, as well as transnationally. Being in the “model minority” position, Asian Americans are often admonished to not rock the boat; we are told, “the nail that stands up gets hammered down.” But what happens if we all stand up together? What happens if we lift our voices together and sing? What w ­ ill be the sound of all t­ hose nails breaking the hammer into pieces? As scholars who are also deeply cognizant of our position in the acad­emy and aware of perceptions of us as potential traitors, we remain w ­ omen of color, and thus vulnerable as ­women of color, and we have both suffered and survived in our specific ways (and, indeed, the ways we experienced oppression in the acad­emy share many points of confluence). Both of us have experienced intersectional oppressions through which we have awoken; sharing our stories with each other, we became not only more aware but also liberated. Sharing our stories and now our research and t­ hose of o­ thers who have had similar experiences, we hope to enfranchise not only ­others as individuals but also the larger communities (­people of color, w ­ omen) of which we are part. Ultimately, it is our hope to inspire the acad­emy itself to fulfill its mission to use education to liberate and to truly value merit, diversity, and social justice. 6 The model minority myth silences the voice of Asian Americans and invalidates their identity (R. H. Kim, 2013). 7 Asian American w ­ omen faculty leave academia at an alarming rate, dropping from 6 ­percent of the first ranks of the professoriate to 2 ­percent of the final ranks (see Hune’s prologue to this volume). Tenure denial, peer and administrative bullying, lack of mentoring, and other f­ actors may be responsible for this loss of 66 ­percent of Asian American w ­ omen tenure-­track faculty. Th ­ ose who try to stay in academia can face retaliation for speaking out, as in the case of Emily P. Lawsin (Flaherty, 2017; Guillermo, 2017), which is reminiscent of many similar cases, in par­tic­u­lar the case of Jean Jew v. University of Iowa (Chamallas, 1993). 8 At the writing of this volume, huge social shifts w ­ ere resulting from the #MeToo campaign, which was begun in 2006 by an African American w ­ oman, social activist and community or­ga­nizer Tarana Burke, and was l­ ater revived by

60  •  Introduction

9

10

11 12

13 14 15

16 17

18 19

20

Hollywood actress Alyssa Milano. This movement successfully brought together ­women who have been sexually harassed in solidarity, hit international proportions and impacted a variety of impor­tant institutions, including entertainment and government. Across ­these institutions and more, accused sexual predators w ­ ere dismissed, pressured to resign, or lost po­liti­cal elections. Though our volume addresses the issue of sexual harassment obliquely, we do recognize that higher education is teaming with such issues. In fact, during the writing of this volume, top academic administrators and faculty involved in harassment cases are being tracked and some are also losing their jobs (Gluckman, 2017; Noguchi, 2017). The case of Rosalie Tung, whose Supreme Court case resulted in all faculty personnel files being made transparent for faculty, is a particularly significant example. Kenneth Starr presented Tung’s case on behalf of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (see Hune’s prologue to this volume; Carmody, 1989). Or, as Brett C. Stockdill and Mary Yu Danico put it, “The acad­emy is often ­imagined as an idyllic place, neutral and untarnished by the ugly inequalities that mar the ‘outside world.’ Yet the ‘ivory tower’ is a part of the world and, like other institutions, is a site of oppression, re­sis­tance, and transformation” (2012, p. 1). For an in-­depth discussion of the theories and practice of “wokeness,” see the conclusion of this anthology. See Linda Trinh Vo “Transformative Disjunctures in the Acad­emy: Asian American Studies as Praxis,” in Stockdill and Danico’s Transforming the Ivory Tower, for a personal narrative of an Asian American ­woman academic set against an institutional history of Asian American studies. A specific guide of how to do this is offered in chapter 14 of this volume. Star Wars: Episode V—­The Empire Strikes Back (Kurtz & Kershner, 1980). The term “overrepresented” is frequently used in reference to Asians and Asian Americans during pre­sen­ta­tions by academic administrators in diversity discussions. It is also seen in the framing of Asian Americans as “non-­ underrepresented minorities” and as not being eligible for grants for “underrepresented” minorities and in publications about student diversity (Gandara & Maxwell-­Jolie, 1999). Most academic institutions offer concurrent tenure and promotion pro­cesses such that obtaining tenure often occurs in parallel with being promoted from assistant to associate professor. This includes tangible resources more likely to be accorded to higher-­paid white male faculty, such as ­family wealth or the support of a spouse to perform domestic ­labor; as well as intangible resources, such as established mentorship networks, a presumption of competence, matching the dominant institutional culture, and so forth (D. Li & Koedel, 2017; O’Meara, Kuvaeva, et al., 2017). This is tied to the culture of silencing within and around Asian American ­women. Darth Vader says ­these words to Luke as they duel: “You underestimate the power of the Dark Side. If you w ­ ill not fight, then you w ­ ill meet your destiny,” in Star Wars: Episode VI—­Return of the Jedi (Marquand, R., Kasdan, L., Lucas, G., Kazanjian, H., et al, 1983). They also sought to keep their fortunes far away from the masses and found investment into educational infrastructure as a tax shelter that allowed them to keep their wealth while continuing to influence society and control the shape of education on ­every level (Edward Berman, 1983; Gavin, 2015). This includes the

Introduction • 61

21

22

23

24

25 26

27

28

funding of the United Negro College Fund to have influence over the black educated (Wooten, 2010). While the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890 established the large land-­grant universities, which formed the basis of many of t­ oday’s public university systems, even by the early twentieth ­century higher education was still reserved for the wealthy elite, which essentially meant white Anglo-­Saxon Protestant men (Trow, 1993). World War II shifted higher education t­ oward the masses as the 1944 GI Bill made higher education accessible for middle-­class and even working-­class white men (including Catholic and Jewish men) and some men of color (Eliza Berman, 2015). W ­ omen w ­ ere also able to take advantage of the accompanying building boom of colleges and universities, and by 1950 w ­ omen accounted for 30 ­percent of all college students (Mueller & Broido, 2012). Although the provisions initiated by the GI Bill expanded the demographic scope of higher education, this expansion was largely l­ imited to the student body, especially white males; diversity among faculty and administration during this time period remained very l­ imited. Watson experimented with babies extensively and was quoted saying, “give me a baby and I can make any man of him.” In his final years, one of his greatest c­ areer regrets was not having an “ethnic baby farm” with black, Asian, and white baby test groups (Buckley, 1989; Richards, 2012). For example, Car­ne­g ie Foundation trustees asked themselves in the 1910 meeting minutes: “Is t­ here anyway known to men, more effective than war to so alter the life of an entire p­ eople?” Members concluded that war was the most effective way, but l­ ater, ­a fter two world wars, they also invested in other forms of population control (Skousen, 1984). It should be noted that the industrialists are not necessarily trying to make more money; they just want to keep it out of the hands of o­ thers so they can stay in control and design the world. They have a master plan, and they are engineering us to go along with it and to even value their master plan. According to Joseph (1934), “But to tell only how the captains of industry ‘made themselves and the country rich’ would be to leave out much of the story” (p. 316). Star Wars: Episode V—­The Empire Strikes Back (Kurtz & Kershner, 1980). With the discussion of Bacon’s Rebellion, we are not trying to valorize Nathaniel Bacon. History shows Bacon and his multiracial band of frontiersmen w ­ ere actually protesting Governor William Berkeley and his refusal to protect them from perceived “hostile natives.” ­There existed complicated relations between the vari­ous groups, who became racialized through dominant narratives. Despite Bacon’s anti–­A merican Indian focus, the multiracial nature of his co­a li­tion demonstrates that the binary separation of Black from white had to be overtly constructed rather than being already inherent. It was, O’­Sullivan claimed, “our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the ­free development of our yearly multiplying millions” (O’­Sullivan, 1845). The term and the concept ­were taken up by t­ hose desiring to secure the Oregon Territory, California, Mexican land in the Southwest, and, in the 1850s, Cuba. Originally a partisan Demo­cratic issue, “manifest destiny” gained Republican adherents as time passed. This includes sex work, which has become deeply identified with Asian and Pacific Islander w ­ omen around the world through imperialism, colonialism, and militarism (M. Kim & Chung, 2005).

62  •  Introduction

29 On the use of the visual media in the construction of racial categories in order to facilitate empire building, see Cruz, Ignacio, et al. (2004). 3 0 For example, Cynthia Enloe’s (2014) Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics offers a feminist perspective on the role of Asian ­women as laborers (sexual and other­wise) in the context of international politics. 31 As Celine Parreñas Shimizu (2007) argues in The Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/American ­Women on Screen and Scene, the hypersexualization of Asian w ­ omen involves “images of the dragon lady, the prostitute with a heart of gold, the dominatrix, the slut, the whore, and easy Asian girl” (p. 3). 32 The l­ abor is considered coerced b­ ecause neither ­children nor enslaved ­people could consent in any way to work or to the conditions u­ nder which they l­ abor. 3 3 Thus, maintaining the illusion of racial, class, and gender hierarchies functions ­because t­ here are deeply oppressed populations at the bottom (Rothenberg, 1998). 3 4 The shape of the U.S. education system, in par­tic­u ­lar, is so closely tied to the needs of industry not so that students ­will be s­ haped into excellent workers but in order to control them in the same way that industrial workers need to be controlled. The ­legal structure of this control was manifested, up through the 1960s, by segregation, that is, Jim Crow laws (particularly in education and voting rights); through anti-­Asian immigration laws and anti-­miscegenation laws; and through eugenics in the form of mandated forced sterilization, which, although generally forced under­ground as a result of Nazi Germany’s extremes, was still practiced as late as the 1970s on a significant percentage of American Indian w ­ omen (Torpy, 2000) and still goes on t­ oday, taking on the form of (in)voluntary sterilization affecting vulnerable Asian immigrants and refugees, particularly from Southeast Asia (Xiong, 2013). 3 5 Very specifically, lawmakers avoided using the term “Caucasian” as the case of United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (261 U.S. 204 [1923]) had determined that the anthropological classification of Singh Thind as “Caucasian” (itself a racist term tied to eugenics) could not replace his social classification as nonwhite, thus making him ineligible to become a naturalized U.S. citizen u­ nder the provision allowing “­free white persons” this privilege. 36 The term “model minority” first appeared in the January 1966 edition of the New York Times magazine and was used by sociologist William Peterson. The term refers to how Asian Americans have achieved economic success despite racism and marginalization; however, it has continually faced critique for both generalizing Asian American groups and providing a tool for creating divides between Asian Americans and other perceived minorities in the United States (Wang, 2018). 37 Ironically, as W.E.B. DuBois and ­others noted, treated as second-­class citizens or worse within their own country of the United States, p­ eople of color, particularly African American, Chicanos, and Native Americans, felt an affinity with colonized subjects abroad. But even as oppressed ­peoples, we know, “By studying national liberation strug­gles Blacks and Chicanos began to imagine themselves as oppressed nations that soon would be liberated through overt revolutionary strug­gle as part of the larger worldwide decolonization movements” (Gutiérrez, 2004, p. 99). 3 8 It is what Frank Chin and Jeffrey Paul Chan have dubbed “racist love.” 39 See H. Allen (1997), who shows that Asian men had the longest work week of all faculty (fifty-­one hours), while Asian ­women had the longest work week of all ­women faculty (forty-­t wo hours, with Black ­women at forty-­one hours and white

Introduction • 63

40

41

42

43 44

45 4 6 47

48

­ omen at forty hours), with the majority of that time (71 ­percent) allocated to w teaching and research—­higher than all other groups. Relatively ­little time was allocated to “professional growth,” meaning leadership in professional organ­ izations, nor w ­ ere Asian faculty seen in campus leadership positions. For early studies and narratives on the experiences of ­women of color faculty, see Cho (1992), TuSmith and Reddy (2002), Vargas (2002), G. Li and Beckett (2006), and the more recent, highly acclaimed Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for ­Women in Academia (Gutiérrez y Muhs et al., 2012). ­These texts reveal both the breadth and depth of the many injustices faced by w ­ omen of color in the acad­emy. Voices come from students, adjunct lecturers, faculty, and administrators speaking of their resiliency against the intersections of racism, sexism, classism, xenophobia, and other oppressions within the institution (Chen & Hune, 2011; Cho, 1992; Hune, 2011; Valverde, 2013). The image of “breaking the silence” is a common trope for Asian American ­women who have been silenced first by language barriers as immigrants and also by both gendered and racialized roles as Asians and as w ­ omen (Hernandez, Ngunjiri, & Chang, 2015). The goal of pushing for institutional transformation is to better ensure the transformation of individual students and their larger communities. Johansson and Felton, in Transforming Students: Fulfilling the Promise of Higher Education, argue that “Our [educators’] goal is for our students to become their own universities, integrating what they have learned into their daily lives and internalizing the transformative pro­cess. . . . ​By making [transformative learning] integral to its very way of being, the institution brings a higher level of integrity to the pro­cess: the integrity of ­doing what one professes” (2014, p. 103). This concept of “looking to the bottom” is inspired by Mari Matsuda’s extremely influential critical race theory essay, “Looking to the Bottom: Critical L ­ egal Studies and Reparations,” (1987). The idea of being an “honorary white” can be seen as an invitation to white status, which Asian Americans have the opportunity to e­ ither accept or reject due to their unique positionality between the white and Black binary. However, simply accepting white status does not provide a solution for deconstructing the structural inequalities that subjugate and control all p­ eople of color, nor is such a “choice” ever ­really pos­si­ble (Chanbonpin, 2015). Feminist ‘awakening’ has been re­imagined as ‘wokeness’ in the framework of the Black Lives ­Matter Movement. Star Wars: Episode III—­Revenge of the Sith (McCallum & Lucas, 2005). By primarily using predominantly lower-­paid female adjunct professors for instructing rather than predominantly higher-­paid male tenured or tenure-­track professors, the educational system is able to restructure its workforce in a more profitable way, which benefits the financial side of the university; however, this shift t­ oward a capitalistic ideology undermines the in­de­pen­dence and academic freedoms of higher education and renders faculty more vulnerable to oppressive structures (Jay, 2011). “­People ‘trained’—­not educated—by such educational techniques w ­ ill be fearful of taking principled, sometimes controversial, stands when called for b­ ecause ­these ­people ­will have been programmed to speak up only if a positive reward or response is forthcoming. The price of freedom has often been paid with pain and loneliness” (Iserbyt, 2000, xvii).

64  •  Introduction

49 Darth Vader warns Luke in Star Wars: Episode VI—­Return of the Jedi (Marquand et al.,1983). 50 The signs of the failure of the acad­emy show so clearly in the experiences of Asian American ­women ­because of a confluence of f­ actors: intersectional sexism and racism, Asian American ­women’s position as administrators’ ideal representatives of diversity, and large percentages of Asian American undergraduate and gradu­ate students relative to the proportions of Asian American w ­ omen faculty. 51 Amy Block Joy, a successful scientist with a multimillion-­dollar research program at the University of California, Davis, has one of the most well-­k nown cases of whistle-­blowing in academia. To abide by ethical usage of grant funding, she exposed wrongdoings within her unit. Instead of support for her act, she was made a pariah by ­those within her department and university and even faced an investigation and a hearing to defend herself against retaliatory accusations. See her three books chronicling her whistle-­blowing experience: Whistle­blower (Bay Tree Publishing, 2010), Retaliation (self-­published by CreateSpace, 2013), and Blowback: The Unintended Consequences of Exposing a Fraud (self-­published by CreateSpace, 2017). 52 Leia cautions Han Solo in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Abrams, Burk, Kennedy, & Abrams, 2015). 53 Jyn Erso inspires a group of Rebel Alliance members in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Kennedy, Emanuel, Shearmur, & Edwards, 2016). 5 4 “Fight the Tower” is also a play on the 1989 song by Public ­Enemy, “Fight the Power.” It was a time when hip-­hop (Fischer, 2012) culture could be seen on the streets, and youths w ­ ere getting harassed by the police for how they looked. Crack had hit black urban communities, and every­one was affected by t­ hose with the addiction. For the opening of his film Do the Right Th ­ ing (1989), Spike Lee commissioned Public ­Enemy to create a song that was both uplifting and a call to arms against the injustices experienced in their communities at the time. It also served to identify the power as the government and other institutions that would undermine and oppress African Americans. The song was a reaction to frustration against the powers, but as Jeff Chang (2016) notes, it was also a call for awareness: “What we need is awareness, we ­can’t get careless. . . . ​Make every­body see, in order to fight the powers that be.” Like the song and the meaning b­ ehind it, we too acknowledge harm done to our communities, identify the oppressors, raise awareness, and call for the p­ eople to action. 55 See the full text of the manifesto in Valverde (2013) and in this volume. 56 The solutions offered in Presumed Incompetent largely focus on creating strategic alliances and working extra hard in order to become too valuable to dismiss. Presumed Incompetent has been used widely by ­those ­going through similar b­ attles to provide both personal comfort and also to share with allies and sympathetic administrators, to de-­individualize and expand the meaning of t­ hese situations. Presumed Incompetent encourages ­women of color faculty to connect not only with other w ­ omen of color but with the larger academic community. 57 The discussion began with Dariotis’s co-­edited (with Laura Kina) anthology, War Baby/ Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art (2013), which Valverde was using as the basis for her 2017 UC Davis course on mixed race, “Race Traitors.” During this discussion, Dariotis shared her own story of battling through the tenure pro­cess, as well as her passion for co-­editing, and a collaboration was born out of a twenty-­plus-­year relationship.

Introduction • 65

58 Kylo Ren attempts to seduce Rey in Star Wars: Episode VII—­The Force Awakens (Abrams et al., 2015). 59 It has not escaped our attention that the AAUP’s princi­ples of faculty rights and academic freedom ­were founded in order to protect a Stanford University professor, the sociologist and eugenicist Edward Alsworth Ross, who spoke openly on his eugenics-­based views, including “race suicide” (or the belief that infertility was leading to white genocide) and a strong belief in the undesirability of Asian immigrants. Mrs. Stanford fired Professor Ross not ­because she found his views to be racist but ­because the Stanford railroad fortune had been built on Chinese ­labor (Samuels, 1991). 6 0 Emperor Palpatine taunts Lord Vader about the existence of Anakin Skywalker’s son, Luke, the e­ nemy strong enough to destroy them, in Star Wars: Episode V—­The Empire Strikes Back (Kurtz & Kershner, 1980). 61 Wei Ming Dariotis thanks Darryl Dickson-­Carr, with whom she co-­authored “Affirmative Anger,” a gradu­ate school seminar paper in which many of ­these ideas ­were hatched, and Christopher Newfield, for whose class it was written. 62 In other instances, even the smallest furrowing of one’s brow can lead to an accusation of being a “dragon lady” (Berdahl, Min, & Zárate, 2012; Rosette, Koval, Ma, & Livingston, 2016). 6 3 Ironically, given the destructive conditions of the acad­emy for so many ­women of color, Lorde cites the university as a location of protection for herself: “I am a lesbian ­woman of Color whose ­children eat regularly ­because I work in a university” (Lorde, 2007, pp. 132–133). 6 4 Gold Five reminds Luke as he approaches the vulnerable point in the Death Star in Star Wars: Episode IV—­A New Hope (Kurtz & Lucas, 1977). 65 W. P. is an Asian American w ­ oman academic and poet who has requested anonymity for fear of reprisal in her case of tenure and promotion. Th ­ ese poems are based on the author’s personal experiences with a tenure and promotion ­battle, as well as her reflections on t­ hose of other Asian American w ­ omen academics. 66 This image of academia as a snake pit, or indeed as a Death Star, contradicts the image of academia as an ivory tower. However, feminist archaeologists, like Marija Gimbutas (2001), have taught us that the “snake pit” is patriarchy’s way of degrading feminist knowledge and wisdom. 67 With this holistic lens in mind, even before conceptualizing of the anthology, we or­ga­nized a panel entitled “Fight the Tower: Asian American ­Women Tenure ­Battles” on April 19, 2014, at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) in San Francisco. Chaired by Shirley Hune, the meeting included a panel of Asian American female scholars with the most high-­profile public tenure and promotion cases in the past de­cade. They included Ping Wang, Jane Iwamura, Elena Tajima Creef, and Kieu Linh Caroline Valverde. Discussant Don Nakanishi, having experienced one of the most epic tenure ­battles in the history of Asian Americans in academia, brought out a poster for an event circa mid-1980s, which listed speakers like Jean Jew, Rosalie Tung, and Marcy Wang—­a ll mentioned in Shirley Hune’s prologue to this volume b­ ecause of their historical significance in fighting institutionalized racism and sexism in the tenure and promotion pro­cess. “Even as strides have been made,” Nakanishi began, “so much has not changed.” “­These w ­ omen,” he said, referring to the panelists, “are the same [as the] w ­ omen on this poster over twenty years ago.” Indeed, panelists felt they had repeated history. The packed room, including the association’s

66  •  Introduction

out­going and incoming presidents, Mary Yu Danico and Linda Trinh Vo, both Asian American w ­ omen academics who have written extensively about the discriminatory practices in higher education, w ­ ere incredibly moved by the panelists’ stories. Some audience members ­were even moved to tears. This group would go on to pre­sent in two more panels at the AAAS, in 2016 and 2017. On April 28, 2016, in Miami, Florida, the panel included new speakers Jane Junn and Brett Esaki. The audience that time was composed mostly of gradu­ate students. Hearing the plight of Asian American academics, they w ­ ere clearly shaken up. But, even so, they thanked the panelists profusely for their bravery and felt they ­were at least forging ahead in the acad­emy with their eyes wide open. In the area of law, at the Conference of Asian American Law Faculty, on April 8, 2016, at the Martin Luther King Law School, University of California, Davis, the Fight the Tower team was joined by Wei Ming Dariotis, Jing Mai, and Darrell Hamamoto when we presented our chapters from this volume on the panel “Neo-­Pariah: Studies in the Emerging Academic Caste System in Higher Education.” With the proj­ect having developed for a year, Eliza Noh, Leslie Đỗ, Kieu Linh Valverde, and Wei Ming Dariotis presented about the book in general and their research specifically for the Pacific So­cio­log­i­cal Association Conference, focused on “Institutional Betrayal: Inequity, Discrimination, Bullying, and Retaliation in Academia” (April 9, 2017, Portland, OR). A week ­a fter that, the April 15, 2017, Association for Asian American Studies panel, also in Portland, Oregon, included Shirley Hune; Wei Ming Dariotis; Kieu Linh Valverde; an undergraduate student contributor to the volume, Shannon Deloso; and a research assistant, Leslie Đỗ. The audience of faculty ­were impressed with how ­these young scholars adeptly broke down the pitfalls of student activism. One faculty shared, “I am not crazy!” referring to how panelists validated her experienced through their research in contrast to how her department made her feel. Another faculty member was suing her university for retaliation and expressed how grateful she was to be able to hear clear data showing that she was not alone in her strug­g le. ­These public speaking engagements and interventions at academic spaces serve as our commitment to spreading the word of our common strug­g les within academic institutions. We aim to inspire and promote well-­respected and up-­and-­coming cutting-­edge thinkers and theorists on the issues of the changing university system. Our public engagements are a concrete attempt to change what academia fundamentally looks like ­today by boldly articulating where it has failed. We w ­ ill continue this endeavor long ­a fter the anthology is published ­because we recognize that the fight continues and we refuse to repeat a history of discrimination and repression.

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Part II

“That’s No Moon!” Attack of the Institution Having just discovered that the planet Alderaan has been destroyed, Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca, and Obi Wan Kenobi are in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon when they realize they have been spotted by an Imperial fighter. Giving chase in an attempt to silence the fighter before it can communicate their position, they see it heading t­ oward what they believe is a small moon. Obi Wan Kenobi, the pseudo-­Oriental wise man, senses the truth and slowly intones, “That’s no moon.” At this moment, the audience knows the heroes are doomed to be sucked into the Death Star. At a certain point in the lives of Asian American w ­ omen academics, t­ here is a slow or perhaps sudden realization that what had once seemed like the benignly wise face of the academic institution is in fact a Death Star designed to maintain imperial domination, and we are in its tractor beam. This second section begins with a power­ful elegiac poem by W. P., “Who Killed Soek-­Fang Sim?” written in memory of W. P.’s colleague, an international Asian ­woman scholar who died at age thirty-­five ­after being hounded and humiliated by her university’s administration. In the end, the poem becomes a call to action, for Soek-­Fang and all of us ­Others: Fear is no longer an option Silence is no longer an option Rise with us, Soek-­Fang Out of this alabaster tower 75

76  •  Part II

We can only rise out of the “alabaster tower,” which is white not through purity but b­ ecause it represents death and nihilism, when we ­free ourselves from the silence that is rooted in fear and maintained by shaming. The death of Soek-­Fang Sim is no aberrance but is rather a bell tolling warning for us all. This warning resonates in Eliza Noh’s study of corporate language being applied in academic settings shows how social engineering is currently manifested in academia. This study, chapter 1, establishes the foundation; how this language of business metrics affects Asian American ­women in the acad­emy is quantified by Jane Junn and Mai’a K. Davis Cross in their groundbreaking study of tenure and promotion at the University of Southern California, found in chapter 2. In chapter 3, Kieu Linh Caroline Valverde, Cara Maffini Pham, Melody Yee, and Jing Mai examine the links between academic stresses and hostilities and Asian American w ­ omen academics’ health prob­lems.1

Notes Part title: Star Wars: Episode IV—­A New Hope (Kurtz & Lucas, 1977). 1 Chapter 3’s reference to the university as a “killing machine” owes a generative debt to Jennifer Lisa Vest, one of the co-­founders of the Fight the Tower Movement, for her 2013 article. ­A fter describing her experiences at the hands of the campus police for the university where she was employed in Florida, Vest (2013) states, “­Women of Color professors experience microagressions as serious assaults on their physical safety while also enduring microassaults in the profession. The end result is that w ­ omen of color often leave the university or are forced out. They experience chronic or life-­threatening illnesses, become disabled, and sometimes they die. . . . . The Acad­emy is killing w ­ omen of color” (p. 485). What D ­ oesn’t Kill You is also the title of Brandy Liên Worrall’s memoir, which details a mixed-­race Viet­nam­ese American w ­ oman’s personal strug­g le as a scholar, writer, and publisher, ­a fter having been an editor at Amerasia Journal at the University of California, Los Angeles, and as the wife of an Asian American academic (2014).

References Kurtz, G. (Producer), & Lucas, G. (Director). (1977). Star Wars: Episode IV—­A New Hope [Motion picture]. United States: Lucasfilm. Vest, J. L. (2013). What d­ oesn’t kill you: Existential luck, postracial racism, and the subtle and not so subtle ways the acad­emy keeps w ­ omen of color out. Seattle Journal of Social Justice, 12, 471–518. Worrall, B. L. (2014). What D ­ oesn’t Kill Us. Vancouver: Rabbit Fool Press.

Who Killed Soek-­Fang Sim? BY W. P.

I’m one of them, Soek-­Fang Already assuming ­you’re just another Dumb teacher, dumb scholar, dumb ­woman Just ­because we share a yellow face, A funny accent, and an eternal doubt Between our eyebrows: are we good enough ­Will we ever be good enough In this fruited prairie? I’m one of them, Soek-­Fang As I sat watching rumors shroud you Poison gas seeping into your breasts Heart, lungs, liver, spleen, tongue, throat Till e­ very drop of blood, ­every cell of our being Is filled with this cancerous doubt: Are we good enough? ­Will we ever be good enough? In this gas chamber of slander We die from inside, a lone alien ­Under the purple mountain majesties I’m one of them, Soek-­Fang Filling vitae with our bone marrow 77

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Books, honors, awards, student evaluations Testifying how ­we’ve changed their lives with ours Oh how we toil with our bleeding dreams No holiday, no weekend, no vacation No time for friends or ­children Only our vitae bigger than this nation Only this yearning to be seen Through the glass of justice As “good enough equals” ­Under the beautiful halcyon skies I’m one of them, Soek-­Fang Killing you with my silence, my quick Belief in this whitewashing slander Even though the truth was just a button away: ­You’re a ­great scholar, a passionate Teacher, a generous colleague . . . You should have been the face of the institution With your roots in China, your birth in Singapore Your PhD from London, the only international Degree as a crown jewel for the global mission Yet I assumed your incompetence ­Because of this internalized doubt— Are we good enough? Must we toil on our knees for a foothold ­Under this alabaster tower dimmed by our tears? I’m breaking through this gas chamber, Soek-­Fang I refuse to believe this whitewashed lie— “Not good enough, ­will never be good enough” Just ­because of our yellow face, our Black accent Our brown immigrant feet . . . ​refuse to please On our knees . . . ​in our deathbeds In the name of diversity, ­human rights I refuse to swallow the doubt That kills you and me That kills our s­ isters and ­brothers Across the amber waves of grain

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I’m rising, Soek-­Fang W ­ e’re rising, Soek-­Fang If the law ­won’t speak justice ­We’ll sing it with our poetry If justice becomes a cover for lies ­ e’ll burn it with our eyes W If lies smear our spirit ­We’ll cleanse it with our blood If our spirit ­can’t cross the chasm of hope ­We’ll make wings of 7 billion hearts To fly from sea to shining sea Take our hands, Soek-­Fang Fear is no longer an option Silence is no longer an option Rise with us, Soek-­Fang Out of this alabaster tower From sea to shining sea ­Under the beautiful halcyon skies Over the purple mountain majesties Across the amber waves of grain Through this fruited prairie Till we reach the land of the ­free

Narrative Soek-­Fang Sim, a Singaporean Chinese scholar, taught international studies at a liberal arts college. She was an award-­winning scholar. Students loved her as a teacher and mentor. Before her third-­year review, the rumor had spread that she was a poor teacher and scholar. She d­ idn’t pass the review and died shortly ­after of breast cancer, in her home near Berkeley. She was thirty-­five. Two years l­ ater, I was fighting the same b­ attle. I was utterly alone, in the silence of a tsunami and mushroom cloud: no colleague, no ­lawyer, no Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Every­one turned away when they saw me on the campus or coffee shops, pretending they no longer knew me, even though I’d served on their hiring committees, made numerous dinners for them in my home, co-­taught semester-­long classes with them (­later I found out the college had warned them not to speak to me). The rumors clouded me like poison gas: “X” was being sued for her incompetence as a teacher, for her greed and extortion to the college.

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Should I fight? I counted my retirement money. Very low. I had started teaching at the college with the lowest pay, lower than a visitor, and for fifteen years, I was the lowest paid faculty on the campus, even though I was the most published author with the most innovative teaching rec­ord. In 2004, I was paid $2 a month ­because the college deducted $40,000 from my salary when the Bush Foundation awarded me the prestigious poetry fellowship. My monthly paycheck was barely enough to cover the living expenses for my sons and myself. Each l­ awyer I interviewed requested a $25,000 deposit and estimated up to $250,000 fees, with no guarantee to win at all. “The best we can do is to help you drop the case.” I told them: “If I had that kind of money, I’d use it to fight on my own, till my last breath.” They told me it’d be suicide. It seemed my only choice was to run and die. One night, Soek-­Fang Sim came to my dreams. She stood t­ here, eyes full of black tears, breasts laced with yellow pus. I sat up and asked why she was visiting me from the other world. I remembered the day she arrived on the campus as a film study scholar, a young, athletic, exuberant intellect born in Singapore and educated in London. During her last year at the college, we traveled together to China with a group of professors. Rumors had it that ­she’d not pass the third-­ year review, ­because she was a dumb teacher, poorly or­ga­nized, incohesive, incomprehensible, and, on top of that, a dumb scholar. My colleagues laughed whenever she spoke. I cringed when they mocked her accent. I ­couldn’t look into her eyes, now dulled by rumors and knowledge that her days at the college ­were numbered. I remembered the day I received the news that she had died of breast cancer. I remembered crying, away from my colleagues. ­A fter her third visit to my dreams, I looked her up on the Internet. What I found shocked me. Soek-­Fang was a top-­notch teacher and an award-­winning scholar. Her rating as a professor was among the highest. I wept with shame. What made me believe the rumors so readily, without a single doubt or question, without showing empathy or support in her last days? Then it hit me. I’ve been shrouded with the same rumor since I started teaching at the college in 1999: a lousy teacher, a poor or­ga­nizer, incohesive and incomprehensible in classrooms—­the exact words used by the college to deny my promotion ­were the words that killed Soek-­Fang! I tried to plead with the provost, bringing evidence of my scholarship and teaching and ser­vices: books, awards, student publications, and a list of my students who won national and regional book awards. I was the most published and publicized author on the campus. My credentials outweighed ­those of my white male colleague who had asked me to help him when we both came up for promotion. Yet he was promoted and I got denied. The provost said to my face:

Who Killed Soek-­Fang Sim? • 81

“­Don’t you even dare to think of comparing yourself to your white male colleague!” “A single essay published by a white professor counts more than your twelve published books.” “You need to be a better teacher. You need to make more star students. What you have is not enough.” “­You’re not good enough, simply not good enough.” “You need to work harder, much harder. ­Don’t ask for promotion again u­ ntil we tell you so.” I almost collapsed on the floor, from sheer exhaustion and despair. I had started teaching at the college in 1999, three weeks ­after I gave birth to my second child. My first-­born had just turned two. I had a torn birth canal. My legs shook when I walked. I asked for a better teaching schedule but was told to tough it out. So I did, teaching a full load of classes without a day of maternal leave, leaving my infant and toddler to a nanny. I developed heart palpitations and nearly lost all my teeth that year from overwork and stress and lack of time to see a doctor or dentist. But I never missed a day of teaching since 1999, not even ­after I had two hernia surgeries and other illnesses. I’d been giving my bone marrow to the college. It was the ­labor of love for students; of trust in the college’s claimed mission of internationalism, diversity and social justice; of the blind faith that my devotion would be recognized someday. It was that blind faith that kept me from collapsing from exhaustion, my last breath that kept me hanging on the edge of the cliff. And she took away that last breath. I wanted to lie on her floor and cry: I’m d­ ying from exhaustion, ­can’t you tell? How can I work harder? Tell me, provost, how I can work harder for you, as a h ­ uman or animal?! But I stood still, looking at her pale face and placid smile, looking at the large photos of mine on the walls, photos that I’d taken, framed and hung to adorn the college for donors and prospective students, and I realized my cry would never reach their ears. I picked up my evidence and walked out. But it was only now, through Soek-­Fang’s tears and pus, that I was connecting the dots. We, as w ­ omen, as w ­ omen of color, as immigrant w ­ omen of color, as immigrant w ­ omen of color in academia, would never be good enough in their eyes, no ­matter what achievements we have made. We, by our colors and gender and accent, are presumed inherently incohesive, incompetent, inferior. NOT GOOD ENOUGH is stamped all over our bodies and souls in red, black, yellow, and brown ink. And the real horror and tragedy is I believed them. I believed that I deserved to work like a mule the day I wobbled onto the campus with a torn birth canal,

82  •  W. P

three-­week-­old infant and two-­year-­old toddler; that I deserved to be paid the lowest even though I was the most published; that I deserved to be constantly mocked, belittled, silenced, denied, by anyone on the campus. That’s why I ­didn’t defend Soek-­Fang when she was mocked and fired. That’s why I accepted all the rumors about her without a moment of doubt. ­Because I’d internalized that belief, that racism, that discrimination. How I wept, with apology to Soek-­Fang and to myself! I was part of the machine that killed Soek-­Fang, the machine that’s trying to kill me now. I picked up my pen and wrote “Who Killed Soek-­Fang Sim,” to the tune and lyr­ics of “Amer­i­ca the Beautiful.” If I’m g­ oing to die, I w ­ ill die roaring in the battlefield, not in silence, in a remote cave, in shame, I vowed to myself. I’m g­ oing to fight till my last breath, for my dignity, for you and all the wronged ­women of colors buried u­ nder the alabaster tower, I vowed to Soek-­Fang. I want the ­whole world to know: we are GOOD ENOUGH! The poem went viral on Facebook. It connected me to other Soek-­Fang Sims: Carmen, Kieu Linh . . . ​the ­women warriors who died and came back fighting. The Presumed Incompetent had just come out. The editor invited me to read the poem to initiate the conference at Berkeley for the book release. Khan Ho, the Huffington Post writer who was denied tenure a­ fter his research manuscript vanished mysteriously, wrote an article about this conference and poem (Ho, 2013). It went viral, too. Then the news exploded from the local and national newspapers and other social media. My students or­ga­nized the “We Support Professor ‘X’ ” Facebook group and launched a petition on my behalf. Thousands of ­people from around the world signed up. Hundreds of comments ­were made and delivered to the president, provost, and trustees. The college c­ ouldn’t raise money that year. Alumni and donors urged the callers to give their wish to the college: ­settle with their favorite professor instead of taking her to court.

Note An ­earlier version of this poem, without the author’s note, first appeared in the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice, 20(2) in 2014, pp. 308–310.

Reference Ho. K. (2013, March 4). Review of Presumed incompetent. The Huffington Post. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­huffpost​.­com​/­entry​/­presumed​-­incompetent​_­b​_2­ 778384

1

Unpacking the Master’s Plan Asian American W ­ omen Resisting the Language of Academic Imperialism ELIZ A NOH

Abstract Eliza Noh examines the language of academic imperialism as a function of the new academic order that defines faculty as ser­vice providers. Noh analyzes the structures of mea­sur­able outcomes, performance-­based funding, and neoliberal efficiencies as applied to the ­labor of academics. Articulating how Asian American w ­ omen are precariously situated within the imperial university, particularly within Asian American, ethnic, and ­women’s studies departments, Noh’s essay warns of the dangers of the corporatization of academia for t­ hese faculty as well as o­ thers like them.

Introduction I have been reflecting on the role of Asian American ­women and Asian American studies within universities being transformed by corporate structures, new technologies, and fiscal limitations. I am sharing my views on this topic b­ ecause 83

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of my experiences as a department chair, a role that I have been in for six years now. I have to begin with a caveat: my research area is not in higher education; my research generally focuses on race, gender, and coloniality and specifically on the influence of racialization and gender on Asian American ­women’s suicides. U ­ ntil recently, my knowledge of Asian American studies and the acad­ emy was mostly ­limited to my own experience. However, I have observed and learned quite a bit about the role of Asian American studies within higher education just over the past six years of chairing my department. My awakening began in Fall 2014, when I heard about our former university president’s convocation speech, which was where I first heard mentioned something called the academic master plan (AMP). Since then, the pro­cess of understanding my department’s role ­under the new administration has felt like a trip down a rabbit hole, as I have observed the astonishing and rapid transformations of my department, and of liberal education in general, on my campus. I teach in the Department of Asian American Studies at California State University, Fullerton (CSUF). The program was founded in 1996 and celebrated its twentieth anniversary in 2016. We are much younger than the other CSUF ethnic studies units, which ­were founded from their beginning in 1969 as bachelor-­degree options offered by the Ethnic Studies Department: African American studies (formerly, Afro-­A merican studies) and Chicana and Chicano studies (formerly, Mexican American studies). Not long thereafter, African American studies and Chicana and Chicano studies became separate, autonomous departments, whereas it was not ­until February  2018 that the Asian American studies program was approved to become a department. By 2018, the department had five dedicated tenured faculty members, three to four adjunct faculty members, and about thirty majors and minors. We serve about 800 students per semester within the largest university system in the country, the California State University (CSU) system. Looking back at our university president’s convocation speech, I feel I should have known what we ­were in for. Our president stated: We w ­ ill develop the university’s first-­ever academic master plan, which w ­ ill provide answers to the fundamental questions driving all the short-­and long-­term visions for the institution, for example: What w ­ ill we teach? Who ­will teach it? Who w ­ ill we teach? How ­will we teach? How many ­will we teach? Answers to t­ hese questions w ­ ill guide our enrollment management and provide a basis upon which to establish mea­sur­able targets for our tenure-­track and contingent faculty hiring plans. Moreover, it w ­ ill revolutionize and guide our expansion of data-­driven decision making; and mandate cross-­campus collaboration between Academic Affairs, the Council of Deans, Student Affairs, our WASC1 steering committee, and IT. (TitanTVCSUF, 2014, 42:14)

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­ ose who recognize the jargon—­master plan, mea­sur­able targets, hiring plans, Th data-­driven decision making, and WASC—­may guess what the AMP was ­really about. Actually, what was to come was hinted at a year and a half prior to that convocation speech during our president’s inauguration address, when she mentioned the Lumina Foundation’s goal to help educate 60 ­percent of all Americans by 2025 through intentional strategic direction and success in graduating students of color. But, as a new program coordinator at the time, what did I know about the Lumina Foundation?2 And, of course, I was all for graduating students of color. The AMP did not begin to concern me u­ ntil Spring 2015, when the proposed AMP framework was first presented for campus feedback. Two t­ hings both­ered me: (1) the framework proposed committees composed of mostly administrators, who would answer questions about degree programs, pedagogy, and faculty; and (2) campus feedback was invited through an online survey during a two-­week win­dow just before spring break when most faculty ­were busy with midterms. The consultation pro­cess was akin to dropping comment cards into a locked box, never to be seen again. That summer, when most faculty members ­were away from campus, the president, along with her close group of advisors, approved the AMP framework and appointed the committee members, the majority of whom ­were administrators and other at-­will employees. I believe this example became part of a pattern of performing consultation and shared governance as a means of manufacturing campus-­wide consent to the corporatization of our public institution. I also learned that the AMP was directly tied to performance-­based funding, which is basically funding allocated for good per­for­mance, e­ ither as incentives or as rewards. It sounds fair, but based on how it has been implemented in other states, per­for­mance funding is bad for departments like Asian American Studies. As stated in a report by the Center for California Studies at CSU Sacramento, “In theory, if per­for­mance is rewarded with increased funding, one could expect per­for­mance to improve. In practice, the obstacles to effective per­for­mance bud­geting are legion, and ­there are few, if any, cases of successful implementation” (Shulock & Moore, 2002, p. 21). Besides per­for­mance funding, ­there are other examples of higher education policy jargon that on the surface seem good but in practice are proving to be bad for our department. Benjamin Ginsberg, in The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All Administrative University (2011), uses the phrase “administrative imperialism” to describe the increasing encroachment of administrative imperatives into what ­were once faculty-­controlled domains. Already marginalized fields within the acad­emy are like canaries in a coal mine or, rather, a gold mine. Like Asian Americans who came to California’s gold mines and faced discriminatory legislation, ­today’s Asian American studies academics are most vulnerable to the administrative imperatives of creating neoliberal efficiencies,

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since our units are often deemed the least essential within “sustainable” financial models looking for ways to trim educational costs (Chancellor’s Task Force for a Sustainable Financial Model for the CSU, 2016). This, coupled with the institutional racism of the “imperial university,”3 which has already left Asian American studies departments and programs underresourced, makes strug­gles with the consequences of neoliberalism more burdensome, and thus more damaging, for Asian American studies departments and programs. I w ­ ill share a few examples of the seemingly positive jargon and how this language, in practice, negatively impacts my department and could damage departments and programs like it.

Unpacking the Master’s Plan The language of corporate universities can be seductive and thus can lead to the co-­optation of faculty who other­wise would be against the implementation of neoliberal policies on their campuses. However, as I often teach my students, critical thinking and analy­sis form the basis for action. Therefore, uncoding the language of present-­day academia is crucial for resisting this tide.

“Student Success” The positive connotation of this term seems self-­evident, but student success at CSUF is strictly interpreted as referring to graduation rates, and funding ­will be tied to the rate at which we gradu­ate students. The Lumina Foundation’s 2025 goals mentioned during our president’s inauguration address, it seems, would eventually come to bear at CSUF. In 2016, CSU launched Graduation Initiative 2025 (GI 2025), “in order to address the ­future workforce needs of California and further improve achievement gaps” in addition to improving graduation rates (CSU, 2016). At CSUF, where we serve significant proportions of first-­generation, low-­income, high-­need, and underrepresented students, graduating students “on time” without compromising the quality of their education can be difficult to achieve. Meanwhile, ­there is evidence that CSU ethnic studies majors gradu­ate at higher rates than non–­ethnic studies majors (Smith, 2018). One would think that the expansion of ethnic studies would be good policy for promoting student success; instead, GI 2025 poses a threat to ethnic and Asian American studies. Due to the absence of ethnic studies in kindergarten through twelfth grade education and a high number of transfer students with already declared non–­ethnic studies majors, our major is typically discovered late in students’ academic ­careers. It is not uncommon for our students to declare Asian American studies as their secondary major or secondary degree a­ fter taking our general education (GE) courses. Obviously, the pressure to improve time to degree could result in policies that discourage

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student exploration and the declaration of double majors and dual degrees. Within this context, Asian American studies courses are perceived as excess units or obstacles to timely graduation. In the CSU system, particularly through the implementation of Executive Order 1100 (White, 2017), ­there has also been a streamlining of (read: attack on) GE in the name of improving graduation rates, which especially impacts our department, since we draw our enrollments and majors primarily from GE courses. If the purpose of general education is to endow students with the basic knowledge believed to be necessary for them to become full members within a participatory democracy, then the assault on GE is of par­tic­u­lar concern for our department, whose definition of student success is explic­itly oriented ­toward transformative learning in order to achieve social justice. In Unmaking the Public University, Christopher Newfield (2008) argues that the financial and po­liti­cal crises of public universities are the result of a conservative campaign to end public education’s demo­cratizing influence on American society, a trend that has certainly continued, if not intensified, a de­cade ­later. Therefore, if we are to believe the market aspiration of CSUF, which is to become a “partner in economic and workforce development,” then we can see a deliberate shift from the demo­cratizing goals of a broad liberal education to a more vocational mission, where the purpose of education is to create ­future workers ready to plug into the l­ abor market like cogs in a machine.

“Excellence, Accountability” Excellence is interpreted as a degree program’s ability to meet learning outcomes, and accountability involves the attempt to ensure that appropriate value is derived from public investments. In their report, “An Accountability Framework for California Higher Education,” Shulock and Moore (2002) state: Accountability systems invariably come down to mea­sure­ment, and the mea­sure­ment prob­lem in higher education is huge. . . . ​One legislator expressed this mea­sure­ment challenge as follows: “higher education has so many missions and so many intended outcomes that it’s hard to think about what an accountability system would look like or how we’d know if it was working ­because we ­wouldn’t be able to mea­sure anything.” . . . ​Faculty are passionately opposed to legislative activity in defining and assessing learning outcomes, and to the very idea that the value of postsecondary education is mea­sured as mastery of concrete subject ­matter. (pp. 13, 17)

At CSUF, assessment has become institutionalized through the appropriately named Office of Assessment and Institutional Effectiveness, to remind us of our in­effec­tive­ness, since in ethnic studies, we often have intangible and holistic learning goals that cannot be directly assessed. It also reminds us of the

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impoverished idea of proficiency-­based learning inherent in teaching to achieve outcomes, similar to the Common Core’s prob­lem of “teaching to the test.”4 The false equivalence between accountability and assessment sets up both faculty and students not to strive for excellence but rather just to check off Core Competencies in order to quickly churn out gradu­ates.

“Data-­Driven, Student-­Centered, Innovation” On the surface, data-­driven decision making or data-­driven advising seems technologically and po­liti­cally cutting-­edge, b­ ecause it reminds us of evidence-­ based practice, which ethnic studies scholars interested in cultural competency and social responsiveness tend to value. “Student-­centered” and “innovation” conjure connotations of engaged learning and creative pedagogies, which ethnic studies also value. However, I have learned that t­ hese are code words to make the imposition of new technologies into almost ­every aspect of education more palatable. Our campus has a­ dopted a new digital advising tool called the Education Advisory Board (EAB) Student Success Dashboard. The way it operates using predictive analytics reminds me of how data are collected on consumers by corporations in order to tag them for targeted marketing.5 Similarly, through EAB, students are tagged for “risk” advising. The EAB Web site states, “We combine technology, research, and consulting to help you improve graduation rates through risk identification, coordinated student support, and effectiveness analytics” (“Technology and Ser­vices,” n.d.). Our administration hails this as an example of “demo­cratizing data.” I call it racial profiling. As for student-­centered innovation, that is just a way to reduce faculty roles to content delivery in f­ avor of student’s personalized digital learning options. The Foundation for Excellence in Education’s “Ten Ele­ments of High Quality Digital Learning” recommends, “All students can customize their education using digital content through an approved provider” (“Personalized Learning,” n.d.). “Diversity” Like Asian American studies, CSUF promises to serve low-­income, underserved, and underrepresented students. I strug­gled with this one for a long time, ­because I could not understand how a university administration could be so vocal about its commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, access, and social justice and, at the same time, embrace neoliberal educational strategies, which have been shown to create more in­equality and debt among racially minoritized students (Steinbaum & Vaghul, 2016). So I asked our former provost how he reconciled his commitment to social justice, equity, and access with per­for­mance funding, and his response was instructive. He stated that public education is not fulfilling its promise of access for the underserved and that

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t­ here is a loss of trust in public education. He painted a picture of a faculty body having instructional release time, implying that the perceived loss of trust was due to faculty focusing on research more than on teaching. He essentially parroted what the Lumina Foundation has been communicating by disseminating negative “data” regarding public educational effectiveness (Wittkopf, 2012). It dawned on me that the so-­called underserved and a certain discourse of “diversity” are being used to leverage the privatization of higher education. Education reformers point to the ostensible failure of diversity as evidence that policy alternatives are needed to address the challenges of access to postsecondary degrees and institutions (Cunningham, Erisman, & Looney, 2008). In this sense, diversity and anti-­corporatization are pitted against each other, which I see happening among some of our campus faculty, who seem to have chosen sides with or against the administration along e­ ither racial or class lines. Ginsberg asserts that crafty administrators understand that they can create strategic alliances with ­people of color on campus by being attentive to multicultural agendas, posturing as allies of activists’ concerns in exchange for their support of the administrator’s agenda (as cited in Abraham, 2016). It became clear that diversity discourse would be hijacked when the university allowed alt-­right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos to speak on campus in October 2017, as part of his “Troll Acad­emy” speaking tour. Despite previous threats that Yiannopoulos himself publicly made to “out” transgender, queer, and undocumented students (Nouriani, 2017; Oppenheim, 2017), as well as incidents of physical vio­lence incited by his campus talks (Park & Lah, 2017), the stance of CSUF was that it had no power to stop Yiannopoulos from coming to campus ­unless he presented a direct threat (Hofer, 2017). In an official statement, CSUF asserted, “Throughout our 60-­year history, our institution has been—­and must always be—­a marketplace of ideas in which diverse perspectives from all sides of issues are explored in a safe environment that upholds the right to freedom of expression, which is fundamental to our educational mission and to American democracy” (Cook, 2017). Notwithstanding its official commitment to “diverse perspectives,” the campus neatly propagated an uncritical embracement of the neoliberal notion of a “marketplace of ideas,” ignoring the levels of institutional vio­lence that have already occurred in order to build, reproduce, and expand the imperial university. I would argue that the university’s manner of dealing with Yiannopoulos’s visit was not coincidentally aligned with conservative model legislation designed to establish campus policies to ensure that conservative speakers are not prevented from speaking in the name of “intellectual diversity” or “viewpoint diversity,” as part of a larger conservative, corporate plan to privatize higher education (Center for Media and Democracy, 2017). In his own CSUF speech, wherein he warned against

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“social justice warriors,” Yiannopoulos revealed how the alt-­right appropriation of “diversity” was ultimately intended to be used: “If ­you’re a student, I urge you to call for the defunding of your own institution, ­because nothing ­will terrify the administration more. Nothing ­will horrify your professors more than their own students calling for the defunding of the university, ­because they deserve it” (Rochlin, 2017b). In the end, the Milo event cost our public university $90,000 (Rochlin, 2017a), funds that could have been better spent on improving diversity, equity, and inclusion for the students.

Weaponizing Words: Using the Master’s Tools to Dismantle the Master’s House6 ­ ese types of administrative imperial language are prevalent throughout Th higher education across the country. The seemingly innocuous language of university plans helps to placate the academic population, since most individuals in academia, from students to faculty and staff, do not always see themselves as being directly affected by the movement ­toward corporatization. Perhaps one of the intended consequences of the growth of the administrative university is the creep of tedious and time-­consuming administrative tasks into the usual workload of faculty, which keeps them from focusing on the neoliberal initiatives operating on their campuses. The implication for higher education, if we do not make ourselves aware of neoliberalism, not as an abstract ideology but as a concrete real­ity s­ haped by specific stakeholders, is that it w ­ ill be too late to act against even more drastic outcomes, such as the elimination of tenure, shared governance, and academic freedom in universities, which are the precursor ingredients for shaping a participatory democracy. Though perhaps other individuals in more established disciplines can afford to ignore the situation for now, as an Asian American w ­ oman faculty member situated in an ethnic studies department, I feel, like the canary in the mine, more acutely what is already happening—­such as the continual need to defend my department as the university seeks to streamline programs and create efficiencies (CSU Task Force on the Advancement of Ethnic Studies, 2016). However, one of the benefits of being trained and working in a field with a long legacy of re­sis­tance is already knowing that the imperial university is the master’s h ­ ouse (Lorde, 1979) and being committed to dismantling it. Therefore, I recommend that we resist the predetermination of our institutionalized roles, first, by exposing the bedfellows of the new higher education reformers. Higher education administrators, corporations, loan companies, politicians, lobbyists, and nonprofit private foundations all work together to create a vicious cycle to fund and develop model policies based on po­liti­cal jargon masquerading as sound educational concepts. They lobby for their implementation through

Unpacking the Master’s Plan • 91

formal legislation, provide private interventions into higher education delivery through technological and financial products, expand per­for­mance funding models based on loaded metrics, and further defund public education as a result of its perceived failure. On my campus, ­those bedfellows include, sadly, our former university president and our former provost, who are currently co-­chairing a new Education Trust–­led network to improve graduation rates for minority students (Abdul-­A lim, 2016). The Education Trust is a nonprofit advocacy organ­ization funded by the Lumina, Gates, and Walton Foundations, that is, lobbyists. The Lumina Foundation has crafted its own proficiency-­based outcomes, the Degree Qualifications Profile, and has provided funding to our accrediting body, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, which in turn influences how we do assessment, not to mention set the groundwork for our AMP. The Lumina Foundation arose from a $1 billion student loan sale to Sallie Mae and has become the nationwide leader in pushing for higher education policy reform focused on degree attainment. Lumina’s “Four Steps to Finishing First” are (1) Per­for­mance Funding; (2) New Models (online degree programs); (3) Business Efficiencies (limiting research to reduce costs); (4) Student Incentives; or, “Legislate tuition discounts and incentives to students who do not exceed the number of credits required for graduation. Limit financial aid to the required number of credits for graduation. In other words—­better not change your major” (Wittkopf, 2012). The California Promise Bill (CA SB 412), signed into law in 2016, proposes to do just this. Of course, the Gates Foundation helps create demand for technological, personalized learning (Talmage, 2015). Fi­nally, the Lumina Foundation works with the American Legislative Exchange Council to write and introduce bills in state­houses to fulfill the wish lists of corporate interests (Miller & McLeod, n.d.). Second, we can dismantle the imperial university by turning its corporate language against itself. Existing as a multiply marginalized academic unit within a field of material contradictions means that Asian American studies is multiply interpellated, that is, required to identify with and speak for several, and sometimes competing, ideologies of the neoliberal university. It also means we are insufficiently hailed by ­these competing ideologies—­that is, we are “bad subjects” who “resist domination by deviating from the normative” (Lowe, 1996, p. 146). Being inadequately interpellated subjects within a minefield of ideologies can be used as a tool of re­sis­tance. As Lowe states, “one site of interpellation may provide the means or instruments with which to disrupt another apparatus” (1996, p. 147). H ­ ere, I give a practical example of how my department was uniquely positioned at the intersection of ideological apparatuses to turn competing university imperatives against one another for our advantage: while the campus was undergoing a streamlining of its GE unit requirements,

92  •  Eliza Noh

ostensibly in order to smooth students’ paths to graduation (the “student success” imperative), the CSU system held a moratorium on any negative changes to ethnic studies units (the diversity imperative) (CSU Task Force on the Advancement of Ethnic Studies, 2016). Since the streamlining of GE units would have severely negatively impacted my department’s enrollments and majors due to the fact that the majority of our courses fulfill GE diversity requirements, we ­were able to delay and to modify how the GE unit policy would be implemented by strategically drawing attention to the campus’s commitment to diversity. ­There is a way to pit diversity against corporatism, in a sense turning the neoliberal strategy of co-­opting diversity discourse against itself. I end with an appeal to my fellow academics to engage in both individual and or­ga­nized acts of re­sis­tance, since we are often on the receiving end of administrative bloat.7 A ­ fter exposing the education reform bedfellows, we need to understand that pushing back on what David Graeber calls “Bullshit Jobs” is a radical act: “long-­hours pen-­pushing—or mouse-­clicking—is imposed on employees as a form of social control: it’s a way of ensuring that we are too monitored, busy and tired to raise questions or revolt” (quoted in Glaser, 2015). As a ­woman of color faculty member teaching within ethnic studies, I am already aware that the inordinate amount and nature of ser­vice work I have to do relative to how I am rewarded for that work is inherently a po­liti­cal issue (Harley, 2008). Now, the rest of the faculty body is feeling the growing burden of administrative work; they just need to politicize how they respond to it.

Notes 1 The Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) is an accreditation body. 2 The Lumina Foundation, like the Gates Foundation and the Kresge Foundation, with which it is closely allied, is particularly focused on pressuring educational policies ­toward graduation rates and other mea­sur­able metrics (Parry, Field, & Supiano, 2013). 3 The “imperial university” refers to the acad­emy’s role within the broader politics of racism, nationalism, militarism, and neoliberalism that define the con­ temporary imperial state (Chatterjee & Maira, 2014). 4 “Teaching to the test” refers to increased focus on test taking and other quantifiable assessment rubrics imposed on education through such legislation as the No Child Left B ­ ehind Act. It is credited with increasing teacher stress, reducing creativity in the classroom, and reducing student learning (Berger, 2013; Gallagher, 2010; Overman, n.d.; Times Editorial Board, 2015). 5 Racially targeted marketing has been critiqued for predatory targeting of minority consumers (Grier & Kumanyika, 2008). 6 Audre Lorde’s “The Master’s Tools ­Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” is a seminal queer feminist of color essay.

Unpacking the Master’s Plan • 93

7 “Administrative bloat” refers to the uneven expansion of university administration relative to faculty growth: “According to the Department of Education data, administrative positions at colleges and universities grew by 60 ­percent between 1993 and 2009, which Bloomberg reported was 10 times the rate of growth of tenured faculty positions” (Campos, 2015).

References Abdul-­A lim, J. (2016, March 10). 11 higher ed institutions uniting to boost minority students’ grad rates. Diverse: Issues in Higher Education. Retrieved from http://­ diverseeducation​.­com​/­article​/­82277/ Abraham, M. (2016, March 1). [Review of the book The fall of the faculty: The rise of the all administrative university, by B. Ginsberg]. Portside. Retrieved from http://­portside​.­org​ /­2016​-­03​-­30​/­fall​-­faculty​-­rise​-a­ ll​-a­ dministrative​-­university Berger, B. (2013, April 11). D ­ on’t teach to the test [Editorial]. US News & World Report. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­usnews​.­com​/­opinion​/­articles​/­2013​/­04​/­11​/­why​-­excessive​ -­standardized​-­testing​-­is​-­causing​-­american​-­schools​-­to​-­fail California State University. (2016, September 9). California State University Graduation Initiative 2025: CSU system and campus completion goals and plans. Preliminary draft report. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­calstate​.­edu​/­bot​/­agendas​/­sep16​/­ed​-­pol​-­2​ -­addendum​-­g i​-­2025​.p­ df Campos, P. F. (2015, April 4). The real reason college tuition costs so much. New York Times. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2015​/­04​/­05​/­opinion​/­sunday​/­the​-­real​ -­reason​-­college​-­tuition​-­costs​-­so​-m ­ uch​.h ­ tml​?­​_­r​=­0 Center for Media and Democracy. (2017, October 12). Intellectual diversity in Higher Education Act exposed. ALEC Exposed. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­a lecexposed​.­org​ /­wiki​/­Intellectual​_­Diversity ​_­in​_­Higher​_ ­Education​_ ­Act​_­Exposed Chancellor’s Task Force for a Sustainable Financial Model for the CSU. (2016, February 18). A financial model to support the ­future of the California State University. Retrieved from http://­calstate​.e­ du​/­financial​-­f uture​/­documents​/­Sustainable​-­Financial​ -­Model​-­Task​-­Force​-­Report​-0 ­ 2​-­2016​.­pdf Chatterjee, P., & Maira, S. (Eds.). (2014). The imperial university: Academic repression and scholarly dissent. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Cook, J. (2017, September 12). Statement regarding Milo Yiannopoulos speaking engagement. CSUF News. Retrieved from http://­news​.­f ullerton​.­edu​/2­ 017su​/­statement​ -­free​-­expression​-­csuf​.­aspx CSU Task Force on the Advancement of Ethnic Studies. (2016, January). Report of the CSU Task Force on the Advancement of Ethnic Studies. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­calstate​ .­edu​/­AcadAff​/­ethnicstudiesreport​.­pdf Cunningham, A. F., Erisman, W., & Looney, S. M. (2008, March). Higher education in Michigan: Overcoming challenges to expand access. Institute for Higher Education Policy. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­ihep​.­org​/­research​/­publications​/­higher​-­education​ -­michigan​-­overcoming​-­challenges​-­expand​-­access​?­id​=­107 Gallagher, K. (2010, November 10). Why I ­will not teach to the test [Editorial]. Education Week. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­edweek​.­org​/­ew​/­articles​/­2010​/­11​/­17​/­12gallagher​_­ep​ .­h30​.­html Ginsberg, B. (2011). The fall of the faculty: The rise of the all administrative university. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Glaser, E. (2015, May 21). Bureaucracy: Why ­won’t scholars break their paper chains? Times Higher Education. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­timeshighereducation​.­com​/­features​ /­bureaucracy​-­why​-­wont​-­scholars​-­break​-­their​-­paper​-­chains​/­2020256​.­article Grier, S. A., & Kumanyika, S. K. (2008). The context for choice: Health implications of targeted food and beverage marketing to African Americans. American Journal of Public Health, 98, 1616–1629. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2007.115626 Harley, D. A. (2008). Maids of academe: African American w ­ omen faculty at predominantly white institutions. Journal of African American Studies, 12, 19–36. Hofer, L. (2017, November 5). Milo Yiannopoulos and l­ imited CSUF finances the focus of Academic Senate meeting. Daily Titan. Retrieved from https://­dailytitan​.­com​/­2017​/­11​ /­milo​-­yiannopoulos​-­mildred​-­garcia​-­remarks/ Lorde, A. (1979, October). Master’s tools w ­ ill never dismantle the master’s ­house. Paper presented at the Second Sex Conference, New York. Lowe, L. (1996). Immigrant acts: On Asian American cultural politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Miller, J., & McLeod, J. (n.d.). Who’s b­ ehind the “completion” agenda? AFT Guild. Retrieved from http://­a ftguild​.­org​/­hot​-­topics​/­whos​-­behind​-­completion​-­agenda​.­html Newfield, C. (2008). Unmaking the public university: The forty-­year assault on the m ­ iddle class. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nouriani, O. (2017, September 21). UC Berkeley students harassed ­a fter Milo Yiannopoulos publicly identifies them. Daily Californian. Retrieved from http://­w ww​ .­dailycal​.­org​/­2017​/­09​/­21​/u­ c​-­berkeley​-­students​-­harassed​-­a fter​-­milo​-­yiannopoulos​ -­publicly​-­identifies​-­them/ Oppenheim, M. (2017, February 3). UC Berkeley protests: Milo Yiannopoulos planned to “publicly name undocumented students” in cancelled talk. In­de­pen­dent. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­independent​.­co​.­u k​/­news​/­world​/­americas​/­uc​-­berkely​-­protests​-­milo​ -­yiannopoulos​-­publicly​-n ­ ame​-­undocumented​-­students​-­cancelled​-­talk​-­illegals​-­a7561321​.­html Overman, S. (n.d.). Fighting the stress of teaching the test: Educators cope with test stress in unique ways. National Education Association. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.n ­ ea​.o­ rg​ /­tools​/­fighting​-­stress​-­teaching​-­to​-­Test​.­html Park, M., & Lah, K. (2017, February 2). Berkeley protests of Yiannopoulos caused $100,000 in damage. CNN. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­cnn​.­com​/­2017​/­02​/­01​/­us​/­milo​ -­yiannopoulos​-­berkeley​/i­ ndex​.­html Parry, M., Field, K., & Supiano, B. (2013, July 14). The Gates effect. Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from http://­chronicle​.­com​/­article​/­The​-­Gates​-­Effect​/­140323/ Personalized learning. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­digitallearningnow​.­com​/­policy​ /­10​-­elements​/­personalized​-­learning/ Rochlin, J. (2017a, November 15). Estimated cost of Milo Yiannopoulos’ appearance at CSUF currently $90,000. Daily Titan. Retrieved from https://­dailytitan​.­com​/­2017​/­11​ /­milo​-­yiannopoulos​-­csuf​-­tentative​-­cost/ Rochlin, J. (2017b, November 1). Milo Yiannopoulos brings firebrand humor to sold out crowd at Cal State Fullerton. Daily Titan. Retrieved from https://­dailytitan​.c­ om​/2­ 017​ /­11​/­milo​-­yiannopoulos​-­csuf​-­apperance/ Shulock, N., & Moore, C. (2002). An accountability framework for California higher education: Informing public policy and improving outcomes. Sacramento: Center for California Studies, California State University, Sacramento. Smith, A. A. (2018, July 9). The benefits of ethnic studies courses. Inside Higher Education. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­insidehighered​.­com​/n ­ ews​/­2018​/­07​/­09​/­san​-­francisco​-­state​ -­finds​-­evidence​-­ethnic​-­studies​-­students​-­do​-­better

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Steinbaum, M., & Vaghul, K. (2016, February 17). How the student debt crisis affects African Americans and Latinos. Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Retrieved from http://­equitablegrowth​.­org​/­research​-a­ nalysis​/­how​-­the​-­student​-d­ ebt​-c­ risis​-­a ffects​ -­african​-­americans​-­and​-­latinos/ Talmage, E. (2015, October 22). Gates undercover [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://­ emilytalmage​.­com​/­2015​/­10​/­22​/­gates​-­undercover/ Technology and ser­vices. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­eab​.­com​/­technology Times Editorial Board. (2015, February 23). No child left ­behind: How to end “teaching to the test” [Editorial]. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­latimes​.­com​ /­opinion​/­editorials​/­la​-­ed​-­testing​-n ­ o​-­child​-­left​-­behind​-­20150223​-­story​.­html TitanTVCSUF. (2014, August 19). CSUF 2014 convocation—­Upward mobility through academic excellence [Video file]. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­youtube​.­com​/w ­ atch​? ­v​ =­V9hzjaulbbU White, T. P. (2017, August 23). General education breadth requirements—­Executive order 1100—­revised August 23, 2017. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­calstate​.­edu​/­eo​/­EO​-­1100​ -­rev​-­8​-­23​-1­ 7​.­html Wittkopf, S. (2012, June 22). ALEC, higher education, and Lumina Foundation—­Policy, money, and setting the agenda [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://­bdgrdemocracy​ .­wordpress​.­com​/­2012​/­06​/­22​/­a lec​-­higher​-­education​-­and​-l­ umina​-­foundation​-­policy​ -­money​-­and​-­setting​-­the​-­agenda/

2

Investigating Discrimination Injustice against ­Women of Color in the Acad­emy JANE JUNN AND MAI’A K . DAVIS CROSS

Abstract Scholars of color and Asian American w ­ omen in par­tic­u­lar experience discrimination in hiring and promotion in the U.S. acad­emy. The relatively small number of Asian American faculty in social science and humanities disciplines combined with the trope of Asian American scholars as a ­silent and “model minority” draws attention away from injustice against ­women of color in the acad­emy. This chapter is a case study of efforts to uncover systematic bias against scholars of color in promotion and tenure at one institution of higher education in the United States: the University of Southern California. The analy­sis quantifies the promotion success rates from assistant professor to associate professor across humanities and social science departments over a fourteen-­year period. The results document highly disparate (much higher) rates of tenure for white males compared with all other scholars, including white ­women, men of color, and w ­ omen of color. The chapter provides an 96

Investigating Discrimination • 97

overview of the methodology of data collection and analy­sis and subsequently discusses how to recognize red flags for discriminatory practices. Challenges to t­ hese practices are most often met with stonewalling, denial of wrongdoing, and attempts to discredit the assertion of discriminatory be­hav­ior. Fi­nally, we discuss what strategies universities may use to deflect and ignore charges of discrimination.

Introduction A series of denials of tenure to minority ju­nior faculty in the Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Southern California (USC) raised questions about ­whether ­there is a pattern and practice of gender and ethnoracial discrimination in the promotion pro­cess. A tenure denial of a female Asian American social scientist in 2012 prompted this analy­sis within the context of a grievance filed by the faculty member. This analy­sis pre­sents five findings from an aggregate analy­sis of 106 individual cases of ju­nior faculty in the social sciences and humanities over a fourteen-­year period. The analy­sis is a systematic quantification of tenure outcomes at the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences at USC between 1998 and 2012 in the social sciences and humanities departments. The analy­sis documents a disparity between tenure success rates of white males at 92 ­percent compared with white w ­ omen and faculty of color at 55 ­percent. The tenure-­success statistic for Asian American ­women is only 40 ­percent, which means that 60  ­percent of Asian American ­women who are hired in tenure-­track positions at USC are denied or drop out before achieving tenure. The differences are vast, statistically significant, and substantively meaningful.1 ­A fter presenting and analyzing this data, this chapter turns to the main pos­si­ble means by which such disparate outcomes have been pos­si­ble at USC. In so d­ oing, we hope to shed light on potential practices that may be vis­i­ble in other universities. The chapter then reviews how challenges to t­ hese discriminatory practices are often met with vari­ous strategies by universities and how to recognize and combat this often insidious behavior.

Study Methodology The University of Southern California does not make rec­ords of its tenure decisions public. In the absence of publicly available information, however, systematic data on the composition of tenure-­track and tenured faculty in the College at USC can be collected from the annual course cata­logs. A database of assistant professors who ­were evaluated ­under the tenure and promotion pro­ cess in the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences at USC (hereafter “the College”) between 1998 and 2012 was built using the annual course cata­logs. Individual faculty members listed as untenured assistant professors ­were tracked

98  •  Jane Junn and Mai’a K. Davis Cross

over time u­ ntil they e­ ither moved to the rank of associate professor or they dis­ appeared from the course cata­log. Ju­nior faculty who moved from assistant professor to associate professor can be observed with full certainty. The disposition of cases not moving from assistant to associate professor at USC was determined by direct correspondence with the faculty member, report of the individual’s status by tenured members of the faculty member’s department, or information from other knowledgeable individuals. Untenured assistant professors who left USC before experiencing the tenure pro­cess ­were excluded from the analy­sis. Th ­ ese cases ­were removed from the analy­sis b­ ecause ­these faculty ­were not—­based on the knowledge obtained from the sources cited above—­evaluated ­under the tenure and promotion pro­ cess at USC. Instead, only ­those cases where ­there was a high degree of certainty that the candidate had entered and experienced the tenure and promotion pro­cess at USC ­were included. Thus, the cases included in the analy­sis represent the universe of cases rather than a sample, and any observed differences in outcome variables between groups is a meaningful difference. The analy­sis pre­ sents the variation in having been awarded tenure at USC versus not being awarded tenure. The category of not being awarded tenure includes the status of having been formally denied tenure as well as not having a decision rendered on tenure despite the presence and evaluation of a dossier. Data ­were collected for a total of 106 assistant professors at USC Dornsife College between 1998 and 2012. Roughly half (n = 54) w ­ ere in the social sciences and the other half (n = 52) in humanities departments. Faculty may have had dual appointments with other College departments or with other units at USC such as the School of Cinematic Arts. In the case of appointments with other units, faculty ­were coded with the USC Dornsife College department. For joint appointments within the College, faculty ­were coded on the basis of the recollection of in­for­mants regarding the department that took the lead on the tenure case. Social science departments included in the analy­sis are Anthropology, Economics, International Relations, Linguistics, Po­liti­cal Science, Psy­ chol­ogy, and Sociology. Humanities departments included in the analy­sis are American Studies and Ethnicity, Art History, Classics, East Asian Languages and Culture, En­glish, History, Philosophy, Religion, and Slavic Languages. During the fourteen-­year period included in this study, 67.9 ­percent of the assistant professors appearing in the course cata­logs w ­ ere observed to advance to the rank of associate professor at USC. Of the 106 faculty included in the database, 53.8 ­percent ­were male and 46.2 ­percent ­were female. Whites made up 60.4 ­percent of the faculty included in the database, 9.4 ­percent ­were African American, 23.6 ­percent ­were Asian American, and 6.6 ­percent w ­ ere Latino/ Hispanic. The largest demographic grouping by gender and race was white male ju­nior faculty, who made up 34.9 ­percent of all assistant professors who went through the tenure pro­cess between 1998 and 2012. The second largest

Investigating Discrimination • 99

group was white female ju­nior faculty (25.5 ­percent). The remaining 39.6 ­percent ­were ju­nior faculty of color (the sum of 18.9 ­percent male minority faculty and 20.7 ­percent female minority faculty). Five findings are described below, and analy­sis of patterns of being awarded tenure by categories such as gender and race is accompanied by tests of statistical significance (that is, chi-­square). As already noted, any observed differences in the average rate of being awarded tenure is a substantively impor­tant difference ­because the data represent the universe of cases rather than a sample of assistant professors who experienced the tenure pro­cess at USC between 1998 and 2012. Nevertheless, statistical significance is reported for each result.

Findings 1. Ninety-­two ­percent of white male faculty w ­ ere awarded tenure at USC. Over the fourteen-­year period ­under study, thirty-­seven white male assistant professors (representing approximately 35 ­percent of all faculty at this rank in the social sciences and humanities) ­were evaluated for tenure. On the basis of information gleaned from multiple sources, only three white males of the thirty-­ seven total ­were not awarded tenure at USC in the social sciences and humanities. The rate of tenure for white male ju­nior faculty is 91.9 ­percent. Of the three white males who w ­ ere denied tenure, one was awarded tenure a­ fter reconsideration and remains on the faculty in a social science department. Another white male who was denied tenure remains at USC as a “professor of the practice” in another social science department. The lone white male who was denied tenure in the humanities is no longer at USC. Th ­ ere is a similar pattern of high success of being awarded tenure for white male ju­nior faculty in the social sciences (88.2 ­percent) and humanities (95 ­percent). 2. Fifty-­five ­percent of female and minority faculty ­were awarded tenure at USC. In stark contrast to the 91.9 ­percent success rate among white male ju­nior faculty, all other faculty in the social sciences and humanities observed during this period had a much more modest rate of success of 55.1 ­percent. This group includes white ­women, minority ­women, and minority men (Asian Americans, Latinos, and Blacks). The difference between the tenure success rate for white males of 91.9 ­percent compared with that of ­women and minority faculty of 55.1 ­percent is statistically significant at the .000 level. Figure 2.1 provides a visual repre­sen­ta­tion of the comparison between white male ju­nior faculty and ­women and minority ju­nior faculty at USC Dornsife College. The relationship between being white and male and being awarded tenure at a substantially higher rate at USC Dornsife College is consistent across the social sciences and humanities. In the social sciences, 88.2 ­percent of white male faculty ­were awarded tenure compared with 51.4 ­percent of female and minority ju­nior faculty (statistically significant at .009). In the humanities, 95 ­percent

100  •  Jane Junn and Mai’a K. Davis Cross

White Male Junior Faculty Awarded tenure

Not awarded tenure

Female and Minority Junior Faculty Awarded tenure

Not awarded tenure

8%

45%

55%

92%

FIG. 2.1  ​Comparison of Tenure Awarded: White Males versus ­Women and Minority Faculty.

of white male faculty ­were awarded tenure compared with 59.4 ­percent of female and minority ju­nior faculty (statistically significant at .005). 3. White ju­nior faculty are awarded tenure at a higher rate than minority ju­nior faculty. Consistent with the high degree of success of being awarded tenure among white male ju­nior faculty, comparison of the success rates between white ju­nior faculty at USC College and minority ju­nior faculty shows a wide disparity. Eighty-­one ­percent of white ju­nior faculty (including both men and w ­ omen) between 1998 and 2012 w ­ ere awarded tenure, while 47.6 ­percent of minority ju­nior faculty (including both men and ­women) w ­ ere promoted to associate professor with tenure. This relationship between race and being awarded tenure at USC is statistically significant at .000. Figure 2.2 pre­sents a visual repre­sen­ ta­tion of the comparison. Patterns of significantly higher rates of tenure awarded to white ju­nior faculty compared with minority ju­nior faculty at USC Dornsife College are consistent across the social sciences and humanities. In the social sciences, 79.3 ­percent of white ju­nior faculty w ­ ere awarded tenure while 44 ­percent of minority ju­nior faculty ­were awarded tenure (statistically significant at .007). In the humanities, 82.9 ­percent of white ju­nior faculty w ­ ere awarded tenure while 52.9 ­percent of minority ju­nior faculty w ­ ere awarded tenure (statistically significant at .023). ­There ­were small differences between groups of minority faculty, with 50  ­percent of African American ju­nior faculty being awarded tenure, 48 ­percent of Asian American ju­nior faculty awarded tenure, and 42.9 ­percent of Latino/Hispanic ju­nior faculty successful in the USC tenure pro­cess. 4. Asian American female faculty are awarded tenure at a lower rate than white female faculty. While the data are clear about the near-­universal rate of

Investigating Discrimination • 101

White Junior Faculty Awarded tenure

Not awarded tenure

Minority Junior Faculty Awarded tenure

Not awarded tenure

19% 52%

48%

81%

FIG. 2.2  ​Comparison of Tenure Awarded: White versus Minority Ju­nior Faculty.

USC awarding tenure to white male ju­nior faculty (91.2 ­percent), white female faculty ­were awarded tenure at a lower rate of 66.7 ­percent. The success rate for Asian American female faculty, however, was even lower, at 40 ­percent being awarded tenure by USC. Overall, the relationship between race/ethnicity and gender of faculty and being awarded tenure is significant at .003. 5. Data on comparative tenure rates between minority and white faculty in social sciences and humanities at USC College show a dif­fer­ent pattern from information published by USC. The University of Southern California’s Manual of the University Committee on Appointments, Promotions and Tenure (UCAPT) specifies the following information in its 2011 publication: 1.a-2. How does UCAPT embody USC’s commitment to equal opportunity? UCAPT’s recommendations are made individually on a merit basis. Analy­sis of the data between 2005 and 2009 shows no statistically significant difference between minority and non-­minority candidates in success rate for promotion to tenure. (The success rate for minority candidates happens to be five percentage points higher.) During the same period, over a quarter of UCAPT’s members ­were themselves minority. (UCAPT, 2011, p. 1)

­These figures are inconsistent with results of tenure cases in the social sciences and humanities at USC Dornsife College observed during this time period. Between 2005 and 2009, ­there w ­ ere forty-­two cases, of which twenty-­ six w ­ ere white scholars of all genders and sixteen w ­ ere faculty of color of all genders. White ju­nior faculty w ­ ere awarded tenure at a rate of 88.5 ­percent, while 56.3 ­percent of ju­nior faculty of color ­were awarded tenure. The relationship

102  •  Jane Junn and Mai’a K. Davis Cross

between race and being awarded tenure during this time is statistically significant at .017.

Beyond the Numbers How can such a pattern of discrimination in the tenure pro­cess at USC persist? It is often difficult to realize what is happening ­behind the scenes during the review of each individual tenure case (see chapter 7). Tenure review, especially at USC, is a highly secretive pro­cess (see prologue). From the point of view of a candidate for tenure at USC, the pro­cess resembles a black box into which she submits her dossier, and for a w ­ hole year no information is conveyed. A year ­later, the tenure decision comes out of the black box with almost no explanation (Bird, 2011). Of course, some universities are less secretive than ­others, but the entire pro­cess is designed to happen b­ ehind closed doors, coded as “personnel” decisions ostensibly kept secret for the privacy of the candidate (see chapter 1 for a discussion of coded administrative language). Despite this, ­there are certain red flags for discrimination that typically appear in USC cases and which can serve as lessons for what to look for in other universities. In par­tic­ u­lar, when assessing ­whether t­ here is discrimination in the tenure pro­cess, it is impor­tant to determine ­whether the university has (1) ­violated its own procedures; (2) ignored its own standards for tenure; or (3) breached the original hiring contract of the assistant professor in question. We now consider each in turn, with reference to the USC case as an illustrative example.

Violating Procedures The extent to which a university follows its own tenure and promotion handbook is an incredibly impor­tant indicator of ­whether a university is applying inconsistent procedures. Applying the rules differently t­ oward white w ­ omen and ­people of color compared with white men means that discrimination is occurring. Section 9 of USC’s UCAPT Manual lays out the specific pro­cess by which outside letters are to be solicited to maintain the integrity and fairness of the pro­cess, as well as to ensure that ­those contacted from outside of the university have adequate time to review a file that is carefully assembled by the department. The starting point for this pro­cess is the creation of a list of potential external referees, which is then approved by the dean as an indication that he or she is “satisfied that it is sufficient for evaluation” (UCAPT, 2011, p. 35). Section 13 of the UCAPT Manual provides a required template for the solicitation of letters. The UCAPT Manual makes clear that the pro­cess and materials should be provided to each outside referee so that each tenure candidate has a

Investigating Discrimination • 103

fair opportunity for full consideration. In addition, the manual stipulates that “The candidate should be given the opportunity to list individuals whom the candidate believes to be biased” (UCAPT, 2011, p. 35). When t­ here is clear violation of this procedure, which has been the case at USC, this is a serious red flag. ­There are well-­known cases where USC v­ iolated its own tenure procedures by inappropriately making cold calls to vari­ous outside scholars to solicit their opinion without any advance notice (Modleski, 2013). This was outside of the normal procedure, which requires a formal pro­cess of letter solicitation, using the template provided in the UCAPT Manual. In one case, the dean at the time contacted a government professor at Harvard University by this extraordinary procedure. The dean knew this person ­because USC had tried to hire him unsuccessfully in the past. In violation of USC’s normal procedure, the dean asked this scholar of his view on a tenure case even though the scholar’s work falls entirely outside the candidate’s subfield. Not surprisingly, the scholar reportedly indicated that he was aware of the candidate’s work but could not answer the question in the context of an unexpected phone call. This Harvard University professor then reached out to someone from the tenure candidate’s department at USC to express his astonishment at this inappropriate contact from the dean of the College. This extraordinary procedure was repeated with another scholar, a UCLA professor, whose work was also outside of the field of the same candidate, and again that scholar reportedly responded that he was neither willing to discuss the candidate’s rec­ord in the context of a cold call, nor was he qualified to judge her work since he is not in the same field of study. Nonetheless, t­ hese cold calls ­were used by USC to undermine a unan­i­mous vote in support of the candidate’s tenure at the College level. They ­were ultimately used as the justification for denying tenure at the university level, meaning that se­nior administrators had used evidence not acquired through the legitimate pro­cess outlined in the UCAPT Manual. The particularly troubling aspect of this procedural violation is this: not only did it involve scholars who ­were neither approved nor could have been expected to have been prepared to respond; it also very well may have involved scholars that should have been strictly barred. It could not have taken into account the names included in the list of potentially biased reviewers that the candidate provided at the beginning of the pro­cess as part of the normal procedure. USC’s provost at the time l­ ater admitted that she had no idea who was on this list. On page 14, section 4 of USC’s 2012 “College Faculty Evaluation Guidelines,” it states, “A princi­ple especially impor­tant to achieving a strong faculty is that the quality of a faculty member’s work not be assessed by the potentially capricious judgment of any single person, but rather by a searching review by the faculty member’s colleagues.” This clear procedural violation that USC

104  •  Jane Junn and Mai’a K. Davis Cross

engaged in undermines the “searching review” that resulted in unan­i­mous support from the College-­level committee.

Ignoring Standards Another red flag for discriminatory practices is when a university ignores its own standards for tenure in terms of what is expected of faculty productivity (that is, research, teaching, and ser­vice). This is most vis­i­ble when a university suddenly changes its standards for tenure or discounts a tenure candidate’s strong rec­ord of annual evaluations and accolades. At USC, like at most universities, ­there are pro­cesses of annual evaluations and awards granted to the very best faculty. It is striking that many assistant professors denied tenure in the social sciences at USC, especially Asian and Asian American w ­ omen, ­were recipients of the top awards for research and teaching both within the university and outside of it. To add insult to injury, USC bragged about the awards and accolades that female, Asian, and Asian American ju­nior faculty received outside of the university—­best book prizes, prestigious fellowships, teaching recognitions, and so on—­and then proceeded to deny them tenure just a year or two l­ ater. Departmental annual reviews also recognized ­these faculty with “outstanding” and “outstanding plus” in the lead-up to tenure denial. The university’s “College Faculty Evaluation Guidelines” state that the outstanding rating “should be applied to a ­limited number of faculty whose superb research productivity and/or teaching excellence constitute major and unusual contributions to their fields and the University” (p.  2). The Evaluation Guidelines provide that the “plus” is used to distinguish one professor’s per­for­mance from other professors in the department also rated as outstanding. Yet, ­these annual standards that are intended to mea­sure pro­gress ­toward tenure ­were seemingly ignored during the tenure review pro­cess. Mentoring is a normal part of the pro­cess of progressing through the tenure track. Departmental colleagues often provide guidance on where to focus efforts in the coming years to make good pro­g ress t­ oward tenure. If annual reviews indicate such advice, and then subsequent reviews indicate that ­these goals have been met, this is a clear indication of meeting standards promulgated by the university (USC, n.d.). When a tenure decision fi­nally comes out of the “black box” at USC, a candidate has the opportunity to ask for further explanation. Inevitably, however, any rationale eventually offered is vague, such as indicating lack of “impact” among certain external groups or leaning too heavi­ly t­oward one type of methodology in social science or another. If pushed further, a university may try to cherry-­pick certain aspects of the external reviews to

Investigating Discrimination • 105

try to paint a positive recommendation in a negative light, as has been the case at USC.

Breaching the Hiring Contract A third impor­tant red flag can be found when comparing the basis of hiring to the basis of denying tenure. Many universities that have prob­lems with diversity effectively change the job criteria, without warning, during the final stages of the tenure track or even during the tenure review pro­cess itself. For example, at USC, the se­nior administration reportedly did not want to grant tenure to a scholar who worked explic­itly on research related to culture, socialization, and trust, even though the job advertisement that resulted in the hiring of this scholar called for someone who worked in ­these research areas. In other words, t­ hese precise categories of research ­were defined as the job requirements before the candidate was hired, and it was on the basis of t­ hese par­ameters that the job contract was signed. ­Whether or not ­these job preferences make sense to or ­were seen as valuable by the se­nior level of administration at the time of the review for tenure and promotion, it is a breach of contract to object to the very approaches that defined the position in the first place. Obviously, no scholar would have come to USC, or remained ­there, if told that the very focus of her research and writing would disqualify her from consideration for tenure (see the prologue, and chapters 3, 7, and 9 on the devaluation of Asian American w ­ omen faculty members’ research areas). As further evidence of the administration’s deliberate and prejudiced approach to qualitative and constructivist research, the UCAPT Manual for the first time added the new provision that citation counts should be obtained only from the Web of Science and not from other sources such as Google Scholar (UCAPT, 2011, p. 16). This new provision elicited formal complaints by faculty members, to no avail.2 Any scholar caught in the late stages of the tenure track when rules are being changed that specifically disadvantage certain types of scholarship should regard ­those rule changes with suspicion.3 Addressing faculty and academic administration on the topic of “Demystifying the Tenure Pro­cess,” the vice provost at USC stated that a tenure candidate hired and working ­under an initial set of standards would not be held to a changed set of standards at the time of a tenure decision. He acknowledged that would be unfair. Yet, the university proceeded with this change anyway. Thus, finding out w ­ hether a candidate has been denied tenure based on the type of research she has pursued, as opposed to the caliber of that research, is often discriminatory as well as in breach of the hiring contract. This is not easy to discover as it typically involves conversations ­behind closed doors, but

106  •  Jane Junn and Mai’a K. Davis Cross

through careful discussions with se­nior colleagues who are privy to such discussions, it is nearly pos­si­ble to understand the “real” rationale ­behind a tenure denial. However, what we found it that ­there are many red flags that can indicate discrimination in the tenure review pro­cess, but the three mentioned ­here are chief among them. Again, the Faculty Handbook is an impor­tant source of determining ­whether a tenure candidate’s rights are being ­violated. Oftentimes, a professor can directly use the handbook as a means of showing that discrimination is occurring. This includes procedural defects such as a) b)

c)

d)

e)

f)

improper contacts, during the final stages of the tenure decision, with outside scholars who lack relevant knowledge; improper change in standards for evaluating a candidate’s work from the standards articulated during the time of her hiring and in her annual evaluations; failure to provide adequate warnings of concerns regarding the scope, focus, and import of a candidate’s work during her annual evaluations; false and misleading description of a ju­nior faculty member’s duties and responsibilities and of the university’s expectations and requirements for tenure at the time of recruitment and hiring; false and misleading description of a ju­nior faculty member’s duties and responsibilities and of the university’s expectations and requirements for tenure at the time of her annual evaluations; and failure to consider strong, “outstanding plus” annual evaluations or to make the tenure decision in a manner consistent with the university’s evaluation guidelines.

Beyond procedural violations, a candidate for tenure may not be fairly evaluated on the merits—­which happened at USC—­because the decision was based significantly on considerations that violate academic freedom or b­ ecause of bias or prejudice based on considerations prohibited by law, including, but not l­ imited to a)

b)

applying standards that had a disparate impact on ­women and ethnic minorities in violation of the Fair Employment and Housing Act (1959) and Civil Rights Act (1964); treating w ­ omen and ethnic minority candidates for tenure differently and less favorably than male and Eu­ro­pean American candidates, also in violation of the Fair Employment and the Housing Act (1959) and Civil Rights Act (1964); and

Investigating Discrimination • 107 c)

applying standards to the tenure decision that penalize females and minorities in the exercise of academic freedom in that the university relied on a preference for areas of research, which effectively precluded certain research and publication foci.

Reacting to Charges of Discrimination Of course, no university wants to be accused of discrimination, but it is easy to underestimate all of the insidious ways in which a university can react to try to undermine the evidence of discrimination. USC engaged in many of t­ hese methods. H ­ ere are some of the main examples of such methods: First, refusal to meet in person with the professor denied tenure; Second, co-­optation of the dean or director of diversity to stand with the se­nior administration and oppose faculty of color; Third, using the Office of Equity and Diversity to obfuscate data and make claims that ­women and minorities are being treated equally; Fourth, using university l­ awyers as well as law school faculty to try to undermine any grievances or complaints from faculty of color or white female faculty; Fifth, refusal to answer media inquiries with any specificity; Sixth, making superficial and misleading changes to the faculty handbook; Seventh, delaying responding to any charges submitted to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; Eighth, dismissal of complaints from faculty at other universities, especially t­ hose who wrote letters in support of the candidate’s tenure; Ninth, ignoring student complaints; and Tenth, putting the candidate through a reconsideration pro­cess that has almost no track rec­ord of success, despite new evidence of top scholarship.

Conclusion Not all universities have “black box” tenure review procedures, but the ones that do leave a lot of room for discriminatory practices to take hold. Revealing what happens ­behind the scenes requires a careful pro­cess of finding out what colleagues know and disentangling what actually occurred. For faculty members who have strong support from their department and college, it may not be too difficult to gain this information, but it takes a lot of time, energy, and devotion. Indeed, the cause of tenure denial in ­these instances often occurs exclusively at the highest levels of the se­nior administration. But for t­ hose who face

108  •  Jane Junn and Mai’a K. Davis Cross

more direct discrimination at the department level, gaining such information or finding ways to fight the outcome becomes much more challenging. But even in the best tenure denial scenario—­a candidate with a clearly excellent and deserving rec­ord—­university appeals systems are rigged against faculty (see prologue for examples of significant historical cases). At USC, even if you win your grievance, as happened in the case that launched this statistical analy­sis, the decision about what to do about the grievance goes to the president. And in this case, the president deferred to the provost, the very person who de­cided to deny tenure in the first place. ­There is no question that holding a university to account is an uphill b­ attle, and one that w ­ ill almost never result in tangible compensation for unjust denial of tenure. More often than not, to have any chance of changing a university’s discriminatory practices, it is necessary to be public and open about the evidence. The attention of the wider community can be effective in embarrassing and exposing a university for its practices. It also empowers o­ thers to push for justice. The media, such as the Chronicle of Higher Education, can be helpful in this regard. But u­ nless the candidate who is denied tenure is willing to risk her ­future ­career trajectory, this route can have major long-­term costs.

Notes 1 Editors’ note: ­These findings correspond roughly to the national rates of tenure and promotion revealed in by Hune in the prologue. 2 At least one complaint argues that the Web of Science is highly unreliable in judging the impact of a ju­nior scholar for multiple reasons. In par­tic­u­lar, it discriminates against scholars who focus on writing books and against young scholars who produce single-­authored works. Moreover, the kind of qualitative and constructivist work, which is correlated with the research that w ­ omen and minorities do, is typically published in books. By contrast, quantitative scholars mainly publish articles, particularly with multiple authors (often benefiting significantly from the notoriety of se­nior co-­authors) and are thus heavi­ly favored in the Web of Science (Antonio, 2002; Creamer, 1998). 3 In an article by Scott Jaschik (2008) published in Inside Higher Ed, Matt Cordon of the Faculty Senate, a law professor at Baylor University, was quoted describing the tenure rules changing during tenure pro­cess as “[not] just a moving target, [but] a moving target ­a fter you think ­you’re done.” B ­ ecause of ­these rules changing during the tenure pro­cess, many candidates are denied; however, t­ hese candidates created their tenure application based on the department guidelines given to them, and they are often caught unaware of the new standards that are implemented ­a fter they have already submitted their application (Jaschik, 2008).

References Antonio, A.L. (2002) Faculty of color reconsidered. The Journal of Higher Education, 73(5), 582–602. doi: 10.1080/00221546.2002.11777169

Investigating Discrimination • 109

Bird, S. R. (2011). Unsettling universities’ incongruous, gendered bureaucratic structures: A case-­study approach. Gender, Work & Organ­ization, 2, 202–230. Retrieved from http://­onlinelibrary​.­wiley​.­com​/­doi​/­10​.­1111​/­j​.­1468​-­0432​.­2009​.­00510​.­x​/­f ull Civil Rights Act, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e et seq (1964). “College Faculty Evaluation Guidelines” (revised October 6, 2009). University of Southern California. Creamer, E. (1998). Assessing faculty publication productivity: Issues of equity. Washington, DC: ERIC Clearing­house on Higher Education. Retrieved from https://­eric​.­ed​.­gov​/­​?­id​ =­ED420242 Fair Employment and Housing Act, Cal. Penal Code §12900 et seq (1959). Jaschik, S. (2008). Changing the tenure rules without telling anyone. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­insidehighered​.­com​/­news​/­2008​/­04​/­01​/­baylor Modleski, T. (2013). The death of shared governance at the U. of Southern California. Chronicles of Higher Education. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­chronicle​.­com​/­blogs​ /­conversation​/­2013​/­01​/­11​/­the​-­death​-­of​-­shared​-­governance​-­at​-­u​-­of​-­southern​-­california/ University Committee on Appointments, Promotions and Tenure. UCAPT manual. (2011). Los Angeles: University of Southern California. University of Southern California. (n.d.). Tenure-­track faculty [USC Faculty Portal]. Retrieved from https://­faculty​.­usc​.­edu​/­apt​/­tt​_­faculty/ University of Southern California. (2018). Faculty handbook 2018. Retrieved from https://­policy​.­usc​.­edu​/­fi les​/­2018​/­05​/­Faculty​-­Handbook​-­2018​.­pdf

3

Killing Machine Exposing the Health Threats to Asian American ­Women Scholars in Academia KIEU LINH CAROLINE VALVERDE, CAR A MAFFINI PHAM, MELODY YEE, AND JING MAI

Abstract This research determines the validity of anecdotal reports of high numbers of serious health prob­lems faced by Asian American w ­ omen in the acad­emy. Through a survey questionnaire, this study reveals that the academic institutional culture is inherently hostile to w ­ omen of color, and model minority ste­ reo­types and expectations place a special burden on Asian American ­women; this and other related ­factors lead to significant health prob­lems for this population. Survey results showed a staggering 74.4 ­percent of the sample (n = 160) ­disclosed having health prob­lems that they associated with the stresses they faced within the acad­emy. Almost two-­thirds of the sample (61.5 ­percent) stated that they had experienced or developed specifically long-­term physical or 110

Killing Machine • 111

psychological health issues a­ fter starting gradu­ate school, with 69.5 ­percent of ­these respondents expressing that academia (from gradu­ate school to working in the acad­emy) has created their health prob­lems or exacerbated them. The nuances of workplace hostility that create stress—as represented in both the survey results and the narratives of t­ hese ­women—­implicates the corporatization of academia and the embedded racism and sexism of t­ hese institutions. Academic institutions are culpable in this health crisis, which has serious implications for the structure of the acad­emy. This research can be used as evidence to make claims for changes to improve the working conditions of academic laborers.

Introduction An Asian American w ­ oman began her first week as an assistant professor by settling into her office when a stranger from the lab across the hallway asked if that was her room. The professor beamed and proudly affirmed that she was indeed moving into this new space as a tenure-­track professor. Concern fell on the stranger’s face as she remarked that the new professor looked young and that ­there was prob­ably nothing to worry about. This reassurance, of course, was no reassurance at all: Why was such a comment even made? The stranger explained that on the door of the professor’s new office, ­there had been posted a series of death notices before she moved in. Made anxious by this unexpected news, the assistant professor quickly walked down the hall to ask the department man­ag­er if the stranger’s comments w ­ ere true. Did the previous occupants actually die in the office? “No,” the man­ag­er reassured her, they did not die in the office, but yes, they ­were the occupants of the office during their untimely deaths. The new professor then recalled the instances from her gradu­ate school years of ­women of color professors ­dying prematurely due to health issues. She would even come to learn the story of the room’s last occupant: this ­woman had been battling for tenure when she developed cancer and ultimately passed away before achieving it. Shaken up by this unsettling news at the time, the assistant professor allowed the information to slowly fade away, ­until she barely remembered it at all. She had no idea that almost a de­cade l­ater, ­after years of working in a caustic department and then ­going through a very public and grueling tenure ­battle of her own, she too would land in the hospital while nearly six months pregnant, lose her baby, fall into a coma, and come very close to losing her life—­ and nearly have the same death notice placed on her office door (Valverde, 2013). The ­woman described h ­ ere is one of the authors of this chapter, and this experience inspired not only this research but the entire Fight the Tower anthology. Academia is not commonly known as a killing machine, but incidents like the story above are more prevalent than most think. An increasing number of narratives, including t­ hose highlighted in this volume and o­ thers and in recent journal articles, depict female professors of color who suddenly develop

112  •  Kieu Linh Caroline Valverde, Cara Maffini Pham, Melody Yee, and Jing Mai

serious health issues or need to take long leaves of absence to attend to personal medical situations. Even as t­ hese stories multiply, few scholars stop to question this phenomenon (Valverde, 2013; Vest, 2013; Wang, 2014). But t­ hose who do find that academia has never been welcoming for ­women (Bessant, 1998), especially w ­ omen of color (Agathangelou & Ling, 2002; Thomas & Hollenshead, 2001; Turner, 2002; Vakalahi & Starks, 2011). Even t­oday Asian American ­women still hit the age-­old “bamboo ceiling” as Asians who are ste­reo­typed as passive and unlikely to be leaders. They also hit a “glass ceiling” as ­women, who are, as a ­whole, less likely to be mentored, given lower student evaluations than their male colleagues, and thus less likely to receive promotions (MacNell, Driscoll, & Hunt, 2015; Wu & Jing, 2011).1 Far from being a haven of intellectualism and civility, academic culture continues to be hostile to many minority groups (Cho, 1997; Gutiérrez y Muhs, Niemann, et al., 2012; Li & Beckett, 2006; Reddy, 2002; Stockdill & Danico, 2012; Twale & de Luca, 2008; Vargas, 2002). Asian American w ­ omen in par­ tic­u­lar are perceived as nonconfrontational, unable and unwilling to stand up for themselves. This emboldens institutions of higher education to mistreat Asian American ­women with impunity, creating a hostile work environment. Tired and long discredited ste­reo­types, like the model minority myth, nevertheless persist in numerous institutions in regards to the Asian American working force. In society and academia, t­ hese harmful misperceptions si­mul­ ta­neously ignore the diversity within the umbrella of “Asian American” while overemphasizing the aggregate economic and academic achievements of its members, especially in the science, technology, engineering, and mathe­matics fields (E. S. Lee, 2014; Osajima, 2005). This ste­reo­type not only devalues Asian American w ­ omen academics’ efforts and training; it also carries the additional burden of resentment by ­others of both minority and majority cultures (J. A. Ho, 2015). The resulting ostracization can make it difficult for Asian American ­women to form the networks that can be so critical in developing an academic ­career (Milkman, Akinola, & Chugh, 2015; Noh & Assembly, 2013). In contrast to this ste­reo­type, previous research has demonstrated that compared with other racial minorities, Asian Americans experience higher rates of imposter syndrome, or the self-­perception that they do not r­eally belong in academia or deserve the positions they have achieved (Cokley, McClain, et. al., 2012). The combined effect of both the model minority ste­reo­type and the imposter syndrome paints Asian American ­women as not experiencing real oppression, while promoting the notion that they have achieved their status ­because of their perceived proximity to white men (Bahn, 2014; Nemoto, 2006).2 Although the terms “racism” and “sexism” typically bring to mind openly derogatory language or be­hav­iors, most ­women working in academia are more likely to be exposed to insidious microaggressions from superiors, colleagues, and students (Chinn, 2002; Pittman, 2010; Van Anders, 2004).3 ­These subtle,

Killing Machine • 113

often thinly disguised forms of discrimination shield the perpetrator from reprimand but still affect the intended target, causing stress. Discrimination of this type can appear in a variety of ways, such as comments about one’s appearance or even intelligence that are tied to sexist and racist ste­reo­types. Our study reveals how both overt and covert dynamics par­tic­u­lar to perceptions of Asian American w ­ omen in the academic workplace contribute to negative health outcomes among this demographic.4 Extant lit­er­a­ture highlights the deleterious health and psychological outcomes associated with stress (Car­ter, 2007; Russ, Stamatakis, et al., 2012).5 For example, research shows that chronic stress is associated with decreased immune function and slower wound healing (Kiecolt-­Glaser, McGuire, et al., 2002). Stress-­induced psychological f­ actors including depression, anxiety, and anger, which may be exacerbated by workplace stress, can also increase the risk of mortality from cardiovascular diseases (Everson-­Rose & Lewis, 2005). Similarly, sleep disorders, which can exacerbate other prob­lems, and be in themselves fatal, are also correlated to workplace stressors (Akerstedt, Knutsson, et. al., 2002; Kalimo, Tenkanen, et al., 2000).6 Although Vakalahi and Starks (2011) identify some of the f­ actors that lead to a hostile environment for many ­women of color in academia, researchers have not yet adequately examined the link between intersectional forms of discrimination inherent in the acad­emy and the failing physical, m ­ ental, and spiritual health experienced by Asian American ­women scholars.7 Th ­ ese conditions are further compounded through the recent rapid hypercorporatization of academia that si­mul­ta­neously increases the demands on departments and faculty members, while limiting their resources (A. Chan & Fisher, 2014; Clay, 2008). Though the working environment within universities affects all scholars regardless of their demographics, ­women of color, specifically Asian American ­women, experience stressors that their more privileged white and male counter­ parts are unlikely to face (McIntosh, 1988). For example, Asian American ­women are less likely to be offered mentoring or partnership opportunities that would accelerate their ­careers yet are expected to spend more time performing ser­vice for their institution and mentoring their students. Moreover, the authority, credentials, and acumen of Asian American ­women are routinely challenged by colleagues and students alike (Irey, 2013; Louis, Rawls, et al., 2016; Milkman et al., 2015; Nguyen, 2016; Stanley, 2006). Overall, Asian American faculty are seriously outnumbered by Asian American students, especially at the institutions that have the highest Asian American student enrollment and the highest proportion of Asian American faculty: 71 ­percent versus 29 ­percent, 42 ­percent versus 13 ­percent, and 38 ­percent versus 12 ­percent at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the University of California at Riverside, and the University of California at Los Angeles, respectively; ­these are the three campuses with the highest Asian American student enrollment

114  •  Kieu Linh Caroline Valverde, Cara Maffini Pham, Melody Yee, and Jing Mai

and among the highest percentage of Asian American faculty.8 This imbalance results in an extremely unequal burden of student mentoring on Asian American faculty.9 ­These numbers tell only part of the story, however. The purpose of this study is to give ­these numbers a voice by amplifying the narratives of Asian American ­women academics in hopes that they ­will no longer be silenced as individual “exceptions” but rather to show that their experiences in academia are symptoms of larger systemic forces. They have not failed academia; rather, academia—as a system—­has failed them.

The Study We are an interdisciplinary team with members from the biological sciences, social sciences, and the humanities who came together to investigate how the academic environment influences the physical and ­mental health of Asian American w ­ omen scholars. Thus far, ­there has been l­ imited information on the conditions Asian American ­women face in academia. However, anecdotes around the toxic culture of academia are pervasive throughout our communities.10 In this study, we hope to reconcile this disparity by examining the health consequences of the stress that Asian American ­women experience in the acad­ emy. Our study was guided by the following questions: (1) What are the sources of chronic stress among Asian American w ­ omen in the acad­emy? (2) How does stress impact physical health, m ­ ental health, and well-­being among Asian American ­women in the acad­emy? (3) What unique stressors do Asian American w ­ omen experience as members of the acad­emy? Participants w ­ ere recruited through national and university e-­mail lists, blogs frequented by academics, and social media over the span of eleven months between 2014 and 2015. Self-­identified Asian American w ­ omen who are current or former gradu­ate students, postdoctorates, adjunct lecturers, tenure-­ track, and tenured professors ­were invited to participate in this study through an online survey. The survey was completely anonymous,11 u­ nless the respondents chose to volunteer their contact information for follow-up interviews conducted by our research team. Before beginning the survey, respondents ­were informed of their right to withdraw from the study at any time without penalty and of their right to decline from responding to any question in the survey. The researchers also made themselves available to answer questions and concerns of respondents via e-­mail. We titled the survey “Health of W ­ omen in Academia Survey,” which attracted responses from self-­identified w ­ omen from all ethnic backgrounds.12 The survey took twenty to thirty minutes to complete and was composed of Likert-­type, multiple-­choice, and free-­response questions to capture both quantitative and qualitative aspects of their experiences in academia. Respondents answered

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demographic questions at the beginning of the survey, which included questions on their race/ethnicity, field of study, number of dependents, and ­whether the respondent was still active in academia. The survey also included questions about participants’ rank (for example, adjunct professor, gradu­ate student, or tenured professor). ­Those who identified as being tenured or tenure-­track w ­ ere directed to additional questions about their experiences with the tenure pro­cess. Over 300 respondents completed the survey within the first weekend the survey was opened. By the time the survey had closed a­ fter thirteen months, we had received over 2,000 responses. This indicated, rather dramatically, that ­women in academia w ­ ere e­ ager to articulate their varied experiences within the acad­emy. For this analy­sis, we used the data from respondents who identified as Asian, Asian American, or Asian mixed-­race. We chose to focus specifically on the Asian, Asian American, and mixed-­race Asian American respondents (N = 160) ­because they are greatly understudied and underrepresented in the acad­emy but are often held up as a model minority for o­ thers to emulate (E. W. Chen & Hune, 2011; Cho, 1997; Shrake, 2006). Ethnically, 39.4 ­percent of respondents identified as Asian American (pan-­ethnic identity13), 22.5 ­percent as South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, and so forth), 15.6 ­percent as an Asian/white mix, 8.8 ­percent as East Asian (Chinese, Japa­nese, Korean), 4.4 ­percent as Filipino, 3.8 ­percent as Southeast Asian (Viet­nam­ese, Hmong), 2.5 ­percent as multiethnic Asian, 1.9 ­percent as Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, 0.6 ­percent as Asian/Latino, and 0.6 ­percent as Singaporean. Participants’ birth years ranged from 1957 to 1992 (M = 1977, SD = 8.19), placing their ages in 2015 between 23 and 58 years old. The sample was almost evenly divided among gradu­ate students (25.6  percent), tenure-­track faculty (22.5 ­percent), and tenured faculty (27.5 ­percent) with the remaining respondents identifying as postdoctoral fellows (9.4 percent) and adjunct lecturers (10.0  ­percent). Additionally, 93.8  ­percent of respondents reported still being active in academia. More than half (56.3 percent) of respondents came from the humanities, arts, and cultural studies fields, including ethnic studies; 18.1 ­percent came from the science, technology, engineering, and math fields; 10.6  ­percent hailed from the social sciences; 3.1  ­percent came from law/legal studies; and 3.1  ­percent identified themselves as scholars from other fields, such as education, library sciences, and economics.

Overview of Asian American W ­ omen Health Issues in the Acad­emy Our research was able to connect failing health with stress experienced in the workplace. In our findings, a staggering 74.4 ­percent of the sample disclosed having physical health prob­lems that they associated with the stress of life in

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the acad­emy. In addition to the physical health prob­lems, almost half of the sample (48.1 ­percent) reported ­mental health issues, with many experiencing more than one issue. In general, research has shown that excessive stress can lead to serious health prob­lems, and occupational stress is the most damaging of t­ hese forms (Cameron, Wagenfeld, et al., 2016; Lovallo, 2015; McEwen, 2008). Teachers are particularly vulnerable to stress, as are all ­those in the helping professions (Colnerud, 2015; Gold & Roth, 2013). High levels of stress impact the immune system in ways that reveal significant correlation between the mind and the body (Khansari, Murgo, & Faith, 1990; Yang & Glaser, 2002). Stress is implicated as a causal ­factor in some cancers and in depression (Vissoci Reiche, Vargas Nunes, & Morimoto, 2004). Stress can also slow the healing of wounds (Walburn, Vedhara, et al., 2009; Kiecolt-­Glaser McGuire, Robles, & Glaser, 2002). Stress may come from a variety of sources. For example, Asian American ­women’s experiences with discrimination, including both overt acts and microaggressions, also can impact physical health, and this extends to the workplace where discrimination persists (de Castro, Gee, & Takeuchi, 2008; Gee, Spencer, et al., 2007; Smedley, 2012). The study of health disparities, for instance, reveals that race, gender, immigration, acculturation, and ethnicity all impact physical health and well-­being among Asian Americans (Ghosh, 2003; Williams & Mohammed, 2009).14 Many of the participants identified multiple, often compounding physical ailments, including general pain (18.8 ­percent), primarily back pain (10 ­percent); fatigue and prob­lems with sleep (11.3 ­percent); reproductive issues, including ovarian cysts, miscarriages, and difficulties getting pregnant (11.3 ­percent); significant weight gain or loss (6.7 ­percent); digestive issues, including ulcers and irritable bowel syndrome (5.6  ­percent); headaches and migraines (4.4 ­percent); allergies (3.1 ­percent); skin issues and rashes (3.1 ­percent); other back issues that did not include back pain (3.1 ­percent); asthma or respiratory issues (2.5 ­percent); and vision concerns (1.9 ­percent).15 A handful of respondents reported life-­threatening and debilitating conditions, such as autoimmune disorders, diabetes, and cancers (totaling 5  ­percent). Respondents scored, on average, 7 out of 10 for stress on a scale of 1 to 10, and their stress came primarily from the workplace.16 The structural barriers and discriminatory practices that exist against Asian American may be based on one or a combination of biases, including race, ethnic group, immigration status, immigration generation or acculturation, language skills, class, and sexuality (Breslau & Chang, 2006; M. S. Chen & Hawks, 1995; Louie, 2001). When Asian American ­women internalize t­ hese attacks against their beings, seeing it as an individual rather than systemic issue, or feeling they are helpless against the system, their m ­ ental health may suffer for it. More than half the respondents in our study identified that they experienced

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Vision Respiratory Other back issues Skin Allergies Headache/Migraines Cancer Diabetes Autoimmune Digestive Issues Weight Changes Reproductive Fatigue/Sleep Pain Other 0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

20

FIG. 3.1  ​Percentage of Health Issues Reported by Asian American W ­ omen in Academia.

psychological health prob­lems while in academia. Almost half of the sample (48.1 ­percent) reported ­mental health issues, with many experiencing more than one symptom of ill health. Depression and anxiety ­were the most prevalent conditions within our sample, with one-­third reporting depression (32.5 ­percent) and one-­fourth reporting anxiety (25  ­percent).17 Stress and burnout w ­ ere reported by 10 ­percent of the sample, and 7.5 ­percent noted other m ­ ental health issues, such as mood or eating disorders (see figure 3.1).

Analy­sis of Health Impacts of Stress on Asian American ­ Women Academics The litany of health prob­lems revealed above is a testament to how health issues are often produced or exacerbated by the stress experienced in a work environment that is both passively unsupportive and actively hostile. The prevalence of work-­related stress reported by our respondents prompted us to ask t­ hese two questions: First, what are the aspects of workplace hostility that are specific to Asian American ­women? Second, does the evidence we have gathered support the hypothesis that gendered and racial hostilities in the academic workplace stand as the primary cause of this stress? More than half of the sample (61.5 ­percent) stated that they experienced or developed long-­term physical or psychological health issues ­a fter starting

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gradu­ate school, with 69.5  ­percent of our respondents expressing that academia has precipitated or exacerbated their preexisting health prob­lems. ­Those who expressed that they ­were generally healthy before entering academia attributed their declining health to the stress from their workplace. Only 8.7  ­percent already had preexisting health prob­lems before entering gradu­ate school. More than half of the sample (52 ­percent) reported the onset of health prob­lems during gradu­ate school or at another point in their academic ­career, and an additional 17.5 ­percent did not explic­itly report specific timing of onset but alluded to chronic and current issues. Given t­ hese significant statistics, what are the ­factors that precipitate the health prob­lems documented by our survey? The clearest link between academic life and physical health is the change of lifestyle that accompanies the entry into academia. Many highlighted the lack of time allowed for self-­care due to their overwhelming responsibilities based in unrealistic and unfair expectations and standards beyond t­ hose associated with gradu­ate school or academic work life generally. Both the model minority myth (Chao, Chiu, et al., 2013) and academic expectations ascribed to ­women (P. P. Chan, 2014) assume that Asian American ­women w ­ ill excel in academic situations with no help, and yet they have to work harder to prove themselves against a higher standard. Th ­ ese time limitations influenced both scholars’ nutrition and sleep patterns, predictably leading to weight gain and associated health prob­lems. A gradu­ate student responded: “[I] lost 20 lbs (about 15% of my body weight) within the first few months of grad school from stress (combination of lack of sleep, terrible diet, lack of exercise, pressures to research/get work done as a GSR [gradu­ate student researcher], few opportunities for social interactions).” Another highlighted the impact that altered nutrition had on her health: “I have had health issues both physically and psychologically. For example, last quarter during finals week I began to have early signs of diabetes (prob­ably from drinking too much soda/boba in order to stay awake to grade papers and write my own papers).” In general, many mentioned that the academic life changed their fitness levels and influenced weight gain. An assistant professor illustrates this by saying that the stress of trying to meet academic goals “contributed to gain in weight and other fitness issues” with a result of “shortness of breath and chest pain.”

Physical Health Concerns Many outside of academia may have the narrow perception that an academic job is ideal—­low stress, with an easy work schedule and good compensation—­ and is conducive to a holistic healthy lifestyle.18 This could not be further from the truth. In addition to health issues incurred during academic life, preexisting health prob­lems ­were commonly exacerbated during our respondents’ time in academia. For example, one respondent noted, “I sustained a lower back

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injury before becoming an academic. The back pain has been anywhere from mild to severe while in gradu­ate school and now as a postdoc. The back pain has been most severe when facing an academic deadline, or when I need to do several hours of grading.” This exacerbation was not only l­ imited to injuries—­ recovery from illnesses also was delayed. Despite their supposed flexible scheduling, respondents frequently expressed that they did not have enough time to recover from illness or injury, which is a complaint made by ­women academics in general (Mountz, 2016). Moreover, respondents noted that the stresses of academic life hindered their recovery. A gradu­ate student commented that “stress affected my appetite (i.e.: eating less) and sleep (i.e.: not able to stay asleep and waking up feeling I had no rest).” On top of their slowed recovery time, many of our respondents reported that they felt pressure to return to work prematurely ­after accidents or other medical crises. They reported that their pain often persisted b­ ecause returning to work prevented their bodies from making a full recovery. Two assistant professors reported injuries from which they never fully recovered: 1: The first professor reports: During my time in my prior position I was in a severe car accident and ­because I went back to work relatively quickly ­after the accident I’m still dealing with chronic pain instead of being fully healed. 2: The second assistant professor similarly shares: Recovery from my more serious illnesses ­were slowed down by stress of not being able to complete all I needed/wanted done for the degree. Previous research has documented that faculty of color often feel compelled to do more work than their white or male peers, resulting in a heavy workload and implicit expectations for ­women of color academics to go “above and beyond” (Gutiérrez y Muhs et al., 2012; Orelus, 2013). Many of our respondents reported living with chronic pain, which often stemmed from an initial injury and was compounded through their time in academia. This is consistent with our findings as our respondents mentioned how overwork often aggravated workplace injuries or preexisting conditions. Although many of the reported health prob­lems w ­ ere clearly explained by lack of exercise, poor diet, and sleep deprivation, other health prob­lems that ­were reported w ­ ere less easily explained and more severe. In addition to chronic pain or injury, respondents reported serious health concerns, including cancer and reproductive issues. Th ­ ese more extreme health prob­lems w ­ ere highly diverse, but all w ­ ere noted to appear or worsen during times of extreme stress. For example, one participant reported that her autoimmune disorder had developed during the time as an assistant professor she was being evaluated for tenure. “I first developed an ongoing allergic reaction to bug bites that went on for nearly a year with them replicating all over and itching incessantly. I then

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developed an allergic rash to the sun (yes, sunlight) on my arms and neck.” Once-­healthy individuals felt the decline in their health most pronouncedly. An associate professor notes this: “I consider myself a very healthy person and was an athlete in high school. I kept up with physical activities throughout my life. Health issues developed shortly a­ fter I began my tenure track position. I developed ovarian cysts that persist to this day.” Another associate professor shared: “I have Poly-­Cystic Ovary Syndrome and Thalassemia. I am pre-­diabetic and now have hypertension. I became pre-­diabetic a­ fter tenure with less time for exercise due to increases in ser­vice and mentoring. I have hypertension while becoming the first w ­ oman of color chair of my department.” Stress was specifically named as the impetus for health issues as this associate professor explains, “My ulcerative colitis symptoms appear to be triggered primarily by stress. . . . ​I developed ulcerative colitis in my fifth year as an assistant professor.” Another respondent posed the following question: “I won­der ­whether my thyroid cancer was stress-­related.” Sharing in g­ reat detail the severity of her health issues, another assistant professor says she suffered from “stress-­related autoimmune disorder which ­causes hair loss which coincided with writing my first book[,] (ongoing) infertility (PCOS) during grad school and ­career although I now have three ­children, Hashimoto’s disease (thyroid) [;] since puberty the latter two have contributed to my becoming overweight (by BMI) since beginning a tenure track job.” Pressures do not necessary ease up ­after tenure; in many cases, stress is actually heightened post-­tenure. As one respondent puts it, “Like most academics, I’m constantly missing deadlines and stressed about t­ hings, and that’s why I de­cided post-­tenure to prioritize sleep and exercise.” Learning about t­ hese many health issues that ­were formed or grew while in the acad­emy rings the alarm bells and makes one question what could be g­ oing on within the institution that harms so many Asian American academics.

Lack of Sleep Stress creates a perpetual cycle that makes it more and more difficult for faculty to accomplish increasingly unreasonable workloads. As stress takes its toll on m ­ ental health, academics often find themselves falling b­ ehind, placing them in even more stressful situations. In order to make up lack of time in a day for work, many of our respondents forgo adequate time for sleep. Lack of sleep can lead to serious health consequences, that can be compounded through time as it becomes chronic, as in insomnia (Spiegel, Tasali, et al., 2009). A respondent who had increased responsibilities as the first w ­ oman of color to chair her department attributed her health issues to lack of sleep: “I have had increasing migraines due to lack of sleep for the last five years.” Several respondents noted that stress contributes to difficulty sleeping, with one saying, “I have a hard time falling back asleep ­because my mind is racing.”

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Causal f­ actors of health issues are often multivalent, with lack of sleep and stress compounding other issues, as one gradu­ate student attributes her health prob­lems to “Lack of sleep due to: staying up late grading/researching/writing, feeling anxious about the amount of work I need to get done, feeling anxious about f­ amily obligations (my parents are immigrants and live close by and I am the main point of contact for their finances, health care, insurance, e­ tc).” Increasing workloads as academic bud­gets shrink and the additional work burdens faced by w ­ omen of color in academia point to further decreased time for sleep and other rest.

Anxiety, Depression, and Substance Use Aside from lacking sleep, our respondents explained that anxiety or thinking too much about work also factored into their ill health. One mentioned “Stress over work. Trying to finish work and meet deadlines. Having to do more than non-­minority colleagues in order to be taken seriously.” Similarly, another noted that “Anxiety for work (that cannot be done soon and well) makes it difficult to fall asleep and sometimes wakes me up in the ­middle of the night.” Anxiety is often associated with difficulty concentrating, excessive worry, restlessness, and fidgeting (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). One in four participants reported experiencing work-­related anxiety. Furthermore, depression was reported by 32.5 ­percent, or about one in three respondents, and, according to the American Psychiatric Association (APA), is characterized by depressed mood, hopelessness, fatigue, excessive sleep (hypersomnia) or inability to sleep (insomnia), difficulty concentrating, feeling worthless or guilty, weight gain or loss, lack of interest or plea­sure (anhedonia), and thoughts of death (APA, 2013). Stress and burnout w ­ ere reported by one in ten respondents, and an additional 7.5 ­percent reported other mood or eating disorders. Emotions that ­were expressed from the pressures of “being in a ruthlessly competitive workspace” manifested in elevated anger and fatigue for another respondent, “with anxiety attacks, [and] night terror that relate[s] to work.” The impacts on m ­ ental and physical health are often related, as described by this respondent: “Yes. It [stress] has definitely contributed to ­mental health [issues].” An associate professor reported similar issues: “My issues with depression are deep-­seated but exacerbated by work—in terms of demands I put on myself for professional achievement, as well as demands of my job. I’m learning how to use positive ways to motivate myself and to recognize when I’m slipping.” Depression is often stigmatized, leading to a reluctance among faculty to seek treatment for depression and related issues for fear of being perceived as weak or “crazy” (Coleman, 2012; Shine, 2013; Wilson, 2012). Burnout, anxiety, and stress are ­factors that ­were implicated in promoting unhealthy coping habits among our sample, with 10  ­ percent reporting

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experiencing at least one of ­these ­factors. One respondent mentioned that she was “battling an urge to drink more alcohol,” while o­ thers alluded to using other substances.19 A gradu­ate student notes: “Since I entered grad school, I’ve been forced to rely on antidepressants to cope with stress. Without them, I would have trou­ble falling asleep and concentrating on my work. As a result, I would constantly feel tired and anxious.” The coping mechanisms begun in gradu­ate school can turn into habits with serious consequences the longer one remains in academia.

Work–­Life Balance As the narratives above illustrate, many Asian American ­women experience academia as an unhealthy environment. It is even more so for w ­ omen with families. ­Because of this, one of the most challenging and stressful components of being a female academic is balancing the overwhelming demands of ­family and work life (Drago, Colbeck, et al., 2006; Wolfinger, Mason, & Goulden, 2009). Moreover, it is common for w ­ omen in academia to delay or even forgo having ­children b­ ecause of the perception that m ­ others are less serious about their academic ­careers (chapter 12, this volume; Armenti, 2004; Bassett, 2005; Ward & Wolf-­Wendel, 2004). W ­ omen with ­children who remain in the professorate rather than leaving—as many do—­are more likely than their male counter­parts to remain in the lower ranks (Martinez, Botos, et al., 2007). Many academic w ­ omen avoid t­ hese barriers by choosing to remain single. Indeed, more academic ­women than men remain single to avoid discrimination. For ­those who are in relationships, when ­those relationships do not work out, the breakup, predictably, can also contribute to stress. In fact, divorce or separation is often linked to the stress of the tenure pro­cess (Mason & Goulden, 2004; Probert, 2005). Reflecting the challenges described in the lit­er­a­ture, many respondents cited conflicts between their ­careers and their families, often stating that satisfactorily meeting proficiency in both their ­careers and f­ amily lives was an impossibility that ­causes them stress. Balancing work with home life is stressful for t­ hose who attempt to do both well, as an assistant professor describes: “My own perfectionist tendencies, my strug­gle to negotiate the tenure track, my desire to be a ­great professor and a ­great mother/wife. The real­ ity is I ­can’t do it all and yet I still keep trying.” ­Those who are in the pro­cess of building their c­ areers while building their families and raising their c­ hildren are also daunted. A tenured professor illustrates this concept: “I am building a research initiative for my school and I still teach and research b­ ecause I d­ on’t expect my administrative life to be a permanent ­career shift and need to stay on top of my scholarship and teaching. Plus, ­there are the usual issues that dual ­career ­couples with adolescent kids have in ­family life.” Balancing work life with child care is a par­tic­u­lar strug­gle for many academic ­women, as an assistant professor lists the challenges: “Difficulty of balancing academic work and ­house/

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family work. Unreliability of partner (also a professional but not an academic). Not enough childcare, but guilt if I use too much childcare and ­don’t take care of kids myself or spend time with them.” ­Those respondents who are single parents have a par­tic­u ­lar level of stress related to being sole caregivers. One postdoctorate elaborates: “In addition to my academic demands, I am a single parent and try very hard to be pre­sent and focused during the times I spend with my child. However, many eve­nings and weekends include parking my child in front of the tele­vi­sion while I try to get work done on the computer.” Another single parent and associate professor describes the stress of raising ­children while on the tenure track: “Being a single parent with no child support, the prospect of being denied tenure (and therefore a stable income) was frightening and caused disturbances in my sleeping pattern and weight gain.” Many campuses have ­little or no support for single parents, including a lack of child care facilities.

Financial Vulnerability and Health When finances are tight, as they often are for adjunct lecturers and even assistant professors in urban areas with high costs of living, academics may have to make the choice between their c­ hildren’s well-­being and their own. Even associate professors, already tenured and with a more secure income, may suffer in the current economy, as discussed h ­ ere: “I have not had regular check ups, largely b­ ecause I want to keep costs minimal and my two c­ hildren’s medical visits take priority when it comes to medical expenses. I’m not sure w ­ hether I have any undiagnosed health issues. . . . ​I just try to eat well and exercise to avoid seeing a doctor while I can.” And, as another associate professor describes, all the stress can result in neglect of personal health: “my current stress is f­ amily stress—­raising kids and trying to get every­thing done for work. Yes, it impacts my health b­ ecause I ­can’t take as good care of myself. Very l­ ittle about the acad­ emy can be described as supportive and healthy.” Work-­related stress among academics is affected by rewards related to esteem and support as well as finances and status, both of which tend to be lower among Asian American ­women than for other academics (Kinman, 2016). Contributing to the lower quality of ­mental health is an oppressive and hostile culture and norms in the work environment. Respondents also established that “working within a hostile work environment and always . . . ​being alert to fend off harassment” has created stressful situations and has affected their health as well. Feeling “unappreciated, even deemed unwelcome and incompetent” was a reason cited for poor m ­ ental health outcomes such as anxiety and depression. Often, Asian American ­women are less likely to ask for accommodations due to their status as a minority and ­woman “Other” who has to prove her worth to the university (Shrake, 2006). One associate professor described experiencing “severe depression—­two episodes each of over a year. Did not ask for

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any accommodation from my institutions. However, my therapist said, and I quote, ‘I have never seen anybody in your condition who could still function.’ I prob­ably should have been hospitalized both times but was too hyperfunctional to ask for accommodation.” As represented by the this respondent, ­women of color, and especially Asian American ­women, are disproportionately less likely to seek accommodation or report instances of pain and seek medical aid (Cornelius, Smith, & Simpson, 2002). Seeking accommodation for health issues can be challenging, especially if one has internalized the model minority myth or the idea that one should shoulder all burdens without complaint; this, coupled with the relative lack of Asian American ­mental health care providers and culturally biased care models, can lead to underutilization of ­mental health care support systems (Iwamasa, 2003). This tendency to both blame oneself and to feel shamed by the idea of seeking help or support has been reported in relation to the extremely high rate of suicide and suicidal ideation among Asian American ­women (Noh, 2007). An adjunct lecturer described in detail how academia exacerbated her preexisting anxiety and contributed to further health difficulties: “I have always dealt with under­lying anxiety, but the intensity of my job and the poor politics of this place have led to a sharp intensification of my anxiety symptoms. I began having panic attacks 2 years ago, frequently as a result of terrible faculty meetings and blurred bound­aries between personal and po­liti­cal issues. Stress has caused my blood sugar levels to rise, and I have had a much harder time controlling my diabetes h ­ ere due to the stress. I also have had to b­ attle an urge to drink more alcohol. I have had bouts of insomnia, which I have not had since I was a teenager.” This respondent’s report demonstrates the complex interconnections of stress, anxiety, physical health prob­lems, sleep disorders, and substance use. Several respondents reported dependence on medi­cation to cope with their m ­ ental and physical health issues, as noted in the “Anxiety, Depression, and Substance Use” section.

Structures of Toxicity We identified common themes in our data around the sources of stress that Asian American ­women experience within the acad­emy, which ­were frequently cited as the ­causes of their health prob­lems. The challenges they faced within the acad­emy include hostile work environments (including experiences of racism, sexism, and bullying); othering through restricted access to institutional and collegial support; l­ abor exploitation (including heavy teaching loads, university committee demands as diversity representatives, and excessive mentoring duties); being undervalued as scholars where their work is often dismissed and not supported; and feeling that ­because of their gender and race, students

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and peers undermine and disrespect their work, ser­vice, and teaching (Johnsrud & Sadao, 1998; Toutkoushian & Bellas, 1999; Treitler, 2016).20 However, even as t­ hese phenomena are felt as intensely personal, they are symptoms of greater insidious systems. Not always explic­itly expressed but often alluded to was the erosion of the tenure system and increasing shift ­toward academic piecework (that is, adjuncting); attacks on academic freedom; increased work demands with ­little to no support; and ­limited promotion of Asian American ­women to higher ranks and to se­nior positions of administrative power (see chapters 8 and 13, this volume).

Corporate University In an open-­ended question, participants ­were asked to identify ­factors that contribute to their experience of chronic stress. Several themes emerged from examining the qualitative responses. Notably, 28.7 ­percent of the sample felt that being overworked had contributed to their experience of chronic stress; 6.3 ­percent of t­ hose who provided more detail reported that they believed they ­were expected to take on more work than their peers. Although many of our respondents did not elaborate specifically, our findings are in line with other studies showing that Asian American w ­ omen must work to a higher standard than ­others to achieve the same rates of success (Turner, 2002). Our findings concur with other lit­er­a­ture that documents the pressure ­women of color face to increase their ser­vice obligations (Turner, 2002).21 One respondent shared, “I think ­women of color, including me, are asked to do a lot of intangible service—­working with minority student groups, serving on diversity committees, ­etc. . . . ​­There is a ­g reat deal of stress associated with the additional workload placed on Asian American ­women, who often have to serve as representatives of ­women and ­people of color—in other words providing ‘ethnic cover’ as well as serving marginalized populations.” Research has implicated the corporatization of academia as exacerbating this prob­lem (Nelson, 2010; Eastman & Boyles, 2015). An international scholar respondent, for example, claimed that pressure from the university to complete academic milestones had led her to push herself past her physical and financial limits: My illnesses ­really slowed down my ability to keep up with work, and so I become more and more stressed about not finishing fast enough and getting to all the ­things I want to do. Certain issues with the first advisor, getting proper accommodations for the comprehensive exam when I was still figuring out how the optic neuritis was actually impacting my abilities and also bureaucratic red tape from the international center all added up to my general stress of living alone and being in another country from my ­family. Furthermore, the medical expenses became a huge strain financially (and is still being paid off).

126  •  Kieu Linh Caroline Valverde, Cara Maffini Pham, Melody Yee, and Jing Mai

Corporatization has drastically altered the culture in academia. Higher education has been shifted to prioritize profits, with certain groups of faculty, staff, and students increasingly exploited ­under the auspices of financial austerity (Weitzel, 2013). This new university system, for example, pushes departments to fill student seats in classrooms to secure funding, increasing the pressure on departments to sell themselves and do more while d­ oing away with crucial support staff and programs (F. J. Lee, 2014). Furthermore, students are increasingly encouraged to focus their energies into perceived lucrative areas of study by an increasingly competitive job market and consequently have begun to treat professors more as ser­vice providers instead of educators; this is particularly true for ­those professors who are already perceived by their race and gender to be of the servant class (Barlow, 2015). One associate professor elaborates on this dramatically changing landscape: “I chair a department that is experiencing considerable pressure from administration (to raise enrollments, ­etc.); faculty are fairly focused on their own research (rather than students/ department); students are stressed about job market (PhDs & MAs).” Th ­ ese new pressures translate into stress for ­those who are in the midst of ­these changes. An associate professor elaborates: The current stress comes from being in on the ground in starting an innovative new gradu­ate program, and learning an institutional culture that is worlds away from a traditional college setup. The school where I am now runs much more like a corporation. For the first time I have a boss in a way that I never did before. For example, if I want to write a grant for my own research, I have to ask my department chair’s permission to do this. This makes me a bit nuts.

Another associate professor remarks on the change: Tenure is moderated by the power of my chair, who is supportive, but weirdly controlling as well, and who does not have ­great management skills. So it’s not that she’s badly intentioned, but she does not deal with conflict well, she does not communicate especially well, and when pushed or challenged she gets defensive and on occasion retaliatory. This makes me ner­vous about being direct and assertive when I disagree with her on issues that affect my own work.

The prob­lems associated with this shift ­toward a corporate model are compounded by the fact that the university’s m ­ iddle management is largely composed of faculty who have never been trained as and who never intended to become man­ag­ers but who find advancing into chairship or even deanship the only possibility for upward mobility (or increased salary) once they have achieved the final level of full professor (Gardner & Blackstone, 2017; Schaefer, Gala, et al., 2015; Wolverton, Ackerman, & Holt, 2007).

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Workplace Hostility From microaggressions to outright hostility, the caustic work environment reflects racism, sexism, and heterosexism that affect Asian American ­women through a par­tic­u ­lar gestalt of oppression.22 A tenure track professor said simply, “The pressure is always t­ here. And any day at the office results in microaggressions.” Workplace hostility was most evident when respondents ­were asked to comment on ­factors that contribute to their experience of chronic stress. When asked, “Do you feel like you are u­ nder chronic stress from the academic environment? If yes, please explain why,” 145 respondents provided narrative responses. Fifteen ­percent of the sample reported a hostile work environment, 9.4  ­percent reported racism, 8.8  ­percent reported sexism, and 3.1  ­percent reported bullying or harassment. Other job-­related ­factors that contributed to chronic stress included concerns about job security (reported by 6.9 ­percent of respondents) and neoliberalism, corporatization, and privatization of higher education (also reported by 6.9 ­percent of the sample). Other chronic stressors included financial strain (reported by 8.8 ­percent of respondents), personal and ­family issues (17.6 ­percent), ­family pressures (8.8 ­percent), and health issues (4.4  ­percent). A tenure-­track professor despaired of “Their unprofessional be­hav­ior, and petty ­things they do like not inviting me to dep[artment] symposia relevant to my field, not approving courses I requested to teach ­because ‘we ran out of time to discuss it in the dep[artment] meeting,’ deliberately omitting my articles from a dep[artment] blog post about faculty publications . . . ​ all of t­ hese are stressful and demoralizing.” Microaggressions function as a burden beyond the expected burdens of faculty work, as another tenure-­track professor explains: “To have to maintain expected levels of research, teaching, and ser­vice are stressful enough. But ­those I can h ­ andle. What I ­can’t ­handle are the ‘microaggressions,’ for lack of a better word. I experience and witness sexism and racism on a regular basis at my institution.” Even ­after having achieved tenure, as the following respondent has, the pressure can be stressful, as she reports: “I do feel very vulnerable to harassment, bullying, and mobbing in my department. My university has not fully recognized the situation even when I explic­itly bring it to the attention of administration. This has been ­going on for over ten years.” The stakes can be especially high; one person reported that “Also, ­after years of harassment, bullying, and mobbing, during my tenure appeals pro­cess, I miscarried and fell into a coma for a week. I miraculously survived to only be met by more harassment in my department and parts of the university administration.” ­These issues are par­tic­u­lar to Asian American ­women in the way they are racialized and sexualized due to ste­reo­types based in the model minority myth and images of Asian ­women as China dolls, geishas, and dragon ladies (K. Lee,

128  •  Kieu Linh Caroline Valverde, Cara Maffini Pham, Melody Yee, and Jing Mai

2013; Shimizu, 2007). From colleagues and students alike, ­there is an expectation for Asian American ­women to behave in ste­reo­t ypical ways—in other words, being demure, not assertive, as described by this tenured professor: When I began teaching h ­ ere, being a short Asian w ­ oman seemed to undermine my authority in the classroom in weird ways. Students seemed to expect me to be “nice” and not apply rigorous standards to their writing and homework assignments. At the same time, one student wrote on my eval[uation]s that I was “so smart that it was a l­ ittle intimidating.” Also, I once had a colleague (another ­woman in my department) tell me that a pre­sen­ta­tion I delivered before faculty was “cute.” She is not much older than me (5 years?), but I’m short, look young, and have what I suppose some might think of as “youthful” mannerisms. The talk was very well received. Another colleague in my department (older, male) was incredibly offended on my behalf.

Another simply stated: “students do believe that ­women of color are t­ here for ser­vice and mentoring and men are ­there for intellectual guidance. They make a distinction.” Th ­ ere have been many works dedicated t­ oward documenting the racism and sexism that w ­ omen of color faculty experience within academia (Agathangelou & Ling, 2002; Orelus, 2013; Turner, 2002). However, t­ here are few works that directly link ­these stresses to the health prob­lems they may cause. Some of our respondents directly attributed their health prob­lems to the racism and sexism that they experienced or alluded to colleagues who w ­ ere dealing with the same. One respondent shares: I have a pre-­existing medical condition. During gradu­ate school, my gynecologist found precancerous cells in my cervix. I had surgery to remove the compromised portion of my cervix. Since then, I’ve had normal pap smears. ­A fter I graduated with my PhD, I landed a tenure-­track position at a community college where I was teaching 5 writing-­intensive courses per semester with 3 separate preps. During this time, my pap smear results came back abnormal—­the first time in 11 years. My oncologist/gynecologist asked me what changed in my life. I told him about the stress of my new job: the workload and, more significantly, the racist environment I was working in.

Another respondent has similar stories of herself and other colleagues: Like I said, the stress of my job at the community college was literally g­ oing to kill me. And I know other w ­ omen of color who teach at that institution who have gotten cancer, who deal with high blood pressure and hypertension, who

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have had miscarriages, and other physical ailments that seem to disproportionately affect w ­ omen of color. Racism and sexism kills. End. Dot. Sometimes it kills quickly. Sometimes, it’s a slow death. And I see so many w ­ omen of color in academia who are d­ ying spiritually and physically ­because of the added stress that comes from working in institutions that are not only not made for us but also ­don’t ­really want us ­there in the first place (but ­will accommodate our presence only for “show” b­ ecause diversity has become a buzzword).

The severity and number of health issues cannot be underscored enough, including perceived harm done to one’s soul.23 Such health issues often appear ­after years of accumulated pressures, big and small. For example, knowing that one is being used to “show” a face of “diversity” is stressful and demoralizing. Being used in this way is a kind of microaggression (Lukes & Bangs, 2014). ­These kinds of microaggressions are notoriously difficult to prove, thus making recourse for this par­tic­u­lar type of racism and sexism difficult, if not impossible, to attain (see chapter  14; Rollock, 2012). Strug­gles to do so may even result in accusations of reverse racism (Cabrera, 2014). One respondent describes a case in which being so accused resulted in negative health consequences: Just one and a half months of starting my appointment, I was charged with racial discrimination by a White male student for creating a “hostile environment” b­ ecause I used the words “White,” “Whiteness,” and “White privilege” in my ENGL 101 class on race and repre­sen­ta­tion. Then 2 weeks l­ ater a­ fter that charge was investigated and dropped, I was called in another discrimination case: I was called as a witness to my own hiring pro­cess ­because a disgruntled White male adjunct was charging the department with racial discrimination ­because I got the job instead of him. Never mind the fact that he had a Master’s degree and I had a PhD. Being fearful that I might get charged at anytime from a White student or colleague was making me physically ill. Given the results of my pap smear, my doctor suggested that I quit the job b­ ecause of what it was ­doing to my body. I know it sounds overdramatic, but it’s actually true in my case: that job would have killed me if I stayed—­which is why I quit.

Both of the preceding stories highlight the very real effect that racism and sexism has on the physical, ­mental, and spiritual health of ­women of color. Asian American w ­ omen, being situated in the gray area by being both ­women of color and, at the same time, model minorities, are acutely aware of being tokenized and not truly belonging within academia. Even in instances where physical health effects w ­ ere not explic­itly mentioned, our respondents commonly reported that interacting with racist or sexist colleagues left them emotionally drained:

130  •  Kieu Linh Caroline Valverde, Cara Maffini Pham, Melody Yee, and Jing Mai

The subtle and overt microaggressions of the men in my department t­ oward me and other female colleagues trying to foster a demo­cratic culture and participate in the department makes me feel terrible. It is demoralizing, depressing, and makes me feel used and taken advantage of by my dep[artment]. Even though I work so hard for my campus, and have not dropped the ball in terms of teaching, ser­vice and research in my dep[artment], I am not rewarded for it ­either in terms of fair and equal raises, or in terms of voice in the dep[artment].

Being punished for speaking up is a form of silencing, which is a common experience for Asian American w ­ omen (Nguyen, 2016). The consequences of silencing are described by the following respondent: “The per­sis­tent discriminatory treatment I face in the department, where the men in positions of authority and power like my chair try to silence me and other female associate professors of color if we disagree with them, is stressful.” Being silenced is a form of being disrespected. It communicates that one’s ideas are not valued. Academic work is the work of ideas; therefore, to be an academic whose ideas are silenced is to be a worker who is not valued. Disrespect can even take on the form of being taken for granted, as this respondent details: In my department I’m largely seen as a “work­horse,” someone who does a lot of bureaucratic, glorified-­secretarial work, ­etc. I think a lot of students and faculty think I’m very NICE and do ­g reat SUPPORT work, but I’m not one of the THINKERS in the department. Students and faculty d­ on’t read/cite my work, ­etc. In part this is ­because I end up teaching a lot of ser­vice courses that ­don’t showcase my own research b­ ecause other faculty d­ on’t want to teach ­those courses but they need to get taught.

­ ese personal biases of their colleagues can translate into withheld academic Th resources, making it almost impossible to effectively perform academic work. One tenured respondent reported that “Some colleagues deliberately try to limit my access to gradu­ate students and hoard resources whenever pos­si­ble.” Often, this phenomenon is justified by claiming that Asian American w ­ omen are d­ oing the “wrong type” of research or that their research is “too personal” ­because it is related to the perceived identities of the researcher. As a result, resources such as funding are siphoned away to more “acceptable” forms and topics of research. “I do think my White and/or male peers who do quantitative work are treated differently since their research gets more funding. For example, my White and/or male peers are asked to collaborate on proj­ects though they may know less about a topic than ­people who are ­people of color and/or ­women.” Asian American ­women are well aware of the re­spect and value accorded to their white and male peers in academia. While the lives of Asian American w ­ omen are marginalized and may indeed be invisible, ­those of their

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white and male colleagues are the normative standard by which they judge their own lives.

Devaluation and Discipline The above phenomenon does not exist in a vacuum. It is a product of the restructured university and its culture of discipline and dismissal (Giroux, 2002; Newfield, 2008). This pre­sents unique challenges for Asian American ­women: they are seen not as academic leaders but as a kind of support staff who should take on more of the ser­vice teaching and even administrative work that is perceived as supportive rather than leadership oriented. Of our respondents, without questions specifically addressing the following issues, 14.4  ­ percent reported that they felt that their research was devalued by their colleagues, 9.4 ­percent felt underappreciated, 6.3 ­percent noted that they feel they are expected to take on more work than their peers, 5.0 ­percent reported incidences where o­ thers w ­ ere condescending, and 4.4 ­percent reported that they are perceived to be easily intimidated. ­Those who do not exist within this behavioral framework are censured by be­hav­ior policing. Be­hav­ior policing was also cited as part of the pressures of existing in academia as Asian American ­women. One respondent simply stated, “My be­hav­ior is monitored in ways that I know my white male colleagues d­ on’t experience.” Many mentioned being expected to fulfill ste­reo­t ypes of Asian American w ­ omen, such as being docile and submissive, or simply had their be­hav­iors scrutinized in ways that o­ thers are not subject to. One respondent described this phenomenon: As feminine-­looking queer Asian, I was expected to be a docile model minority. When I spoke up in departmental and university-­wide conversations as responsible and dedicated colleague, my se­nior colleagues perceived me as “difficult” and stated it in their tenure report without evidence. Th ­ ere was no mechanism in the structure of the tenure pro­cess that would have protected me from such subjective judgement. The department committee quoted lit­er­a­ture on how gender and race affect student evaluations, but dismissed it, stating the lit­er­a­ture does not apply to my case (without evidence as to why it does not apply to my case).

Be­hav­ior policing has its costs. Another respondent described the health impact of having her be­hav­ior policed: “I have been regularly undermined and disciplined for speaking up. . . . ​Th is has made me feel fear, powerlessness and rage. . . . ​This led to anxiety and depression and this cyst in my liver. I felt I had to prove myself. . . . ​No one was able to help me through the transition. . . . ​I cried a lot, slept poorly and felt anxious and miserable.” This effect is further compounded by the gender biases that find their way into the classroom and academic work environment. The following respondent

132  •  Kieu Linh Caroline Valverde, Cara Maffini Pham, Melody Yee, and Jing Mai

highlighted how normalized gender interactions, enhanced by racialized overtones, had affected her experiences in the classroom: During the first year of my PhD program, I ­don’t think I was treated as a serious scholar or with re­spect by my mostly male cohort. For example, I was constantly interrupted and talked over in class and was insulted once for “being newly assertive.” My male colleagues would mostly engage with each other in academic conversations, but not me. It has gotten better since then, but t­ here’s still a culture of male performativity/drinking that I’m not privy to. I think this happened ­because of my race and gender, and also b­ ecause I am about 5 years younger than them.

Twenty ­percent of our sample reported having their authority questioned or challenged by both colleagues and students, with 18.1 ­percent reported feeling disrespected by their students. Th ­ ese instances often took the form of having their qualifications scrutinized or being bypassed by t­ hose below them. In addition, respondents noted that extra ser­vice is often demanded of them without recognition: “My students do not always re­spect me. They challenge the authority of w ­ omen of color in the classroom constantly. They also demand more ser­vice and l­abor from w ­ omen of color. Same goes for colleagues more generally.” Another elaborated, “Students have directly asked me what my educational level/qualifications are or expressed surprise at my expertise in certain areas. They often bypass me altogether and go to the chair or their dean to complain without discussing issues with me. Their comments on teaching evaluations focus on my physical appearance. Except for my close friends, peers seem surprised at my successes or ignore them altogether.” Disrespect also manifested in more subtle ways, such as the per­sis­tent use of informal terms of address and students’ re­sis­tance when trying to change modes of address: “By my 3rd year, I chose to change my form of address to, ‘Professor [name]’ instead of the first name basis used at my small liberal arts college. During my tenure review, anonymous eval[uation]s from former students stated that they did not like this form of address . . . ​stating that I thought I was above my current institution.” This authority-­challenging be­hav­ior is not just l­ imited to students: even colleagues engage in it as well. Sometimes it is manifested in Asian American ­women faculty being accused of benefiting from affirmative action. One instructor was accused by a male colleague of being “hired more ­because of my racial background than ­because of my qualifications.” Our respondents ­were very aware that they w ­ ere being treated with disrespect as a way to subject them to a system of authority; in other words, they ­were being put in their place. As one respondent describes, this can happen even when one is generally respected

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and recognized for scholarly acumen: “Many students and most of my peers have respected me as a serious scholar. Some students and a minority of peers did not re­spect me as a serious scholar, b­ ecause I am perceived as Asian ­woman, queer, and foreigner. For them, my academic competence was threatening. It was an insult for them to be learning something from a person like me.” Some of the most subtle attacks w ­ ere attacks upon their scholarship, since the critique of scholarship is an accepted and encouraged be­hav­ior in academia. One simply summed her experiences by saying, “­People presume I am incompetent.” This experience of being dismissed may sometimes be due to a lack of understanding of research modalities that may be practiced by Asian American ­women, as discussed by the following respondent, “My students do re­spect me as a serious scholar and teacher. [Yet] Many of my peers in my department view scholarship that is not quantitative to be useless and [they] do not understand theory.” Similarly, another scholar said, I have a strong rec­ord of publication and one that outpaces most p­ eople in my department. I think this has been recognized by my colleagues, but my chair has made a comment about how my work is “trendy,” which suggests to me that he might think my work has something to do with a ­matter of timing rather than intellectual merit. I also think that my chair, who does not have a lot of research experience himself, has l­ ittle idea of what constitutes strong research.

The dismissive attitude also often relates to the subject ­matter of the scholarship by Asian American w ­ omen. Respondents often mentioned having their scholarship or entire disciplines scrutinized and devalued, particularly ethnic studies and w ­ omen and gender studies or other disciplines or subject areas that are devalued as being outside of the “mainstream” of academia (Cacho, 2010; Sleeter, 2011; Cacho, 2010). A respondent shares, “­There is negativity t­ owards my sub discipline as a w ­ hole which ends up being targeted at me or my colleagues in our subdiscipline. As a result our views, opinions, contributions ­aren’t valued.” Another explains: “My colleagues are dismissive at worst. I’m ghettoized b­ ecause of my work and my racial/ethnic identity as South Asian” and continues, “Also my work is focused on social justice and works by ­people of color and more con­temporary theory than anyone ­else does in my dep[artment] . . . ​but this work is seen as “edgy”—­not in a good way—­it’s seen as “alternative” and kind of an “extra” or “fringe” to the mainstream, or “real” scholarship.” One respondent summarized this phenomenon with this quote: “Being in interdisciplinary fields such as ­Women’s Studies and Ethnic Studies makes one precariously located in the University. We are underfunded and understaffed. [We] hold ­things together on a shoestring bud­get.”24

134  •  Kieu Linh Caroline Valverde, Cara Maffini Pham, Melody Yee, and Jing Mai

Hiring, Hierarchy, and Health ­Hazards The extreme hierarchy of academia creates an environment that is ripe for abuse, from the first stages of hiring up through ­every review for promotion. Asian American w ­ omen faculty are clustered at the bottom rungs of that hierarchy in adjunct or lecturer positions and as assistant professors on the tenure track. They have relatively few opportunities to sway hiring decisions or to mentor newly hired faculty. Thus, the hierarchy of academia c­ auses more stress on Asian American ­women faculty, who are more likely to be disempowered by ­these structures than white ­women faculty or male faculty (E. W. Chen & Hune, 2011).

Adjuncts Affirmative action and other hiring policies are often not activated for adjuncts, who are hired on an ad hoc basis, often via an informal pro­cess in which they are vetted only by department chairs (Kezar & Gehrke, 2014). This is very dif­ fer­ent from the hiring pro­cess for tenure-­track faculty, which requires adherence to hiring policies, such as equal opportunity (Schaefer et  al., 2015). Tenure-­track hiring also requires reporting to ­human resources and possibly other oversight entities, while adjunct hiring often does not. The stress and health effects of low pay for adjunct work is compounded by lack of benefits (many institutions ­will deliberately avoid hiring adjuncts to teach more than two classes to avoid having to provide health care and other benefits) and extra long commute times (see chapters 8 and 13 in this volume). A respondent eloquently describes how ­these ­factors combined to cause stress and depression: “­A fter quitting, I cobbled together adjunct teaching gigs and worked as an in­de­pen­dent contractor for an educational organ­ization. Although the teaching climate was significantly better, the poverty-­level wages, no benefits, and no job security wreaked havoc on my spirit—­especially as a single mom. The emotional and spiritual stress of living as an underemployed and undervalued adjunct led to bouts of depression.” Tenure Track Although tenure-­track hiring, unlike adjunct hiring, is governed by equal opportunity and other hiring policies meant to increase diversity in the workforce, Asian American ­women academics seeking tenure-­track positions can be daunted by both the saturation of new doctorates in the job market and bias that works against them in hiring. Worry about the uncertainty of the job market was also noted to be a ­factor involved in respondents’ stress, especially when thinking about f­ actors such as “life a­ fter graduation” and “applying for jobs in the job market.” One respondent emphasized the academic job market as “precarious” and “horrible,” which she claimed made it difficult to “achieve that elusive work life balance.”

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­Others highlighted the unique challenges of meeting the expectations of the job market. More than half of the sample (54.8 ­percent) felt that their race or sex prevents or severely hinders their upward mobility in academia. One-­ quarter (25.6 ­percent) of respondents reported that ­there are obstacles that uniquely affect them as a ­woman of color during the tenure pro­cess. When asked to identify what ­those obstacles w ­ ere, several themes emerged in the qualitative responses and ­were quite similar to the sources of stress addressed previously: specifically, sexism (7.5 ­percent), racism (7.5 ­percent), excessive ser­vice (5.6 ­percent), lack of mentorship (3.8 ­percent), student receptivity and teaching evaluations (2.5 ­percent), being held to a higher standard (2.5 ­percent), perceived special privileges and affirmative action (2.5 ­percent), Asian American ­women ste­reo­types (2.5 ­percent), motherhood and pregnancy (2.5 ­percent), interpersonal tensions (1.9 ­percent), not having enough time due to higher demands (1.9 ­percent), having to serve as a diversity advocate (1.9 ­percent), teaching (1.3 ­percent), presumed incompetence (1.3 ­percent), and bullying (1.3 ­percent). Once hired on the tenure track, a faculty member is considered probationary u­ ntil achieving tenure. This means that failing to achieve tenure w ­ ill result in dismissal, often with the granting of a terminal year. The faculty members dismissed are sometimes not allowed to return to the institution at which they ­were not granted tenure, even as adjuncts, and many feel forced to leave academia altogether, making the stakes of achieving tenure very high. As one respondent puts it, “I am generally healthy, however, over the past few years— so, during the time when I have been writing my book and being bullied by the institution in terms of my tenure pro­cess . . . ​I have developed a series of autoimmune skin disorders.” Climbing the ladder of academia requires grabbing certain rungs of achievement. However, Asian American w ­ omen faculty may find the ladder rungless, due to their position as outsiders, as described h ­ ere: Some of my colleagues have created an unhealthy work environment. Some of them, b­ ehind my back and without any evidence did not want to promote me to full professorship. Some of my colleagues simply d­ idn’t like me speaking up against my dep[artment] not following policies, and supporting relinquishment of tenure. Fortunately, the larger college committee overruled the decision of my colleagues and gave me full professorship unanimously. This decision was also upheld by the dean and the president of the college.

In a unique case, a tenured professor took dramatic steps to deal with her situation: “Three years ago I gave up tenure at an elite liberal arts college to move to an untenured position at an art school. In many ways it was incredibly liberating—­though tenure is not offered at my current institution, basically nobody ever gets fired, so the stress of tenure i­ sn’t even on the t­ able.”

136  •  Kieu Linh Caroline Valverde, Cara Maffini Pham, Melody Yee, and Jing Mai

Academia is fraught with hidden standards and unwritten rules. The tenure and promotion pro­cess is often guided by an amalgam of overarching university policies and discipline-­specific policies written by individual academic departments. Th ­ ese policies may be extremely specific, indicating an exact number of articles, books, or other forms of professional achievement and growth, including a list of acceptable publications, or deliberately vague. In ­either case, such policies can be easily manipulated by ­those who may wish to determine a par­tic­u­lar outcome, perhaps based on personal biases. One respondent describes how this affected her: “During my tenure pro­cess, some of my colleagues and the faculty advancement committee treated my scholarship as ‘a personal ­favor to someone ­else’ (editing); ‘dif­fer­ent ­because it’s in ethnic studies’ (articles, editing). I believe they acted this way b­ ecause they did not believe in the scholarly value of ethnic studies.” Achieving tenure is uniquely stressful for w ­ omen of color tenure-­track professors. Many scholars have documented how w ­ omen of color faculty face more stringent and irrationally par­tic­u ­lar standards for tenure, or w ­ omen are expected to work twice as hard to achieve a fraction of their underperforming but entitled male colleagues (Agathangelou & Ling, 2002; Bell, 1994). Our respondents frequently mentioned how their health noticeably deteriorated while ­going up for tenure. Undoubtedly, tenure is a stressful experience for anybody who goes through it, but the hidden standards that are attached specifically to Asian American ­women, coupled with the lack of transparency of the tenure pro­cess, can exacerbate the stress associated with this pro­cess (Agathangelou & Ling, 2002). Stress becomes further exacerbated for faculty who work on the tenure track ­because t­ here is a finality associated with failing to receive tenure. One respondent reported that “depression [manifested] during the tenure track, especially when receiving scathing evaluations and unhelpfully unkind reviews of manuscripts.” Although stress is a constant within academic circles, Asian and Asian American ­women can be more vulnerable than ­others within this atmosphere of competition ­because they are less likely to be mentored or other­wise supported (see prologue to this volume; Li & Beckett, 2006)25 by their se­nior colleagues, and lack of mentoring has been correlated to higher stress levels (Irey, 2013). This makes the already stressful tenure pro­cess even more so for Asian and Asian American ­women. Common obstacles to tenure, cited by our respondents, included being expected to take up extra ser­vice and committee work, behavioral expectations revolving around ste­reo­types, and having their scholarship dismissed. Ser­vice work expectations ­were mentioned repeatedly as a barrier ­toward tenure. Our sample also spoke to the impossible standards that ­women of color academics are held to when being evaluated for tenure. An assistant professor lamented

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“the false belief that I need to prove my worth to my department, knowing I am their one [person of color] hire, even though I have read all the lit­er­a­ture on critical race theory, Presumed Incompetent, ­etc. I cannot seem to break from the cycle of trauma.” A tenure-­track professor shared similar concerns: “I am on the fifth year of my tenure clock, and this past year has been worse than the previous. The pressure is definitely accumulating to a breaking point. I’m angrier than I used to be. And more fatigued.” The additional pressure to represent diversity on numerous committees and at institutional functions can be a significant burden for Asian American ­women faculty who may be chosen for t­hese roles ­because the model minority myth makes ­others assume they w ­ ill be docile and compliant. As the following associate professor describes, “We are given a bigger share of committee ser­vice than White male professors, yet ser­vice counts very ­little for tenure. We are constantly asked to go to extra dinners and events so that we look diverse.” Another professor underscores this idea: “As a w ­ oman of color, I found that the expectations to be pre­sent at so many university functions, to sit on high profile committees, to advocate for students of color (which I ­didn’t mind) on top of teaching/advising/ser­vice/research ­were enormous obstacles ­towards making tenure. I found myself not having enough time for my own research and writing, and was held to higher standards than my white colleagues.”

Marginalization Asian American ­women work hard to educate their colleagues about the value and quality of their work and the significance of journals26 that may seem marginal to dominant disciplines but are integral to the work of Asian American ­women, particularly when that research deals with minority groups: I have been denied tenure a­ fter my department was unan­i­mous in my f­ avor and the faculty evaluation pro­cess was positive all the way through to the presidential level. Th ­ ere is no appeals pro­cess at my institution. With the support of the [American Association of University Professors] (despite t­ here being no chapter at my university) I am figuring out w ­ hether to sue or not, and I’m waiting to hear if I w ­ ill get an exit deal from my current university in return for not suing. I have to go on the job market while also g­ oing through [in vitro fertilization] (while I still have insurance and a dwindling win­dow where I can get paid parental leave; I was just the most instrumental person in getting our maternity leave improved to full pay for a semester, so I guess I might as well try and benefit). Despite having huge support from se­nior colleagues in my field and at my institution, the job market is very tough in my small subfield and I d­ on’t know when a job w ­ ill open up that can work geo­graph­i­cally for my partner and I.

138  •  Kieu Linh Caroline Valverde, Cara Maffini Pham, Melody Yee, and Jing Mai

Re­sis­tance Even as the ­women continue to face hurdles, they also showed resilience and re­sis­tance against mistreatment. Far from seeing themselves as victims or falling into ste­reo­types as passive model minorities, some ­women in in our research took action against perceived injustice and moreover created dif­fer­ent ways to change their situation and safeguard their health. ­Others, for reasons specific to their situation, chose to not visibly challenge their circumstance, while still ­others left academia entirely.

Action One interview respondent, an adjunct professor who is disabled, opted to appeal to her u­ nion to address the hostility within her department but found the “advocacy” she received from the ­union to be “in­effec­tive, and amounted to lip ser­vice in most cases.” Additionally, in her district, “at least two ­union presidents took posts as deans,” creating a “conflict of interest” where their job mobility seemed to be tied to siding with the university against individual faculty grievances. Still determined to fight for her rights, the adjunct professor appealed to a civil rights agency (the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC) and was told that “No unlawful discrimination had occurred, even though the evidence was overwhelmingly in my ­favor.” She had relied on the EEOC, but, as she notes, The EEOC failed to properly or thoroughly investigate my complaints and issued “no cause” findings. Of course, the discrimination continued. It was only when the dean herself was implicated in an unlawful discrimination complaint and dismissed that the harassment and bullying temporarily ­stopped. Such irony. I am currently appealing the EEOC’s determinations through my senator. In total, I have lost approximately $40,000 in potential hourly wages. At this writing, my ­labor ­union still refuses to support my contract rehire rights and my rights as a disabled worker. The u­ nion leadership is comprised almost exclusively of full-­time, tenured professors. Many of ­these full-­time professors desire appointments in the administration. The conflict of interest prevents adjunct[s] from receiving due pro­cess.

This adjunct drew her support from both her academic and personal worlds: her support came in the form of an older Hispanic colleague, a disenchanted ­union officer who had also been a target of bullying, and her husband and ­family. When asked what she would have done differently, she responded: “I would have left teaching to find another source of income. I stayed ­because I enjoy teaching and I am very good at it. Students often ask what other classes I teach ­because they want to take another class with me.”

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Another academic found herself tackling the issue of superficial forms of “diversity” within her institution. Her frustration involved the practice of diversity hires, where coded language is used to dismiss and even undermine qualified applicants. This practice was so glaring that she took it upon herself to make formal complaints to her chair and dean. She received the following reaction: The Dean’s first response was to ask if I was filing a title IX complaint. I told her that I was not filing a title IX, rather I wanted to have a conversation. My Dean was very responsive. She did not get defensive and listened to me. I felt that I was able to make a difference and she has continued to involve me in conversations about diversity issues at the school. The Dean[’s] conciliatory response is in part due to my tenure at the school. As a nontenured faculty member, I am not sure if I would have received the same response.

Her advice to ­others includes the following: Know your rights. ­Don’t quit your job!! All school have a pro­cess and have to comply with title IX. Educate yourself about title IX and the language of discrimination. Consult with your ombudsman/person to get advice. This is usually a confidential meeting, but be aware the ombudsperson works for the school. Document every­thing. Try to work with your school, but if you are a non tenured faculty member you have a lot at stake if you file a title IX complaint. A formal complaint ­will go to the Senate. Do not hesitate to contact the Senate chair, he/she works for you. A lawsuit can cost up to $40,000. Be sure that you have a valid case before you sue your university.

Quiet Re­sis­tance Some of our respondents felt they ­were pushed to the margins of academia, so they chose to stay removed from the institution, knowing that their active participation would make very ­little difference to their standing and treatment. One professor in par­tic­u­lar articulated it this way: “I am pretty much totally UNINVOLVED with my institution, despite a long track rec­ord in my ­career of being highly effective in institutional ser­vice. I also do as ­little as pos­si­ble, voluntarily, for my department, b­ ecause t­ here is no point. I remain highly supportive of students and continue to work with them heavi­ly.” For o­ thers struggling in the acad­emy, however, she believes having a supportive network can make a positive difference: Find your allies, both inside the institution and outside of it and d­ on’t be afraid to lean on them. Be smart and savvy—­the old once burned ­thing. Institutions

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are not actually in the business of change, usually, so pay attention to actions[,] not words. When the actions regarding diversity, justice and e­ tc. do not match the institutional words, pay attention and d­ on’t get idealistic. On the other hand, stay student centered. B ­ ecause that’s where change can happen and where it’s still pos­si­ble to do meaningful work.

While this scholar chose to connect with students but not the university beyond the bare minimum ser­vice commitments, other scholars found work within the administrative ranks empowering and a way to achieve more equitable treatment. One such individual, during efforts to revise the curriculum, experienced backlash from her self-­identified “feminist” white female colleagues. She turned to ­those outside of her department for assistance and advice: “I sought support from faculty of color who w ­ ere my informal network. I also had se­nior leadership at the university counsel me on strategy for h ­ andling the awful personal attacks.” This lead to a successful curriculum change, but she recognized she could have done ­things differently, such as filing an “official complaint of racism.” She warns, “Be aware of grievance policies27 and formal channels as well as informal. Document every­thing!” ­Those who are exiled from academia are typically excluded from conversations around academic climate. The following professor was denied tenure and subsequently left academia without pursuing ­legal or bureaucratic redress. A significant component of her experiences is the internalization and isolation that comes from not hearing about the experiences other w ­ omen or queer ­people of color have within academia. She states: What was most lacking for me back then was any references to experience of other [­women of color/queer ­people of color] who might have been ­going through similar issues. I was never sure ­whether t­ here was something wrong with myself or t­ here ­were prob­lems with the department. It was only a few years ­later that I was able to learn how ­others ­were/are ­going through very similar experience and I realized that what I experienced was microaggression and severely hostile workplace environments.

In addition, gaslighting, or deliberate lack of transparency, from her colleagues contributed to a culture of covert hostility and further marginalization: “Se­nior colleagues in the department kept saying that any lit­er­a­ture on gender and racial discrimination in academia does not apply to their department and that I was the prob­lem. I felt helpless and ­didn’t know how to argue against them or the university back then. (This was several years before volumes like Presumed Incompetent got published.)” Given the silence around the experiences of ­women of color academicians, she states that “I feel like I could have done ­things differently if I had access to more data (beyond my institution) and scholarship

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on [­women of color/queer ­people of color] and tenure, and opportunities to connect with ­those who had similar experience.” Her vision of a more equitable academia includes changes in the tenure decision system to potentially include “external specialists on diversity [who] are required to intervene in departmental and university decisions on tenure” and also a deep cultural shift: I also feel that academic communities need to be more proactive about how to protect our colleagues who are experiencing marginalization and hostility. ­There is too much culture of fear in academia, which prevents p­ eople to act reasonably when their colleagues are in trou­ble. One of the t­ hings that are most traumatic for me is the moments when my colleagues ran away from me on the hallways and months and weeks when none of my colleagues came to visit my office (during the grace year ­a fter denial of tenure).

Although this respondent’s experiences do not sound like a story of re­sis­tance, in a way it is. Despite being forced out of academia, she still conducts her life on her own terms: “One ­thing I did ­after I left the university was to never let anyone make me give up on my research and writing (­People ­were so fast to advise me and help me to give up my academic work and seek alternative ­career paths), I got a major fellowship and also started to teach as adjunct instructor. At the same time I devoted more of my energy to activism, where I felt that my knowledge and ideas w ­ ere valued.” One professor who became department chair found herself attacked by the faculty of her department. Lack of support from her dean worsened the situation, and she was even advised by a trusted mentor to leave her position due to the insufficient support. Her defiant choice to remain in her position garnered some success but came with some costs: I have been able to survive basically by sucking up the irrational and often hostile be­hav­iors in the department. I am proud to have been able to manage the dysfunctional dynamics and work with department members to move forward in ways that help our students, even though I still get depressed, sometimes for days, ­after e­ very department meeting. Organ­izing with allies has been complicated. On the one hand, it has helped so much to have sets of ­people who watch each other[’s] backs and who strategize together. On the other hand, the more a set of faculty of color speak up and support students who advocate for institutional change, the more hostility we bring on ourselves and the more marginalized we become.

If given the opportunity to do t­ hings differently, this scholar said, “For the departmental issues, I think I would have taken a more aggressive stand, even though I was standing alone. I would not trust institutional leadership. I would definitely do the ally-­building and organ­izing work again, although the goals

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of the organ­izing might look dif­fer­ent.” She underscores the importance of organ­izing for collective action and support and adds: I think it’s impor­tant to connect individual experiences with an understanding of institutional issues as well as the larger contexts of higher education. . . . ​ Stronger faculty governance would be helpful for building better faculty relationships and ways of understanding the cooperative aspects of our work (and the dangers of playing into divide and conquer leadership tactics). Also, have ­legal resources at hand (find attorneys who know academic employment law) in case they are needed.

Even when speaking up may garner negative reactions and even direct hostile actions, the scholars quoted above took their chances instead of remaining ­silent or ­doing nothing.

Wellness In the previous section, we documented some of the actions that our respondents have taken to shield themselves from the racist and sexist onslaughts of their colleagues and superiors. However, re­sis­tance does not always appear as overt action against administration. Often, merely performing self-­care and one’s continued existence within academia can be revolutionary acts. Our respondents listed a variety of ways they have maintained their physical, m ­ ental, and spiritual wellness in a hostile work climate. When asked about ­factors that contribute to their current lifestyle, 63.98 ­percent of respondents reported engaging in self-­care and resilience building. They emphasized physical and psychological well-­being through physical activity, healthy diet, spirituality, social support, and hobbies. Respondents discussed the importance of balance through a variety of activities, such as “exercise, spiritual beliefs, ­family, social networks” and “regular exercise, daily meditation, eating well.” One participant explained that she “started a mindfulness program which I find very helpful. My partner is En­glish and believes that work stops at 5 p.m. and does not take place on the weekend. I try to learn from that [point of view] and emulate it. I get lots of exercise. On the other hand I prob­ably drink a bit more than is ideal.” Another described her balance of activities: “supportive and fulfilling work environment. Regular individual therapy, ­couples therapy. Support groups. Yoga.” (See chapter 9 for details on the constructive and destructive modes of self-­care chosen by Asian American ­women academics.) For ­others, spirituality and self-­compassion have been essential to their success: I think the ­thing that has been most integral to my healthy life is recommitting to spiritual work through meditation, d­ oing daily affirmations, and engaging in practices of self-­love and self-­care. It is precisely this emphasis on my

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spiritual health that has made me feel grounded and at peace despite the fact that my personal and ­career life are undergoing major transformation.

Though academia is not known as a welcoming and tolerant space for p­ eople to express their spiritual beliefs, w ­ omen in our survey clearly utilized this personal and cultural resource in order to fight off attacks while making sure to heal all their wounds, including ones of the spirit.28 In addition to leaning on one’s spiritual beliefs, common coping skills mentioned by our respondents include having and maintaining healthy relationships, getting adequate sleep, utilizing therapy and counseling, healthy eating, spending adequate time with ­family, regular exercise, demanding reasonable work hours and taking time off, mindfulness, and taking medi­cations to help treat serious m ­ ental health issues. Some found that the best coping strategy was to leave academia (for other examples, see chapters 8 and 13, this volume). When asked “What are your coping strategies to deal with stress in academia and in your personal life?” several themes overlapped with the healthy lifestyle responses. Respondents discussed seeking support from other ­women, peers, and mentors in academia for emotional and professional support. The need that ­these w ­ omen articulate for additional support highlights the crisis that has been caused by the lack of Asian American w ­ omen in the higher ranks of academia. Related to this, our respondents noted the importance of having a strong network of colleagues. O ­ thers discussed achieving balance by compartmentalizing work and ­family life. Some suggested the importance of g­ oing to counseling, engaging in religion or spiritual practices, having a pet, and hobbies.

Conclusion: Work-­Related Stress and the ­Future ­ ere are many layers to the stressors experienced by Asian American w Th ­ omen. Like other scholars in academia, Asian American ­women face the typical academic issues related to teaching, research, and ser­vice expectations. However, as w ­ omen of color, Asian American w ­ omen experience additional stressors in the form of prejudice and discrimination (Meyer, Schwartz, & Frost, 2008). For Asian American ­women scholars, ­these stressors can be even more specialized, like experiencing increased stress around the model minority ste­reo­type, where Asians are perceived to perform better than o­ thers ­because of their race, which thus devalues their efforts and training (Noh & Assembly, 2013). Additionally, Asian American ­women are perceived as especially passive, nonconfrontational, and thus easily bullied (Pyke & Johnson, 2003). Our study reveals how dynamics par­tic­u­lar to Asian American ­women in the academic workplace can contribute to negative psychological and physical health outcomes.29 Cognizant of ­these dynamics, our research uncovered a troubling phenomenon where the physical and ­ mental well-­ being of Asian

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American w ­ omen scholars is jeopardized by institutional discrimination and prejudice based in part on their gender, race, ethnicity, and other societal markers. The academic pipeline “leaks” for Asian American w ­ omen at a much higher rate than for Asian American men or even white ­women, meaning that while Asian American and other ­women may be granted doctorates and even be recruited for tenure-­track positions, they w ­ ill be much less likely to be tenured and promoted to full professor (see prologue and chapter 2, this volume; E. W. Chen & Hune, 2011; Wolfinger, Mason, & Goulden, 2008). According to our findings, an alarming 74.4 ­percent of Asian American ­women surveyed are coping with physical or ­mental health prob­lems caused or exacerbated by workplace stressors. We can infer, from the sheer amount of health prob­lems with which Asian American w ­ omen cope, that the productivity of t­ hese academics is negatively impacted. As Esaki argues in chapter 9 of this volume, this health crisis can be attributed at least partially to the disjunction between the false image of the university as a bastion of impartial meritocracy and its ­actual construction on racist and sexist structures. Academic institutions report and define sickness and disability in a way that absolves the institution from blame, where systemic injustices, such as a culture of bullying,30 are reduced to “intrapersonal prob­lems,” if they are indeed talked about at all. In academia (and society at large), physical and m ­ ental health prob­lems are conceptualized as the pathologies of individual p­ eople instead of the natu­ral reaction to an inherently destructive system (Williams, 2002). Many of our respondents reported the lack of support and accommodations they received from their academic institutions for existing and developed illnesses and disabilities as inciting ­factors in exacerbating their health prob­lems. The sheer number of stories about the failing health of Asian American ­women academics ­ought to alarm university leadership and spur them into action to rectify t­ hese prob­lems. However, within the institution, the onus falls squarely on the few victims who dare to speak up to prove that their health prob­lems stem from mistreatment in academia (Exum, Menges, et al., 1984; Khoo, 2010; Salin, Tenhiälä, et al., 2014). It is in this context that we conducted our research, through which we ultimately found evidence of high rates of physical and m ­ ental illness rooted in academic ­careers and caused by aspects of the academic system itself. But it is not enough to attribute ­these failings to the individuals, departments, disciplines, or specific universities. Asian American w ­ omen’s failing health is a reflection of the toxic environment that festers within the entire institution of academia. Many have uncovered the inherent racism and sexism around which academia is built (Gutiérrez y Muhs et al., 2012), yet this is rarely conceptualized in the context of Asian American w ­ omen and has not, to our knowledge, been connected to their health and larger structural injustices. This research closes that gap.

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The truth is that Asian American ­women are heavy targets of discrimination in academia ­because of their perceived vulnerabilities; the consequence has been that their health is declining in ­great numbers b­ ecause of this onslaught. If other groups experience ­these same levels of attacks, they may also suffer the same ill health. Ultimately, this research advises that if academic institutions choose to ignore the warning signs and continue to operate without accountability, they make themselves liable for workplace lawsuits, actions by u­ nions, and other efforts by t­ hose affected to radically change the structure of the acad­emy. At the start of this chapter, we introduced you to the personal experience of the lead author of this chapter. Although she had observed throughout her gradu­ate school ­career the severe health issues that plagued ­women of color scholars, not making the connections between academic structural injustices and their declining health, she entered an academic ­career with all the heart and optimism of a young assistant professor. As the months and years passed and she faced one form of discrimination ­after another, sometimes even at the hands of ­those that looked like her and ­those she considered friends, she chose to ignore the warning signs instead of engaging with the red flags. As a result, her sense of isolation and worthlessness grew. She did not want to believe that the academic institution could breed and harbor such causticity, so she instead internalized much of the oppression. That and the stresses of a difficult tenure ­battle resulted in a severe shock to her body. In the midst of the tenure fight, she lost her child at nearly six months of term, underwent cardiac arrest, was considered brain dead for ninety minutes, and, ­after being rescued, fell into a coma. Her doctors told her she was not supposed to have lived (Valverde, 2013). Although this professor is miraculously alive ­today, she still paid too heavy a cost. Unfortunately, her situation is hardly unique. Asian American ­women scholars defy the odds through their existence within a system that refuses to acknowledge their physical, m ­ ental, and spiritual pain. Their w ­ ill to survive is revolutionary. The authors anticipate that this chapter w ­ ill spark conversations around ways to combat the both the kyriarchal and hierarchical natures of academia and that, slowly but surely, Asian American ­women scholars ­will begin to articulate the traumas to which they are collectively subject, with the hope that ­these stories, like the wooden shoes of the first saboteurs, w ­ ill clog the gears of this killing machine and fi­nally grind it to a halt before any ­others are harmed.

Notes 1 According to Wu and Jing (2011), “The advancement of Asian female scientists and engineers in STEM ­careers lags ­behind not only men but also White ­women and ­women of other underrepresented groups.” (p. 82).

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2 . As E. S. Lee (2014) explains: “The Asian American ­woman’s identification as a model minority ambivalently traps her as dichotomously inauthentic. It establishes a false dichotomy: the poor Asian American w ­ oman is inauthentic ­because of her inability to achieve economic upward mobility following the model minority theory, whereas the model minority Asian American w ­ oman is inauthentic b­ ecause of the assimilation practices demanded for economic mobility.” (p. 147). 3 The term “microaggressions” was coined by Chester M. Pierce in 1970 to describe the phenomenon of brief, commonplace verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities. Mary Rowe, in 1973, introduced “microinequities” and “microaffirmations” to describes microaggressions inclusive of sex and gender. Sue, Capodilupo, et al. (2007) describe microaggressions as “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, ­whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults t­ oward ­people.” (p. 271). Given the rise of the usage of the term “microaggression,” some have taken liberty to appropriate the term to use in extremely po­liti­cally correct ways that are acontextual and ahistorical, essentially rendering it useless and thus leaving targeted individuals defenseless to explain the chronic discrimination they experience. 4 Outcomes of stress can range from healthy effects, such as enhanced immune function (Dhabhar, 2012), to negative outcomes, such as digestive issues, cancer or tumors, reproductive difficulties, and headaches or migraines (Dhabhar, 2014; Wacogne, Lacoste, et al., 2003). Psychological health issues impacted by stress include self-­esteem, confidence, depression, and anxiety (Hammen, Kim, et al., 2009; Zuckerman, 1989). 5 Racism is regarded as a traumatic stressor that correlates to poor physical and ­mental health (Harrell, 2000; Williams & Mohammed, 2013). 6 To mitigate the effects of t­ hese stressors, individuals may utilize coping mechanisms, some of which are healing and ­others that are not. See chapter 9 for a detailed study of specific coping mechanisms used by Asian American w ­ omen academics. 7 Esaki’s chapter in this volume (chapter 9) seeks to redress the inattention to spiritual health. 8 See Snyder and Dillow (2015, t­ able 315.20). Most organ­izations or institutions that collect data on Asian American faculty do not disaggregate Asian from Asian American. This is significant ­because Asian immigrant faculty are largely members of the dominant group in their culture, as opposed to Asian American faculty, who have been socialized very differently as members of minority groups in the United States. Further, as Takeyama’s describes in chapter 7 of this volume, Asian immigrant faculty are especially vulnerable to the structural inequalities of the academic workplace. 9 As of 2009, ­women faculty comprise, on average, 42 ­percent of full-­time faculty, while ­women ­were 57 ­percent of undergraduate students and 59 ­percent of gradu­ate students (Curtis, 2011). The demographics of faculty becomes increasingly more white and male as one rises in ­either academic rank (from contingent to full professor) (Snyder & Dillow, 2015; t­ able 315.20) or institutional ranking (from community colleges to Ivy League) (S. Ho, 2011; Hune, 2011). 10 See chapter 13 for a closer discussion of social media spaces where female of color scholars are able to discuss their experiences in academia.

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11 ­Because of this anonymity, and the self-­defined nature of the term “Asian American ­woman,” we are not able to disaggregate Asian immigrant faculty from Asian American faculty. We recognize that separating t­ hese categories could yield useful information; however, for the purposes of this study, t­ hese distinctions are not made. Takeyama’s essay in this volume (chapter 7) details stressors par­tic­u­lar to Asian immigrant faculty. 12 ­Future studies may be drawn from ­these rich resources. 13 Yen Le Espiritu describes “pan-­ethnic identity” as dif­fer­ent ethnic groups identifying themselves as a single entity along po­liti­cal, social, or economic interests (Espiritu, 1992). 14 Health issues can be severe, like cancer, which is a leading cause of death among Asian Americans. Other significant health issues for this heterogeneous population include heart disease, diabetes, suicide, and Alzheimer’s disease, specifically among older Asian Americans (Yoo, Musselman, et al., 2014). 15 Vari­ous disorders that do not fit into one of ­these categories comprised another 18.8% of the health prob­lems reported by the sample. 16 For our study, a ten-­point scale was used to mea­sure stress (1 = no stress, 10 = very stressed), and the average stress level of respondents was 6.96 (SD = 2.09). Though not explic­itly mentioned in our study, anecdotal evidence shows that work-­related injuries such as carpal tunnel or repetitive stress injury seem prevalent for Asian American ­women in academia. 17 Sometimes ­mental health issues are exacerbated by a reluctance to seek support ser­vices or assistance of any kind, particularly among newer immigrants who feel their experiences are isolated (Atkinson & Gim, 1989; Augsberger, Yeung, et al., 2015; Spencer, Chen, et al., 2010). As a pos­si­ble result of the compounding of the causal f­ actors and disinclination to seek support and a lack of culturally sensitive support ser­vices, Asian American ­women are the demographic that is at one of the highest risks for attempting suicide. The risk of suicide for Asian American ­women academics was highlighted by the suicide of well-­known historian Iris Chang. Though this study did not ask respondents to discuss suicide specifically, we know that “East Asian American ­women have the highest suicide rates of all ­women over the age of 65 years in the USA” (Mc­Ken­zie, Serfaty, & Crawford, 2003, p. 100); and “U.S.-­born Asian American w ­ omen (15.9%) have much higher percentage for [suicidal] ideation than the national estimates” (Duldulao, Takeuchi, & Seunghye, 2009, p. 285). According to Eliza Noh and Assembly’s 2013 study, in “1981–2010, [Asian and Pacific Islander] females had the highest rates of suicide across race from ages 5–9 and 70 + and the second highest rates from 20–69” (slide 2). This is not to imply that U.S. ­mental health ser­vices are the only and best outlet to seek assistance. In fact, our study showed that a significant number of Asian American ­women scholars found alternative means to deal with wellness issues based on their needs and what was culturally relevant to them. See the “Wellness” section of this chapter for more in-­depth explanation. 18 The online job site CareerCast​.­com (2015) claims that university professors top their “Jobs Rated” report for “least stressful jobs of 2013.” Kensing (2013) noted, “The field’s high growth opportunities, low health risks and substantial pay provide a low-­stress environment that’s the envy of many c­ areer professionals.” The same site had (tenured) professors at number three least stressful job in 2015. Th ­ ese types of lists regularly appear in popu­lar print and online news, giving an erroneous view of academia, especially as it pertains to Asian American ­women.

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Asian American w ­ omen are not centered in surveys from which t­ hese lists are drawn. We should note that t­ here has been some backlash to claims that professors experience less stress than t­ hose in other fields. See the addendum of Susan Adams’s (2013) Forbes article and Tyler Kingkade’s (2013) piece in the Huffington Post. 19 In a study on the use of m ­ ental health ser­vices by Asian American ­women with a history of depression and suicide, Augsberger et al. (2015) found that “When discussing reasons for using substances, participants reported that substances numbed the pain and/or made them feel temporarily happy” (p. 8). Being employed and being highly acculturated are ­factors that correlate with higher use of alcohol among Asian American w ­ omen, who other­wise tend t­ oward abstemiousness, at least partially due to what is commonly called “Asian flushing syndrome” (Collins, 2002). Alcohol and drug use can make w ­ omen more susceptible to sexual harassment or abuse (Nolen-­Hoeksema, 2004). Asian Americans are underserved in drug and alcohol treatment and are less likely to seek help, although they are just as likely as other groups to need preventative and other care (Evans, Pierce, et al., 2012). 20 In a related study published in 2002, ­a fter interviews with ­women of color in academia, Caroline Sotello Viernes Turner identified five themes. They included “(1) feeling isolated and under-­respected; (2) salience of race over gender; (3) being underemployed and overused by departments and/or institutions; (4) being torn between ­family, community, and c­ areer; and (5) being challenged by students.” We found from our data that Asian American ­women scholars experience all of ­these same issues, with deleterious effects to their health (Turner 2002, p. 80). 21 Commenting on multiple roles that faculty play in the classroom, Philpot 2014 noted, “In addition to their work with students in the classroom, university faculty engage in many other roles with students, such as mentors and role models. Noel and Smith (1996) found that students of all racial groups prefer to disclose information to a faculty member of their own race or ethnicity, especially if that information pertained to racial, academic, or other sensitive topics” (Philpot, 2014, p. 11). 22 Colorism, in which darker skin tones are devalued compared with lighter ones, also affects Asian American ­women, though differently than it has been noted to affect African American w ­ omen (Keith & Monroe, 2016; Rondilla & Spickard, 2007). 23 See chapter 9, this volume. 24 See chapters 1 and 4 of this volume for more on the vulnerability of ethnic studies. 25 Irey (2013) noted, “Mentees often become more productive with their work, gain networking skills and c­ areer eminence, and become able to h ­ andle stress better (Allen & Eby, 2007; Johnson, 2007). . . . ​Asian American w ­ omen are frequently excluded from an institution’s mentoring program (Austria & Austria, 2010). Yet, what is known is that Asian American w ­ omen continue to lack access to se­nior faculty’s mentoring and lag b­ ehind in obtaining leadership roles (Hansman, 2002)” (p. 35). 26 ­These journals include MELUS, Amerasia, the Journal of Asian American Studies, the Asian American Literary Review, and even nonacademic publications such as Hyphen Magazine. 27 Grievance policies govern the pro­cess by which individuals who have been harassed, bullied, discriminated against, and so on, can seek reparations from their institution. However, ­these policies, although they may include some

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references to race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and other classes that are protected ­under the Equal Opportunity Act, often fail to provide real protection (see chapter 14, this volume; Moore & Cooper, 2004). 28 For further discussion of the ways in which the acad­emy is in odds with spiritual beliefs and how ­these beliefs can and have allowed ­women of color to cope with harm to their health, physical and spiritual, see Shahjahan (2005) and Wyld & Fredericks (2015). 29 Psychological health issues include difficulties with self-­esteem, confidence, depression, and anxiety. 30 See chapter 14 of this volume and Keashly and Neuman (2012) on bullying in higher education.

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Part III

“You Are Unwise to Lower Your Defenses” The Phantom Menace In the midst of their famous ­battle scene, Darth Vader warns Luke Skywalker not to lower his defenses, a comment designed not to protect his son but as a form of psychological assault. From gradu­ate school throughout academic ­careers, similar advice is given by se­nior mentors. This perpetuates an atmosphere of fear and anxiety; it encourages the building of defenses rather than alliances; ultimately, this fear functions as a mechanism to control and limit academics to prevent them from using their tools of inquiry and knowledge to critique the institution. Thus, Part 3 explores the subtleties and insidious nature of the strug­ gles faced by Asian American w ­ omen in academia. In her poem, “The Cost of Speaking,” W. P. outlines what we have come to learn is the cost of speaking out and speaking up, that we w ­ ill be “shushed, shunned, shamed,” but speaking out is the way to save ourselves, change the system, and prevent harm to ­others. Shannon Deloso describes the pro­cess by which she, as an undergraduate Asian American ­woman, recognizes the ways in which academia attempts to co-­opt and silence student activism through her autoethnographic essay in chapter 4. The damage of academia happens not only in the form and structure of the acad­emy; it can also result from the content of the education provided, as described by doctoral candidate Kaozong  N. Mouavangsou, in chapter 5, an educational autoethnography combined with a study of six Hmong families’ attitudes ­toward education and gender biases. 159

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In chapter 6, Cindy Nhi Huynh reframes her gradu­ate school experiences through Gloria Anzaldúa’s seven stages of conocimiento, in order to heal and reconcile the mindbodyspirit of ­women of color in pursuit of PhDs. ­There are fewer academic positions than ­there are new PhDs ­every year, making t­ hose who get such jobs feel as if they are extremely lucky. For international Asian ­women scholars, getting the job is just the start of a painful uphill ­battle, as such institutions are ill prepared and generally uninterested in supporting such scholars through the tenure and promotion pro­cess, as Akiko Takeyama describes in chapter 7. In return for the benefits of the unique perspectives, skills, and transnational connections they offer, academic institutions should support such scholars, but too often fail to do so. ­A fter sixteen years of teaching at Ivy League institutions, Rani Neutill discusses in chapter 8 how ­these conditions eventually lead to her to determine “How to Leave Academia,” despite de­cades of investment in a ­career that defined her selfhood ­until it failed her like an abusive relationship.

Note Chapter title: Kazanjian, H. G. (Producer), & Marquand, R. (Director). (1983). Star Wars: Episode VI—­Return of the Jedi [Motion picture]. United States: Lucasfilm.

The Cost of Speaking BY W. P. the cost of speaking It marks you a black-­sheep, boat-­rocker, loser, misfit, maverick, mother-­f-er, mad-­creature in the attic . . . ­You’re shushed, shunned, shamed, then shoved into the court where money equals power equals truth. ­You’re stripped naked: internship, study abroad, sports, grants, research, publishing, travel, work, dignity, friends, colleagues, shelter, food, peace, joy, your rights to be a student, teacher, h ­ uman, ­woman, your plans de vidas: your reason to live. Every­one flees from you: colleagues, “friends,” publisher who has published six of your books, claiming “­We’re your h ­ ouse and ­we’ll publish ­every word you write . . .” You feel alone in the jungle, surrounded by thorns, vines, fire ants, scorpions, snakes, pythons, owls, hyenas, wolves, each waiting to jump on you . . . Before they take you down, y­ ou’re already torn from inside: doubt, betrayal, bewilderment, outrage—­what have I done to deserve this? The worst is fear: losing your job, shelter, c­ hildren, parents, friends, publisher, community, country, every­thing ­you’ve been working for—­your dream, belief, hope. Your core is shaken. You ­can’t eat, sleep, concentrate, care for your ­children . . . ​ you cry, scream, ­tremble, sweat . . . ​your mouth tastes ­bitter, dry, stuffed with cotton . . . ​you lie awake all night long . . . ​you jerk awake gasping and whimpering . . . ​you alternate between diarrhea and constipation . . . ​your

161

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heart palpitates . . . ​your breath stinks . . . ​your ­temples pound with migraines . . . ​you ­can’t eat, talk, yawn from TMJ . . . ​your innards twist like a boa constrictor . . . ​your world spins into a vertigo. You die young, depending on your strength, your w ­ ill to live. the cost of not speaking You still die young, depending on your level of conscience. It eats you up from inside, starting from the heart, up to your throat, tongue, teeth, eyes, ­temples, brain, down to your stomach, spleen, liver, guts, kidney, back, limbs . . . You try to justify your silence: internships for good grades, good grades to gradu­ate, graduation to get a job, job to pay off the loans ticking like time bombs. Silence to keep the job that feeds the kids and keeps them sheltered; silence to secure grants for research proj­ects that secure the job, promotion, re­spect, happiness . . . And you work 24/7 to make beauty, laughter and dreams, for c­ hildren, for students from Kindergarten-­to-­g raduate schools, for the se­n iors, the poor, the sick . . . ​You feed t­ hose misfits, mavericks and losers with food, money, poetry, story, hope . . . ​pulling them out of the pit one by one, turning them into superstars, warriors, poets, writers, artists, activists . . . ​you give your bone marrow, not for money, but out of your conscience. Yet your win­dows and doors shut one by one, with nails and invisible glue: no more grants, funds to teach, field trips, visitors; y­ ou’re put on academic probation constantly; ­you’re forbidden to intern outside the campus, or study abroad, therefore you c­ an’t gradu­ate; your tenure is threatened, denied . . . ​Before you know it, ­you’re in a pit alone, airless . . . You start rotting from inside: IBS, anemia, depression, tidal fever, night sweating, weight gain, weight loss, blurry vision, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, cancer . . . You tell yourself: I’m picking the right ­battle to fight; let ­others speak, and I’ll second, as you watch your big-­mouth colleagues taken down and out one by one, your brilliant misfit students on probation, your friends declaring bankruptcy, homes taken away by the bank and law firm that also represents your boss charging $800 an hour that you’ll end up paying if you lose in court . . . Your conscience begins to gnaw its way through the organs: acid reflux, ulcer, alternation between diarrhea and constipation, manic depression, cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, Lupus, Graves’ Disease . . . ​ In the long silence, the body attacks itself as an e­ nemy, the body becomes an ­enemy . . .

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reasons to speak ­You’re marked anyway, if y­ ou’re a minority, a misfit, a non-­conformist, a mad ­woman in the attic . . . ​­you’re not the same, ­will never be. You ­can’t hide or pretend. Your body hums with the urge of a volcano. Once a maverick, forever a maverick. Once a big mouth, forever a big mouth. It’s the essence of being alive, our hallmark, our plans de vidas. ­There’s no other way to live.

Narrative In 2010, the college denied my full professor promotion application, for the ­simple reason that I was not “good enough,” even though my research, teaching, and ser­vice ­were way ahead of my white male colleague who got a second very rare early promotion that year. I appealed to the college. An Appeal Committee was formed. It found serious procedural violations and recommended that the president reopen my case. The president rejected the recommendation. Meanwhile the retaliation started from all fronts: blocked funding for grants, travels, teaching, research; harassment from coordinators and administrators. When the provost told me to my face that I was simply not good enough, that all my books cannot be compared to a single article published by a white assistant professor, I filed the complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The federal agent was floored by the evidence and started the investigation on the college. The retaliation accelerated as the investigation went on. On December 21, 2012, the president hired five top l­awyers from the most feared law firm to file a lawsuit against me, to shut me down and force me out of the college once for all. The ­lawyers did their homework on Chinese culture and designed their strategy: file the suit on the Mayan End of the World Day, deposition on the Chinese New Year, and trial on 4/14/2014, the death number for Chinese. The firm convinced the judge to skip the required mediation procedure before the trial, arguing that no mediation or reconciliation was pos­si­ble. They demanded that I pay for their l­egal fee, $800 hourly for each l­awyer. My counsel had a ner­vous breakdown. I gave her acu­punc­ture treatments to lift her spirits. She told me she could no longer represent me, and I must find other ­lawyers. I interviewed a bunch. They all knew the college well through their own cases, and they all shook their heads, telling me to duck and run, b­ ecause “the tsunami is coming and the atomic bomb is dropping! The college is having a showdown of ‘shock and awe,’ and ­there’s nothing we can do to save you.”

4

Precariously Positioned Asian American W ­ omen Students’ Negotiating Power in Academia SHANNON DELOSO

Abstract As the College of Ethnic Studies representative and incoming president of the San Francisco State University Associated Students, Incorporated, Shannon Deloso negotiated with the administration to defend and advance the College of Ethnic Studies during a time of crisis and mediated on behalf of four student hunger strikers. Deloso describes her activism work for the protection of precariously positioned students, professors, departments, and colleges. She also includes her strategies for resurrecting and protecting true intellectual exchange, relevant education, and collaborative solidarity between professors and students in universities. Revealing the tactics used by universities to silence students, Deloso analyzes methods by which Asian American ­women students can reclaim their power while negotiating with university administration.1

Introduction At a public university renowned for its radical student activism demanding a relevant education, a young Asian American student leader ­faces her fears and 165

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rallies to defend ethnic studies against the university administration’s overt and blatant attacks: she f­ aces her fears of inadequacy to speak at a public gathering in front of hundreds of her peers, her professors, and the president of her university. On February 25, 2016, at 7 a.m., before that public gathering, she runs around trying to get as much done as pos­si­ble before what feels like a war is about to begin. Exhausted from the sleepless nights organ­izing with o­ thers and trying to find answers, worried and anxious, she asks herself, “Is this the right ­thing to do? Am I ­really ­going to fight against authority when I was raised all my life to re­spect t­ hose who are older and who know better?” As hundreds of students, teachers, community members, and news outlets stand outside of the one and only Ethnic Studies and Psy­chol­ogy Building, students yell out chants and hold up posters. In solidarity, a diverse group of students, faculty, and community members march to a meeting with the San Francisco State University (SFSU) administration that students have demanded. I am filled with questions and doubts as I make my way with supporters and we try to fit nearly 800 p­ eople in the SFSU Seven Hills Conference Center (Villegas, 2016). The center is jam-­packed, p­ eople shoulder to shoulder, yelling from ­every side. It is also hot as hell, making me feel even more ner­vous. The pressure is on; thousands of questions are racing through my head: “Who am I? Why am I ­here? Who the hell are you? Who do you think you are, trying to speak for t­ hese students, t­ hese ­people, let alone the College of Ethnic Studies? What do you know? ­You’re just a Filipina girl who ­doesn’t know anything, ­aren’t you?”

“Never Once Considering”: Asian American W ­ omen before Awakening As a first-­generation college student and Asian American undergraduate ­woman student leader from a marginalized ethnic community (Filipina American), I and ­those like me are seen as having l­ittle voice to critique academic institutions. Due to gendered, racial, and ethnic biases, we are perceived as too passive and obedient to successfully enact structural change within the university. By identifying university administrative silencing tactics ­toward Asian American ­women student activists, we want Asian American w ­ omen students and faculty members to know that they have a lot of power in advocating for their self-­protection and needs within the acad­emy. Our movements are a part of a long-­standing strug­gle to expose the conflicts of interest between students’ needs and the corporate, neoliberal agendas of the university—­such as downsizing and even destroying ethnic studies and decreasing funding for liberal arts and humanities departments. I am fighting to

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protect the ethnic studies–­based belief that the university should support students’ growth as grassroots leaders who improve the lives of their communities. By reclaiming the narrative of Asian American ­women student leaders through telling our experiences, I believe that ­these leaders can grow by voicing their opinions and advocacy in front of university administration and being at the forefront of both movements and organ­izing. Another step in one’s growth also includes connecting p­ eople together so that they all can contribute to the movement in vari­ous ways to expand their agency as activists. They can also become leaders who seek the truth through research. I believe that we should train the next generation of activist students so that they become aware of how student activism and student leadership can become structurally restricted over time. I experienced unjust methods of suppression and barriers to activist work when activism does not serve the neo-­corporate university’s agendas of maintaining students’ obedience, silence, and passivity. In the California State University (CSU) system, I find that restrictions on student leadership stem from shared governance with the university administration as a subtle form of inflicting unequal power dynamics over students. Shared governance and approval systems are used as systemic forms of hindering student activists’ autonomy. Of course, when student activists get too far out of control, many campuses have histories of involving and sometimes overusing physical force through the police (Fallows, 2011). According to Asian American ­lawyer, activist, and law professor Mari Matsuda, by “looking from the bottom,” we can see how the large numbers of Asian American ­women in the undergraduate population can be activated, can be awoken, and can use that awareness collectively (Matsuda, 1987). The CSU system’s administrations have designed systems to keep students sleeping by disempowering and depoliticizing student activism. We cannot remain asleep. We must awaken. We must liberate our hearts and minds to f­ ree the truth from layers of structural deception. We must be reborn into activist students. We may not often have much individual power, but collectively we can make power­ ful changes.

A Methodology The qualitative research methodology begins with my autoethnography in which I narrate and analyze significant experiences as an Asian American ­woman student becoming an activist student (Chang, 2008).2 Informed by this autoethnography, I conducted an in-­person interview with an Asian American ­woman who had come before me as a student activist, to form a deeper understanding of my respective location as an Asian American ­woman activist student in this par­tic­u­lar historical moment. I developed strategies for Asian

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American w ­ omen activist students to help them succeed in making social change. Fi­nally, I reflected on my experiences in the context of my interviews and research on t­ hese issues. My autoethnography and interviews trace a specific genealogy of Asian American w ­ omen activist students as part of the student-­centered movement to create and sustain ethnic studies within the university. I pay special attention to intersections of gendered and racialized expectations within pan-­ethnic and racially diverse movements. I also examine how Asian American w ­ omen leaders function at the forefront of t­ hese movements.

“I Was a Dif­fer­ent Person Then”: Autoethnographies of Becoming Activist Students In the following autoethnography, I explore my individual pro­cess of awakening as an activist student, while the CSU school uses the structures of student government and shared governance as a system of control. My university resides in a uniquely small city with a booming Asian American population, one that is seen as being both progressive and richly diverse. In the following autoethnographic narrative, I detail my experience of fighting for the College of Ethnic Studies, which taught me that I could fight and, in the pro­cess, analyze how I became transformed from a student activist into an activist student.

In Defense of Ethnic Studies ­ fter hearing the news from one of my professors that the College of Ethnic A Studies bud­get would be slashed by the SFSU administration, the first ­thing that I did was head to the dean’s office, along the way talking to faculty to get some answers. We got word that ­there was ­going to be a College of Ethnic Studies faculty meeting in two days and that students would not be turned away if they showed up. Throughout t­ hose two days, I continued to try to search for understanding, asking students what they knew and educating them about what I had heard. When the day of the meeting came, I sat in the back of the room making space for ­others to come in. As we all settled down, Dean Kenneth Monteiro explained that the president, provost, and administration ­were ­going back on a promised moratorium to changes to ethnic studies, pending the final report of a CSU system-­wide Task Force on Ethnic Studies that had been convened when it became apparent that many of the CSU system’s ethnic studies programs and departments w ­ ere u­ nder extreme threat or had already been dismantled (Ayestas, 2014). President Les Wong had contravened this moratorium by claiming that his cuts ­were not “new” cuts but that he was no longer backfilling for overspending, which he laid at the door of the College

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of   Ethnic Studies. Dean Monteiro disputed the president’s claim, stating instead that the college had been chronically underfunded by the university administration, which had failed to provide even the state-­mandated funding to cover tenure-­line faculty salaries (Flaherty, 2016). Meanwhile, the college had also been pressured to make up the difference through fund-­raising, which created an extreme additional burden on the college administration and faculty, the smallest of the six SFSU colleges. As a student, I was infuriated to hear that the college that so defined our university was being threatened so deeply. We felt that we needed to do something, and we needed to do it now. We w ­ ere a group of a dozen-­plus students who moved swiftly to find the president and confront him about the situation. We saw the president by the entrance to the Administration Building, and a confrontation began with a Latino male transfer student talking in a respectful way about the conditions of the College of Ethnic Studies. As he continued to speak, he shared how cutting ethnic studies would be detrimental not only to our college experience but to the f­ uture of our p­ eople. As President Wong said the College of Ethnic Studies was a priority for him, we students felt his words w ­ ere insincere. If he meant what he said, how could he let the situation get so bad? How could he surprise the college dean with the news of cuts that would result in, according to the chair of American Indian studies, “around 50 ­percent of the coursework that the college provides, some of which are required courses for SFSU students, [possibly not being] available in the fall. The gradu­ate program is also at risk of closing, and the lecturers that make up 40 ­percent of the college’s staff may lose their jobs” (Yemenidjian, 2016). Unconvinced by President Wong’s protestations of concern for us, we demanded a meeting a week from that day (Feb 25, 2016). A Latina ­woman majoring in Latino/a studies told him, “If you care about the students, you w ­ ill go to this meeting.” With ­those words, he was obliged to agree to our demand. During the confrontation, I was fearful that he would recognize my face. I had been elected as the ethnic studies representative to the Associated Students, Incorporated (ASI), SFSU’s student government. If he recognized me as a student activist, confronting him, would my work in that student government role be compromised? Being a part of student government, and holding a student leadership position, you are the acting liaison between students and the administration and you have to maintain a good relationship in order to maintain the functional relationship between two impor­tant entities. As the conflict developed, my biggest strug­gle was finding the balance between who I am and who they (the public, faculty, ASI, the administration) wanted me to be. “Ethnic studies representative” was my position. This seemed to mean that I had to work within prescribed roles and rules to communicate the needs of the ­students of my college to the administration. But how could that role and those rules function when the administration demonstrated its fundamental

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disregard for all the members of my college—­administrators, staff, faculty, and students? It seemed that the administration’s decisions did not take student needs into consideration at all. Cutting funding so fundamentally, and with so ­little warning, would have made it impossible for many students to stay on track with their graduation plans. I do not believe that President Wong considered this basic fact even once before making his decisions. ­A fter the initial confrontation between the students and President Wong, I was able to meet committed comrades who cared about ethnic studies as much as I do, and the organ­izing began. Within a week of working together, something beautiful emerged: ­people who had been strangers came together to fight for their shared vision of social justice offered by ethnic studies. Having this vision in our minds kept us wanting to put more meaning into all that we ­were ­doing. During this time, I was able to work with a Chilean student, Sofia Cardenas, who became one of the main organizers and worked with me throughout the campaign to Defend and Advance Ethnic Studies, as well with a larger co­ali­ tion of diverse activist students and student organ­izations. Working with Sofia was my first real experience organ­izing with someone who was not a part of my Filipino or Asian American communities. Reflecting back on my experience, I realize how impor­tant it was to see that w ­ omen organizers from dif­fer­ent communities can come together to not only empower one another but also to take the risk of fighting against an institution of power that has tried to define us. To better understand my experiences as an activist student, I interviewed Dr. Laureen Chew,3 who was a member of the iconic 1968 San Francisco State College Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) Strike and spent twenty-­one days in jail as a result of her student activism. Chew, a Chinese American who grew up in San Francisco’s Chinatown and who had had few interactions with non-­ Chinese p­ eople before coming to SFSU in in the late 1960s, says: It’s in­ter­est­ing ­because in my own view of being an Asian American w ­ oman, I had not felt that I c­ ouldn’t be who I am/is/was ­because I am a w ­ oman, which is weird ­because a lot of w ­ omen felt that being a w ­ oman was a negative piece; [for example, men would say,] “If ­you’re a ­woman, I’m not ­going to take you seriously.” I think it was not typical for me to be involved in the strike. One, I was loud. . . . ​My voice, every­one always complains about my voice, like [it is] louder . . . ​and lower and deeper. So I ­don’t think men necessarily categorized me as a weak w ­ oman or something they can push. . . . ​The other ­thing was, I had an opinion and I was forceful about the opinion. . . . ​So in that sense, it was freeing b­ ecause I got to say what I wanted and I got to do what I wanted and did what we [strikers] did.

While Chew says, “I d­ idn’t feel that I was silenced,” she contrasts her experience with that of other ­women involved in the 1968 strike. She sees herself as an anomaly in that

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The roles w ­ ere clearly defined; men are the leaders and w ­ omen support it. We ­didn’t have a clue that it was an unusual. It was very typical so the w ­ omen, a lot of the ­women, started the community program. Many of us started tutorial programs and that took a lot of work. The tutorial [program] was basically tutoring immigrant kids.

In other words, the w ­ omen did work that was very gendered—­they worked with c­ hildren—­while the men w ­ ere more likely to occupy leadership roles, speaking in public, and representing the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) strike to the media and the administration. This externally imposed limitation to gendered roles was not part of my student leadership experience, although I sometimes imposed gendered expectations on myself as I kept asking myself, “Why is this Asian girl up h ­ ere?” In contrast to her own experiences as a student striker in the 1968 strike, Chew noticed that the 2016 hunger strike was led by ­women: First of all, the student strike was all w ­ omen. It totally flip-­flopped in terms of the presence of it. So that’s a s­ imple question. Look at the visuals: looks like the ­women are the leaders. The first t­ hing I told [my companion] when I was sitting next to him at the Seven Hills [Conference Center at SFSU], I said “Did you notice that [the leadership is] all w ­ omen this time? Who are taking the center of what’s happening?” And [he responded], “Yeah y­ ou’re right. The ­sisters are ­really ­doing it, huh?” That’s a marked change and I think it’s fabulous. But I think ­there are special issues with being a ­woman and a leader.

I am particularly proud of the fact that ­women ­were in leadership positions during the 2016 hunger strike; it shows how far we have come. Learning the lineage of the Asian American ­women activist students who have come before, fighting in a similar strug­gle, inspires me further.

A Bittersweet Journey It was a long odyssey from how I grew up to becoming an activist student and indeed a student leader. Being the youn­gest of three and living in my ­father’s ­house­hold as the only girl ­after my parents’ divorce, I felt a strong sense of hierarchy and understood that within my culture I needed to be quiet, sweet, and passive b­ ecause I was a female. With my f­ ather the dominant parental figure in my life ­after my parents’ divorce, his voice always paved the way for our ­family, and he was never questioned. This ­shaped my life, ­because I rarely saw any ­women being treated equally in e­ ither their relationships or in the families I saw growing up. My f­ ather worked a full-­time job at a train com­pany and countless hours at side jobs, which made me look up to him ­because he was willing

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to sacrifice so much of his own life to make ­things better for our f­amily. Although my ­mother tried to empower me with the idea of using my voice, living in a male-­dominated childhood it was rare to ever have a chance to speak up. In my eyes, as a ­little Filipina girl, the ­father in the ­family was the breadwinner, the final voice, and the king who knows it all. All the adults around me held the expectation that young Filipina girls like me and my cousins should be subservient and have proper etiquette when around adults. This meant I was not allowed to have an opinion about anything. Being the youn­gest and the only girl in the h ­ ouse, I had l­ ittle leverage in conversations b­ ecause within the Filipino culture, respecting your elders, especially the elder males, is a top priority. With ­these expectations and experiences, my life as a Filipina American female has ­shaped the way I interact with ­others, and I became passive-­aggressive and submissive. I never felt validated ­until another person affirmed my decisions and choices. Coming to SFSU in the fall of 2012 as a kinesiology major, I would describe myself as a very timid and naive eighteen-­year-­old who had the ­will to truly find her purpose but needed to learn the tools to do so. Essentially, my first experience with ethnic studies was informally through my Pinay-­based sorority, Kappa Psi Epsilon, which provided cultural lessons about the history of the Philippines and a space for making change in the community on issues that continue to face Filipino ­people ­today. I also met a few ­sisters who ­were majoring in Asian American studies, which sparked my curiosity, and I asked myself, “What can you possibly do with an Asian American studies degree?” As time progressed, I started to realize that my voice has strength and I liked how ­these cultural and po­liti­cal lessons helped me build both my confidence and curiosity. In my Asian American studies public policy class, one lecture, in par­tic­u­ lar, struck me hard and tested my mind-­set: Professor Eric Pido asked us to question why Filipino Americans are seen as ­doing certain t­ hings. I ­really began to ask myself, on a personal level, “Why are Filipinos always working in nursing or idolizing the need to come to the United States?” Th ­ ese and other questions led me to recognize the interconnections between systemic forms of injustice such as imperialism, sexism, racism, and so on. From this point on, I questioned anything and every­thing in life and began to understand that being a Filipina American ­woman is a position and an identity that is ­shaped by society. I saw that learning ethnic studies was like opening Pandora’s box: you are opened to all the injustices in the world, yet you are also greeted and cared for by a side of yourself that you have never experienced before. Ethnic studies gave me the experience of being part of a larger community, dedicated to supporting and loving that community, just like a ­family. In turn, as my knowledge and curiosity grew from ethnic studies classes and working in the community, my own voice developed, and I was given the precious gift of building a better ­father–­daughter relationship. Being able to ask my

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f­ather about his experiences helped me understand his story as a Filipino mi­grant and also developed my unconditional love for ethnic studies. The more and more I learned about ethnic studies, the more politicized I became and the more strongly I felt the responsibility to give back. Being a first-­generation college student has been bittersweet b­ ecause it has given me the freedom to do what I want, but growing up in a f­ amily that did not have it all yet valued struggling together as a ­family, it was hard to follow my heart without feeling like I was breaking my f­ amily’s. So, as I shifted t­ oward Asian American studies, I could not open up to them like I used to. They counted on me, and I was counting on myself, to make sure that my parents would never have to strug­gle again a­ fter I got my degree. I wanted to major in Asian American studies b­ ecause that was where my heart lay, but I was afraid they would not understand b­ ecause t­ here was no clear path from that major to a secure ­future. It constantly stressed me out; I could not find the right words to tell them that I was turning from a c­ areer path that offered me stability and security. Shaking, with my heart beating fast, I fi­nally built up the courage to share the news. My m ­ other was concerned, but she told me: “I want you to be happy and follow your dreams.” She supported me, suggesting dif­fer­ent ways to approach my ­father, but I was afraid to be a disappointment to him. I was supposed to be a good girl. But then my b­ rother explained that our parents might have an idea of college, but having no experience of it themselves, they ­were not aware of all the dif­fer­ent opportunities and majors that could lead us to success. I had to make my own choices based on what I knew. This message empowered me. Making this decision to follow my heart to pursue a degree in ethnic studies pushed me into thinking on my own, and it was one of the first times that I ever felt like I was ­doing something just for me, which prompted me to be very purposeful in the fight to defend and advance ethnic studies. When I and other students from the College of Ethnic Studies at SFSU de­cided to fight against cuts proposed by the administration,4 I was ner­vous but also excited b­ ecause I knew that the day had come where I would be able to rise against my fears and do what my f­ amily and ethnic studies had prepared me for: to fight for what I believe in and protect the t­ hings that m ­ atter to me. Being a Filipina American ­woman, I often allow myself to be ­limited, thinking that I was only a Filipina and only a girl. Professor Laureen Chew had similar experiences in 1968 when she was a student getting involved with the Third World Liberation Front strike. Like most other Asian American ­women at the time, Chew did not see herself as someone who could take the front line, as she reveals ­here: No, as a ­woman, no . . . ​the guys ­were mainly the ones who dealt with administration. . . . ​We [­women] came on campus for all the rallies and speeches that came about. When Eldridge Cleaver would come or what­ever, Black Panther or

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whomever came at McKenna Theater, I would say that on campus as a w ­ oman, I was more like the soldier: [my job was to] support the cause in what­ever way that was necessary.

The leadership of ­women within the 1968 strike was not as overt as that in the fight in the spring of 2016, but ­those ­women provide a power­ful example for ­those of us who follow in their footsteps. I am always inspired by the knowledge that Professor Chew spent twenty-­one days in jail during her fight to create the College of Ethnic Studies. While understanding the history of the silencing of Asian American ­women, her example continues to shine as a beacon as an out­spoken ­woman in our community. She is very ­humble and deflects the praise given to her for her work as an activist student, saying: But I think I was always very sure that I d­ idn’t want to be singled out as a leader. That’s the way I was taught; not to be a star, to be h ­ umble. I was very sure that ­people designated certain p­ eople to take charge ­because that’s what it takes in order for it [the strike] to go. I was not comfortable in it, but at the same time, I felt that it was helping me grow somehow. I was uncomfortable. Yet, I was learning. Therefore, I was happy.

She shared that her f­ amily and community had taught her that it was not her role to take center stage, or as she puts it, “It was an odd mix ­because if ­you’re taught to be invisible in your ­family so that you ­don’t become a star, when ­you’re put out ­there and p­ eople make you the center of attention, it’s r­ eally hard to balance the humility piece and the star piece.” In her wisdom as an elder, she adds, “You should understand that.” Bolstered by the example set by Professor Chew and ­others, I faced the public speech I had to give with determination and yet, at this moment, I let the internalized oppression get to me, especially as I made eye contact with the president and his administration. Before this crisis, knowing that President Wong is a mixed-­heritage man of color (Mexican and Chinese), I had always thought of him as an older Asian f­ ather who knows best. Remembering my childhood fear of disobeying my ­father, I was shaken up inside. I was afraid to see President Wong’s look of disappointment; I was afraid of bringing dishonor to myself and my f­ amily by ever having thought of challenging my elders. On that stage on February 25, despite all the encouragement from ­others and work I had done on myself, I still felt like an imposter.5 I felt like I did not deserve to be up ­there, but it was too late for me to cut out. As I turned to the audience, I saw a sea of beautiful ­people, and, still ner­vous and scared, I took a deep breath and began my speech: “My name is Shannon Deloso, and I am a first-­generation Filipina American college student.” I could hear loud cheering

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and I felt so much pride. With e­ very word that fell out of my mouth, I could feel myself grow stronger: Like many of you ­here, I have experienced the love and empowerment that ethnic studies has given me. Not only to better understand our p­ eople’s resilience throughout history, but to share and preserve this knowledge, which is what brought us h ­ ere ­today. This is the same strug­gle that caused the founding of the College of Ethnic Studies nearly forty-­eight years ago. The administration has not seen the value of our p­ eople’s story, and most importantly has underestimated the power that the students and community have when we unite.

­ very time I spoke the truth and felt that the p­ eople in the room knew the same E strug­gle, I grew stronger again: “When administrative decisions cause an outright dismantling of the basic fundamentals that operate the College of Ethnic Studies—­the only one in the nation—it is clear that ­there is serious distance between the administration’s and the community’s expectations and values.” With each word, my self-­doubt and worries w ­ ere transformed into confidence. I felt our collective strug­g le being transformed by our collective action into change. We could make a difference! Facing President Wong and his administration did not scare me anymore. Being in that room, I felt t­ here was no more hierarchy; t­ here was no more fearing what the president might think of us or what would happen if we got into trou­ble. At the same time, being a very empathetic person, I knew that every­ one was in a vulnerable place, and although the members of President Wong’s administration w ­ ere getting roasted, I still had empathy for them and tried to humanize their position. I hoped that we would not do anyone any harm, and yet I felt determined and knew that we ­were right to take a stand. My mind-­ set had shifted ­because it had become so impor­tant to me, to the community around me, and to the ­future I envisioned. Finishing that speech was a wakeup call, just as attending that meeting with the president was a wake-up call to all of us, b­ ecause we realized we have the power when we are united. Demands of what we needed to defend and advance ethnic studies at SFSU ­were presented to President Wong and his administration that same day, ­because we knew that this was a springboard to institutionalizing real change. We wanted to pay homage to the Third World Liberation Front;6 thus, like them, we also made ten demands and also set the deadline for a response to ­those demands by the end of Black History Month, which in 2016 was on February  29. Th ­ ese ten demands eventually included but ­were not l­imited to recruitment to the college through high schools in the Bay Area; restructuring the college’s master’s programs; an open review of the university’s bud­get by the Academic Senate; meetings ­every semester between President Wong and

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ethnic studies students to discuss the college; and amnesty for the students, faculty, and staff who supported the protests. The university administration also agreed to funding for a course in Pacific Islander studies and to consider a proposal to turn Race and Re­sis­tance from a program into a department.7

Shared Governance as a Tactic to Disempower Students Looking at President Wong on February 25, I had realized that, while he was a leader and a role model of what an Asian American can achieve, he also represented the epitome of every­thing from which I was trying to break f­ ree: the patriarchal force that influences me to be quiet, passive, and obedient. Throughout the ensuing months of actions and negotiations, this conflicted feeling would continue to haunt me. In my role of the College of Ethnic Studies representative and as a part of the regular course of student involvement in shared governance, I represented the College of Ethnic Studies during monthly brown bag luncheons between associated students and President Wong to talk about the dif­fer­ent issues of concern to the SFSU community. I remember being in ­these meetings during the fall semester, how quiet I would be, having nothing ­really to say and mostly being ­there to observe. It was not ­until the spring semester that I was able to see my purpose in t­ hose meetings; I felt that t­ hese meetings provided a g­ reat opportunity to r­ eally get answers out of President Wong to better help the College of Ethnic Studies. However, soon enough, I noticed that what he was ­really saying was, “I hear you, but I w ­ on’t listen; and I know best.” I remember spending significant portions of each meeting pulling teeth to get answers. The president would continue to try to downplay e­ very aspect of what was brought to him as proof. A lot of times I felt like he was trying to convince me that I did not know anything and that the students and faculty w ­ ere wasting their energy b­ ecause our information was wrong. What I felt like he did not understand was that we w ­ ere expecting guidance and communication b­ ecause at the end of the day, the prob­lem was not whose fault it was but that the College of Ethnic Studies was not getting enough money to be sustained and that, as a result, we students of color ­were basically getting set up for failure. As students of color, that was something we recognized quite clearly. Almost all the times that I met with him, the president would make the argument that our w ­ hole university did not have enough money from the chancellor to give to the six colleges. The president continued to tell us that the chancellor is the one who does not give us enough money, even though we are located in San Francisco, one of the most expensive places to live in the country. I felt that he was always trying to just take away the heat from himself and redirect us to other ­people. His solution to this was always the same and sounded very ­simple: “Come with me to Sacramento to advocate for more money for our school.”

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This would not be the first time that the administration let me down with its lack of awareness or a realistic solution for the ­future of ethnic studies. I was almost surprised at the fact that I would be okay with this “solution” that he put forward. Yes, it did sound like an option, but it was not an immediate solution for right now. Once the proposed cuts to the College of Ethnic Studies ­were made, getting funding from the legislature to restore what was lost would be almost impossible. Wasting student activists’ time with bureaucratic obstacles hinders student activism, so that the university does not have to be responsible for student issues. As time went on, President Wong started to put heat on the dean of ethnic studies, saying that he was not ­doing his job and that he was the one who controlled the bud­get. Although it was true that our dean of ethnic studies controls the bud­get once the money is given from the administration to the college, the administration’s office of academic affairs had been systematically underfunding the college for years. Being in t­ hose brown bag luncheons was exhausting and disheartening ­every time ­because a­ fter e­ very meeting at which I did not get answers, I would have to go back to my community empty-­handed and pre­ sent them with President Wong’s unhelpful feedback. I could feel their disappointment that I had not been able to achieve more. I felt the president was prolonging our fight by not meeting with me to discuss our issues in depth; his strategy seemed designed to wear me down. I l­ater realized that the administration always has time on its side. They only have to wait for summer vacation, or for the activist students to gradu­ate or leave, and students ­will lose their momentum. As in the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, I felt like our clock was being buttered up in order to run out our time. Town hall meetings ­were supposed to be used to share how we felt about what was ­going on and to make ­people feel that they ­were heard or to give clarification, but instead the administration used tactics to undermine the students. In par­tic­u­lar, during the February 25th town hall meeting, none of the administration took responsibility for what was ­going on; instead, officials just blamed the lack of funding that was supposed to have been provided by the Office of Academic Affairs on the dean of the college. Rather than moving forward with a solution, such as the bare minimum of setting up a meeting with the students or even just acknowledging why we ­were upset or what the College of Ethnic Studies means to us, they just disregarded us. They made us feel that we did not have a say in how the situation could be resolved. The fact that the administration claimed the prob­lem was not its fault or just responded in a defensive way did not help the situation; this attitude ensured the town halls would not be solution-­based. This resulted in discouraging students from participating in events like town halls ­because they provided no hope. Students left ­those meetings unsure of how we would benefit from them and thus wondering if we should continue to participate at all. I

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remember being ­really frustrated from both meetings ­because if the administrators w ­ ere ­really ­doing their jobs, serving the students, then they would be listening to us and fighting for what we need rather than being uncooperative and unproductive. In another town hall hosted by President Wong about shared governance, the students w ­ ere bullied by the administration pre­sent: 80 ­percent of the room full of fifty ­people w ­ ere administrators; ­every time the president spoke and said something snarky, the other administrators would chuckle; when a student stood up and talked or asked a question, the administration would scoff and make small talk or just act immature. This was very disempowering to students b­ ecause it made us feel like every­thing we w ­ ere saying was completely wrong and anyway it did not m ­ atter. Administrators also provided information that was skewed to make us focus away from the real prob­lem; every­thing they said was designed to make it sound like they ­were better than us and that we w ­ ere below them. They would refer to numbers in the bud­get books when ­these numbers ­were not pre­sent; they would state numbers that did not match the public information on their very own Web site; and they pinned the blame on the dean of ethnic studies as a person who mismanaged money that led to this crisis. If you spoke up, you ­were set up to get shut down, and once you spoke you became a target. This took a lot out of me and other students who participated in ­these events. I felt like we ­were labeled at worst as liars or at best as stupid students who did not know what we ­were talking about; ­either way, we ­were on the administration’s hit list.

The Fight for Advocacy and Community Support As the Campaign to Defend and Advance Ethnic Studies developed, we had very empowered students, student organ­izations, and community members that wanted to give a helping hand in this fight. From radio shows, to interviews, social media, and the ethnicstudiesnow​.­org Web site promoting our petition and providing weekly updates, we used e­ very communication tool to update our community. The stronger our voice grew within the community, the more the administration tried its best to change the narrative. Administrators claimed that Dean Monteiro controlled of all the money and was always overspending. Organizers from the Ethnic Studies Student Organ­izations gave us the idea to bring the issue to the San Francisco H ­ uman Rights Commission (SFHRC); we asked for the commission’s help in supporting the ethnic studies campaign and they provided us a forum to speak. Just when we thought we fi­nally had the upper hand, we found that word had gotten out and the administration was also speaking out in defense of the university. Students and faculty came out and spoke through public comments to express the view that dismantling the only College of Ethnic Studies in the nation would be a violation of our h ­ uman rights. As a recently hired administrator read a letter in

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which blame was laid on Dean Monteiro, the chair of the SFHRC argued that the administration’s characterization of the dean was deeply misleading (SFHRC Hearing, March 24, 2016). I felt vindicated by the chair’s evaluation of the administration’s accusations, ­because it was so obvious to ­those of us in the college that Dean Monteiro had simply been ­doing every­thing he could to stretch the few dollars he had been given to make ends meet.

Winning the Presidency In the midst of all that was ­going on with the fight to defend and advance ethnic studies, ASI’s elections came around. Initially, it was never my plan to run for ASI president, but the push from ­people within my community ­really validated my work as I tried my best to understand why I should run. I started to see that by ­running for president of ASI, I would have a platform, not only to help change the culture on campus and provide outlets for students to be aware but to also utilize my privilege as president to help the College of Ethnic Studies advance. A ­ fter two months of heavy campaigning and rough politics that validated my purpose in breaking bound­aries and the norm of what and who a president should look like, at the end of April, I won by a hundred votes. However, as much as I would like to think that this did not affect my narrative as I fought against the administration, my candidacy became the ultimate test for me. I learned much from the election about the real­ity of politics and the importance of having ­people who are for the ­people within elected positions. G ­ oing from an environment of p­ eople who are so selfless and invested in making a change for the greater good to dealing with p­ eople who did not see the bigger picture and would get what they want by any means has been a difficult transition for me. The toughest challenge during this time has been trying to find effective ways to contribute to staying true to my ideals and staying true to the community that looks to me to give them a voice in the shared governance pro­ cess, when I am called on daily to behave the way the administration believes a student leader should behave. But this challenge does not mean I w ­ ill be defeated, so to me it has come to symbolize my resiliency.

The Hunger Strike ­ fter such a tumultuous fall and winter, we w A ­ ere looking forward to resolving the issues between the administration and the College of Ethnic Studies in the spring, but then the administration showed us what they ­really thought of ethnic studies through an action no one expected. A ­ fter having approved the search pro­cess for Africana Studies to replace a faculty member who had died several years previously and another who had retired, the provost, Sue Rosser, claimed t­ here was suddenly “no money” to hire the two candidates who w ­ ere

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brought forth ­after a lengthy and diligent search pro­cess (Barba, 2016). ­These two young Black w ­ omen would be much-­needed mentors for students and colleagues for faculty in the Africana Studies department, throughout the college, and indeed the university. In recent years, this same provost had denied tenure to one Black male professor and tried to deny promotion to another;8 with this track rec­ord, and ­after the horrendous treatment of the College of Ethnic Studies in the fall and winter, no one expected the administration to refuse to hire new faculty members for searches she had already previously approved. We w ­ ere shocked, but we had already laid the groundwork for organ­ izing in the previous fight. Ultimately, we knew that we had to take drastic action, as we had learned that town hall meetings and attempts at thoughtful discussion ­were not ­going to achieve our goal of being heard by the administration. The hunger strike was conceived of by Sofia Cardenas and a second-­year Latino studies major, Ahkeel Mestayer, who ­were ­later joined in their protest by Sachiel Rosen, Julia Retzlaff, and Hassani Bell. ­These five student activists, myself, and o­ thers collectively represented the ­whole College of Ethnic Studies as a unified front. The hunger strikers made a commitment and a decision to put our lives on the line for something that we believed made a difference in our lives. We ­were inspired to do a hunger strike in order to connect our fight to the larger campaign for which the Frisco 5 w ­ ere putting their lives on the line in San Francisco: against police brutality and in support of the firing of the San Francisco chief of police, Greg Suhr.9 I remember sitting in Sofia’s ­house the day before we went public about the hunger strike; we wanted to share their last meal with them in order to be with the strikers mentally and physically. As a way of binding our commitment, we went around the circle and told each other why we w ­ ere fighting for ethnic studies. My reason was not only b­ ecause it has changed my life in giving me a voice as a Filipina but b­ ecause I wanted to be that example to Asian American youths, especially to my students at Burton High School, where I was a student teacher through the Pinoy/Pinay Educational Partnership (PEP),10 which had changed my way of looking at youth work and life. In PEP I learned that students come into the classroom with baggage and burns from all dif­fer­ent parts in their life. The power dynamic of a traditional classroom very much shapes what power dynamics and agency should look like, which shapes the perception of who they are, what they are capable of, and the way they see the world. This taught me that being a good educator means to understand how to properly cater to what your students need in order to succeed and smash the power dynamics to meet students where they are at and instill hope for themselves and their community. As I worked with students who represented dif­fer­ent communities, I wanted my high school students to know that ­there are p­ eople who look just like them

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fighting for what they believe in and that we have a voice and it needs to be heard. ­A fter I shared my story, I remember looking around the room and seeing that ­these other ­people of color with whom I had worked ­were surprised to hear this passion from me. Seeing an Asian American—­the only Asian in the room—­being vocal was something that not many of them ­were used to. This was a first for me as well. I was so used to speaking out within my own Filipino communities and being fearless, b­ ecause I knew in the end that the Filipino community “had my back” and understood our common strug­g le. I knew I could speak in the Filipino community and they would not be surprised to see a ­woman speaking out; they would not expect me to be shy and passive. In contrast, being in a multiracial community space, I felt deeply challenged b­ ecause I knew I was being seen as the introverted Asian girl. Similarly, regarding the 1968 strike, Laureen Chew also acknowledged the difficulties of leading and sustaining a movement: “It’s more like ­people are learning about groups as they are organ­izing as a group. So, that’s very energy consuming and, also, tiring, in terms of sustaining a movement.” Although it was uncomfortable ­because I had not ­until then experienced true solidarity among multiple communities of ­people, I felt good representing my p­ eople and the broader scope of Asian Americans in a room full of p­ eople d­ oing the same t­ hing for their communities and for our collective community. All this pushed me to rethink the dif­ fer­ent possibilities ­there are to continue to push bound­aries. My role within this hunger strike was to be the liaison between the strikers and the university president and administration. This was my first task as president of the ASI, even before anyone knew it publicly, and not many knew how difficult it was for me to put myself into this situation. I had to remember that now my actions as a student or­ga­nizer on campus would soon shift into being responsible for the damaging of a multimillion-­dollar organ­ization that I represented on a daily basis. It was a hard pill for me to swallow, as it was a drastic change to my real­ity. May 2, 2016, was the first day of the hunger strike, which we planned strategically to seem coincidental with my inauguration into office as ASI president. Although this position built up my pride, it was also a r­ eally hard transition ­because I knew that my role in the movement would be completely shifted from the position of being an out­spoken activist to that of a student president, having to play a new po­liti­cal game and fight b­ ehind the scenes instead of at the front of the protest march. Every­thing I did would be a reflection of not only myself and my leadership but of the student leadership organ­ization as a ­whole. I was honestly scared. Through all the experiences that I had had of fighting against the system publicly, by becoming ASI president, I had officially ­adopted the responsibility to fight against the system within a system that was unfamiliar to me.

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Despite ­these concerns, I de­cided it was only right for me to speak at my inauguration about the hunger strike and to remind every­one that I was not ­there for my own self-­interest but for the p­ eople. I could tell that day that I was seen by my ASI cohort—­the rest of the student governing body—as a wild card. I was a ­woman who could make or break this organ­ization with my ideas and actions, like supporting the hunger strike. At the same time, the administration was not taking me and my new position seriously. They seemed to think I was incapable of being ASI president, ­because I was negotiating and advocating for the defense of ethnic studies, which by the administration’s definition was “not acting in the best interests of the university.” My advocacy was defined by the administration as outside of the bound­aries for the expected be­hav­ior in my role. However, in my view, supporting ethnic studies was the very best ­thing I could do for the university as a ­whole, for the students especially, and for the wider community of San Francisco—so many of whom have been directly and indirectly affected by ethnic studies over the last fifty years. I often felt conflicted. While I believe passionately in the fight to support the Africana studies department, and the College of Ethnic Studies more generally, I have also found it difficult at times to balance being a community or­ga­ nizer with being in an institutionalized position of power. Being in this position gave me access to power, but it also meant being part of the system that I was trying to change. For example, the town halls w ­ ere set up by the university administration as a tool of suppression, power, and control over students; I found that participating in them disempowered students and invalidated our work and our concerns. The town halls ­were hosted by administrators, and they controlled the narrative during ­these meetings. For example, administrators manipulated language, calling the crisis they had created a bud­get prob­lem caused by the dean’s mismanagement of funding, when in actuality it was a structural deficit caused by the administration. They focused on blaming the dean, who was especially vulnerable being in the midst of a five-­year review, rather than hearing students’ concerns about how much the administration’s proposed cuts would cause major losses for students, including the loss of the Cesar Chavez Research Center, the loss of most adjunct faculty and thus about 40 ­percent of the courses offered by the college, and the end of two master of arts programs, ethnic studies and Asian American studies. Th ­ ese w ­ ere not just abstract ideas to us: t­ hose courses serve hundreds of students e­ very year, often being one of the few places they find the truths that motivate them to endure in what can be an other­wise hostile academic environment.11 ­Those two master’s programs provide training for community organizers, to help them write better grants to support their organ­izations and programs, and for the next generation of ethnic studies scholars; many of the gradu­ates of the ethnic studies and Asian American studies master’s programs go on to teach at SFSU as well

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as at other colleges and universities. And some go on to achieve their doctorates and further serve the community through their original scholarship. As students, we w ­ ere putting our bodies on the line to protect our education—­particularly so the hunger strikers. Meanwhile, President Wong and his wife ­were given security guards, but no one was thinking about student safety, except for we students ourselves and a few professors and community members who worked to monitor the health of the hunger strikers, especially as the strike wore on. During this time, the support of the strike continued to grow as word continued to spread; our community was our source of hope. We started to see throughout the duration of our strike more students, faculty, and community members came to support us. Faculty members from all around the university took their students to the hunger strikers’ campsite to learn about the conditions and the issues. I even hosted a ­middle school ethnic studies class to learn about the conditions and why ethnic studies was impor­tant, which l­ater resulted in the seventh and eighth graders writing letters to Timothy White, chancellor of the CSU system, to ask him to stop making cuts to ethnic studies ­because it is their ­future. The support of the ­people was our hope and our protection as tensions on campus continued. In the end, this started the conversation, with all parties fi­nally coming to an agreement only a­ fter the hunger strikers had not eaten for ten days. Within the conclusion of it all, it was negotiated with the students that the College of Ethnic Studies would receive a mixture of onetime funding and increased baseline funding that totaled around $750,000, as well as agreements around the cultivation of new departments, reinstating the hirings of the two professors for the Africana studies department, and additional support to advance the College of Ethnic Studies. This could be seen as a form of victory, the foundation for ­future change, yet the events leading up to this agreement caused more rough realizations for students as we reflected back to the beginning of it all. We won, but we lost our innocence. We lost our belief that our educational institution had ever cared for us. We learned that the administration was willing to risk the ­actual lives of students just to save a few dollars—or, more likely, to reallocate funds out of the hands of faculty they deemed troublemakers. We won ­because we became troublemakers, too. We won ­because we became activist students, and we w ­ ere willing to teach as well as to learn.

Conclusion: Returning to Grassroots Student Leadership By experiencing crucial turning points, I realized that activism can be filled with hidden land mines of administrative backlash in order for the imperialist university to instill administrative control and emotional pacification over students and faculty members. My work as an Asian American w ­ oman student leader goes beyond the self, our current generation of students, and our

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universities’ physical borders. In general, collective understandings of student activism and student advocacy positions have become depoliticized over time. The campus has a long history of being connected with the community and being the founding location of the ethnic studies disciplines. My city, San Francisco, sets up the national culture to expect re­sis­tance when its universities or its governmental institutions are not serving the p­ eople. In the late 1960s, student leaders of color cultivated cultural, po­liti­cal, and social organ­ izations on campus to unite as underrepresented students and strengthen their collective voice, which formed the 1968 Third World Liberation Front. Within San Francisco, the TWLF, supporting allies, and the community of city locals’ solidarity ­were so intertwined that they served as a catalyst to cultivate the College of Ethnic Studies. Although the 1968 strike is often romanticized, students and community members dealt with severe consequences, such as expulsion or jail time. Their experiences of institutional oppression and resilience show their deep commitment to relevant education. The TWLF’s legacy and the rich history has sustained SFSU’s culture of student-­led re­sis­tance. Its legacy and the lessons learned from the movement have kept the spirit of grassroots organ­izing against institutional oppression alive on campus throughout many generation of students. Institutionalized student activism has not halted students from mobilizing quickly and taking action. The students at SFSU want to see how the work goes beyond themselves. The con­temporary structure of the College of Ethnic Studies was also significant in sustaining the 2016 student-­led movement to fund the college, ­because the College of Ethnic Studies’ pedagogy emphasizes community in all aspects of a university, including teacher–­ student mentorship, collaborative classroom environments, and community ser­vice learning. By using classroom tools to implement community work beyond the university, the College of Ethnic Studies trains students to address con­temporary issues that affect vulnerable communities, to which the students and faculty often belong themselves, and to take actions to resolve ­these issues. At the same time, one should also be careful not to romanticize ongoing, current student activist movements and spaces. Despite my leadership position, I felt silenced and experienced gendered and racialized ste­reo­types that often made me question if being in this space was worth it. In par­tic­u­lar, I did not feel safe when confronting the university administration, b­ ecause of the university’s power to control the narrative about students and the issues that the university administration created in the College of Ethnic Studies. The manipulation of the narrative redirected attention and criticisms away from the university administration and incited public ridicule against the student activists. For example, in the shared governance town hall, students w ­ ere being ridiculed about not knowing anything. Students’ knowledge and value w ­ ere undermined

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by an administration that was focused more on proving administrators’ points than supporting students’ education. Asian American w ­ omen student leadership is about developing practical activist skills to fight against structural issues through campaigns and movements—­not through discussing social movements in academic jargon and buzzwords, which reinforce elitist distances between students and their ethnic communities. Our acts of re­sis­tance protect the original purposes of grassroots student activism and ethnic studies in the context of the TWLF movement. We act collectively to liberate our oppressed communities, promoting third world solidarity against U.S. imperialism from our universities and using educational tools to better understand one’s identity and the conditions of our community—­and ultimately as a collective power to combat against social and institutional injustices. I have learned the importance of having purpose when being a part of a social justice campaign or addressing an issue within our community and society. It is essential to come ready to learn from each other and engage in issues affecting our communities, but it is just as crucial to realize that you have the same agency that every­one ­else has. It is also imperative to evolve the power of your agency and empower your student community through collective awareness. When I experienced negative repercussions, I learned to look t­ oward my happiness rather than to live in fear. I learned to take risks to make the university a more holistic environment in which to learn to be ethical leaders. Ultimately, I learned how to or­ga­nize with o­ thers through emotionally intense places in order to make decisions that ­will benefit every­one. Essentially, I learned that the power lies within the ­people. When I evolved my understanding of social injustices in the world beyond our sense of self and identity politics, my goal became seeing the larger forces of both covert and overt attacks against grassroots student activism, ethnic studies colleges and departments, and Asian American ­women student leadership, which precariously positioned me as an activist student at my university. When faced with suppression from administration, I was able to combat it and move forward with my life by learning that I had voices, and that using them changed how ­others saw me and saw other Asian American w ­ omen. My leadership autonomy was restricted between my role as a student leader and student activist, ­because unequal power dynamics between student leaders and university administration in the guise of “shared governance” and “obligations to serve the university” allowed the administration to pressure me with expectations of my be­hav­ior. I realized that ­there are also many layers of structural oppression against grassroots student activism through seemingly innocuous university-­coded terms. I sometimes had to force ourselves to speak by remembering all the other Asian American ­women who could not speak or

186  •  Shannon Deloso

who ­were not in the position I was in to be heard. At the same time, I also had to learn how to protect myself and my beliefs from negative treatment a­ fter speaking up for myself. Most impor­tant, I learned not to censor myself in anticipation of this negative treatment. My experiences and lessons as an activist student, though filled with the loss of innocence, painful truths, and university administrative deception and unjust backlash, made me stronger, more vigilant to structural oppression within academia, and more resilient. Through taking action, I believe we can reclaim our universities.

Notes 1 Deloso began and finished this chapter while she was an undergraduate at San Francisco State University. 2 Heewon Chang defines autoethnography in the following terms: “Like ethnography, autoethnography pursues the ultimate goal of cultural understanding under­lying autobiographical experiences. To achieve this ethnographic intent, autoethnographers undergo the usual ethnographic research pro­cess of data collection, data analysis/interpretation, and report writing. They collect field data by means of participation, self-­observation, interview, and document review; verify data by triangulating sources and contents; analyze and interpret data to decipher the cultural meanings of events, be­hav­iors, and thoughts; and write autoethnography. Like ethnographers, autoethnographers are expected to treat their autobiographical data with critical, analytical, and interpretive eyes to detect cultural undertones of what is recalled, observed, and told of them. At the end of a thorough self-­examination within its cultural context, autoethnographers hope to gain a cultural understanding of self and o­ thers” (Chang, 2008). 3 Dr. Laureen Chew, formerly a public school teacher, has been integral in developing bilingual teacher education. In addition to starring in several iconic Asian American films, such as Chan Is Missing (Wayne Wang, 1982) and Dim Sum: A L ­ ittle Bit of Heart (Wayne Wang, 1985), Dr. Chew was a member of the TWLF strike and spent twenty-­one days in jail as a result of her student activism and was l­ ater a longtime member of the faculty of the Asian American studies department at SFSU. All quotations from Dr. Chew are from my 2016 interview. 4 An article from Inside Higher Ed features Dr. Kenneth Monteiro, the dean of San Francisco State University’s College of Ethnic Studies, explaining that the College of Ethnic Studies was the canary in the coal mine (Flaherty, 2016). 5 The imposter syndrome can affect many in a variety of circumstances but has par­tic­u­lar resonance for ­those who are the first in their ­family to go to college and ­those who are the ­children of immigrants (Kolligian & Sternberg, 1991). 6 The Third World Liberation Front was a co­a li­tion that arose in 1968 and consisted of the Black Students Union; the Latin American Students Organ­ization; the Pilipino American Collegiate Endeavor (PACE); the Filipino-­A merican Students Organ­ization; El Renacimiento, a Mexican American student organ­ization; and the Asian American Po­liti­cal Alliance. This group or­ga­nized the TWLF strike at SFSU, shutting it down from November 6, 1968, ­until March 21, 1969, and demanding the creation of ethnic studies and the hiring of faculty to teach t­ hese courses.

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7 Editors’ note: ­these goals have been met, and Pacific Islander studies is establishing a minor. 8 Neither w ­ ere faculty in Africana Studies. 9 The Frisco 5 was a group of five activist, community leaders who led a hunger strike responding to the systemic injustices that are pre­sent in the San Francisco Police Department. Their seventeen-­day hunger strike was to demand the firing of police chief Greg Suhr and the resignation of Mayor Ed Lee (Morrison, 2016).. 10 Editors’ note: PEP was founded by volume contributor Allyson Tintiangco-­Cubales. 11 A Stanford University study shows that “ethnic-­studies classes boost student attendance, GPAs, and high-­school credits for a key student group—­a pivotal finding that brings hard evidence to the dispute over adding t­ hese courses in public schools” (Anderson, 2016).

References Anderson, M. (2016, March 7). The ongoing ­battle over ethnic studies. Atlantic. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­theatlantic​.c­ om​/­education​/­archive​/­2016​/­03​/­the​-­ongoing​-­battle​-o­ ver​ -­ethnic​-­studies​/4 ­ 72422/ Ayestas, J. (2014, February 25). California State University task force investigates ethnic studies funding. State Hornet. Retrieved from https://­statehornet​.­com​/­2014​/­02​ /­california​-­state​-­university​-­task​-­force​-­investigates​-­ethnic​-­studies​-­f unding/ Barba, M. (2016, May 9). SFSU president says hunger strikers’ demands not “unrealistic.” San Francisco Examiner. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.s­ fexaminer​.­com​/­sfsu​-­president​ -­says​-­hunger​-­strikers​-­demands​-­not​-­unrealistic/ Chang, H. (2008). Autoethnography as method. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­academia ​.­edu​/­1244871​/­Autoethnography ​_ ­as​_­method Fallows, J. (2011, November 19). Pepper-­spray brutality at UC Davis. Atlantic. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.t­ heatlantic​.­com​/­national​/a­ rchive​/­2011​/­11​/­pepper​-s­ pray​-b­ rutality​-­at​ -­uc​-­davis​/2­ 48764/ Flaherty, C. (2016, March 3). Iconic ethnic studies college at San Francisco State says it ­can’t pay its bills. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­insidehighered​.­com​ /­news​/­2016​/­03​/­03​/­iconic​-­ethnic​-­studies​-­college​-­san​-­francisco​-­state​-­says​-­it​-­cant​-­pay​-­its​ -­bills Kolligian J., Jr., & Sternberg, R. J. (1991). Perceived fraudulence in young adults: Is ­there an imposter syndrome? Journal of Personality Assessment, 56, 308–326. Matsuda, M. J. (1987). Looking to the bottom: Critical ­legal studies and reparations. Harvard Civil Rights–­-­Civil Liberties Law Review, 22, 324–399. Morrison, J. (2016, May 11). Hunger strike over but Frisco 5 determined to fight on. El Tecolote. Retrieved from http://­eltecolote​.­org​/­content​/­en​/­features​/­hunger​-­strike​-­over​ -­but​-­frisco​-­5​-­determined​-­to​-­fight​-­on/ San Francisco H ­ uman Rights Commission Hearing. (2016, March 24). Retrieved from https://­docs​.­google​.­com​/­g view​?­url​=­https%3A%2F%2Fsanfrancisco​.­granicus​ .­com%2FDocumentViewer​.p­ hp%3Ffile%3Dsanfrancisco​_­631c5312faff94ae56ff327a8f04 8321​.­pdf%26view%3D1&embedded​=­true. Villegas, A. (2016, February 26). Hundreds denounce looming bud­get cuts to SF State College of Ethnic Studies. El Tecolote. Retrieved from http://­eltecolote​.­org​/­content​/­en​ /­features​/­29520/

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Wang, W. (1982). Chan is missing [Motion picture]. New York, NY: New Yorker Films. Wang, W. (1985) Dim Sum: A ­Little Bit of Heart [Motion picture]. New York, NY: New Yorker Films. Yemenidjian, N. (2016, February 25). S.F. State’s historic Ethnic Studies College may have to cut courses, faculty. KQED News. Retrieved from https://­w w2​.k­ qed​.­org​/n ­ ews​/­2016​ /­02​/­24​/­s​-­f​-­states​-­historic​-­ethnic​-­studies​-­college​-­may​-­have​-­to​-­cut​-­courses​-­faculty/

5

Hmong Does Not Mean ­Free The Miseducation of and by Hmong Americans K AOZONG N. MOUAVANGSOU

Abstract Previously, researchers have analyzed Hmong American educational experiences through cultural explanations (that is, focusing on Hmong gender roles) and structural explanations (that is, focusing on resources and mobility). This study takes a dif­fer­ent approach by integrating Woodson’s (1933/1972) and Constantino’s (1982) concepts of miseducation to examine how the U.S. education system impacts Hmong students and their community in what I term the miseducation of Hmong Americans. Data w ­ ere gathered through a case study of six Hmong American families, an examination of California’s curriculum standards, a critique of California’s social studies curriculum, and the author’s own personal and educational experiences. Analyses shows that the Hmong American community recognizes education as a path to financial stability (that is, the belief that education is critical for a successful ­future) and as a divide within the Hmong American community (that is, how education publicly and internally creates spaces of division within the Hmong American community) and that education fails to include Hmong Americans in U.S. history studies. This 189

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study challenges ­future researchers, educators, community members, and students to reexamine the U.S. educational system and its curriculum in order to educate and empower Hmong students in Amer­i­ca. How can the U.S. educational system and curriculum be reframed to educate and empower Hmong American students in the United States?1

Introduction When I was ­little, my ­father said to me that every­thing in this world has a rule. When you eat, t­ here’s a rule. When you cook, t­ here’s a rule. Now that I think hard about it, I believe my ­father was saying that in our everyday activities, ­there is a language that we must learn. His eating example is not simply to learn to eat but to know the etiquette of eating, the reasons b­ ehind that etiquette, and the meaning of the food we eat. This holistic and deep cultural knowledge comes from a place of love and appreciation for that daily activity that could be merely a necessity but is so much more. What my f­ ather taught me could actually be applied to every­thing in this world. But somehow, I lost that knowledge once I went to school. As long as I can remember, school has taught me about equality and fairness—­more specifically, that men and ­women should be treated as equal. Taking this concept from school to home, I felt that I was treated unfairly at home and not treated as an equal within the Hmong community. As the only Hmong ­daughter in a ­family of eight, I have always felt that in order for me to be seen as an equal among my b­ rothers and in the Hmong American community, I had to excel in education. Ever since I was a ­little girl, the gender disparities within the Hmong culture —­the privileging of Hmong sons over Hmong ­daughters—­served as my primary motivation to excel in education. I knew that I would never grow up to be a man or be treated with the same re­spect as a man; however, education would serve as my gateway t­ oward equality. Education, in my child mind, would serve to equalize me in the eyes of my ­family and ultimately in the eyes of the Hmong American community. During my high school years, 2005 to 2009, I felt an urgency to excel academically, b­ ecause a­ fter high school I would be released into the real world as an adult, but with fewer privileges than a Hmong man. For me, high school was my training ground to build myself for the real world, to get accepted to the University of California system, to gradu­ate, to prove my worth as equal to that of a Hmong son. In high school, my need for educational excellence drove me to notice the educational achievement differences between Hmong girls and boys, from which extracurricular activities they chose to the types of classes they took. Many of the Hmong American boys chose not to take college preparatory or Advanced Placement classes. At most, ­there would only be one Hmong male student in one of ­these courses as opposed to four Hmong female students. As

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a high school student, t­ hese observations left a power­ful and puzzling impact on me. Why are the majority of Hmong American male students avoiding challenging academics? Why do they not apply for more prestigious colleges when they have a sufficient cumulative grade point average? ­These questions I had as a high school student carried over into college and then gradu­ate school, and this led me to conduct the current study in hopes of understanding not only my own positionality as a Hmong ­daughter as well as the experiences of my Hmong b­ rothers but also the experiences of Hmong American students within the U.S. educational system and how this is influenced by and influences f­ amily and ethnic community dynamics. For my master’s thesis, The Mis-­Education of Hmong in Amer­i­ca (2016), I interviewed six Hmong families in California in 2014 to understand how Hmong youths and their parents view Hmong gender roles and expectations within the context of the U.S. educational system. My hope was to understand the gendered nature of relationships within Hmong American families. In my initial findings, I “discovered”—or was led to see—­negative stereotyping of Hmong male students and the positive stereotyping of Hmong female students, which affirmed the hunch I had had in high school: Hmong male students need help in school. However, in analyzing ­these ­family members’ interviews, I eventually came to realize my own naïveté in my initial approach to analyzing the data I had collected. It was only by reflecting on my own experiences as a Hmong ­daughter that I came to realize that my own education—­the very tactic I thought would lead to my liberation—­was the source of manipulated and distorted views about my own culture. The U.S. educational system has done a disser­vice by miseducating Hmong students such as myself to believe that our own culture needs to be fixed and that we—or our culture—­were the cause of the prob­lem. The real­ity is that the U.S. educational system is not prepared to teach students of color and has been particularly egregious in its miseducation of ­people of ethnic groups that have migrated to the United States most recently. Researchers who have studied Hmong students in the United States tend to describe Hmong American students’ educational strug­gles as a result of Hmong gender expectations, language barriers, peer pressure, pressure from parents, and other cultural traits that are seen as cultural failures (S. Lee, 1997, 2001, 2005; Ngo & Lor, 2013). ­Because of my positionality as a member of the population I study, I have come to realize that ­there exist two types of miseducation concerning Hmong through the U.S. educational institutions: (1) miseducation about Hmong Americans (that is, from non-­Hmong individuals, in textbooks or research about Hmong); and (2) miseducation by Hmong Americans (that is, from Hmong individuals and the Hmong community). This chapter examines the miseducation of Hmong youths as a critical analy­sis of U.S. education systems, including Asian American studies.

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This chapter is divided into four parts to further explore this miseducation. The first part discusses a new framework that emerged from my master’s thesis as a way to reexamine the impacts of U.S. educational institutions on Hmong Americans. The second part focuses on how non-­Hmong scholars and individuals have been miseducating the Hmong community and ­others about Hmong and Hmong American history, culture, and language through published works (that is, books and scholarly articles). The third part explores this miseducation by introducing my own personal educational experience, analyzing data collected from my case study of six Hmong families, examining California’s curriculum standards, and critiquing California’s social studies curriculum. The fourth part provides conclusions and implications for U.S. schools and the ­future of Hmong American scholarship.

Part 1: Miseducation of the Hmong as a Framework The educational system of a society is reflective of that society’s values and beliefs. B ­ ecause society upholds the status quo, the educational system must balance the goals of teaching skills that youths w ­ ill need to succeed in adulthood and of instilling the values of the society in which it is located. This section draws from Car­ter Godwin Woodson’s The Mis-­Education of the Negro (1933/1972) and Renato Constantino’s “The Miseducation of the Filipino” (1970) to re-­examine how U.S. educational institutions are miseducating Hmong students and their community in the United States.

Participants: The Six Hmong families In this section, I introduce the six Hmong families whom I interviewed in 2014. I begin with brief information about each of the families in order to illustrate the variation and the complexities that exist within and between each ­family. Many of the families I interviewed ­were ­either close or extended relatives of mine.2 In order to protect the identity of each ­family, ­every ­family was assigned a pseudonym.3 Lor ­family. This f­ amily consists of the m ­ other, ­father, three d­ aughters, and two sons. Both the parents came to the United States as refugees and ­were married in the United States in 1988. As for schooling in the United States, the ­father attended two years of community college while the m ­ other had some college schooling. All five of their ­children w ­ ere born in the United States and have gone or are currently ­going to school. In this study, only the four oldest ­children ­were interviewed ­because they met the age requirement of eigh­teen years or older. All of the ­children are currently living with their parents and attending local state or city colleges.

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Moua ­family. This f­ amily consists of the ­mother, f­ ather, three ­daughters, and four sons. Both the parents came to the United States as refugees and ­were educated ­there, where they also married in 1991. All seven of their c­ hildren ­were born and educated in the United States. Only the three oldest c­ hildren ­were interviewed b­ ecause they met the age requirement for this study. Xiong ­family. This ­family consists of the m ­ other, ­father, six ­daughters, and one son. The parents married before coming to the United States in 1988. The two oldest Xiong c­ hildren w ­ ere born outside of the United States, while the rest ­were born ­here. In terms of U.S. education, the ­father went to adult school,4 while the ­mother did not. All of their c­ hildren w ­ ere educated in the United States. In this study, only the five c­ hildren who w ­ ere born in the United States ­were interviewed. Vang ­family. This f­ amily consists of the ­mother, f­ ather, four d­ aughters, and five sons. The parents married in a refugee camp in Thailand before coming to the United States in 1989. The f­ ather’s highest formal educational was in third grade in Thailand, while the ­mother did not attend U.S. schools. Not all of the Vang ­children w ­ ere born in the United States, but they w ­ ere all educated ­here. In this study, only three c­ hildren ­were interviewed. Thao ­family. This f­ amily consists of the m ­ other, f­ ather, five d­ aughters, and two sons. The parents met each other in the United States. They got married when the f­ ather was in high school. He graduated with a high school diploma, and the m ­ other’s highest formal educational attainment was adult school. All their ­children are U.S. citizens and received a U.S. education. In this study, only five ­children ­were interviewed. Vue ­family. This f­ amily consists of the m ­ other, f­ ather, one ­daughter, and five sons. The parents met in the United States and married. The f­ ather graduated with a bachelor’s degree, and the ­mother attended adult school for a time. All their ­children ­were born in the United States and received a U.S. education. In this study, only three of the ­children ­were interviewed ­because they met the age requirement.

Data Analy­sis In my data analy­sis, I reviewed each of the participant’s transcripts with open-­ coding Merriam (C. Mouavangsou, 2009). I highlighted areas in the data that ­were related to gender and education. I paid special attention to what the parents and youths had to say about differences in male and female education. ­After my first coding, I reexamined what I had highlighted, and I saw contradictions between some f­amily members’ transcripts and how both the youths and parents perceive Hmong male and female students. Due to the structure of my interviews, I had a lot of data, but t­ here was one distinct pattern that caught my

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attention early on: the general consensus from all my participants is that Hmong male students in comparison to Hmong female students did not excel in school. However, their belief in the failure of Hmong male students is not corroborated by U.S. Census data, which suggest that Hmong male students’ graduation rates are comparable to t­ hose of their female counter­parts (U.S. Census Bureau, n.d.). It would take me another two years, and a trip to Washington, DC, to make sense of this discrepancy and henceforth shift my study t­ oward a critical examination of the U.S. education system. I was excited to be visiting national monuments that I had heard so much about during my elementary and high school years. However, upon my arrival, I felt alienated and foreign, feelings I had never truly experienced before in my life growing up in the Central Valley, California, which has a large Hmong population and other ethnic diversity.5 All I saw in Washington, DC, was white Amer­i­ca. Even the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, whose history directly connects to my p­ eople, had no indication of Hmong in it. This realization forced me to reflect on my participants’ views on Hmong male and female students and how and why they came to be. It was in that moment that I understood how the U.S. education system was the source b­ ehind it. It was this realization about the patterns I saw and my own reflexivity that guided me in my final stage of the axial codes Merriam (C. Mouavangsou, 2009). My axial codes are (1) education as a path to financial stability, which refers to the belief that education is critical for a successful ­future; (2) divide in the Hmong community, which refers to how education publicly and internally creates spaces of division within the Hmong community; and (3) Hmong missing in U.S. history, which refers to the lack or inadequate inclusion of Hmong history in the social science classes.

Findings and Discussion: The Miseducation of the Hmong The descriptions of each f­ amily demonstrate their shared history and also the varied experiences of both the parents and youths alike. Although most of the parents w ­ ere not educated in the United States, they all expressed a belief in the power of the U.S. educational system to better the lives of their ­children. They have passed their beliefs onto their ­children, whose own education within the U.S. system further reinforces its value. My findings show that despite their differences in educational background, both the parents and the c­ hildren share this power­ful belief in education as a pathway to financial security, despite the evidence that shows that formal education has, to a certain extent, served to divide the Hmong community and to miseducate Hmong about themselves.

Education as a Path to Financial Stability Throughout my interviews with each f­ amily, I heard them tell of the strug­gles, sacrifices, and challenges that parents faced in order for their ­children to have

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a better f­ uture. Many had escaped persecution, with one ­family escaping a re-­ education center that they w ­ ere imprisoned in—­all so their c­ hildren could have a better ­future. Knowing their history and what they sacrificed, I am not surprised that ­these parents push their ­children to excel in school. They want their ­children to have a better ­future, a better life. They perceive education as the key to success in the United States, to achieving the American Dream. Education, to them, ensures the financial stability that they so longed for during their time of strug­g le. This is consistent with S. J. Lee’s (2005) findings that the importance of education goes beyond being a son or a ­daughter but rather signifies a necessity to survive and be successful in the United States. For example, the ­mother from the Lor f­ amily said, “But like I told all of [her ­children], you have to do it for yourself, not for me, but so that you find a job that you like to do, build a c­ areer that you want to so you d­ on’t go to work being miserable everyday of your life. . . . ​But you have to have education, that’s the most impor­tant ­thing. You have to have a degree.” Her quote highlights many of the parents’ perspective that education is a must and essential for their ­children’s ­future. Her emphasis is on education for the sake of her ­children’s ­future, not her own. Like this m ­ other, many of the parents interviewed believed that education was impor­tant to having a good and well-­paying job, thus enabling their c­ hildren to be happy. ­These parents have passed down their values of education to their ­children. All the youths in my study agreed that education is needed. As Candice Xiong expressed to me, “since it’s the United States, you gotta learn before you get a good job and a good life and every­thing.” Her statement reveals many of the youths’ perception of education as part of a sequential pro­cess: (1) get an education; (2) find a good job; (3) “live a good life that is financially stable.” Her agreement with her parents’ view of education and how the system works interactively positions her parents as being knowledgeable about surviving in the United States and how to achieve this survival, while reflexively positioning herself as someone who should follow the preceding steps to have a better ­future. It is not without merit that all the parents and youths expressed the importance of education. Education is itself a basic h ­ uman right.6 Education provides students with essential skills such as reading, writing, and math—­all of which they may one day use in the workforce. The emphasis on education is so crucial that even parents and guardians who have ­children in kindergarten through twelfth grade (K–12) ­will get in trou­ble with the law if their child misses a certain number of school days (Harris, Nelson, et  al., 2013). According to the California Supreme Court decision in Serrano v. Priest, “Education is the lifeline of both the individual and society” (Imber, et al, 2014, p. 306). Thus, education is essential for not only an individual’s life but has implications for the society as a ­whole.

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However, throughout my interviews, the importance of education was emphasized, but no one mentioned how a U.S. education may have negative impacts on the Hmong American community. For example, it has been shown in numerous studies that learning En­glish may lead to subtractive bilingualism of one’s home or heritage language (Fillmore, 1991; Ngo, 2016). Loss of home language can have significant impacts on self-­identity (Portes & Rumbaut, 2001). In relating this to miseducation, the education that students receive is crucial to how they perceive themselves, and the type of education provided about an ethnic group impacts how society ­will perceive individuals within that group. Education is not only a tool for learning but also a tool that can divide and misinform communities (Constantino, 1970; U.S. Department of Education, 2003; Woodson, 1933/1972). Education of and about ethnic minorities should be approached cautiously and with awareness of the implicit messages it may send to students, their families, their communities, and ultimately the larger society.

Dividing the Hmong Community In accordance to the miseducation of the Hmong, being miseducated creates a public space of division and internal spaces of divisions (K. N. Mouavangsou, 2016). In my master’s thesis, I used “public spaces of division” to refer to institutional ways that schools divide Hmong American students (that is, through classroom placements, tracking), while “internal spaces of division” refers to the division that exists between Hmong students and the Hmong American community. Public Spaces of Division. The ways in which Hmong students are systematically divided into certain classrooms by assessment of academic abilities is an example of public spaces of division. U ­ nder this division, the institution is implicitly sending messages to Hmong students, specifically Hmong male youths. In my study, several of the Hmong male youths who took Advanced Placement courses in high school and college expressed feelings of isolation, e­ ither from the Hmong student population at their school or from other Hmong male youths. For example, Hue Vang said: “I guess, it was that I had a higher reading score or something b­ ecause I know I was never in the Hmong class and I was always upset. I was so sad. I felt like I was always a loner and actually t­ here was another Hmong guy, but it was just me and him throughout Elementary School . . . ​that’s why a lot of my friends are white and Mexicans. . . . ​­You’re not ­really Hmong b­ ecause ­you’re not r­ eally with the Hmong p­ eople and I think that ­really pushed me forward, too.” Although the U.S. education system is designed to group students of the same or similar educational levels in the same class, this also ­causes alienation, as shown in Hue Vang’s example of ­there being only one other Hmong student in his class. His usage of the phrase “the Hmong

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class” refers to being in a classroom with primarily other Hmong students. His educational experience of not being in a class with many Hmong students continued throughout his high school. Similar to Hue Vang’s experience, Chad Lor said: “I d­ idn’t have a lot of classes with Hmong students, honestly. So I just met them from out of classroom and we would hang out in the cafeteria and, what­ever, mess around, but most of them ­weren’t in my class . . . ​most of them ­were like white p­ eople.” When asked if Hue Vang still kept in touch with his Hmong friends from high school, he said, “­after I graduated, I just went on my own path. Most of them d­ idn’t go to school, so I d­ on’t r­ eally hang out with them anymore.” Th ­ ese experiences demonstrate how the very system that is meant to support them can also systematically separate Hmong students, in par­tic­u­lar Hmong males, from their own community. It can also divide an individual internally, as it did with Hue Vang. Internal Spaces of Division. Through the U.S. education system, Hmong students and the community as a ­whole are divided internally through the divergent ste­ reo­types of Hmong male and female youths. For example, the Hmong male youths in the study who excelled in school and had Hmong female friends w ­ ere viewed as dif­fer­ent from the other Hmong boys. Jim Vue shares his experience: Honestly, it was ­really in­ter­est­ing ­because other Hmong females they ­were just like, “oh ­you’re not like the other guys” . . . ​­because most of the Hmong males they ­were just kind of the ste­reo­typical, like they just g­ oing to school and hanging ­after school and stuff like that . . . The male influence from, like, they have a lot of pressure, like I said, identity ­because you know it’s like “school is for wussy, school is for, you know, the geeks and the nerds.” I pretty much met every­one halfway. I can be cool with you guys and understand that my school comes first.

This exemplifies the socialized be­hav­iors and ste­reo­t ypes that define how Hmong males should be in school. Academic success equates with emasculation. The implicit message that the U.S. education system sends to students of color, specifically Hmong male students, is that in order to be academically successful, a student needs to be more American and to stay away from other Hmong boys, therefore dividing the Hmong community. In this case, what my findings illustrate is the socialized stereotyping of characteristics between Hmong male and female students. Although my data do not represent the w ­ hole Hmong community, they do support H. Vang’s (2000) claim that the majority of the Hmong American community perceive Hmong ­women as more successful in school compared with Hmong men. In my study,7 85.71 ­percent (30/35) of my participants agreed that Hmong ­women ­were excelling in school compared with Hmong men; while 8.57 ­percent (3/35) believed

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Hmong men and w ­ omen ­were both excelling; 2.86 ­percent (1/35) believed it is actually Hmong men that excel more than w ­ omen; and 2.86 ­percent (1/35) ­were not sure. ­These beliefs are contradicted by the statistics provided by the U.S. Census. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s (n.d.) 2011 to 2013 American Community survey three-­year estimates, the percentage of Hmong male high school gradu­ates or higher was 73.6 ­percent in comparison with Hmong females, who had a 61.0 ­percent rate of high school graduation. Meanwhile, for educational attainments of a bachelor’s degree or higher, 15.6 ­percent of both Hmong males and females had this level of attainment (U.S. Census Bureau, n.d.). Although the reporting by the U.S. Census was ­limited to Hmong individuals ages 25 and older, the given statistics demonstrate perhaps a shift in educational attainment. When asked how they know who is excelling more in school, many of my study’s respondents said their own observations ­were the source of their beliefs. None of my participants cited the U.S. Census or the Hmong National Development Report, “The State of the Hmong American Community” (2013); even though t­ hese information sources are available and f­ ree, not every­one from the Hmong community has knowledge about or access to them. In order to find statistics on Hmong American students from the U.S. Census, a person has to be able to navigate the Web site and understand what they are being shown. Similarly, in order to find the Hmong National Development Report, a person has to know how to look it up online. In my study, the majority of my interviewees described Hmong male students negatively, while associating positive characteristics with Hmong female students. For instance, one of the youths, Jasmine Xiong said, “[Hmong guys are] pretty slow and t­ hey’re all about the fun life.” This theme appears frequently and consistently throughout all the interviews. Hmong sons are depicted as “slow” learners and e­ ager to join the “fun life,” which paints a picture of students whose priorities may not be education. What is even more demonstrative is the lack of words to describe what type of learners Hmong female students are and the type of life they care about—it is simply understood that what­ever Hmong male students are, Hmong female students are not. Conversely, some describe Hmong male students not as slow learners but rather as students who do not challenge themselves like Hmong female students do. For example, the Moua ­mother says: “You see now not a lot of Hmong men that are like or Hmong boys that are Valedictorians b­ ecause they d­ on’t see that challenge in them. Th ­ ey’re not dumb or anything, it’s just that they d­ on’t challenge themselves to that level.” In the Vue ­family, where both the sons are currently at state college, the Vue ­father agreed with ­these ste­reo­types. He positioned his sons as deviating from the ste­reo­types of Hmong male students but still believes that ­these ste­reo­types are generalizable to Hmong male students:

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Kuv muaj tub xwb, kuv muaj ntxhais tsawg mas rau li kuv saib mas kuv cov tub ua kawm zoo dua, tiamsis tej zaum mas nyob li coob coob sab nraum mas tej zaum qhov koj yeej muaj tseem thiab. (I only8 have sons, I have few ­daughters so based on what I’ve seen with my sons they do better in school, but maybe for the majority of the p­ eople on the outside then that maybe true, too.)

He argues that even though his own f­ amily steers away from the negative ste­ reo­type of Hmong male students, this fact does not make the ste­reo­types less true. He goes on to explain why t­ hese ste­reo­types exist in the first place: Kuv tws hos tsis tau muaj saib hauv survey . . . ​tiamsis mas tej zaum yeej muaj thiab vim hais mas, cov ntxhais lawv siab muag dua ces lawv mloog niam mloog txiv hais dua feem ntau nas, ces cov tub lawv mas tau muaj 18 xyoos rov sauv mas tej tus lawv muaj tsis ua si ces tsis tshua mloog niam mloog txiv hais ces lawv poob qab thaum ua. (I have not looked at the survey . . . ​but maybe that is true b­ ecause the ­daughters are soft-­hearted so they listen to their parents more for the majority, while the sons when they are eigh­teen and up, some play and ­don’t r­ eally listen to what their parents say so they fall b­ ehind when they are thirteen years old and in high school, they play more so they fall ­behind, maybe they fall b­ ehind when they are in high school.)

Although the Vue f­ ather does note, “kuv tws tsis tau muaj saib hauv survey” (I have not looked at the survey), to examine w ­ hether t­ hese ste­reo­types are indeed true, he refers back to the characteristics of ­daughters as “siab muag” (soft hearted) ­people who “mloog niam mloog txiv hais” (listen to their parents) as a way of explaining their academic success. In contrast, he observes that “tej tus” (some p­ eople), meaning not all but some sons, “ua si ces tsis tshua mloog niam mloog txiv hais ces lawv poob qab” (play so [they] ­don’t r­ eally listen to their parents so they fall ­behind). Jim Vue also talked about similar patterns he saw as the education chair for the Hmong Student Organ­ization at his college. E ­ very year, this Hmong Student Organ­ization holds a summer conference where interested Hmong high school students submit a written response to their two essay prompts: “What do you want to change about yourself?” and “What do you think you cannot change about yourself?” During his term as education chair, the organ­ization had over a hundred applications, only twenty of which came from Hmong male applicants. In comparing the answers from Hmong male and female applicants, he told me that the female applicants, “always state that they want to change eco­nom­ically or financial part.” Meanwhile, the male students say, “I would change my height.” He explains that “it’s just kind of like ­they’re ­really chill about it or it’s kind of like, I want a straight answer and then guys would say, ‘I want to make my parents proud, related to f­ amily in t­ here.’ ” Jim Vue observed

200  •  Kaozong N. Mouavangsou

of male and female Hmong students: “they may have [a] dif­fer­ent mind-­set or dif­fer­ent expectations or goals but they all know the word ‘Hmong’ carries a lot of weight. So, they always say the same kind of responses. They always say that, you know, ‘being Hmong, I’m proud of it. I ­can’t change it. It’s who I am.’ ” Based on Jim Vue’s observation of each applicant’s essay answers, the Hmong female students seem to display a dominant mainstream narrative of wanting to change their financial situation whereas the Hmong male applicants seem to for the most part be “chill”—in other words, cool or relaxed about life. His description of Hmong male applicants is consistent with the characteristics that ­were described by Jasmine Xiong, the Moua ­mother, and ­others in my study. Additionally, the ratio of 80 ­percent female applicants to 20 ­percent male applicants to an academic success resource speaks volumes, supporting S. J. Lee’s (2001) observation that Hmong girls in high school seeks out resources more often than do Hmong boys in high school. Jim Vue’s observations further demonstrate the internal spaces of division within the Hmong community. With both the public spaces of division and the internal spaces of division happening within the educational institution, the Hmong community is further divided. The students who are able to navigate educational institutions successfully may feel more isolated from their Hmong peers, as did Hue Vang. Although not all of my participants had negative ste­reo­types of Hmong male students, the majority did (including parents and youths). Even among families where t­ here ­were sons who are in college, the stereotyping of Hmong male sons as not ­doing as academically well as female students dominates. This made me won­der: why is it that the majority of the parents and even the youths have this perception? Through a study of The Mis-­Education of the Negro by Woodson (1933/1972) and “The Mis-­Education of the Filipino” by Constantino (1970), I have come to believe that the source is the U.S. education system, and particularly the miseducation of the Hmong.

Hmong Missing in U.S. History Oftentimes, education is associated with knowledge, liberation, and equality, but that is not always the case. As demonstrated in both Woodson’s (1933/1972) and Constantino’s (1970) works, education is very power­ful but can also be detrimental, especially when a specific group is represented in a l­imited or even ste­reo­typical way. For example, for African Americans, the education system has undeniably wronged them by failing to fully communicate their experiences, their culture, and their achievements (Blanchett, 2006; Coates, 2015; United Nations ­Human Rights Office of High Commission, 2016; U.S. Department of Education, 2016; Woodson, 1933/1972). Similarly, for Hmong Americans, a brief reference within the history of the Việt Nam War is not sufficient; however, even this is rarely provided.

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­Because the nature of my interview questions did not provide me with access to the social science content that the youths w ­ ere taught in school, I examined the “History-­Social Science Content Standards for California Public Schools: Kindergarten through Grade Twelve” issued by the California Department of Education (2000). I specifically chose this publication of the social studies content in the California public school curriculum b­ ecause the youths in my study ­were in K–12 during this time. In the California standards, the Việt Nam War was mentioned only so students could “analyze U.S. foreign policy since World War II,” specifically to “trace the origins and geopo­liti­cal consequences (foreign and domestic) of the Cold War and containment policy” (California Department of Education, 2000, p. 52). The word “Hmong” is never mentioned in reference to the Việt Nam War, nor are Hmong referenced elsewhere in the curriculum guides. Within the standards, having students be able to trace what took place during the Việt Nam War both abroad and within the United States is impor­ tant; however, the way this is taught is often misleading, particularly in regards to Hmong ­people. Blia Vue’s (2011) study of Northern California school districts led her to an examination of the three textbooks with content on the Việt Nam War, revealing that the textbooks are problematic. Vue found that only two of the three textbooks “brought up the possibility that the United States might have been involved in another country’s civil war in Vietnam” and that “none of the three textbooks specifically states that the United States ‘lost’ the Vietnam War” (B. Vue, 2011. Most problematic was that ­these three textbooks lacked minority perspective and voices. In the case of the Hmong p­ eople’s involvement in the Việt Nam War, Vue found that only one of the textbooks mentioned the Hmong as escaping Southeast Asia but did not provide context for why they fled or what they experienced during the war. She writes, “Clearly, this part of the text needs to be supplemented and explicated by the teacher” (B. Vue, 2011, p. 71). However, if textbooks do not provide the necessary information, it is not likely that teachers ­will explain who the Hmong are. Additionally, if teachers do have course materials to teach about Hmong culture and history, ­those materials are likely to be inaccurate. This was true of a Hmong immersion program class taught in California and analyzed by Yang, who examined three textbooks9 and the course materials for this program, which was intended to teach mostly Hmong youths and some o­ thers about Hmong culture and history (K. Yang, 2012). The misinformation of materials ranges from Hmong history, to the sacred instrument, qeej, the traditional Hmong clothing, and, most significantly, to the definition of the word “Hmong” itself. Although I do not have data regarding the youths’ high school social studies courses, I am of similar age to the youths I interviewed, and the schools I attended ­were e­ither the same or similar to the schools they attended in

202  •  Kaozong N. Mouavangsou

California. Thus, I draw on my own experience to provide a glimpse of what K–12 social studies courses in t­ hese school districts w ­ ere like. As I reflect on my elementary and high school years, I do not recall learning much about Hmong history, nor did we fully understand the history of the Việt Nam War. My own recollection of education about the Việt Nam War consists of learning that ­there was a draft, many ­people died, Americans in the United States protested against the war, and Southeast Asians w ­ ere refugees that came to the United States. The extent of what I knew of the Hmong, my ­people, is that we ­were allies of the United States. This friendship between the United States and my ­people was reiterated by my parents, teachers, and community members. However, what I did not learn was the impact of this “friendship” on the Việt Nam War. It was not u­ ntil I was in college, when I took my first ethnic studies course in Asian American Studies at the University of California, Davis, that I learned that the Việt Nam War was part of many civil wars and that t­ here ­were Hmong who fought against the United States as well as alongside U.S. troops. It was in college that I learned an alternative narrative to the dominant mainstream history that I had been fed. My experience mirrors the experiences of other Hmong college students in R. Vue’s (2013) study, who, in order to obtain a glimpse of their history, turn to Asian American studies. Like Vue’s participants, I also believe that learning about my own history and community is impor­tant for my development as well as that of t­ hose around me.

Part 2: Miseducation about the Hmong Since the first wave of Hmong migration to the United States in the late 1970s, ­there have been many studies conducted by non-­Hmong American scholars. Although many of ­these studies attempted to give voice to the Hmong community, they also, to some extent, miseducate the American public and younger Hmong Americans about Hmong history and culture. This section identifies some of t­ hese moments of miseducation to demonstrate that more work is needed to truly understand this (my) community.

Hmong means Hmong A widely cited book about the Hmong is Sucheng Chan’s (1994) Hmong Means ­Free: Life in Laos and Amer­i­ca. Although this book had ­great intentions10 in informing p­ eople about Hmong history, culture, and their experiences in the United States, it promulgates misconceptions about the Hmong. For example, Chan (1994) writes, “The word Hmong means ‘­free’ ” (p. 3) and also uses this definition as the title for her book. Her usage of defining Hmong as ­free without providing any citations or explanation for it assumes that it is common

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practice within the Hmong community to define themselves as being ­free. However, the word “Hmong” does not mean ­free. Both Lee and Yang have pointed out that ­there are many scholars who misuse this definition (M.N.M. Lee, 1998; K. Yang, 2012). Lee explains, “The phrase ‘Hmong means ­free’ has been thoughtlessly promoted by both Hmong and non-­Hmong alike. This phrase, however, simply manifests thousands of years of narrow, one-­ dimensional characterization of the Hmong” (M.N.M. Lee, 1998, p.  1). According to Yang, who investigated11 the meaning of “Hmong” in vari­ous Hmong communities in Thailand, Laos, Việt Nam, China, Australia, Germany, France, and the United States, “no one has offered a satisfactory answer.” I agree with Yang that “ ‘Hmong’ does not meant ‘­free’ or ‘­free p­ eople.’ Hmong is simply the name of an Asian ethnic group” (K. Yang, 2012, p. 6). In my perspective, this continuous act of defining “Hmong” as “­free” perpetuates this notion of othering. “Hmong” is what my ­people are called; it is our name and our identity.

A Complicated History Given the complexity of the definition of the term “Hmong,” it is not surprising that Hmong history is similarly complicated. The l­imited general knowledge that ­people have about Hmong living in the United States is that we ­were U.S. allies and fought in the “secret war” that was part of the Việt Nam War. ­A fter the United States withdrew from Vietnam, the Lao government began persecuting the Hmong. In order to escape persecution, many of them fled to Thailand and came as refugees to countries like the United States and France. However, this history is one-­dimensional and misleading. For instance, not all Hmong p­ eople living in Laos w ­ ere considered U.S. military allies. Th ­ ose opposing the United States believed that they ­were fighting against U.S. imperialism and for the in­de­pen­dence of Laos (Hamilton-­Merritt, 1993; Hillmer, 2010; Quincy, 2012). Simplifications of Hmong history lead to distortions of the true Hmong history to both Hmong and non-­Hmong students and scholars alike. Similar to the one-­dimensional portrayal of Hmong history, the portrayal of Hmong p­ eople as illiterate and uneducated has been misleading (for example, Chan, 1994; Fadiman, 1997). Hmong literacy in terms of “formal education” does exist. A ­ fter the Hmong migration from China to Laos in the 1800s, the growth in Hmong student enrollment in Laos increased since the first Hmong school was built in Laos in 1939 (D. Yang, 1993). In addition, ­there w ­ ere Hmong students from Laos who studied abroad at universities in France, the United States, Canada, Australia, and Italy (D. Yang, 1993). When the United States became involved in Laos, ­there ­were educated Hmong professionals in both military and civilian roles (Hillmer, 2010; D. Yang, 1993).

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Knowing Hmong Literacy The most widely conveyed myth about Hmong among Westerners and Hmong in diaspora themselves is that t­ here was no written Hmong language u­ ntil missionaries came and created the Hmong language using the Romanized alphabet (e.g., Chan, 1994; D. Yang, 1993). The Hmong language (discussed subsequently in part 3) is a story of creative survival and re­sis­tance against Han Chinese oppression. In addition to misunderstanding the true nature of the Hmong language, by perceiving the Hmong p­ eople with this lens of illiteracy, the Western perspective presumes that a respectably educated ethnic group is one that has their own written language. Yang perpetuates this misunderstanding: “traditional Hmong society is marked by the notable absence of any formal educational system which explains its very low level of education” (D. Yang, 1993, p. 83). In 1990, the New York Times published an article that reiterated this same message: “The Hmong (pronounced MUNG) are members of a primitive, mostly illiterate tribal group that was enlisted by the Central Intelligence Agency to fight in Laos during the Vietnam War, which ended with the Communists’ victory in 1975” (Mydans, 1990). Note the first c­ ouple of words used ­here to describe the Hmong ­people: “primitive” and “illiterate.” ­These descriptors do not acknowledge the form of literacy and education that exist within the Hmong community. As Duffy, Harmon, et al. (2004) put it, “to think of the Hmong as a preliterate p­ eople oversimplifies the past and ignores the pre­sent. Far from being a p­ eople unfamiliar with writing, the Hmong have been aware of the powers and potentials of written language. Moreover, they have experienced diverse forms of literacy in multiple languages over the last ­century” (pp. 25–26). According to Vang (2016), “It is not that Hmong lack writing but rather Hmong writing systems have been unrecognized and lost through the group’s colonial history of war and displacement. B ­ ecause written lit­er­a­ture discursively informs and reproduces the nation and its subjects, Hmong refugees, then, are constructed as lacking a nation and are thus difficult to categorize in relation to existing disciplinary knowledge formations, let alone a national literary canon” (p.2). This continuing attempt to create a writing system, despite having lost one in the past, signifies the Hmong ­people’s understanding of the power that comes with written language. Thus, to label Hmong as preliterate is problematic and overlooks their strong resilience and their intention to persevere and preserve their history and culture despite the obstacles in their path.

Knowing Hmong Culture ­ ese misconceptions about the meaning of Hmong (il)literacy by non-­ Th Hmong scholars create miseducation about the Hmong. Educators seeking to

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under­stand their Hmong students may rely on books like that by Chan (1994) or do a quick online search—­only to stumble on information that manifests more inaccuracies. Similarly, universities offering courses on Asian American history, education, culture, cultural anthropology, or health may use Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures (1997) to teach about Hmong history and culture clashes in the realm of medicine. I have personally seen this book used in undergraduate courses in cultural anthropology and Asian American studies classes and also in gradu­ate courses in education and health. However, readers who are not familiar with the Hmong may take from this book a static perspective of Hmong culture ­because this book is written from an outsider’s perspective. As a member of the Hmong community, I believe this book paints a portrayal of the Hmong as primitive and foreign. For example, ­toward the end of Fadiman’s book, she uses vari­ous examples from the Lee parents to demonstrate how much they “trust” Western medicine. For example, she writes: “When the pot of boiling ­water oil fell from the electric stove onto Foua’s skirt, setting it on fire and burning her right hip and leg, she sacrificed two chickens and a pig” (p. 253). Fadiman’s purpose in listing vari­ous examples like this seems to be to paint a portrait of a community that is inherently foreign to Amer­i­ca. What is lacking is an explanation of why the Lee parents made ­those sacrifices—­the deep cultural context that is missing. This anecdote perpetuates a portrayal of my community as possibly being unproductive or not able to help the person in need of care. ­People questioning why the Lees would sacrifice a pig and chicken when a person burns her hips and legs would not understand that such sacrifices are seen by some Hmong as healing. Another example of this superficial attempt to understand Hmong culture occurs when Fadiman writes, “when Foua got pregnant with her sixteenth child, and had an early miscarriage, she did nothing” (p. 253). Fadiman’s portray of Foua, the Lee ­mother, as d­ oing “nothing” is inaccurate. In Hmong culture, ­whether you gave birth or had a miscarriage, you are culturally obligated to follow what is known by Hmong Americans as the “chicken diet” in order to nourish the body back to health. This may be perceived by outsiders as “nothing” ­because it does not adhere to Western medical norms such as visiting the doctor. Th ­ ere are also other cultural customs to which Foua does adhere with the support of her husband; thus, Fadiman’s determination that Foua has done “nothing” seems to be used to further convey a portrait of Hmong as “primitive.” This book lacks a deep understanding of Hmong culture and therefore should not be heralded—as it often is—as the definitive book on Hmong cultural practices and beliefs.

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Part 3: Miseducation of the Hmong ­ ntil now, many researchers have attributed cultural, parental, school resources, U teachers, mentors, friends, and other internal f­ actors to Hmong American students’ academic success or lack thereof (for example, S.  J. Lee, 1997, 2001, 2005; Ngo & Lor, 2013; C. T. Vang, 2004), without a close examination of U.S. educational institutions themselves. Only by examining t­ hese institutions can we understand their impact on Hmong students and the Hmong community as a w ­ hole. Miseducation about the Hmong, especially through the U.S. educational system and research, leads to miseducation of the Hmong. By “miseducation of the Hmong,” I am referring to Hmong individuals being miseducated and misinformed about their own ­people and identity. I am referring to Hmong Americans who have been educated through the U.S. educational system, become products of the system, and in turn regurgitate the white lies that they have been fed. In this section, I discuss my own miseducation about my community to demonstrate that my experience is consistent with the majority of Hmong Americans.

My Miseducation of My Hmong Community As a Hmong American w ­ oman growing up in California, ­there ­were instances where I encountered many individuals who have not heard of Hmong, so I would have to educate them about my ­people. When I was in elementary school and even up u­ ntil the time I was in gradu­ate school, I would describe my ­people as, “a group of p­ eople who have no written language and no country of their own.” According to the formal education I had received and books I had read,12 I was correct to say that Hmong have no written language and no country; however, according to our own cultural knowledge, I was wrong. Based on Hmong dag neeg (stories or myths, equivalent to folk tales) told to me by my grandparents and parents, the Hmong paj ntau (flower cloth, or embroidery) holds the Hmong language. The story begins long ago when the Hmong lived in China ­under the Chinese government prior to their mass migration t­ oward Southeast Asia. One day, a Hmong man began creating the Hmong alphabet, but he died and so the alphabet was never completed. Unfortunately, the Chinese government heard about the beginnings of the Hmong alphabet and attempted to seize it.13 Thus, in order to preserve the alphabet, the Hmong wove it into their clothes both for disguise and to keep the written language alive. Although this dag neeg is perceived by Westerners to be a myth, it points very clearly to the idea of Hmong ­people constructing their own written language in re­sis­ tance to an oppressive force. It also highlights their determination to be educated “formally” despite a dominant group’s attempt to limit or control their

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education. However, in ­doing my own research, I have also found that scholars such as Vang (2016), Duffy et al. (2004), and Enwall (1997) have also encountered this story (although t­ here are some variations), but it all ends with the Hmong having lost our written language. I came to realize that my answers about my ­people came from a deficit perspective: “no written language,” “no country of their own.” Th ­ ese phrases did not appear out of thin air. I was taught, I had read, I had heard repeated over and over t­ hese ideas that I came to internalize. I did not come to the realization that this was a false narrative ­until ­after I had completed my master’s thesis, when I was invited as a guest speaker to do a pre­sen­ta­tion about it in November 2016. As I was revisiting previous pre­sen­ta­tions I had created a year before, I had a slide that gave a brief depiction of who the Hmong are with the phrases “no country of their own” and “no written language.” Although my overall pre­sen­ta­tion focuses on the importance of understanding one’s culture, I had negatively portrayed my community to a group of students. I did not realize u­ ntil then that understanding culture was not enough to understand one’s heritage; one must also understand one’s community history. I used to won­der why my colleagues who ­were Latinx would talk so proudly of their community and their indigenous roots. I often wondered, what was ­great about my community? I had been blindfolded by miseducation, and in perceiving my community as inferior, I had failed to see its beauty. It was only when I had recognized this fault that I became determined to reframe not only my own view of Hmong education but also that of o­ thers. The sound bite about the Hmong in Amer­i­ca has been “no written language” since we first arrived. This is a power­ful shorthand, which also serves to contrast us with e­ arlier Asian American groups, thus providing Hmong Americans a useful way of distinguishing themselves within the pan-­ethnic Asian American conglomeration. However, what was once useful has now become harmful. We must eradicate the use of this shorthand description ­because of the harm that it does as it is internalized by Hmong Americans. Similar to my own miseducation about my ­people, other Hmong scholars may have also been miseducated and may have been miseducating the public and other Hmong youths unintentionally. Dia Cha, a Hmong author who wrote the c­ hildren’s book Dia’s Story Cloth (1996), received many recognitions for it, including the C ­ hildren’s Books of Distinction Award, the Los Angeles 100 Best Books, and the American Best Sellers Association award. Cha’s book details the Hmong p­ eople’s journey to the United States and introduces readers to the paj ntau tradition. Unfortunately, Cha’s book perpetuates the misunderstanding of the definition of “Hmong” as “­free” (M.N.M. Lee, 1998; K. Yang, 2012). In addition to Hmong story books providing miseducation to Hmong Americans from an early age, t­ here are researchers who have sought to provide

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educational support for Hmong students through studies that, while well-­ meaning, take as a priori Hmong educational failure. The two main ways that research has focused on Hmong educational experiences have been through cultural and structural theories. ­These structural theories have been ­limited to analyses of support at the classroom level, while the cultural theories are based in a deficit model and a misunderstanding of Hmong culture. Generally, when researchers use cultural theories, they also integrate gender as a way to study the educational experiences of Hmong American students (for example, S. J. Lee, 1997; Ngo & Lor, 2013; K. Yang, 2012). In reflecting on my own experience with U.S. education, I remember comparing and contrasting the experience of being Hmong with that of being American. In school, I learned about equality and the melting pot:14 ­people from all cultures come together to be part of the same culture, on the same footing. This false image of a merit-­based culture was presented to us as evidence of Amer­i­ca’s greatness. In contrast, at home in my Hmong ­family, I was faced with the patriarchal male-­centered world, or at least that was how I viewed it. I saw my b­ rothers as better, more valued, ­because only male ­children can carry on the ­family name. The notion that my ­brothers w ­ ere deserving of value and privilege simply for being sons carried over into and from my academic experience. The prob­lems I perceived in my own f­ amily life led me to believe academic success was a way to fight the Hmong culture, which is one of the many explanations that researchers have posited for the achievement gap between men and ­women, especially in studies concerning Hmong students (S. J. Lee, 1997, 2001, 2005; Ngo & Lee, 2007). For instance, in Lee’s study of Hmong ­women in higher education, her participants spoke “about the link between education and freedom from male domination” (S. J. Lee, 1997, p. 814). They believed “education leads to in­de­pen­dence and self-­empowerment” (S. J. Lee, 1997, p. 814). However, when viewing one’s own culture in this light, it creates a deficit perspective and generalizes Hmong culture as sexist without fully understanding Hmong culture and traditions. This perception is what the general public believe, and it creates an inferiority complex for Hmong youths, Hmong men and ­women, and the Hmong community, while freeing the educational institution of any responsibility. We must remember that it is within the educational institutions that ­these feelings and associations of the Hmong culture as limiting and patriarchal are manifested. In addition to cultural theories, other researchers have used structural theories to understand the academic experiences of students (Ngo & Lee, 2007). ­These structural explanations focus on the educational opportunities within schools, such as course curriculum, having good teachers, and how students are tracked in high school (S. J. Lee, 2005; Xiong, 1996; K. Yang, 2012). Th ­ ese structural ­factors are impor­tant and relevant ­because they are the tools that enable students to learn. However, t­hese structural f­actors typically focus on the

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classroom and not the educational institution; examining Hmong students’ experiences by focusing only on the academic support or lack thereof by teachers ignores the significance of educational institutional infrastructure, such as textbook choices and Core Curriculum standards, over which individual teachers have ­little say. Through an examination of the institution, we ­will have a better understanding of how that informs what happens in classrooms and subsequently how that impacts Hmong students such as myself.

Born American but a Foreigner In April of 2016, I embarked on my first trip out of California to pre­sent at the American Educational Research Association in Washington, DC, where, for the first time in my life, being Hmong meant “foreigner.” Throughout my life, I have never truly felt like a foreigner in the United States, the country of my birth. I knew I was dif­f er­ent—­I knew I was Hmong—­but I did not know then what I learned from visiting our nation’s capital. The following excerpts taken from my diary mark the beginning of my awakening.

April 10, 2016 Since elementary [school], I’ve learned how the United States fought for its in­de­pen­dence from ­Great Britain. I learned about slavery, and the American Civil war. I learned of Brown v. Board of Education, of the Vietnam War, and the Red Scare. I have seen photos of the Lincoln Memorial, the White House, places that carry the history of the United States. ­These iconic images represent “Amer­i­ca” but my time ­here only made me weep. Although in 2016, college students may learn about how the Chinese helped build the railroad, how anti-­miscegenation laws prohibited marriages, [and] how Japa­nese ­were interned [and] stripped from their own property regardless of their status as a U.S. citizen or not. Are we, the United States ready to know our history? April 15, 2016 As I left Washington, DC, I was more emotional than when I arrived. I was more doubtful about who I am and my place within the United States. As I thought about what I had experienced and felt, I wrote a letter to myself: Kaozong, You, too, are American. Although ­going to Washington, DC, reminded you of a White Amer­i­ca it d­ oesn’t mean that it has to be that way. Remember that this awakening is the first of many fights that you ­will prob­ably endure. This perspective is what ­will make Amer­i­ca, Amer­i­ca; it is what ­will help ­those individuals who feel like how you are currently feeling . . . ​feel like an American. What ­you’re experiencing is a sense of American nationalism, something that

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y­ ou’ve prob­ably never had to think critically about. ­You’ve dealt with identity and are still struggling with it, but American nationalism is something quite dif­fer­ent. The feelings you are experiencing are what makes you a true American. But then again, what is a true American? I cannot hide my true feelings of how I feel about the exclusion of “American” history that I see salient in the National Mall. It was not ­until my cousin, who has participated in U.S. politics and who took my group on a night tour that I saw a glimmer of hope. She showed me the floor where Martin Luther King stood as he gave his speech at the Lincoln Memorial, but it’s ironic that I had walked past that spot over the 3 times that I had been ­there and had not seen it. She, an insider, showed me that on the outside ­there is the White American that is very prevalent, but ­there is hope that more inclusion can happen. If it ­were not for her, I would have left feeling even more alienated. At that spot where Martin Luther King stood, she said to me, “I also stood at that very same spot and gave a speech, too.” I was happy to hear that t­ here has been change, but I am saddened that it seems ­these moments of inclusion are still very secretive. To an international tourist, they see a White Amer­i­ca. To the American-­ born ­daughter, I, too, saw a White Amer­i­ca. How can I provide the inclusion that my cousin was able to provide to me, to the public? Having national museums are g­ reat b­ ecause they preserve the history of the p­ eople—­yet, to have only an [sic] national museum and not a monument located near the iconic symbols of Amer­i­ca . . . . ​makes it problematic. To be in an enclosed space represents the secretive nature that still exists in the United States, to not have monuments that represent the American population makes me question the “melting pot” [ideal] that we instill in ­children. To have them internalize that Amer­i­ca is a diverse country that welcomes all, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, a place where every­one is treated equally—­seems idealistic. How do I bridge that? The fire in me is burning and it’s burning bright. How do I begin? Where do I start? What can I do?

Part 4: Conclusion and Implications Through understanding this non-­Western narrative of my Hmong history, I thought I had fully grasped what it meant to be Hmong and that I was prepared to correctly educate other Hmong American students about our history. This is why, when I was given a chance to teach my own course at the University of California, Davis, through the Asian American studies department as an associate instructor in 2015, I chose to teach a course that focuses on Hmong history and their experiences within the United States. This was the first

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Hmong American history course taught at UC Davis, and I intended it to begin the pro­cess of dismantling the U.S. Americanized version of Hmong history. However, when I reflect now on the topics I covered, I realize that I provided my students the information they needed to understand their history but did not awaken them from the miseducation that they (including myself) had been fed. The distinction between being awakened and being provided information is significant. Being provided information functions along the Western educational model, which is about individual betterment within the context of a Western model of success, but I strongly believe that being awakened inspires students to seek social justice not only by pursuing more information for themselves but also by taking action to awaken ­others. By awakening ­others, I mean making students question the information they are given and to critically think about it. The difference is between hoarding and sharing. Similarly, prior to being awakened about the failures of the U.S. educational institution in relationship to my p­ eople, I had approached my master’s thesis from a cultural perspective of binary gender roles and expectations for Hmong sons and ­daughters’ education. I remember my thesis committee critiquing me for re-­creating a Eurocentric argument that did not even seem like it was written by a Hmong person. I had removed myself from the writing. This critique forced me to reconsider my data and the lens through which I examined them from the perspective of decolonization. Once I did so, the data took on a very dif­fer­ent meaning. For example, what had once seemed to ratify the deficit view of Hmong culture was now revealed to show the extent to which Hmong p­ eople in the United States have accepted dominant U.S. views of their culture and had not seen the failings of the U.S. educational system itself. As I wrote in my master’s thesis, I still strongly believe that education is a path ­toward financial stability. But now I have also become more critical of the content of what is being taught and how it affects me as a Hmong American. Likewise, I have experienced the divisions within the Hmong American community, specifically the internal division regarding the ste­reo­types of Hmong male students; but what was I ­really seeing? How much of what I saw was ­shaped by Amer­i­ca’s deficit view of my culture, a view that explained the failure of Hmong students within the U.S. educational system by finding flaws within Hmong culture but failed to recognize the prob­lems within the U.S. educational system itself? The system has failed us; we have not failed it. And yet I still have to consciously remind myself to not revert back to believing in ­those ste­reo­types. It is an ongoing pro­cess for me, a researcher from that community, to not fall into the dominant culture’s trap. The educational system is constructed to foster the perception that Amer­ i­ca is g­ reat. However, constructing Amer­i­ca as g­ reat has been done at the expense of devaluing other cultures. This creates a paradox, as it is actually all of ­these cultures that, in coming together, made and continue to make

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Amer­i­ca, Amer­i­ca. In 2016, California’s AB 2016 was passed, which would require a development of ethnic studies in California’s public schools; however, this bill was previously vetoed by Governor Jerry Brown in 2015 (Alejo, 2016; Caesar, 2015; Wang, 2016). Although he l­ater changed his mind in response to community pressure, the fact that he had previously vetoed this bill reinforces the superiority of only one type of history that is dominant within public schools (Ethnic Studies Now, n.d.). I believe ­there is a fear that the more progressive and critical we become of Amer­i­ca’s educational institutions, the more we w ­ ill realize how much the truth has been hidden from us.15 Yes, education is the key to empowerment, but that depends on who is teaching it and how the curriculum is being taught. My recommendation for educational policy makers, especially t­ hose who serve in states where t­ here is a large Hmong population such as Minnesota, Wisconsin, and California, is to implement e­ ither an ethnic studies course or a more in-­depth classroom curriculum that provides a space for Hmong American students to learn about their history.16 With an inclusion of Hmong history in the curriculum, Hmong students such as myself would feel validated and have a better understanding of our history and thus ourselves. However, as we learned through my critique of the currently available materials on Hmong culture, inclusion may not be enough. To include Hmong by naming them illiterate and misdefining them as “­free” can cause greater harm. Hmong culture needs to be centered, and Eurocentric assumptions need to be questioned. If the teacher does not have sufficient knowledge about Hmong history or does not teach in in a way that allows students to feel included or proud to explore their own history, then it defeats the purpose of creating such curriculums in the first place. Thus, my Hmong American community members, parents, students, and allies of the Hmong, I also challenge you to not only rely on the educational institution to teach Hmong history: you must also seek it out yourselves. Most importantly, I challenge you to undo the miseducation about the Hmong and of the Hmong. Additionally, we must remember that education can penetrate all aspects of society, from the individual to the community level, as seen with my interviewees, creating public and internal spaces of division. At the individual level, a Hmong male student shared a personal story of how he excelled in schools and was physically divided in the classroom, left feeling isolated from his Hmong male peers and from the Hmong community. We also heard from the participants how Hmong males are ste­reo­typed as less likely to excel academically compared with Hmong female students. ­These interviews shed light on the need to conduct more research to understand the nature of ­these public and private spaces of divisions within the Hmong student population and the community at large. As believed by all my participants, education is the key to financial stability. However, if the quality of education they receive fails them,

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it is not their fault but rather that of the educational institution. The way our U.S. educational institutions are currently designed only values one type of knowledge, that of Eu­ro­pean American culture and values. This Eurocentric way of seeing the world continues to both undermine and ignore Hmong values and knowledge. In conversation with instructors at vari­ous ethnic studies and Asian American studies departments and programs across the University of California and California State University systems, I learned that each professor who teaches about Hmong (­whether it is Hmong history, community issues, or culture) uses a variety of resources to inform what they teach their students. ­These resources range from Sucheng Chan’s (1994) book to newspaper articles to research studies published in the Hmong Studies Journal. Based on the responses I received, within ethnic studies and Asian American studies, t­ here is no one book that captures all the experiences of the Hmong. Similarly, as teachers, educators, and students, we must not refer to one book or news article to apply to the Hmong community; rather, we must be diligent and utilize a variety of resources. I highly recommend K. Yang’s (2012) critique of the Western narrative of the Hmong as a starting point. Although this chapter focuses on one ethnic group in the United States, it has implications for educators, parents, and students from many communities of color, especially ­those that are deliberately ignored, to be wary of educational institutions. This chapter also calls for more awareness about how students of color are being taught, both explic­itly and implicitly, about their own backgrounds, history, and culture—­especially in their relationship to the United States. We must not forget that education can be a power­ful tool for learning, but at the same time it can also be a weapon that can hurt t­ hose who are not in a position of controlling it. My question to you is, does “Hmong” truly mean “­free”? Figuratively, if we truly do want “Hmong” to mean “­free,” then we must first ­free our minds of this miseducation in order to find our truth.

Notes Chapter title: Th ­ ere are dif­fer­ent ways to spell “Hmong” based on the two dialects, White or Green/Blue. Th ­ ose who speak the White dialect use the spelling “Hmong” ­because it is similar to the Romanized spelling H-­M-­O-­O-­B. ­Those who speak the Green/Blue dialect use the spelling, “Mong” b­ ecause it is similar to the Romanized spelling M-­O-­O-­B. In most published works, the spelling “Hmong” is most widely used, and that is the spelling that I w ­ ill also use in this chapter. 1 This chapter was taken from my master’s thesis and furthered developed with the encouragement and mentorship of Kieu Linh Caroline Valverde and Wei Ming Dariotis. I also want to thank them and Philip Nguyen for reviewing the early drafts of this chapter. 2 In the Hmong American community, every­one is related somehow, especially through marriage.

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3 Each ­family was given an assigned Hmong pseudonym for their first and last name. The first name of each youth was e­ ither a Hmong or American pseudonym, depending on ­whether their real name was Hmong or American. The parents ­were identified as f­ ather or ­mother according to their position in the ­family. 4 Parents used the term “adult school” to describe their highest level of education in the United States. This was where they w ­ ere taught to read and write in En­g lish. 5 According to Pfeifer, ­Sullivan, et al. (2012), California’s population of “91,224 still constitutes more than one-­third of the total number of Hmong in the United States” (p. 7). Within the cities of California, Fresno is the most highly populated, with a Hmong population of 31,771, Sacramento–­Yolo with 26,996, Merced with 7,254, and then Stockton with 6,968 (p. 8). 6 This is in accordance with Article 26 of the United Nations’ (1948) Universal Declaration of H ­ uman Rights. 7 In my master’s thesis, I noted that twenty-­nine participants said Hmong w ­ omen ­were excelling in school more than Hmong men; however, the correct number is thirty participants. Out of the thirty participants, two of them answered that Hmong w ­ omen are excelling in school but also mentioned that it depends on the individual. Thus, only three participants said that both Hmong men and ­women ­were excelling in school. 8 The word “xwb” translates as “only,” but in this context, the speaker is emphasizing that he has more sons. His usage of the word “tsawg” translates to him having few or l­ ittle d­ aughters. In En­g lish, the use of or translation to “only” is grammatically incorrect b­ ecause using “only” should mean he has no d­ aughters. However, in the Hmong-­language context, using “xwb/only” is accurate. Thus, ­there is a disconnect between the Hmong language, which allows for flexible meanings based on relationships between p­ eople and their knowledge of one another, and En­g lish, which has more rigid grammar. 9 The following is a selected list of books and classroom curriculum materials analyzed by K. Yang (2012): Barr, L. (2005). Long road to freedom: Journey of the Hmong. Mankato, MN: Red Brick Learning. Brittan, D (1997). The Hmong. New York: PowerKids Press. Cooper, R. (1998). The Hmong: A guide to traditional lifestyles. Singapore: Times Editions. Millet, S (2002). The Hmong of Southeast Asia. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications Com­pany. Robbins, C. (1987). The Ravens. New York: Crown Publishers. Saint Paul Public Schools. (2004). Teacher handbook: Embedding Hmong culture into the K–3 studies curriculum. 10 Chan (1994) writes in the preface that she and her student collaborators “produced this book b­ ecause we hope that it ­will enable other Americans to better understand the Hmong. At the same time, we like to think that the life stories collected h ­ ere w ­ ill serve as a rec­ord of the legacy that young Hmong Americans, who may no longer know the language of their ancestors, are inheriting t­ oday as they strug­g le to find a place for themselves in the multiethnic and multicultural society that is Amer­i­ca” (p. xx). 11 K. Yang (2012) spent thirty years investigating what the word “Hmong” means. 12 My formal education entails my social science classes from kindergarten to twelfth grade, ­children’s story­books like Cha’s (1996) Dia’s Story Cloth, and Fadiman’s

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13

14

15 16

(1997) Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. This is not to say I ­didn’t enjoy reading t­ hese books—­I did; however, the inaccuracies and the static perspective it gives of the Hmong are problematic. This story was passed down by word of mouth from generation to generation of Hmong. My grandparents grew up hearing it when they w ­ ere younger; my parents grew up hearing it, too. I am a person who is fascinated by stories and who wants details, so I would ask for the man’s name, year, and so on. But the response I got is, “No one knows.” This is a story that is widely shared among the Hmong community (although not all Hmong youths t­ oday may know of it). Since the arrival of Hmong in the United States, t­ hese stories have also been preserved the Western way, which is writing it down. I do want to emphasize that t­ here is a difference between the American definition of “myth” and the Hmong definition. In my understanding, American myths tend to just be stories, but Hmong myths are the ways in which we explain the world; they are both our ontology (what we know) and epistemology (how we know). As a child, I distinctly heard Amer­i­ca referred to as a “melting pot.” My teachers would play “The ­Great American Melting Pot,” by School­house Rock, for my class and me to sing along. We also sang other patriotic songs like “Amer­i­ca the Beautiful” and “The Star-­Spangled Banner.” At a young age, t­ hese songs instilled the idea that Amer­i­ca is indeed a land of equality and a “melting pot.” See Arizona’s anti-­ethnic studies crusade (Delgado, 2013) and the documentary Precious Knowledge (McGinnis & Palos, 2001). Although instances of including Hmong in the curriculum have increased—­for example in the Hmong charter schools in Minnesota (opened in 2004) and California (opened in 2010)—­and some schools now offer a Hmong language class to high school students, as at Central High School in Fresno, California (2016), ­these are isolated and individual incidents. What I am advocating for is not individual districts, schools, and teachers to include Hmong into the curriculum but encouragement and support for this implementation from the state and national levels.

References Alejo, L. (2016). California Assembly Bill 2016, Pupil instruction: ethnic studies. Blanchett, W. J. (2006). Disproportionate repre­sen­ta­tion of African American students in special education: Acknowledging the role of white privilege and racism. Educational Researcher, 35(6), 24–28. doi:10.3102/0013189X035006024 California Department of Education. (2000). History-­social science content standards for California public schools: Kindergarten through grade twelve. Retrieved from http://­ www​.­cde​.­ca​.­gov​/­be​/­st​/­ss​/­documents​/­histsocscistnd​.­pdf California Department of Education. (2016, March 14). Truancy. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­cde​.­ca​.­gov​/­ls​/­ai​/­tr/ Caesar, S. (2015, October 12). California gov. Jerry Brown vetoes ethnic studies bill. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­latimes​.­com​/­local​/­lanow​/­la​-­me​-­ln​-­brown​ -­ethnic​-­studies​-­bill​-­20151011​-s­ tory​.h ­ tml Cha, D. (1996). Dia’s story cloth. New York: Lee & Low Books. Chan, S. (1994). Hmong means fr ­ ee: Life in Laos and Amer­i­ca. Philadelphia: T ­ emple University Press.

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Coates, T.-­N. (2015, October). The black ­family in the age of mass incarceration. Atlantic. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­theatlantic​.­com​/m ­ agazine​/­archive​/­2015​/­10​/­the​-­black​ -­family​-­in​-­the​-­age​-­of​-­mass​-­incarceration​/­403246/ Constantino, R. (1970). The mis-­education of the Filipino. Journal of Con­temporary Asia, 1(1), 20–36. Delgado, R. (2013). Precious knowledge: State bans on ethnic studies, book traffickers (librotraficantes), and a new type of race trial. North Carolina Law Review, 91(5), 1513–1554. Duffy, J., Harmon, R., Ranard, D. A., et al. (2004). The Hmong: An introduction to their history and culture. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics, Cultural Orientation Resource Center. Enwall, J. (1997). A myth become real­ity: History and development of the Miao written language. Vol 1. Stockholm: Institute of Oriental Languages, Stockholm University. Ethnic Studies Now. (n.d.). Letters of support. Retrieved from http://­w ww​ .­ethnicstudiesnow​.­com​/­letters​_­of​_ ­support Fadiman, A. (2012). The spirit catches you and you fall down: A Hmong child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures. New York: Macmillan. Fillmore, L. W. (1991). When learning a second language means losing the first. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 6, 323–346. Hamilton-­Merritt, J. (1993). Tragic mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the secret wars for Laos, 1942–1992. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Harris, K. D., Nelson, B., Habig, J., et al. (2013). In school and on track: Attorney general’s 2103 report on California’s elementary school truancy and absenteeism crisis. Sacramento: Office of the California Attorney General. Hillmer, P. (2010). A ­people’s history of the Hmong. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society. Hmong National Development (2013). The State of the Hmong American Community: 2010 U.S. Census Report. Retrieved from http://­aapidata​.­com​/­wp​-­content​/­uploads​ /­2017​/­04​/­State​-­of​-­the​-­Hmong​-­A merican​-­Community​-­2013​.­pdf Imber, M. (2014). Education law. New York: Routledge. Lee, M.N.M. (1998). The thousand-­year myth: Construction and characterization of Hmong. Hmong Studies Journal, 2(2). Lee, S. J. (1997). The road to college: Hmong American ­women. Harvard Educational Review, 67(4). Retrieved from https://­hepgjournals​.­org​/­doi​/­abs​/­10​.­17763​/­haer​.­67​.­4​ .­0296u12hu7r65562 Lee, S. J. (2001). More than “model minorities” or “delinquents”: A look at Hmong American high school students. Harvard Educational Review, 71, 505–528. Retrieved from http://­her​.­hepg​.­org​/­content​/­k055628l18wp51v6​/­f ulltext​.­pdf Lee, S. J. (2005). Up against whiteness: Race, school, and immigrant youth. New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University. McGinnis, E. I. (Producer), & Palos, A. L. (Director). (2001). Precious knowledge [Motion picture]. United States: Dos Vatos Productions. Mouavangsou, C. (2009). Traditional Hmong marriage ceremony values and practices: Influence and change as a result of immigration. Fresno, CA: Alliant International University. Mouavangsou, K. N. (2016) The mis-­education of the Hmong in Amer­i­ca. (Unpublished master’s thesis.) University of California, Davis. Mydans, S. (1990, November 7). California says Laos refugee group is a victim of leadership’s extortion. New York Times. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­nytimes​.­com​/­1990​ /­11​/­07​/­us​/­california​-­says​-­laos​-­refugee​-­g roup​-­is​-­a​-­victim​-­of​-­leadership​-­s​-­extortion​.­html

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Ngo, B. (2016). The costs of “living the dream” for Hmong immigrants: The impact of subtractive schooling on f­ amily and community. Educational Studies, 53, 450–467. Ngo, B., & Lee, S. J. (2007). Complicating the image of model minority success: A review of Southeast Asian American education. Review of Educational Research, 77, 415–453. Ngo, B., & Lor, P. (2013). G ­ reat expectations: The strug­gles of Hmong American high school boys. In M. E. Pfeifer, M. Chiu, & K. Yang (Eds.), Diversity in diaspora: Hmong Americans in the twenty-­first c­ entury (pp. 151–164). Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Pfeifer, M. E., S­ ullivan, J., Yang, K., & Yang, W. (2012). Hmong population and demographic trends in the 2010 census and 2010 American Community Survey. Hmong Studies Journal, 13(2), 1–31. Portes, A., & Rumbaut, R. G. (2001). The story of the immigrant second generation: Legacies. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Quincy, K. (2012). From war to resettlement: How Hmong have become American. In V. K. Her & M. Buley-­Meissner (Eds.), Hmong and American: From refugees to citizens (pp. 59–79). St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press. United Nations. (1948, December 10). Universal declaration of h ­ uman rights. United Nations ­Human Rights Office of High Commissioner. (2016). Statement to the media by the United Nations’ Working Group of Experts on P ­ eople of African Descent, on the conclusion of its official visit to USA, 19–29 January 2016. Retrieved from http://­w ww​ .­ohchr​.­org​/E ­ N​/ ­NewsEvents​/P ­ ages​/­DisplayNews​.a­ spx​?­NewsID ​=­17000 U.S. Census Bureau. (n.d.) Selected population profile in the United States 2011–2013 American Community Survey 3-­year estimates. Retrieved August 18, 2016, from http://­factfinder​.­census​.­gov​/­bkmk​/­table​/­1.​ ­0​/­en​/­ACS​/­13​_­3YR​/­S0201//­popgroup~039 U.S. Department of Education. (2003). From t­ here to ­here: The road to reform of American high schools. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Vocational and Adult Education. U.S. Department of Education. (2016). U.S. Education Department researches settlement with Lodi Unified School District in California: Agreement aims to end discrimination against African-­American in discipline practices. [press release]. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­ed​.­gov​/­news​/­press​-­releases​/­us​-­education​-­department​-­reaches​-­settlement​ -­lodi​-­unified​-­school​-­district​-­california Vang, C. T. (2004). Hmong-­A merican K–12 students and the academic skills needed for a college education: A review of the existing lit­er­a­ture and suggestions for ­f uture research. Hmong Studies Journal, 5, 1–31. Vang, H. (2000). Hmong American ­women’s educational attainment: Implications for Hmong American ­women and men. Hmong 2000 Census Publication: Data & Analy­sis. Hmong National Development Inc. & Hmong Cultural Resource Center. Washington, DC. pp. 23–25. Vang, M. (2016). Writing on the run: Hmong American literary formations and the deterritorialized subject. MELUS: Multi-­Ethnic Lit­er­a­ture of the United States, 41(3), 89–111. Vue, B. (2011). 11th grade United States history curriculum unit: Vietnam War textbook analy­sis and minority voices. (Master’s thesis). California State University, Sacramento. Vue, R. (2013). Campus contexts and Hmong students’ experiences negotiating identity and higher education. In S. D. Museus, D. C. Maramba, & R. T. Teranishi (Eds.), The misrepresented minority: New insights on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and the implications for higher education (pp. 182–197). Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing. Wang, F. (2016, September 14). California governor signs bill to develop high school ethnic studies curriculum. NBC News. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­nbcnews​.­com​/­news​/a­ sian​

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-­america​/c­ alifornia​-g­ overnor​-­signs​-b­ ill​-­develop​-­high​-­school​-­ethnic​-­studies​-­curriculum​ -­n648396 Woodson, C. (1972). The mis-­education of the negro. New York: AMS Press. (Original work published 1933.) Xiong, M. (1996). Hmong college student attitudes ­towards counseling ser­vices. (Unpublished master’s thesis.) California State University, Northridge. Yang, D. (1993). Hmong at the turning point. Minneapolis, MN: Worldbridge Associates ­Limited. Yang, K. (2012). Commentary: Mis-­education in K–12 teaching about Hmong culture, identity, history and religion. Hmong Studies Journal, 13(1), 1–21.

6

An Offering Healing the Wounds and Ruptures of Gradu­ate School CINDY NHI HUYNH

Abstract Inspired by Gloria Anzaldùa’s (2002) work on healing and transformation, Huynh offers her experience as a doctoral candidate to discuss the wounds and ruptures of gradu­ate school through five stages she calls Wreckage, Bleeding Out, Cleaning the Wound, (Ad)dressing the Wound, and Scar Tissue. Huynh reiterates concerns regarding the acad­emy as a fickle, contradictory space that impacts the health and well-­being of w ­ omen of color gradu­ate students and shares how she strug­gles to navigate difficult academic terrain while keeping her mindbodyspirit intact. In closing, Huynh encourages more w ­ omen of color gradu­ate students to disclose and critique their academic experiences as an audacious act of healing.

Introduction When I sat down to write my chapter for this collection, I was confident. I articulated clearly to my mentor and one of the co-­editors, Kieu Linh Caroline Valverde, that I would speak to the fragility of the academic experience, offer evidence of the countless microaggressive attacks I experienced as a Southeast 219

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Asian American ­woman gradu­ate student, and boldly call out my institution and department for its systemic failures and disinvestment in ­women of color gradu­ate students.1 But a­ fter many dedicated months of writing and over seven dif­fer­ent drafts, I fell short of my proposal. Every­thing I wrote was not cohesive. My memories had become distant. My intellectual capacity was drained. More than anything, my mindbodyspirit had become deeply resistant. I was also struggling with and burdened by expectation and time. With the holidays coming, I de­cided to step away from writing and made a commitment to enjoy the moment and relax with my f­ amily. As I packed for my mom’s h ­ ouse, I left b­ ehind my outline, notes, and the articles needed to complete this chapter. Instead, I packed Presumed Incompetent—an early Christmas gift from my partner—to read at my leisure and consciously reminded myself that my laptop would be used only for entertainment. I spent my days at my mom’s home just as I had intended. I indulged in home-­cooked meals, caught up on sleep, lounged around with my f­ amily, and read leisurely. Despite being relaxed and in the moment, I often went to bed with my mind on this chapter. Why was it not coming together? Why was I struggling to articulate my own lived experience? What was it ­going to take to write? I thought about new ways I could write the introduction, dif­fer­ent theories I could use, and other experiences I could include. Yet nothing felt right. As my mind wandered and I fought for answers, I began thinking about Gloria Anzaldúa’s path of conocimiento, from el arrebato (outburst or rupture) to shifting realities (Anzaldùa, 2002). For years I have offered Gloria Anzaldùa’s “now let us shift . . . ​the path of conocimiento . . . ​inner work, public acts” to my homegirls, students, and mentees when they are g­ oing through moments of challenge. I have always found comfort and encouragement in Anzaldùa’s writing and most particularly this chapter. ­There has not been much ­else that I have read that has similarly captured the complexities and possibilities of transformation when our earth, lives, and selves shatter. I have read “now let us shift . . . ​the path of conocimiento . . . ​inner work, public acts” over ten times, but not once have I offered it to myself, ­until now.

An Offering The path of conocimiento is the connection between the personal and political— a merging of knowledge, emotion, spirituality, and agency (Anzaldùa, 2002, Bobel, Sieber, et al., 2006;). For Anzaldùa, this path occurs through seven interconnected and reoccurring stages that call upon e­ very detail of ourselves—­ mindbodyspirit—to act transformatively. She writes: “Breaking out of your ­mental and emotional prison and deepening the range of perception enables you to link inner reflection and vision—­the m ­ ental, emotional, instinctive, imaginal, spiritual, and subtle bodily awareness—­with social, po­liti­cal action and

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lived experiences to generate subversive knowledges” (Anzaldùa, 2002, p. 542). The offering of Anzaldùa’s work to myself was timely. It was an invitation to challenge my own ways of thinking, seeing, and being as I strug­gled to share my experiences. In this very writing pro­cess, I had under­gone the path of conocimiento and emerged. My realities had shifted. Anzaldùa’s work served as a catalyst to engage my academic experiences in ways that I had yet to fully comprehend. I found new meaning in experiences that I had previously dismissed as meaningless; drew deeper connections between my suffering and my survival; and courageously confronted my academic fatalism (Anzaldùa, 2002; Keating, 2008). I realized that I could not write ­because I had been writing as a function of retaliation rather than to facilitate healing. This chapter is an audacious work of healing. It is the sum of my painful but tenacious path ­toward a doctorate—­a path I have yet to conclude. The memories I share are not always linear or orderly. They happened in vari­ous phases, years, and moments. Some memories are still re-­forming. Nonetheless, what I share is deliberate, outlined in five stages I name as Wreckage, Bleeding Out, Cleaning the Wound, (Ad)dressing the Wound, and Scar Tissue. I am inclined to think about my academic experiences as wounding and rupture. I entered into the acad­emy well prepared—­mindbodyspirit—­for the task ahead but found the environment and terrain far more difficult than I had anticipated (Chavira-­Prado, 1999; Valverde, 2013; Vō, 2012;). This caused a g­ reat deal of chaos and became deeply disorienting. Consequently, I became wounded and have been struggling to restore myself ever since. My hope is that this chapter serves to generate solidarity with other ­women of color who courageously talk back to the systemic and individualized failures of the acad­emy both publicly and privately (hooks, 1989; Muhs, Niemann, et al., 2012; Valverde, 2013). More than anything, I hope this chapter serves as a gentle reminder that we must be tender with ourselves in all of our pro­cesses (Anzaldùa, 2002). When we are, we are investing in our survival.2

Wreckage By many accounts, I was the rock-­star doctoral student. I came into my program highly recommended, well mentored, and academically experienced. As a Southeast Asian American ­woman, I was also underrepresented across my university, college, and department. I viewed my presence and attendance as a mutual benefit—­I wanted a doctorate and my university was able to use me for recruitment and retention purposes.3 Beyond this, I was ­eager, focused, and motivated by my program’s marked commitment to social justice through academic excellence. I r­ eally believed in my program’s mission, the faculty b­ ehind it, as well as my own abilities. I performed well at ­every juncture of my program, including my first-­year review, teaching and research assistantship, and

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qualifying exams; volunteered myself for numerous department and college-­ wide opportunities; presented at prestigious national academic meetings; received grants to develop online curriculum; and was selected for honorary mention for a teaching award—­all before reaching candidacy. Yet, all of this meant very ­little, especially as I got further along in my program. I learned quickly that the acad­emy is fickle. The acad­emy is regarded as a space of intellectual rigor and freedom, social advancement, autonomy, flexibility, and prestige (Harris & González, 2012). Yet, beneath its promoted functions, it is also a space of hostility, alienation, discrimination, and disinvestment for ­women of color (Anzaldùa, 2002; Bañuelos, 2006; Chavira-­Prado, 1999; Gumbs, 2012; Valverde, 2013). For Asian American w ­ omen, the layers of hostility and stressors can be particularly specialized and heightened (see chapter 3). As existing research indicates and this volume thoughtfully advances, the acad­ emy is manufactured and symptomatic—­reactive and reflective of larger structural issues impacted by historical, economic, and po­liti­cal systems (Douglas, 2012; Harris & González, 2012). In her article, Chavira-­Prado (1999, p.136) explains: On one hand [academia] represents liberation (hooks, 1994) for the historically oppressed b­ ecause its cornerstone, education, equips us to question critically, thereby enabling our decolonizing pro­cess. But academia is also a power player in the politics of domination. It ensnarls us into another form of colonization as it attempts to impose its own language, norms, expectations, and proscriptions, all of which form an academic culture that enshrouds theory and method. As students we are introduced to selected, interpreted phenomena that serve to mold us as professional academicians ultimately shaping how (and how much) we analyze, reason, respond, or contribute to new academic production. An inherent irony, and evidencing our recolonization within academia, is the commonly held notion that much of our intellectual endeavor represents in­de­pen­dence, liberation, and empowerment.

Although I did not recognize the discrepancies of the acad­emy immediately, my eventual awareness of its contradictions would come with mixed emotions. I was deeply hesitant about upholding academic elitism and narratives that w ­ ere meritocratic and romanticized. Si­mul­ta­neously, however, I was proud of my achievements, which required conforming to some of the same norms with which I had begun to take issue. I now understand that t­ hese confusing contradictions rested on the maintenance of the symbolic value of my academic accomplishments, especially for my ­mother and deceased f­ather—­both of whom ­were refugees of the Việt Nam War. I took very seriously the opportunity to be formally educated b­ ecause my parents had not been. I also valued my access to vari­ous intellectual spaces and conversations. But as my critical

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thinking skills advanced, my understanding of the terror within the acad­emy did, too.

Bleeding Out I do not remember my first academic wound. I experienced nicks and bumps often—­subtle but irritating interactions—­however, ­those had felt like they came with the academic pro­cess. I knew that disagreements with colleagues, observations of favoritism, and cliquish be­hav­ior ­were not exclusive to the acad­ emy. But over time, my nicks and bumps turned into gashes and bruises— interactions and exchanges that ­were obviously intentional and thus upsetting and frustrating (Duncan, 2014). I was used as a pawn to promote vari­ous messages between faculty, pressured into research I did not want to conduct, told that the research I did want to conduct was not rigorous or valuable to my field, and silenced and overly scrutinized in the classroom. I also found my efforts, ­labor, and ideas exploited, including when, without appropriate compensation, I developed a course and trained a team of teaching assistants to lead it. The pressure to fulfill expectations was disguised as “opportunities” and “collaboration.” My gashes grew and bruises deepened. They eventually became unmanageable. I began academically hemorrhaging when I transitioned between dissertation chairs. This decision caused some tension with my original chair, which was exacerbated when I also changed my research trajectory away from her specific interests. Then, when I candidly spoke about the hostile classroom environment and lack of pedagogical investment in a class I was taking co-­taught by her husband, a professor in our same college, my situation went from bad to irreparable. Our “good” faculty–­student relationship quickly diminished as she became unsupportive and distant. I clearly needed to move on. My new dissertation chair seemed like a better match for me—­she had the expertise to support my new research trajectory, was e­ ager to see my progression as a student and scholar, supported my community work at a local elementary school, and shared similar frameworks and politics as a ­woman of color. This new working relationship made sense to me—or so I thought. In an unexpected turn, what was supposed to be a meeting to discuss my dissertation topic, projected timeline, and ways she could support me in my writing pro­ cess became a hostile conversation about my activist and organ­izing work. “I’ve been seeing you in the newspaper a lot lately, calling out the president for the firing of [a high ranking administrator on campus],” she said. I acknowledged her comment and mentioned that I was t­ here to call out the inconsistencies and lack of transparency the president’s office demonstrated in the decision. As students, I said, we ­were stakeholders in administrative ­matters, too. She sternly replied that I had “absolutely no business getting involved” in t­ hose ­matters and

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that I needed to ­either actively disengage from my organ­izing work to complete my dissertation or continue organ­izing and face personal consequences. I interpreted her comments as a threat to my successful completion of the program.4 I spent the week following our meeting seeking advice from trusted mentors and colleagues on what to do. Transitioning to a new chair seemed like the most obvious answer, but it was not that s­ imple. I had just transitioned. My department also lacked available faculty with whom to work. Many faculty members w ­ ere overcommitted; a ­couple ­others ­were on sabbatical or leave; while the rest w ­ ere not particularly well versed to support my research. Then t­ here ­were also department politics. It was well known that certain faculty members refused to be part of committees depending on who was chairing. For fear of reprisal, I began the exhaustive pro­cess of finding a new chair and compiling a committee, all the while keeping my prior chair and existing chair from learning about my endeavors. Broken and drained, I could not write for a full academic year. I attempted a variety of methods to g­ ently encourage my writing. I started by buying a new keyboard, mouse, and desk. My workspace investment did not yield much of a return so I moved my desk out of my bedroom and into my living room. I had read online somewhere that your workspace should be separate from your bedroom ­because your brain is too distracted and relaxed when ­those spaces are shared. I carried home some flip-­chart paper from my department and put it up on my walls. I spent time mapping out ideas for my dissertation with colorful markers. I also embellished my flip-­chart paper with sketches, cartoons, and diagrams. I posted a picture of myself on social media with my flip-­chart paper. I thought this would keep me accountable. If p­ eople knew that I was “writing,” then maybe I would actually write. Psychologically I was convinced that this would make me write. Eventually I resorted to what I believed was “tough love.” I shamed myself for not writing and withheld myself from ­doing ­things I found joy in b­ ecause I was not writing. I s­ topped studying at cafes, thrifting, walking to school, and cooking meals that reminded me of home ­because I did not think I deserved to have ­these pleasures.5 I became infuriated by my inability to write on my own so I reached out to my colleagues to write together. Despite many willing participants, ­those writing circles always only lasted one to two sessions. ­A fter multiple failed writing circles, I signed up for a writing retreat in Zion National Park that was offered to select gradu­ate students and faculty at my university. I was certain the serenity of nature would uplift and inspire my writing. I went on solo and partnered hikes daily before I would sit down for a writing session. I also participated in the group’s facilitated writing sessions in the eve­nings. Although I enjoyed the setting, I wrote minimally. I publicly cried out my frustration about not being

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able to write during one of the eve­ning facilitated writing sessions. On the third morning of the writing retreat, I went on a solo hike and got caught in a hail storm. I ran down a hill seeking refuge and injured my knee. The pain was so unbearable afterward that I could not sleep or eat. I ended up leaving days before the writing retreat completed to go home and receive medical care. My mindbodyspirit was in ruins. This signaled the culmination of my experience. I called on e­ very part of myself but received no response. I was just a shell—­deeply tormented, depressed, and resentful. I refused to acknowledge my pain and found so many ways to occupy my time with other commitments—­ coaching, community work, teaching, conferencing, traveling —­that I no longer had the time to write. Who would question ­whether I was writing? I just had to kindly smile and say that I was. Over time, my body continued to warn me of the dangers of my state. A torn right meniscus was not enough. An autoimmune disease began extracting my physical, emotional, and spiritual strength.6 My skin was burning and peeling off. My heart palpitated through my chest. My thyroid got so swollen that every­thing—­physical and emotional—­was becoming hard to swallow. I sat on the toilet six times a day for thirty minutes at a time trying to pass enormous amounts of soft stool ­because my body could not absorb any nutrients I put into it. Sometimes I sat for so long on the hard, cold toilet seat that my legs would go numb. I could not focus. I cried a lot. I did not sleep well. My physical energy evaporated. I was unable to complete ­simple daily tasks. Writing was no longer an option. My body was not physically capable of producing energy anymore, and when I tried to medicate myself to produce energy, I would wind up in the emergency room from adverse reactions to my medi­cation. Despite all I went through, I held onto the belief that I escaped any form of ­mental, physical, or emotional breakdown during gradu­ate school. I comforted a lot of colleagues through their own breakdowns but took a lot of pride in the idea that I never had to be comforted. I attributed this to losing my dad at a young age. Having endured so much so early, I had ferociously built ­mental, physical, and emotional walls that allowed very l­ ittle to bother me. I was good at moving along no m ­ atter the circumstances. I held onto my toughness so firmly that I ignored my s­ ister when she carefully expressed that I was “withdrawn.” I even became outrageously defensive when my partner lovingly told me that ­there was nothing wrong with acknowledging my depression. I had to come face-­to-­face with my depression and illness ­because it was quickly depleting me of my quality of life. I could no longer deny my pain and grief. I had broken down. My autoimmune disease forced me to accept the perils of the acad­emy as well as what it had done to me. My autoimmune disease forced me to accept my humanness. This new awareness forced me engage dif­fer­ent aspects of my real­ity to write anew. As Anzaldùa (2002) notes,

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combating oppressive power systems includes empowering the collective self—­mindbodyspirit. I put my writing aside and began researching the short-­ and long-­term implications of my disease. I wanted to understand my body’s dysfunction and heal it holistically. I coupled my research with the narratives and experiences of w ­ omen of color in the acad­emy and began making connections (Bowen, 2012; Douglas, 2012; Duncan, 2014; Lugo-­Lugo, 2012). My autoimmune disease, depression, and inability to produce academically and creatively w ­ ere not mutually exclusive (see chapter 3). They could not be treated separately, so I committed myself to viewing them as one.

Cleaning the Wound I laid in the ­middle of my living floor and stared at the ceiling in silence. My eyes filled with tears. When I blinked, my face was flooded. My body could no longer contain the tears that ­were made from exhaustion and relief. I cried honestly and freely. The acad­emy conditions you to endure—­endure the expectation, pressure, exhaustion, and isolation (Carillo, 2010; Duncan, 2014). When you endure, you earn your keep in the acad­emy. When you do not, your abilities and commitment come into question. I no longer wanted to endure, and I cried ­because I fi­nally realized that I no longer had to do so. Although it was an unspoken rule, I knew that doctoral students w ­ ere not supposed to move home, especially prior to reaching candidacy. Every­one believes that home life ­will distract you from finishing your writing. You ­will be inundated with ­family and community responsibilities. You w ­ ill become lackadaisical b­ ecause home is too comforting. Faculty worry about your ability to focus and meet deadlines. ­Going home is like academic suicide. When you remove yourself from the physical place your institution occupies, you also limit the urgency of the faculty to support you. You miss out on opportunities when you are not seen. You become easily forgotten when you are no longer physically pre­sent. As my health escaped me for a year, my self-­awareness began to transform. Being physically sick and unable to control how my body functioned served as a compelling reminder of the body I lived in. All of my aches and pains, waves of energy, and changes in breath signaled my survival but also my fragility. I could not take my body for granted and it was my responsibility to care for myself. If I could not care for myself, then I could not care for o­ thers, and if I did not care for myself, then ­others’ care for me would be futile (Lorde, 1988). It was time to recenter my care—it was time to go home.7 I reached out to my dissertation chair and asked her to meet me off campus to discuss my decision. I remained discreet about my health and well-­being and opted instead to pre­sent my decision to move home as the most logical. I had just received notice from my landlords that they ­were selling their property, the

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new funding package I was awarded was no longer tied to a teaching assistantship, my community work would continue at a distance with some minor adjustments, and I was just a two-­hour plane ­ride away if I needed to return to campus for defenses and advising. My chair cautioned me about what my departure could mean—­a delay in my completion and less hands-on support—­but ultimately offered her understanding. As my semester began to close out and summer neared, I began to prepare for my move home. I made arrangements to spend time with my few close friends and began sifting through the items I had accumulated. I created piles of the ­things I wanted to bring home and the ­things I wanted to leave ­behind. I made a very conscious decision to keep only the necessities—­things that would support my new intended journey. My move symbolized far more than just a physical departure of myself and my items from a place I had lived in for four years. My decision to move home signified my readiness to leave ­behind the years of self-­imposed pressure, labels, and loathing. The preceding four years had taught me that anxiety, stress, and fear ­were normal responses of the academic experience. I was ready to leave b­ ehind my identity as academic rock star and token ­woman gradu­ate student of color. For me, leaving t­ hose ­behind meant that I was ready to engage and embrace my humanness. My move home was a conversion from where I was to where I hoped to be—­a proactive attempt and choice of self-­care. I knew that merely ­going home would not simply heal me and that ­there was still more work to do, but I understood that home was an impor­tant bridge to my health. ­Going home was not comfortable, easy, or neat—­fi nancially, emotionally, physically, or mentally—­but I trusted in my inner being and allowed my desire to heal to guide me home.

(Ad)dressing the Wound The adjustment of being home was certainly not swift or seamless. I went from moving out of my own one-­bedroom apartment into my older ­sister’s one-­ bedroom apartment. Although we have always had a close relationship, I had to adjust to moving into her own, pre-­established space. The privileges I was used to having changed. I was no longer sleeping in my bedroom, working at my ergonomic station or in a space that I had decorated and or­ga­nized myself. Instead, I was sleeping on a mattress pad in the living room, writing at the dining ­table, and sifting through storage boxes to retrieve my belongings like my books. Although it took a serious adjustment, I was content and comforted. I dedicated my first summer home to settling in and easing my mindbodyspirit. As ­women of color, we are often told that the act of self-­care is po­liti­cal, yet we are not always sure about what that might look like. It was impor­tant to me that my self-­care addressed my most pressing ailments and that it was not temporary or reactionary. Instead, it needed to be practical,

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tangible, and a long-­term investment—­a transformation of my habits and lifestyle. As such, I spent months reading and researching more about autoimmune diseases and my own in par­tic­u­lar. I wanted to understand why my body was misfiring and how I could proactively and ­gently guide it to a place of healing. I taught myself about dif­fer­ent forms of medi­cation and health care procedures, how to decipher my hormone levels and blood work, and I read numerous forums on ways to cope with my disease on a day-­to-­day basis. I also committed to having consistent conversations with my partner to discuss dif­fer­ent ways he could be more supportive and understanding of the m ­ ental, physical, and emotional toll my disease had on me. We dedicated a ­great deal of time talking about how to care for me while also caring for our partnership. I applied for county-­sponsored health insurance to access needed care and to alleviate myself of as much financial burden as I could. I also taught myself about the Autoimmune Protocol (AIP) Diet8 and began experimenting with dif­fer­ent ­recipes to maximize the ­little energy my body was able to produce. Moving home gave me the ­mental clarity and support system (in my ­sister, partner, and friends) to be in constant conversation with myself. I was actively rewiring my health and habits as well as rewriting my self-­care. Part of taking care of my mindbodyspirit also meant adjusting what my work schedule looked like and sticking firmly to it. I had established very few bound­ aries and l­ittle balance regarding work. I was accustomed to working for ten to fifteen hours a day and often late into the night. Although some of my best writing happened late in the eve­ning, I would deprive myself of adequate rest in return. Being home encouraged me to find more balance in how I managed and or­ga­nized my time. I began first by implementing a no-­work policy on Saturdays. Having the opportunity to disconnect and disengage allowed me to be more fully pre­sent. It also allowed my mindbodyspirit to reset and refresh itself—­ valuable to performing well on the days that required my full effort and focus. In addition to not working on Saturdays, I ­stopped working late into the eve­nings. Instead, I would go to the gym three to four days out of the week, sit down completely unplugged for dinner with my s­ ister and partner, and go to bed e­ very eve­ ning at the same time with my partner. Most significantly, I returned to my art. I had always found deep joy and peace in my artistic expression. Art gave me an outlet to ease my anx­i­eties, encourage mindfulness, and create and complete something. The ability to create something and observe its transformation also translated into academic confidence for me. As I strug­gled to write and complete a paper or chapter, creating art helped to restore some balance and clarity. It also proved to me that I had the tenacity and focus to start and finish a piece. My newfound work–­life balance and real­ity became essential to my healing, and my body eagerly returned the ­favor by restoring much of the energy, focus, and passion that had eluded me for over a year. And although I had known this before,

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my newfound balance was key to me fi­nally understanding that if I did not take care of myself, I simply could not care for o­ thers (hooks, 1989).

Scar Tissue When I think about where I am ­today in my academic pro­cess, I think about it like I do scar tissue. Our bodies form scar tissue as a natu­ral response to an injury or trauma. Scar tissue is made from very tough, inflexible fibrous material that binds to damaged tissue fibers as an effort to draw them back together. Although scar tissue is an indication of healing, the area that is damaged remains vulnerable. The formation of scar tissue results in a loss of strength— to regain back that strength, the injured area must go through a consistent rehabilitation pro­cess. The last two years of my doctoral pro­cess have been my rehabilitation. I am working on healing e­ very day from the wounds of the acad­ emy. I know that re-­injury is always a possibility, but this does not stand as a threat; rather, it is a form of wisdom. My healing pro­cess has not been perfect—­I do not believe that any healing pro­cess is. It is also never done—­but rather is an ongoing pro­cess. I am still learning to manage my resentment and understand my trauma. I continue to feel an im­mense amount of pressure to complete my degree in the next year as well as move forward with expectations to publish and apply to postdoctorate and tenure-­track positions. As of late, I have declined conference invitations ­because I am overwhelmed, yet I remain fearful and anxious that I am selling myself short of opportunities as I near graduation. I think daily about the practical and rational. How do I set up myself up for a ­career that is stable and meaningful? How do I serve my community with my degree, knowledge, and skill set? I w ­ holeheartedly acknowledge my privilege in being highly educated. I know that this offers me access and opportunities to impact my community in a way that is effective and necessary. I want to be part of spaces that have long excluded communities of color and create new spaces. I also want to influence change at a systemic level. Yet, I question the actuality of all of this. I am struggling to find motivation to finish my dissertation. I do not write consistently ­because I am not supported by the majority of my committee members. Moving away from my institution has created a distance in mentorship. But I refuse to abandon my dissertation b­ ecause my work is an impor­tant contribution to my field.9 I am learning to affirm my own writing, give myself feedback, and trust in my voice as a writer and researcher. I also lean heavi­ly on the support of many ­women of color gradu­ate students and faculty. They are a consistent, impor­tant source of strength. I also now understand that pursuing a doctorate is not an individual endeavor. It never is. Although we typically work

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on our own and in isolation, t­ hose closest to us also experience this pro­cess by proxy. If my pro­cess remained toxic and imbalanced, that means that it would be the same for t­ hose that I love and care most deeply about.

Conclusion The acad­emy remains a place of contradiction and terror, but that does not mean it cannot shift, too. As Anzaldùa (2002) reminds us, transformation happens as, “when a change occurs[,] your consciousness (awareness of your sense of self and your response to self, ­others, and surroundings) becomes cognizant that it has a point of view and the ability to act from choice” (p. 568). Meaningful structural changes are not mutually exclusive from our self-­care and healing in the acad­emy. Resisting troubling academic culture and practices requires strategizing with our self-­care and healing at the forefront. In addition to what I have shared above, the following strategies serve as an example of ways we can consistently pro­gress in our academic endeavors while supporting and keeping ourselves intact: 1. Join or create a group on social media. A few months ago I joined a private social media group for w ­ omen of color in the acad­emy. This group has over 10,000 members and was created to encourage, mentor, and support ­women of color gradu­ate students and faculty at any stage of their academic c­ areers. The conversations in this group are uplifting, affirming, and fruitful. I am also comforted in my connection to a large community of ­women of color in the acad­emy who share and understand many of my academic experiences and challenges.10 2. Use your academic skill set for yourself. This seems obvious, but for me it was not ­until my health declined that I recognized ­these skills as a resource. I was so conditioned to use my research, teaching, and learning skills solely for gradu­ate school that I had neglected using them for myself. Now, I study my ailments and habits like I do theory, implement self-­care like a lesson plan, and listen to my body the same way I listen in any classroom. My academic skill set is an asset to my healing pro­cess. 3. Log your everyday work. I recently created a spreadsheet to log the work I attempt and complete on a daily basis. Writing a dissertation is a lengthy, overwhelming process—­this log serves as a marker and affirmation of my steady pro­gress over time.11 The accessibility of technology also offers numerous other ways to log your work, including through photos, videos, voice memos, applications, and vari­ous social media sites for private and public rec­ord. Last, I w ­ ill not say that I am better for what I have endured and am still enduring ­because that normalizes my wounding and rupture. I ­will say that I am

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dif­fer­ent, though. I have spiritual realization, health, and cautioned optimism (Anzaldùa, 2002). I have my own, unique sense of healing. I hope this chapter becomes an offering to o­ thers as Anzaldùa’s (2002) “now let us shift . . . ​ the path of conocimiento . . . ​inner work, public acts” is to me. I hope my experience is comforting, encouraging, and timely during moments of challenge—­ especially for ­women of color gradu­ate students. More than anything, I hope this chapter counteracts academic wounds and ruptures. We do not have to gradu­ate or be removed from gradu­ate school to disclose, critique, and wrestle with our experiences. The same goes for healing from them. ­There is promise and power in our vulnerabilities.

Notes 1 I began and finished this chapter while I was still in gradu­ate school and experiencing some of worst oppressive experience in the acad­emy to date. Editors’ note: Dr. Huynh has since completed her dissertation and become a tenure-­track faculty member. 2 I am guided by Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s (2012) definition and discussion of survival from her 2012 Feminist Wire blog, “The Shape of My Impact.” She explains that survival must be placed in context of what we have overcome. She writes, “Survival is life ­after disaster, life in honor of our ancestors, despite the genocidal forces worked against them specifically so we would not exist. I love the word survival b­ ecause it places my life in context of ­those who I love, who are called dead, but survive through my breathing, my presence, and my remembering.” 3 My image, name, and words w ­ ere featured in my gradu­ate school’s diversity campaign. 4 In “Fight the Tower: A Call to Action for ­Women of Color in Academia,” Kieu Linh Caroline Valverde (2013) shares how she was blindsided when a self-­identified feminist scholar in her department was the first person to torment her. I felt similarly when I was threatened by my dissertation chair. 5 Gloria Anzaldùa (2002) writes that during times of depression and despair, the masochist in us appears. We find plea­sure and rationality in our suffering. 6 I was diagnosed with Graves’ disease in 2014. According to the Mayo Clinic Staff (n.d.), Graves’ disease is an immune system disorder that results in the overproduction of thyroid hormones. Some common signs and symptoms of Graves’ disease include anxiety and irritability, tremor of the hands and fin­gers, heat sensitivity, change in menstrual cycles, frequent bowel movements, irregular heartbeat, and thick, red skin sores. 7 I think about home through bell hooks’s (1999) “Homeplace: A Site of Re­sis­tance in Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics,” a chapter first published in Yearning: Race, gender, and cultural politics. Home is not exclusive to a location of birth or origin. Instead, home is also meta­phorical places of refuge. “Home” can be vari­ous spaces like churches, t­ emples, and gyms; physical practices like meditation, cooking, dancing, stretching, and breathing; and cherished p­ eople; and so forth. 8 For more information on the AIP diet, I suggest the Web site www​.­aiplifestyle​ .­com.

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9 My dissertation research explores how Asian American ­women educators navigate and transform vari­ous educational landscapes through their use of hip-­hop pedagogy. 10 Editors’ note: this is the same group discussed in chapter 13. 11 Editors’ note: Such a log can also be a critical tool for faculty, particularly when facing ­labor strug­g les.

References Anzaldùa, G. (2002). Now let us shift . . . ​the path of conocimiento . . . ​inner work, public acts. In G. Anzaldùa & A. Keating (Eds.), This bridge we call home: Radical visions for transformation (pp. 540–579). New York: Routledge. Bañuelos, L.E. (2006). “­Here they go again with the race stuff”: Chicana negotiations of the gradu­ate experience. In D. Delgado Bernal, C. A. Elenes, F. E. Godinez, & S. Villenas (Eds.), Chicana/Latina education in everyday life: Feminista perspectives on pedagogy and epistemology (pp. 95–112). Albany: State University of New York Press. Bobel, C., Sieber, T., Suyemoto, K. L., et al. (2006). Introduction: This bridge we are building. ­Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self Knowledge, 4, 333–­338. Bowen, D. M. (2012). Visibly invisible: The burden of race and gender for female students of color striving for an academic ­career in science. In G. G. Muhs, Y. F. Niemann, C. G. González, & A. P. Harris (Eds.), Presumed incompetent: The intersections of race and class for ­women in academia (pp. 116–132). Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Carrillo, J. (2010). Teaching that breaks your heart: Reflections on the soul wounds of a first-­year Latina teacher. Harvard Educational Review, 80(1), 74–80. Chavira-­Prado, A. (1999). Chapter 12: Ni eres ni te pareces: Academia as rapture and alienation. Counterpoints, 65, 135–152. Douglas, D. D. (2012). Black/Out: The white face of multiculturalism and the vio­lence of the vio­lence of the Canadian academic imperial proj­ect. In G. G. Muhs, Y. F. Niemann, C. G. González, & A. P. Harris (Eds.), Presumed incompetent: The intersections of race and class for ­women in academia (pp. 50–64). Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Duncan, P. (2014). Hot commodities, cheap l­ abor: ­Women of color in the acad­emy. Frontiers: A Journal of W ­ omen Studies, 35(3), 39–63. Gumbs, A. P. (October 29, 2012). The shape of my impact. Retrieved from Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­thefeministwire​.­com​/­2012​/­10​/­the​-­shape​-­of​-­my​-­impact/ Harris, A. P., & González, C. G. (2012) Introduction. In G. G. Muhs, Y. F. Niemann, C. G. González, & A. P. Harris (Eds.), Presumed incompetent: The intersections of race and class for ­women in academia (pp. 1–14). Boulder: University Press of Colorado. hooks, b. (1989). Talking back: Thinking feminist, thinking black. Toronto: Between the Lines hooks, b. (1999). Yearning: Race, gender, and cultural politics. Brooklyn, NY: South End Press Keating, A. (2008). “I’m a citizen of the universe”: Gloria Anzaldúa’s spiritual activism as catalyst for social change. Feminist Studies, 34(1/2), 53–69. Lorde, A. (1988). A burst of light. Ann Arbor, MI: Firebrand Books. Lugo-­Lugo, C. R. (2012). A prostitute, a servant, and a customer-­service representative: A Latina in academia. In G. G. Muhs, Y. F. Niemann, C. G. González, & A. P. Harris (Eds.), Presumed incompetent: The intersections of race and class for w ­ omen in academia (pp. 40–50). Boulder: University Press of Colorado.

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Mayo Clinic Staff. (n.d.). Graves’ disease. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­mayoclinic​.­org​ /­diseases​-­conditions​/­g raves​-d­ isease​/­basics​/­definition​/­con​-­20025811 Muhs, G. G., Niemann, Y. F., González, C. G., & Harris, A. P. (Eds). (2012). Presumed incompetent: The intersections of race and class for w ­ omen in academia. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Valverde, K.-­L .C. (2013). Fight the tower: A call to action for ­women of color in academia. Seattle Journal for Social Justice, 12, 367–420. Vō, L. T. (2012). Navigating the academic terrain: The racial and gender politics of elusive belonging. In G. G. Muhs, Y. F. Niemann, C. G. González, & A. P. Harris (Eds.), Presumed incompetent: The intersections of race and class for w ­ omen in academia (pp. 93–109). Boulder: University Press of Colorado.

7

Opening the Box An International Asian W ­ oman Scholar’s Fight AKIKO TAKE YAMA

Abstract Professor Takeyama illustrates her fight for tenure as an international scholar, one of many Asian ­women serving as faculty in U.S. academic institutions. Her narrative reveals how a growing trend in the hiring of foreign scholars in the name of internationalization is potentially another form of exploitation b­ ecause ­these scholars may be given very ­little institutional support despite their specific needs. Issues such as language, accent bias, acculturation, racism, and sexism combine with l­ egal residency issues to compound the challenges of academic work for such transnational scholars. The author describes her own case culminating in an agonizing b­ attle for tenure, which she eventually won. Once she was on the side of serving on tenure and promotion review committees, she recognized the systemic overinterrogation of ­women’s work and the relative ease with which white male faculty moved through the pro­cess.

Introduction International faculty have been increasingly part of the U.S. academic landscape, but l­ ittle is known about their experiences in academia. Perform a search 234

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on data about them, and most of what you ­will find is on international students.1 International faculty are an invisible underclass among U.S. academics: often paid less, prevented from taking some funding or positions that are reserved for U.S. citizens, harder to hire b­ ecause of additional governmental paperwork, struggling with language and acculturation issues, often facing racial and accent discrimination, and living ­under the threat of loss of residency if they fail to make tenure or other­wise lose their academic position. Due to the aggregation of Asians with Asian Americans at many universities, a significant—­ though difficult to calculate—­proportion of faculty counted as “Asian American” are in fact Asian international scholars.2 Our issues are often similar, but as my experience demonstrates, ­there are also significant differences. I am a Japa­nese cultural anthropologist, trained in the United States, who in the last year of my doctoral program landed a tenure-­track position in a joint appointment between a gender studies and social studies department at a public research university in the Midwest. I also had an affiliation with the university’s Asian studies center, which, combined with my joint appointment, led to a very hectic first year on the job. Compounding my stress, I needed to file my dissertation during that time as I had joined the university as an ABD—­ “All But Dissertation.”3 The nature of joint appointments—of which I had not been very aware before taking mine—­encompasses a double, or more, workload, including departmental meetings, other ser­vice, social gatherings, teaching core courses for each department, gradu­ate student recruitment and advising, and research and publication appropriate to each discipline. Some of the initial challenges and stresses of my experience may not be so dif­fer­ent from ones that many other faculty face on the tenure track. They resemble the institutionally set gateway for all new faculty to internalize their strug­gles as part of their academic ­career development and path ­toward academic freedom. Delving into the nature of such strug­gles, however, it becomes clear that systematic prob­lems such as racial and gender bias and microaggression place bigger burdens on international scholars. Nonetheless, ­these burdens often remain invisible b­ ecause it is very difficult to trace institutional biases and prob­lems especially when faculty internalize them as personal incompetency issues. B ­ ecause of this very reason, I think it is impor­tant to share individual stories and combat t­ hese challenges together.

Prior to Tenure In the beginning of my academic ­career, I tended to spend a lot of time preparing for my classes. Teaching in En­glish was quite challenging to me in vari­ous ways. It took me quite a while to develop new courses, design proper assignments, utilize the interactive Web-­based teaching method, and provide in-­class instruction. I spent extra time to find visual materials and cultural references

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in the United States to make the course content more relevant and relatable to American students. I also had a native speaker of En­glish proofread the course syllabi, handouts, and exam questions. Even though I thought my teaching was attentive, I had to deal with multiple cases of student misconduct and other challenging issues related to teaching. For example, an undergraduate student asked her friend to sign in for her for several class meetings in order to gain attendance credit. Another student requested an absence by presenting a falsely signed medical document from her own f­ ather’s dentist office. A ­couple of students plagiarized their final papers. This happened even though, at the beginning of each semester, I presented my course syllabi clearly stating that academic misconduct would not be tolerated. When I consulted with my se­nior male colleagues, however, they said that in more than thirty and forty years of teaching, they had never experienced ­these types of misconduct. Although I questioned myself, I also began to won­der if ­these students would do the same t­ hings if I w ­ ere not a ju­nior Asian female professor (Armstrong & Wildman, 2012; Easton, 2012; Onwuachi-­Willig, 2012). On the basis of their minimal experience with academic misconduct, my male colleagues advised me not to report ­these students to the college ­because the hearing would most likely put me on trial to prove the misconduct, rather than questioning the students themselves. This would in turn create more stress and pain for me. Respectfully disagreeing, I reported t­ hese cases. It was a time-­consuming and emotionally draining process—­providing evidence, filing reports, and even attending a hearing—­but worthy, I thought, for the students to learn life lessons from their misconduct. My female colleagues in gender studies all shared similar experiences with me, some far more disturbing than what I had experienced. For example, many had dealt with students who had experienced domestic vio­lence or sexual assault. ­Women professors are oftentimes expected to be not only intellectual guides but also emotional caretakers, spending extra time to seek out proper offices and facilities on campus in order to assist individual students. It is often difficult to refocus on our own research ­after ­handling cases of intimate vio­ lence against gender and sexual minorities. Hence, we ­women faculty shared the burden of extra emotional work,4 and our experience was not exceptional (see chapter 10; Branch, Hayes-­Smith, & Richards, 2011). Furthermore, ­women’s emotional work in teaching, advising, and ser­vice, which is often invisible, is largely dismissed or confused with a lack of self-­discipline and time management skills. Most of the male faculty did not have ­these same expectations or burdens from students. In addition to the gendered division of l­abor, w ­ omen of color and international scholars tend to attract racial minority5 and international students who often, in my experience, have very unique perspectives. But it usually takes them extra time, effort, and courage to adjust to predominantly white academic

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institutions and openly express their thoughts. It is especially challenging to international students who are not native speakers of En­g lish. They need extra guidance, feedback, and editing of their papers from faculty. I found my emotional work and additional time spent on teaching, advising, and mentoring highly demanding ­because of my race and gender. I consequently “failed” to become a productive scholar in my research area. Research is often considered more impor­tant than teaching and ser­vice in the tenure review at a research institution, like my university. Even so, I had continued to receive good annual evaluations from both departments year ­a fter year.6 Prestigious external funding (a Wenner-­Gren Hunt postdoctoral writing fellowship and Social Science Research Council–­Japan Society for Promotion of Science research fellowship) helped my research profile as much as it brought nationally and internationally recognized prestige to the university. In order to secure time to write, I prioritized mastering grant proposal writing early on. Luckily, my university has an excellent grant officer who helped tenure-­track faculty identify eligible funding sources, edit proposal drafts multiple times, and submit an application package for us. Such attentive guidance and assistance was invaluable. It was key to my success in winning highly competitive grants and fellowships. ­There was, however, virtually no such ser­vice nor systemic mentoring for publication itself despite the fact that it is a very impor­tant ­factor, if not the most impor­tant one, in academic job security and promotion at a research institute (Turner, Myers, & Creswell, 1999).

Book Publication I truly strug­gled with my writing in En­glish, which affected my publication rec­ord. Writing in En­glish is not simply about switching from my native tongue, Japa­nese, to academic En­glish, even though I had spent nearly ten years learning this language before I started my tenure-­track job. It still took me a long time to read and write in the second language while making sure of the correct use of En­g lish vocabulary, expressions, and ways of logical thinking. I received many rejections from journals with reviewers’ comments that the author’s writing was confusing and the author himself or herself seemed confused. I realized that many of the expressions I used in my writing, especially my translation of Japa­nese quotes and descriptions I collected in my fieldwork in Japan, ­were not quite comprehensible to En­glish native speakers. Without any guidance or support in this area, I am still struggling with the nuances that En­glish speakers instinctively understand between what is grammatically sound and what is not quite right. Not surprisingly, I strug­gled to get my book published. It was a mystery to me how to turn a doctoral dissertation into a book manuscript, how good is

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“good enough” for the manuscript to be accepted, and what the editor–­author relationship should be like. Academic book publishing in the United States is quite dif­f er­ent from that in Japan. I attended a campus workshop on this topic and talked with several published colleagues. I was, however, still puzzled. Each case seemed dif­fer­ent. The nature of the publication pro­cess appeared to me like the fieldwork anthropologists like myself conduct: t­ here is no way to fully prepare for it in advance and t­ here are always contingencies out in the field that one has to adjust to flexibly. In my fieldwork, I could manage unknown f­ actors pretty well without pressing deadlines or pass/fail interrogations. Nonetheless, I was unable to do the same t­ hing with my book publishing effort. I could not hand in my manuscript b­ ecause, ironically, an editorial director from one of the most prestigious university presses in my field showed strong interest in publishing my book early on. The more I wished to publish with this press, the more I became afraid of submitting my manuscript for review and having it rejected. At this point, I had already rewritten my doctoral dissertation entirely and revised it at least twice during two years of my academic leave, secured with external funding. I have found that female professors, especially ­women of color with En­g lish as a second language, have a tendency to keep revising their manuscripts endlessly out of rejection anxiety and instinctive knowledge about the devaluation of w ­ omen’s work (Skachkova, 2007). My weak publication rec­ord, lack of confidence, and self-­imposed pressure drove me into a corner. This was the case even though numerous colleagues, dissertation advisors, and friends of mine kindly encouraged me to submit my manuscript as soon as pos­si­ble. I fi­nally submitted it to my dream press ­under the gun before I went up for tenure the following year. As I had feared, the publisher de­cided not to go forward with the manuscript b­ ecause of mixed reviews and the pressing time frame. It was indeed a big disappointment to me. But I had ­little time to lament the outcome. Quickly contacting other publishers, I found two university presses, both of which allowed me to go through a multiple review pro­cess when I explained my tenure review timeline. Fi­nally, I secured a book contract with Stanford University Press just in time. I was lucky enough to find understanding editors at ­these university presses. It was a “live-­and-­learn” lesson without much knowledge in advance about how the book publication pro­cess would work. ­These are the t­ hings that university faculty tend to be left alone to figure out by themselves; we are not trained in ­these areas in our gradu­ate education. In my opinion, it did not have to be that way. Close mentorship on campus (and even off campus, if ­there is not a proper person for a ju­nior faculty of color, who is struggling with writing and publishing in En­glish) could have mitigated t­ hese unnecessary and yet systematic strug­gles. How many universities successfully provide such necessary guidance? That is partly why mentorship itself is commercialized ­today as a commodity

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that gradu­ate students, postdocs, and ju­nior faculty can purchase online.7 If universities have outsourced necessary mentorship and support to commercial entities for faculty members to achieve success, does it not risk shaking the foundation of the university, particularly the public university itself, (re)producing in­equality between the haves and the have-­nots?

Meaning of an Informal Network I was not quite aware of ­these commercially available ser­vices when I went up for tenure review. I did not even know that I needed them u­ ntil I was told that my case was in trou­ble. The gender studies program had supported my tenure application unanimously. With the enthusiastic support of my colleagues, as well as a book contract in hand, I started to feel good about my tenure review at this point. A ­couple of weeks ­later, I also found that my application had received a majority positive vote in my home department in the social sciences, although votes w ­ ere split. I was, however, relieved about the result b­ ecause such a split vote is typical in this par­tic­u­lar department over most issues. My sense of relief was, however, shattered very quickly. A ­couple of days ­later I was called to the chair’s office. Assuming t­ here was some paperwork for me, I approached the chair’s office door and then sensed something wrong. When I knocked on the door, I was told to wait outside for a few more minutes. Although the door was closed again, I could sense that a serious conversation was taking place between the chair and my tenure review committee. I anticipated that some bad news would be delivered to me shortly. I knew it; I just could not figure out what it was exactly. I fi­nally joined the conversation and received a straightforward message: the news the chair delivered to me a few days e­ arlier had to be reversed, and my tenure application was, ­after all, turned down ­because it did not make the two-­ thirds majority vote required by the departmental bylaws. The chair explained to me that none of the faculty at the meeting was aware of the rule; only ­after the vote was taken did they find the rule. The retrospective projection of this bylaw did not seem sound to me. In addition, the information about the two-­ thirds majority vote might have impacted some negative voters’ decisions. I asked the chair to call for another meeting and retake the vote, but the chair insisted that nothing more could be done, assuming that a “forced” meeting and voting would yield further hostility against me. Even though I understood the department’s position, I felt it was a careless stance to take since ­after all the tenure review decision could possibly terminate my academic life. Some might think it is not a big deal: it is just a rejection of tenure and promotion from one institution; the candidate could start all over again elsewhere if he or she is capable enough. But I was very concerned about the

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consequence of tenure rejection as I saw the trauma and stigma suffered by other Asian academic friends who, when denied, failed to secure other tenure-­track jobs. The academic job market had changed drastically due to institutional bud­ get cuts and hiring freezes while more PhDs had been produced e­ very year (Basil & Basil, 2006). It is a buyer’s market ­today, and institutions can easily replace unwanted faculty with highly competitive ju­nior faculty or inexpensive adjunct professors (Belkin & Korn, 2015; Edmonds, 2015; Frederickson, 2015; Schell & Stock, 2001). Although my institution provides l­ egal ser­vices for international scholars on the tenure track to obtain permanent residency as soon as they join, other institutions are not necessarily supportive in this way. A few of my Asian friends had to leave the United States due to their lack of permanent residency when they could not find jobs within a year of the denial of their tenure and promotion.8 Thus, rejection is not a ­simple m ­ atter of moving from one institution to another, especially for foreign scholars without residency status. I was very disappointed when the department chair said to me that they had already de­cided not to call another meeting, although the chair was very sympathetic and willing to support me in any pos­si­ble way. I was not sure how much impact such unofficial support would make in the university’s bureaucratic tenure review pro­cess. I wished very badly at this point that I had had a 100 ­percent appointment with my gender studies department. I felt as if the joint appointment was a system to showcase interdisciplinary and collaborative research models at the expense of an invisible double burden imposed on jointly appointed faculty without any special compensation or consideration (Fryberg & Martinez, 2014; Patton, 2015). It was not even an option for a jointly appointed faculty member to move his or her line entirely to one department ­until he or she is promoted and tenured. This is ­because a tenure review is bound to the job description for which one is hired. In a sense, a ­legal contract of employment in academia that binds assistant professors to their assigned units ­whether it is a good fit or not is a bit like debt bondage in ­human trafficking. Even though college professors have relative prestige and financial security, they cannot freely walk away u­ nless they can find a job at another institution and move on, to start the cycle over again. In this structural power dynamic, the university can easily take advantage of untenured faculty members’ obedience and justify their current distress as a necessary gateway to become a tenured member and to safeguard academic freedom and job security.

Panic Attacks The hardest part in my long uneasy journey of tenure review was waiting for the college’s and then the university’s decisions. Of course, I had done every­ thing I thought I could. I reached out to my se­nior colleagues, dissertation

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advisors, and friends who had experienced similar situations in their tenure review, for their advice. Through this pro­cess, I encountered an eye-­opening anthology, Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for ­Women in Academia (Gutierrez y Muhs, Niemann, et al., 2012). The book, which is an account of w ­ omen of color and their experiences of discrimination, microaggressions, and everyday strug­gle within U.S. academia, made me think that my experience is not personal but structural. I met a l­awyer and director of my university’s office of institutional access to find out if t­ here was anything I could do about it. She was very understanding, but what I learned from her was the bottom line: I had to provide evidence to make a case that ­there was racial, gender, or national origin discrimination against me. To do so, I needed to collect comparative information about other faculty members who w ­ ere in a similar situation to mine and had been treated differently. Obviously, it is not an easy job to collect t­ hese data. I had access to only ­simple demographic information about the university faculty. The fragmented data of gender, race, nationality, and appointment type w ­ ere not helpful to contextualize the intersection of t­ hese categories meaningfully. The university’s policy also cautions against revealing personal information ­under faculty senate rules for confidentiality reasons.9 Only the chancellor’s final decision is to be made public, and ­needless to say, this applies to release of names only, not under­lying review pro­cesses or other related information. I felt lost.10 First of all, ­there was neither systematic information gathering in this area nor a ­labor u­ nion (or something similar) to support faculty at my institution. Second, I was discouraged from hiring my own l­ awyer b­ ecause, according to the university’s l­ egal con­sul­tant, who was employed by and worked on behalf of the university, it would be costly in terms of both finance and strategy. She thought that a lawsuit would only make the situation worse and be detrimental when we took into account that the university would most likely try to protect itself rather than openly talk with me.11 Third, I was also advised not to withdraw my application as rejection had yet to be determined. Thus, the worst part of my journey was the suspended uncertainty during which I had to persevere for more than six months ­until the final decision would be made. In this suspended temporality, I could neither devote myself to a ­career that might be terminated soon nor move on to something ­else. I felt powerless and let fear take me over. During the prolonged waiting period, I had panic attacks twice.12 The first one occurred when I was trying to relax on the couch in our living room late one night. ­There was nothing unusual. I just could not stop thinking about what had happened and would happen. I felt overwhelmed with feelings of anger, disappointment, anxiety, and despair. This state of mind had become rather normal at that point, but all of a sudden I sensed my entire bodily strength gradually but steadily wither. It was a very strange experience. I tried to call to my husband for help. He was reading on a

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lounge chair across from the couch where I was sitting. I realized that my body was already out of control. I could not open my mouth to speak. My chin was dropping and hanging weakly. I felt a strange sensation on my tongue as if a wave of mild electric shock came and went. My legs had lost their muscle strength to stand up. My upper body slowly collapsed onto the sofa. I could only barely groan to send a signal to my husband who was right ­there and yet seemed so far away. Meanwhile, breathing became difficult for me. I felt as though my bronchial tube was choked at my throat. My vision became blurry as tears slowly shed from my eyes. I was in a panic but oddly also at peace. I thought I was ­dying. I felt my agony was ending. The attack did not last long, even though I felt it lasted forever in my phenomenal world. My husband carried me to the bedroom and helped me calm down. I had a sleepless night. To my surprise, however, I was fine the next morning when I woke up. The ­whole experience was very strange to me. Th ­ ere was nothing e­ lse of which I had been fully confident but my health.13 I had never questioned it b­ ecause I maintained a healthy lifestyle—­eating well, sleeping enough, and exercising regularly. Nonetheless, I had another panic attack a ­couple of months ­later. Panic attacks ­were the physical symptoms of the distress I felt during this period. Additionally, unhealthy thoughts occurred to me numerous times. It occurred to me how easy it would be if I just could drop every­thing and dis­ appear. I wondered w ­ hether my death could potentially contribute to raising awareness for w ­ omen of color scholars in academia or if it would simply result in silencing their voices.14

Differences Made It was always my ­family, friends, and colleagues whose tireless support prevented me from a­ ctual disappearance or suicidal attempts. They helped me realize how fortunate I was to be surrounded by caring p­ eople. It was, a­ fter all, t­ hese folks who, I believe, made a difference in my tenure review pro­cess. The chair of my social sciences department wrote a strong non-­concurrence letter to the college dean against the departmental decision. Faculty who could not make the departmental meeting to vote also wrote strong support letters endorsing my application. Beyond my home unit, the director of the Asian studies center, who had experienced similar cases to mine in the past, submitted a beautifully crafted letter for me. A former chair in my gender studies department also stood up to support my case. Meanwhile, the chair at the time met with the college dean several times to communicate the unit’s endorsement. I also made an appointment to meet with the dean in order to express my concerns. At our meeting, the dean was understanding and supportive, giving me concrete

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guidance on how to strategize regarding my teaching and book publication between then and the beginning of the spring, when the college was scheduled to report its decisions to the university. Thanks to his suggestion, both of my joint-­appointment departments arranged gradu­ate student hourly workers who could assist my teaching preparation, book revision, and other miscellaneous chores. The cluster of this official and unofficial support eventually helped me to recuperate a sense of hope. It also made me realize an impor­tant t­ hing: although I initially demonized my joint appointment when I was in complete darkness, it was paradoxically this unique arrangement that enabled me to draw more support from multiple units across disciplines. Thus, the dearth of institutional backing and the abundance of unofficial support networks are not simply two sides of a joint appointment; the former rather depends for its compensation upon the latter. Although I cannot stress enough the importance of building a supporting network in and outside one’s department, I also caution that such an unofficial network, without reliable institutional prearrangement, can easily become another layer of emotional work for minority faculty. Furthermore, the effectiveness of such informal support is far more contingent anyway. Fi­nally, my college and then the university eventually approved my tenure and promotion. On the surface, it looks like I earned that based on my academic rec­ord alone. Such a perception, however, perpetuates the romanticized merit-­ based ideal while covering all the extra work ­behind the scenes that numerous ­people, including myself, had to do in order to make the system see the merit of my rec­ord. Even so, when I received the official letter that announced my promotion to associate professor, I thought my long uneasy journey t­ oward tenure had ended at least. So I felt at the moment.

Tenure Is Not the End Achieving tenure was not, however, the end of my journey through institutional pressure to seek promotion in a certain institutionally determined time frame. It was rather the opening to the next chapter. It used to be widely understood that only associate professors who seek to become full professors apply for this promotion; other­wise, they remain at the associate level u­ ntil their retirement.15 Within the last ­couple of years, the situation has changed as the university put into force post-­tenure review e­ very six years to check productivity and pro­gress ­toward full professorship.16 ­There is now much more pressure aimed at becoming full professor, ideally within ten years of achieving tenure.17 The university, for example, recently held its first workshop ever to help associate professors plan ahead for promotion to full professor. At the workshop, three presenters, all of whom ­were men, shared their experiences, stressing the

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importance of constantly working with very ­little sleep and utilizing all available resources, including their wives’ personal care (Gersick, Bartunek, & Dutton, 2000; Toutkoushian & Bellas, 1999). Meanwhile, w ­ omen attendees I talked with afterward ­were left with the impression that managing such an unsustainable life would be impossible without “wives.” Once promoted to tenured associate professors, ­women faculty often serve in leadership roles in dif­ fer­ent units, programs, and areas of study and strug­gle with attaining the most impor­tant passport to full professorship: the second book (Misra, Lundquist, et al., 2011). The ­whole pressure, pro­cess, and strug­gle seems to me to be a disheartening déjà vu. It has been an in­ter­est­ing ethnographic moment for me to observe the ways that men and ­women are reviewed differently. Since I was promoted to associate professor, I have served on the tenure and promotion review committee several times and witnessed the difference in the atmosphere and review pro­cess given to male and female candidates. For male candidates, reviewers in general seem more relaxed reviewing their dossiers and coming up with a consensus that they have been d­ oing well. By contrast, for female candidates, meeting rooms become rather tense ­unless their cases are airtight. Reviewers are sometimes divided into opposing groups over w ­ hether to support or challenge the candidates. Each detail seems thoroughly discussed. It is oftentimes obvious that the female candidates’ incompetence is presumed, as is the male candidates’ competence, especially in male-­dominated departments and review committees. ­Here, I do not mean to simplify complex individual experiences that intersects with other identity categories such as race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, and age into merely the male versus female binary. My point is that gender in­equality is one of the structural f­ actors, among ­others, that is manifested implicitly and explic­itly in male-­dominated departments and institutions as a form of structural vio­lence: sexist presumption of female incompetence, microaggression, and systemic devaluation of ­women’s work.18 If gender is an axis where discrimination is experienced, race and ethnicity is another. Similarly, En­glish as a second language or En­glish with an accent19 is, I argue, a discriminatory ­factor, too, that an international scholar or racial/ ethnic minority f­ aces. Nonetheless, t­ hese microaggressions are so subtle as to go often unnoticed.20 Nonnative speakers are constantly interrupted before they finish talking or even a sentence is completed in day-­to-­day conversations. As a result, not only are dialogues and topic choices dominated by o­ thers, but ­these faculty are also silenced. At other times, faculty might sincerely praise the level of command of a nonnative speaker’s En­glish during a pre­sen­ ta­tion, as if it is not the content but the linguistic competence that ­matters. ­These interactions, which are not uncommon, are often not acknowledged as

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microaggressions, and as a result, such an environment constantly reminds individuals of color of their nonmember status in the Euro-­A merican-­ centric cultural system.21

Lessons to Learn Looking back, ­there w ­ ere t­ hings that I could have done differently on a personal level to avoid the distress I went through. I also feel that t­ here are areas that universities could do to better prepare minority scholars, such as t­ hose who have joint appointments, are ­women of color or international scholars, and who are not native En­glish speakers (Mayuzumi, 2015). I had assumed that foreign scholars would be expected to be able to do every­ thing as well as our American counter­parts do, no ­matter how hard it is or how much longer it takes; other­wise we would be disqualified or become a burden to the institution if we ask for special accommodations. With this mind-­ set, I could not ­really convey the difficulties I was facing and ask for help. I tried to overcome difficulties introvertedly. I became aware that this is the mechanism of the model minority, who attempts to assimilate to the status quo and perpetuates it. I wish international scholars, including myself, shared their promotion and tenure review experiences openly and built a collective knowledge and strategy forum. One area for ­future strategy is book publications. One of my manuscript readers, who knew who I was,22 commented, “It still reads like a dissertation written by a non-­native En­g lish speaker” and strongly recommended the “hiring of a native-­English speaking copy editor who can work closely with the author to revise the stilted academic language and who would make the book more accessible to an undergraduate readership.” At this point, three native En­glish speakers who had copyediting experience or a journalism background had already proofread it for me. Based on the reviewer’s suggestion, however, I also hired a developmental editor who not only further smoothed out my language but also assisted with orga­nizational restructuring, logical argumentation, and further fine-­tuning of my revised manuscript. I paid $3,000 to the editor out of my own pocket and closely worked with him for two months. Spending extra money and time is not uncommon among international scholars, particularly ­those whose native language is not En­glish (Dueñas, 2012). One of my Japa­nese friends told me that when she was ­under tenure review, she paid $8,000 for a package deal that included intensive copyediting, formatting, and indexing. Both of us ­were aware that it was necessary to allocate extra time to have impor­tant documents we wrote proofread by a native En­glish speaker. But we did not know how much it would cost to hire professional copy editors. Still, ­there is no institutional consideration for extra time

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and money that international scholars potentially have to spend as t­ here is neither financial support available nor an option to extend the tenure or promotion clock. The tenure pro­cess was so consuming that I did not have much time for anything e­ lse except some occasional gatherings with other Asian (and Asian American) ­women to enjoy myself.23 This meant a pro­cess of self-­isolation. It was oftentimes challenging to socialize with Eu­ro­pean American friends and colleagues due to language barriers and lack of a sense of cultural belonging.24 It resulted in a vicious circle: without good communication and mutual understanding, it was difficult to ask for help; without being asked, it was prob­ably hard for my colleagues to understand what was ­going on with me. In the United States, I came to understand that I am responsible for what I need to secure proper assistance; this is very dif­f er­ent from other socie­ties, including my home country, Japan, where p­ eople hesitate to bother asking o­ thers for help but rather expect o­ thers to notice when someone is in trou­ble. In hindsight, I could have asked for help, such as gradu­ate student hourly work, much e­ arlier on instead of waiting u­ ntil the very last minute. At the same time, this kind of institutional support—­the use of departmental discretionary money—­was beyond my institutional knowledge and imagination. Thus, ­there ­were ­things that I could have, and should have, done differently. ­There ­were also other ­things that exceeded my capacity at the time. U.S. academic institutions have long ­housed international scholars;25 the need for extra support has also been known but is rarely offered (Mori, 2000; Yeh & Inose, 2003). Many U.S. academic institutions hire international scholars and p­ eople of color in the name of strategic plans for internationalization, global and multicultural awareness, and enhancement of campus diversity (Hu-­DeHart, 2000). Along t­ hese lines, universities may establish designated offices and programs such as international programs, multicultural affairs, and diversity and equality offices.26 ­These offices and programs are, however, primarily designed to improve students’ learning experiences and, only by extension, faculty members’ working conditions. Faculty might benefit from some funding for their own research or new course development on diversity issues. In addition, international scholars should have ­legal assistance to apply for their permanent residency. Beyond t­ hese ­limited forms of support and ser­vices, however, t­ here are virtually no other forms of assistance or workshops for scholars of color, as well as international scholars, on how to h ­ andle their minority status and everyday strug­gles in academe (Alberts, 2008; Richardson & Zikic, 2007). In this sense, the recruitment of scholars with foreign nationality or minority background serves well as a token of campus diversity—­the diversity that is manifested in the increase of vis­i­ble ­others who speak En­g lish with accents (Kennelly, Misra, & Karides, 1999). It would be a g­ reat opportunity for all players—­students, the institution, and faculty concerned—if such recruitment

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is followed by the careful and systematic support necessary for them to succeed (van de Bunt-­Kokhuis, 1994; Zafar, Roberts, & Behar-­Horenstein, 2012). Minority students in the United States have opportunities to take advantage of the Department of Education’s McNair Scholar Program for their success; minority faculty need a similar program especially when they are first-­generation college professors of a group that is “traditionally underrepresented” in U.S. academia.27 Other­wise, t­ hese faculty hires could be criticized simply as a form of tokenism, which benefits the university while the faculty laborer is seen as expendable. I contend that building cultural and linguistic sensitivity and raising awareness is an impor­tant component for mutual understanding. Institutional—­ financial, psychological, and occupational—­support to cater to t­ hese minority scholars’ needs surely would mitigate their anxiety and distress and direct their energy to research and publications. I strongly believe such understanding and support becomes an organic manifestation of campus diversity, equity, and inclusion and reflects well on American society as a ­whole.

Conclusion I was e­ ager to move on ­after my tenure ordeal ­until I was invited to contribute to this edited volume, Fight the Tower, two years following my promotion to associate professor. I initially shied away from the volume, as I did not want to relive painful memories. I did not want any supportive ­people at the university to feel bad about what happened ­either. I also learned that ­there is a risk of retaliation and stigma by writing and publishing this kind of essay. At the same time, I felt obliged to share my experience with other ­people who might have had or currently have a similar situation. Fi­nally, I also hope to raise awareness about the structural inequalities that exist in U.S. academia. ­These structural prob­lems make individuals feel responsible for the failure of the system and make it difficult to share ­these stories. Therefore, breaking the silence is the most effective way to start seeing how systemic ­these prob­lems ­really are. I am afraid it was too late for an Asian friend and colleague of mine, who was denied tenure at a private liberal arts college in New York despite having the unan­i­mous support of her department and overwhelming endorsement of the external reviewer. It was she who referred me to the editors of this volume. I felt as if I ­were writing on behalf of her and ­people like her whose voices are unheard b­ ecause they are no longer in academia or in the United States. Their non-­reappointment cases w ­ ill never be revealed in the name of university confidentiality policies. Without knowing other ­people’s experiences, we might simply blame ourselves for any sort of m ­ istakes we have made, w ­ hether it is for lack of publications or collegiality.28 Worse, such strug­g les have long been silenced and, as a result, are not only unknown but are also largely mystified

248  •  Akiko Takeyama

within the ste­reo­typical image of Asian and Asian American w ­ omen who are perceived as model minorities and good at adjusting to given situations (see chapter 3; Roshanravan, 2009). Thus, structural in­equality remains normalized and perpetuated. So, writing this piece is feminist activism to remind us once again: the personal is the po­liti­cal. My hope lies in building a necessary solidarity by sharing our individual stories and addressing the unfolding systematic unfairness in academia. I want to end this chapter with feminist scholar and educator Sherrie Tucker’s work, “poem for far too many brilliant scholars, not enough of whom are with us ­today.”29 social justice is soo nineteeneightsix, but WE are committed to diversity with all our hearts and core curriculum initiatives and hiring protocols ­we’ve ACHIEVED equality, what we need are more kinds of p­ eople to enrich our offerings bring impor­tant perspectives to our committees and brochures to mentor the students we do not reach to reach out to the broader community to replace the new we use to love but who, ultimately, w ­ ere not good fits, took ­things the wrong way—­the uncollegials—­who told us the collegiality is always used against p­ eople of color and we said that d­ idn’t make sense and they said it happens all the time and we ­d idn’t think it was very collegial to say that, and they said neither is that . . . to enhance our courses to replace . . . ​what was her name? why d­ idn’t she ask for help? she w ­ asn’t happy ­here . . . ​­didn’t make an effort to join in our campus culture spent all her time on outreach, too much time mentoring students who d­ on’t even take our classes, w ­ e’re sorry it ­didn’t work out . . . social justice is soo nineteeneightsix, but this is us, now, h­ ere, and WE are committed to your diversity with all our hearts, we are committed to our commitment we celebrate your difference we treat you the same except when y­ ou’re not what we wanted.

Acknowl­edgments My colleagues and friends, including supportive and critical individuals in administrative offices, kindly read this chapter and gave me insightful

Opening the Box • 249

comments, sincere concerns, and enthusiastic support. I thank Sherrie Tucker, Jennifer Hamer, Alesha Doan, Joane Nagel, Ann Schofield, John Younger, Carl Lejuez, Katie Rhine, Stacey Vanderhurst, Haeng-ja Chung, and other friends unnamed ­here due to confidentiality.

Notes 1 Editors’ note: Though not discussed in this chapter, international students’ numbers, like ­those of international faculty, are also rising on U.S. campuses, and they, too, come with their own unique needs for support. This includes language and culture acculturation, to name a few. However, often universities accept international students as a strategy to increase revenue without supplying adequate support to ensure their success in the U.S. educational system. Indeed, they often pay double the tuition their U.S. student counter­parts pay but are sometimes prevented access to the first pass to choose their courses. Essentially, they pay more to get less, which too often sets them up for failure rather than success. 2 Editors’ note: Fanny Yeung (2013) argues, “when data on Asian and Asian American faculty are reported they . . . ​conflate Asian faculty who are foreign nationals, non-­U.S. citizens, or international gradu­ate students who remain in the United States to work with Asian American faculty” (p. 282). For more on t­ hese demographics and the differences between Asian and Asian American gradu­ate students and faculty, see Woo’s (2000), especially chapter 4, “The Educational Pipeline.” 3 “All But Dissertation” or ABD refers to the status of doctoral candidates where they have completed their coursework, oral examination, and qualifying papers. They have completed every­thing but their dissertation to receive a PhD. The degree is given ­a fter completing their dissertation and having it approved by their dissertation committee members. 4 See Arlie Hochschild’s The Managed Heart for the discussion of gendered emotional work. 5 “Minority” as a so­cio­log­i­cal term refers to ­those who, b­ ecause of their physical and cultural characteristics, are l­ imited in their access to power. Minority invisibility is a par­tic­u­lar issue for Asian and Asian American ­women (Sun, 2007). 6 ­Women and ­people of color faculty are particularly vulnerable to joint appointments, as w ­ omen studies and ethnic studies programs or departments are often built from joint appointments. The burden of ser­vice, teaching, and research can be a “double burden,” while compensation remains below or at the level of other faculty (Patton, 2015). 7 The Professor Is In and the National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity are good examples. They provide such commodified ser­vices as coaching professionalization, writing successful grant proposal, and providing survival tips in academia. For more information on ­these programs, see http://­theprofessorisin​ .­com and http://­w ww​.­facultydiversity​.­org. The National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity claims that t­ here are 83,000 gradu­ate students, postdocs, and faculty members (http://­w ww​.­facultydiversity​.­org​/­​?­page​=­about​_­us accessed on June 12, 2016). 8 In the sciences, the par­tic­u­lar barriers for international scholars include reduced access to specific forms of funding reserved for U.S. citizens, lower stipends, and

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more red tape for employers. Note, too, that “Scientists on temporary visas d­ on’t have access to some government jobs, such as principal investigator at the [National Institutes of Health]” (Bonetta, 2007). 9 Joane Nagel and Ann Schofield brought the issue of confidentiality to my attention. Alesha Doan helped me to realize how school policy potentially covers up what is ­behind the scenes and works against vulnerable populations. 10 See Junn and Davis Cross (chapter 2) for a detailed discussion of the university’s lack of transparency regarding faculty rec­ords and the lengths one has to go to in order to gather this crucial information; and Hune (prologue, this volume) for the history of similar cases, particularly that of Rosalie Tung, who sought to open her own personnel file against administrative and faculty claims that academic freedom would be impaired by granting such access. 11 Only ­later did I come to see the conflict of interest that her status as the university’s employee conferred on her advice to me. 12 According to the Mayo Clinic Staff (2015), “A panic attack is a sudden episode of intense fear that triggers severe physical reactions when ­there is no real danger or apparent cause. Panic attacks can be very frightening. When panic attacks occur, you might think y­ ou’re losing control, having a heart attack or even ­dying.” 13 See the correlation between stressful working environment and its impact on health prob­lems (see chapter 2, this volume). 14 Editors’ note: Suicidal ideation in Asian and Asian American w ­ omen, which is one of the highest of any group in the United States, is often related to experiences of discrimination (Cheng, Fancher, et al., 2010). 15 ­Women faculty are more likely than male faculty to pause at the associate level (Buch, Huet, et al., 2011). 16 See the discussion of “corporatization of universities” (Valverde, 2013, 375). 17 ­Women faculty are promoted from associate professor “from one year to three and a half years longer than men to attain the rank of full professor” (Standing Still, 2009). 18 See Hamer and Lang’s “Race, Structural Vio­lence, and the Neoliberal University” for a discussion of the university as a site of institutional racism. 19 Accent discrimination is practiced in par­tic­u­lar against faculty with Asian accents, while t­ hose with Eu­ro­pean accents are not criticized in the same way (Chow, 2015; Skachkova, 2007). 20 See Solorzano, Ceja, and Yosso (2000) and Sue, Bucceri, et al. (2007) for more on microaggressions, or the “subtle insult” (such as microassault, microinsult, and microinvalidations) directed t­ oward ­people of color consciously or unconsciously. 21 Sue et al. (2007) point out that the invisible nature of microaggression f­ rees the perpetrators from their sense of guilt an any harmful consequences that the victims suffer from. As a result, the authors claim that white individuals may “unconsciously perpetuate Eurocentric attitudes of white supremacy and in effect cause individuals of color to feel invalidation or inferior” (Sue et al., 2007, p. 73). 22 Evidence suggests prejudice can be expressed on the basis of Asian names and a presumption of foreignness (Kassaye & Feldman, 1983). In a study of 6,500 randomly selected professors from 259 American universities, researchers found that name discrimination resulted in “professors [being] more responsive to white male students than to female, Black, Hispanic, Indian or Chinese students in almost e­ very discipline and across all types of universities. We found the most severe bias in disciplines paying higher faculty salaries and at private universities” (Chugh, Milkman, & Akinola, 2014).

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23 Pressure to publish has meant that ­women academics, especially, are sleeping less in order to produce more (Acker & Armenti, 2004). 24 I share the same sentiment as African American students in Hamer and Lang’s study: Black students, relative to whites, are “more likely to be embarrassed by emotional and psychological distress, and consequently do not feel safe sharing ­these prob­lems with ­others. Many determine that it is preferable to conceal than to share out of fear that their trou­bles may only affirm negative ste­reo­t ypes of Black students as incapable or unprepared for college success” (2015, p. 905). 25 “From 1993 to 2007, international faculty increased nationally from 2 to 4 ­percent” (Stulberg & Weinberg, 2012, p. 142). 26 ­These offices can create courses, curriculums, and programs to support both students and faculty who are involved in international activities, w ­ hether it is a study abroad program or an international research proj­ect. Th ­ ese offices can also provide ser­vices for current and prospective students from underrepresented populations, while offering education programs to foster diversity and inclusion for all students. 27 The McNair Scholar Program supports e­ ither “first-­generation college students with financial need, or members of a group that is traditionally underrepresented in gradu­ate education and have demonstrated strong academic potential” (http://­mcnairscholars​.­com​/­about/ accessed June 11, 2016). 28 Valverde also describes the tendency for self-­blaming among w ­ omen of color instead of looking at external c­ auses for invisible barriers and systemic wrongdoing. Furthermore, ­because academia remains an “institution that is seen as civil, ­little research has been conducted to link failing health to experiences of racism and sexism” (Valverde, 2013, pp. 370, 372). 29 The poem was originally delivered by Sherrie Tucker at the Feminist Theory and ­Music XIII conference on August 9, 2015, and was l­ ater published in ­Women and ­Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture in 2017.

References Acker, S., & Armenti, C. (2004). Sleepless in academia. Gender and Education, 16(1). doi:10.1080/0954025032000170309 Alberts, H. C. (2008). The challenges and opportunities of foreign-­born instructors in the classroom. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 32(2). Retrieved from http://­ www​.­tandfonline​.­com​/d­ oi​/­abs​/1­ 0​.1­ 080​/­03098260701731306 Armstrong, M. J., & Wildman, S. M. (2012). Working across racial lines in a not-­so-­post-­ racial world. In G. Gutierrez y Muhs, Y. F. Niemann, C. G. Gonzalez, & A. P. Harris (Eds.), Presumed incompetent: The intersections of race and class for w ­ omen in academe (pp. 224–241). Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Basil, M. D., & Basil, D. Z. (2006). The marketing market: A study of PhD supply, demand, hiring institutions, and job candidates. Journal of Business Research, 59(4). doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2005.08.005 Belkin, D., & Korn, M. (2015, February 16). Colleges’ use of adjuncts comes u­ nder pressure. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­wsj​.­com​/­articles​/­colleges​-­use​-­of​ -­adjunct​-i­ nstructors​-­comes​-­under​-p­ ressure​-­1424118108 Bonetta, L. (2007, February 2). Foreign faculty face challenges.” Science. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­sciencemag​.­org​/­careers​/­features​/­2007​/­02​/­foreign​-­faculty​-­face​-­challenges

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Branch, K. A., Hayes-­Smith, K., & Richards, T. N. (2011). Professors’ experiences with student disclosures of sexual assault and intimate partner vio­lence: How “helping” students can inform teaching practices. Feminist Criminology, 6(1), 54–75. doi:10.1177/1557085110397040 Buch, K., Huet, Y., Rorrer, A., & Roberson, L. (2011). Removing the barriers to full professor: A mentoring program for associate professors. Change, 43(6), 38–45. Cheng, J.K.Y., Fancher, T. L., Ratanasen, M., et al. (2010). Lifetime suicidal ideation and suicide attempts in Asian Americans. Asian American Journal of Psy­chol­ogy, 1(1), 18–30. doi:10.1037/a0018799 Chow, K. (2015, March 5). Study: At “Rate My Professors,” a foreign accent can hurt a teacher’s score.” NPR. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­npr​.­org​/­sections​/­codeswitch​/­2015​ /­03​/­05​/­390686619​/­study​-­at​-­rate​-­my​-­professor​-­a​-­foreign​-­accent​-­can​-­hurt​-­a​-­teachers​ -­score Chugh, D., Milkman, K. L., &. Akinola, M. (2014, May 9). Professors are prejudiced, too.” New York Times. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­nytimes​.c­ om​/­2014​/­05​/­11​/­opinion​/­sunday​ /­professors​-a­ re​-­prejudiced​-­too​.­html​?_­​ ­r​=­0 Dueñas, M.P.M. (2012). Getting research published internationally in En­g lish: An ethnographic account of a team of finance Spanish scholars’ strug­g les. Ibérica: Revista de la Asociación Europea de Lenguas para Fines Específicos (AELFE), 24, 139–155. Retrieved from https://­dialnet​.­unirioja​.­es​/­servlet​/­articulo​?­codigo​=4 ­ 106667 Easton, S. (2012). On being special. In G. Gutierrez y Muhs, Y. F. Niemann, C. G. Gonzalez, & A. P. Harris (Eds.), Presumed incompetent: The intersections of race and class for ­women in academe (pp. 152–163). Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Edmonds, D. (2015, May 28). More than half of college faculty are adjuncts: Should you care? Forbes. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­forbes​.­com​/­sites​/­noodleeducation​/­2015​/­05​/­28​ /­more​-­than​-­half​-­of​-­college​-­faculty​-­are​-­adjuncts​-­should​-­you​-­care​/­#32220c421d9b Frederickson, C. (2015, September 15). Th ­ ere is no excuse for how universities treat adjuncts. Atlantic. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­theatlantic​.­com​/­business​/­archive​/­2015​ /­09​/­higher​-­education​-­college​-­adjunct​-­professor​-­salary​/­404461/ Fryberg, S., & Martinez, E. (2014). The truly diverse faculty: New dialogues in American higher education. New York: Springer Gersick, C. J. G., Bartunek, J. M., & Dutton, J. E. (2000). Learning from academia: The importance of relationships in professional life. Acad­emy of Management Journal, 43, 1026–1044. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­jstor​.o­ rg​/­stable​/­1556333 Gutierrez y Muhs, G., Niemann, Y. F., Gonzalez, C. G., & Harris, A. P. (Eds.). (2012). Presumed incompetent: The intersections of race and class for w ­ omen in academe. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Hamer, J. F., & Lang, C. (2015). Race, structural vio­lence, and the neoliberal university: The challenges of inhabitation. Critical Sociology, 41(6), 897–912. Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of ­human feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hu-­DeHart, E. (2000). The diversity proj­ect: Institutionalizing multiculturalism or managing differences? Academe, 86(5), 38–42. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­jstor​.­org​ /­stable​/­40251919 Kassaye, W., & Feldman, W. (1983). Students’ perceptions of American-­born vs. foreign-­ born instructors: A preliminary experiment. In Proceedings of the 1983 Acad­emy of Marketing Science (AMS) annual conference. Part of the series Developments in Marketing Science: Proceedings of the Acad­emy of Marketing Science (pp. 248–251). Switzerland: Springer Nature.

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Kennelly, I., Misra, J., & Karides, M. (1999). The historical context of gender, race, & class in the academic ­labor market. Race, Gender & Class 6, 125–155. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­jstor​.­org​/­stable​/­41674899 Mayo Clinic Staff. (2015, May 19). Panic attacks and panic disorder. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­mayoclinic​.o­ rg​/­diseases​-­conditions​/­panic​-­attacks​/­basics​/­definition​/­con​ -­20020825 Mayuzumi, K. (2015). Navigating Orientalism: Asian w ­ omen faculty in the Canadian acad­emy. Race Ethnicity and Education, 18(2). doi:10.1080/13613324.2014.946495 Misra, J., Lundquist, J. H., Holmes, E., & Agiomavritis, S. (2011, January–­February). The ivory ceiling of ser­vice work. Academe. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­aaup​.­org​/­article​ /­ivory​-­ceiling​-­service​-­work#​.­V14YkqYmT88 on June 12, 2016. Mori, S. C. (2000). Addressing the ­mental health concerns of international students. Journal of Counseling & Development, 78, 137–144. doi:10.1002/j.1556-6676.2000. tb02571.x Onwuachi-­Willig, A. (2012). Silence of the lambs. In G. Gutierrez y Muhs, Y. F. Niemann, C. G. Gonzalez, & A. P. Harris (Eds.), Presumed incompetent: The intersections of race and class for ­women in academe (pp. 142–148). Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Patton, S. (2015, May 2). How joint appointments stall the ­careers of ethnic-­studies professors. Chronicle Vitae. Retrieved from https://­chroniclevitae​.­com​/­news​/­994​-­how​-­joint​ -­appointments​-­stall​-­the​-c­ areers​-­of​-­ethnic​-­studies​-­professors#sthash​.­mURjVTLS​.­dpuf Richardson, J., & Zikic, J. (2007). The darker side of an international academic ­career. ­Career Development International, 12, 164–186. Retrieved from http://­d x​.­doi​.­org​/1­ 0​ .­1108​/­13620430710733640 Roshanravan, S. M. (2009). Passing-­as-­if: Model minority subjectivity and ­women of color identification. Meridians, 10(1), 1–31. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­jstor​.o­ rg​/­stable​/1­ 0​ .­2979​/­mer​.­2009​.­10​.­1​.­1 Schell, E. E., & Stock, P. L. (Eds.). (2001). Moving a mountain: Transforming the role of contingent faculty in composition studies and higher education. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of En­g lish. Skachkova, P. (2007). Academic ­careers of immigrant ­women professors in the U.S. Higher Education, 53, 697–738. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­jstor​.­org​/­stable​/­29735083 Solorzano, D., Ceja, M., & Yosso, T. (2000). Knocking at freedom’s door: Race, equity, and affirmative action in U.S. higher education. Journal of Negro Education, 69, 60–73. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.j­ stor​.­org​/s­ table​/2­ 696265 Standing still: The Associate Professor Survey. (2009, April 27). [Report of the Committee on the Status of ­Women in the Profession]. Retrieved from https://­apps​.­mla​.­org​/­pdf​ /­cswp​_­final042909​.­pdf Stulberg, L. M., & Weinberg, S. L. (2012). Diversity in American higher education: ­Toward a more comprehensive approach. New York: Routledge University Press. Sue, D. W., Bucceri, J., Lin, A. I., et al. (2007). Racial microaggressions and the Asian American experience. Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psy­chol­ogy, 13, 72–81. Retrieved from http://­d x​.­doi​.­org​/­10​.1­ 037​/­1099​-­9809​.­13​.1­ ​.­72 Sun, W. (2007). Minority invisibility: An Asian American experience. Lanham, MD: University Press of Amer­i­ca. Toutkoushian, R. K., & Bellas, M. L. (1999). Faculty time allocations and research productivity: Gender, race and ­family effects. Review of Higher Education, 22(4), 367–390. Tucker, S. (2017). Poem for far too many brilliant scholars, not enough of whom are with us ­today. ­Women and M ­ usic: A Journal of Gender and Culture, 21, pp. 1–2. University of Nebraska Press. Retrieved from https://­muse​.­jhu​.­edu​/­article​/­673626

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Turner, C.S.V., Myers, S., & Creswell, J. (1999). Exploring underrepre­sen­ta­tion: The case of faculty of color in the Midwest. Journal of Higher Education, 70(1), 27–59. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­jstor​.­org​/­stable​/­2649117 Valverde, K.-­L .C. (2013). Fight the tower: A call to action for ­women of color in academia. Seattle Journal for Social Justice, 12, 367–420. Retrieved from http://­digitalcommons​ .­law​.­seattleu​.­edu​/­sjsj​/­vol12​/­iss2​/­5​?­utm​_ ­source​=­digitalcommons​.­law​.­seattleu​.­edu%2Fsjs j%2Fvol12%2Fiss2%2F5&utm​_m ­ edium​=­PDF&utm​_c­ ampaign​=­PDFCoverPages van de Bunt-­Kokhuis, S.G.M. (1994). Determinants of international faculty mobility. Higher Education in Eu­rope, 19(2). doi:10.1080/0379772940190209 Woo, D. (2000). Glass ceilings and Asian Americans: The new face of workplace barriers. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Yeh, C. J., & Inose, M. (2003). International students’ reported En­g lish fluency, social support satisfaction, and social connectedness as predictors of acculturative stress, Counselling Psy­chol­ogy Quarterly, 16(1), 15–28. doi:10.1080/0951507031000114058 Yeung, F. P. (2013). Strug­g les for professional and intellectual legitimacy: Experiences of Asian and Asian American female faculty members. In S. D. Museus, D. C. Maramba, & R. T. Teranishi (Eds.), The misrepresented minority: New insights on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and the implications for higher education (pp. 281–293). Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing. Zafar, M. A., Roberts, K. W., & Behar-­Horenstein, L. S. (2012). Mentoring perceptions and experiences of culturally diverse tenure-­accruing faculty. Florida Journal of Educational Administration & Policy, 5(2), 58–67. Retrieved from http://­eric​.­ed​.­gov​/­​?­id​=­EJ983136

8

How to Leave Academia R ANI NEUTILL

Abstract Rani Neutill discusses her sixteen years in academia and how she ultimately left. She applied for over 350 tenure-­track positions without success. Years of postdoctorates at elite institutions and adjuncting led her back to waitressing, a job she started during college. Alternating through vari­ous jobs and c­ areers, including still having one foot in academia, Neutill took the rarely discussed leap of leaving academia for good. This chapter highlights the ills of a system that overproduces doctorates while exploiting the temporary workers that have grown dramatically in academia. It is a story of leaving that turns to the structural prob­lems that caused her to depart. It also pre­sents the possibilities and realities of leaving the acad­emy. It aims to give ­those who truly want to leave the acad­emy some information on how to do so.

Introduction In 2007, I got my doctorate.1 I proudly walked across a stage and received my diploma in ethnic studies and film from the University of California at Berkeley. I held on to that diploma tightly, but not too tightly. I did not want to crush it.2 In 2009, I was a lucky one, lucky ­because the market crash in 2008 hit hard and still I had nine interviews at the Modern Language Association (MLA).3 ­There w ­ ere not a lot of tenure-­track jobs in academia to begin with, so you can 255

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imagine what the job search was like afterward. Still, I seemed destined to get a job. The odds w ­ ere on my side. A reporter found out about my interviews through a mutual friend. She wanted to interview me for an essay she was writing (Ma, 2009). The job crisis was getting a lot of media attention and my multiple interviews ­were, I guess, newsworthy. “What is it like to be on the market during this time?” she asked. “Well, it’s frightening. Sometimes I think I am g­ oing to end up being a waitress.” When the article was published, that quote got pulled. It was one of t­ hose quotes that they highlight. The font goes up to, like, seventy-­two points and it’s bolded and placed between paragraphs. You know the kind of quote I’m talking about. I ­didn’t get any of ­those nine jobs. I applied year ­after year, flew to wherever the MLA conference was being held, sat in h ­ otel rooms (yes, interviews for tenure-­track jobs in the humanities take place in h ­ otel rooms), wore conservative clothing to cover all my tattoos and body parts that I’m told should be covered. I was warned that if I dressed too stylishly or provocatively, it would distract from what I was saying—­I needed to look boring. Being a mixed-­race, “exotic” ­woman of color, with an obsession with fashion, made me someone who was in a par­tic­u­lar need of looking boring—­I ­couldn’t be loud in any way—­ visually, aesthetically, or vocally. Well, I was fucked from the beginning. I am inherently a loud person. And I like it. For hour ­after hour, I sat in front of strangers who made me feel ­either special, as though the job was mine, or, alternatively, like an idiot. They asked me long and intricate questions that w ­ ere meant to show off their own brilliance. Lots of peacocks in academia, lots. I applied year a­ fter year and never got a single offer. Fortunately, I did get postdocs,4 which, however, lasted only a c­ ouple of years, so ­every two years I moved to a dif­fer­ent city to work at a dif­fer­ent school and build a new life—­new streets, new friends, new bars, new grocery stores. My only constants at that time ­were my dogs. Gradually, I started to resent academia, partly ­because I ­couldn’t get a permanent job and partly b­ ecause of the elitism and snobbery that came with the profession—an elitism that seemed inextricable from the environment and the ­people in it. I would grit my teeth at academic parties, listening to conversations where it was impossible for a person to talk about anything other than Hegel or T. S. Eliot. All I wanted to talk about was The Good Wife. “How do you deal with t­ hese p­ eople?” a colleague’s spouse asked me one night. We w ­ ere smoking on a porch in the dead of winter, shivering through our conversation. ­There was snow everywhere. I had been quietly listening to two white dudes from the philosophy department alternate between

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a discussion of Heidegger’s Being and Time and reminiscences of traveling to Paris in the summer for research, how wonderful the city was and how hard it had been to return to the provincial United States. In my head, which had started to throb, I was thinking, “You guys have it real hard h ­ ere, ­don’t you?” Another guy from the En­glish department launched into a monologue about his recent publication in some fancy academic journal. No one seemed impressed. No one ­there seemed impressed by anything other than themselves. “Oh my god, have you read so-­and-­so’s book? It’s terrible. She ­doesn’t understand Deleuze at all.5 I ­can’t believe Harvard published her!” I looked at my colleague’s spouse, a bit tipsy. “Save me,” I mouthed. We went inside. ­There was a glass of wine in her hand. “­Here,” she said. “Sedate yourself. It ­won’t make it stop but it w ­ ill numb the pain.” We started talking and laughing. And that was when it hit me. I was someone who always made friends outside academia, who would rather engage with the spouses or bartenders and servers I encountered than the fancy se­nior faculty around the ­table. It was suddenly clear; I would rather be a waitress than an academic. The one t­ hing I still loved about the job was teaching, but that was changing. The kids I taught now seemed more like clients or customers than students (see chapter 1). In 2014 I taught a class on sex and cinema, a course that pretty much broke me b­ ecause of the entitled and hostile attitude of students, supported by an administration that uses students to keep faculty in check.6 A ­ fter that, I’d had enough. I went on unemployment and began applying for jobs outside higher ed. It was a bust. It seemed that without any connections outside the acad­emy, I was screwed. My résumé was too long. P ­ eople in h ­ uman resources w ­ ouldn’t even consider me. They would read “PhD” and think “over-­qualified” (Feldman and Maynard (2011). I was at home d­ oing nothing, not even writing. I had given up on that passion as well, floundering about in self-­pity and confusion and the panic I felt when I realized my unemployment was ­going to run out before long.

I Would Rather Be a Waitress What the fuck was I ­going to do with my life? I knew I needed income and structure, that without it I was ­going to go crazy. As an undergrad in the 1990s, I’d worked at a bar in Cambridge and loved it. So much twenty-­one-­year-­old fun. As a thirty-­eight-­year-­old, back in the area, I went ­there once a week. I knew the man­ag­er. I loved the staff and the food. It was that bar that I always went to: it was my bar. We all have a bar like that.

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One day I was telling one of the servers about being unemployed. She said, “Why ­don’t you work ­here again? You know all of us, and ­you’ve already done it.” I looked at her, sighed, and said, “yeah, maybe,” thinking at that moment, I have a PhD, I’ve taught at Harvard, Yale, and Johns Hopkins, and now I’m ­going to waitress? This feeling was only compounded by comments made by folks in academia, some leaving ­because they ­couldn’t find a job or wanted to be in corporate Amer­i­ca (something that is vehemently not me). “What? ­You’re g­ oing to waitress? You are way too overqualified to do that.” “You are g­ oing to waitress? You are the most educated person I know.” I felt like a total and utter failure. I also knew I was g­ oing to do it. I needed a job, and d­ oing anything was better than ­doing nothing. I contacted the man­ag­er and asked if he was hiring. He was. I interviewed with the owner. When he noticed my age, he said, “Oh! You’ll be our oldest server.” Just like that, I was the ­thing that I once joked about becoming: a waitress with a doctorate, only now I also felt old and like a failure. That bolded quote in seventy-­two-­point font was coming back to haunt me. The night before my first shift I crawled into a ball on my bed, hugged my Chihuahua, and started crying. My husband came in and held me. My Chihuahua climbed between us and licked the salty tears off my face. I ­don’t think he cared that I was crying; he just ­really likes salt. My first week the two p­ eople training me walked me over to the computer and showed me all t­ hese buttons, some for drinks, some for food. I stared at it. I touched it. This was new, a touch screen. Still, so many other ­things ­were familiar; I remembered the narrow stairs that take you down to where every­ thing is stocked, carry­ing buckets down to get ice, the slow soda gun, restocking toilet paper, soap, napkins, and rolling silverware—­I was so fucking bad at it, and watching my co-­workers do it was mesmerizing. Remembering ­orders, that was the hardest ­thing. What temperature did she want that burger cooked? Did he want dressing on the side? I felt pretty dumb ­because I was the only person carry­ing a pad in my pocket, the only person that needed to write every­thing down. Other folks had razor-­sharp memories. I ­didn’t. I ran around shaking that week. I ­didn’t want to fuck up. My feet hurt. They hurt so badly. One night I was an utter mess. I did every­thing wrong. “What do you want, miss? A vodka soda?” I brought her a Jameson on the rocks. I broke shit. I ran into a door and smashed my arm into the ­handle. I slipped on a puddle of green Tabasco sauce from a broken ­bottle in front of a full restaurant. When I looked up, my co-­worker was already leaning over me, his hand extended to help lift me up. The Brazilian cooks started calling me desajeitada.

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I am told it means clumsy. I hope so (actually it does; I looked it up to make sure). Even though I was desajeitada, every­one was supportive. My co-­workers would repeatedly grab me by the shoulders and say, “You are ­doing a ­great job, Rani.” The next week, I got some sensible shoes. My feet still hurt, but not as much. The less I shook and rushed, the easier it became. ­A fter working t­ here for almost six months, I started to get to know the ­people I worked with. All of my co-­workers are smart. Many are in school, one was in the army, a few are moms. They are funnier than a lot of academics, but that seems unfair to them ­because most academics a­ ren’t that funny. The biggest difference is that it felt like a ­family. The regulars come in, sit at the bar, and talk to us. I smile as they saunter in, hug most of them, and chat with them about our lives. A lot of customers are nice, and I enjoy engaging and making them laugh as they sit down, persuading them to come in again ­because, a­ fter all, it’s a cool bar. And my clothes ­don’t have to be boring. I’ve learned a lot about the world and myself since I started working ­there. But the most impor­tant t­ hing I’ve learned is that I’d been an asshole for thinking I was a failure ­because I was ­going to be a waitress. I’d been an asshole when I’d believed I was too good, too intelligent, and too educated to wait ­tables, even though I ended up enjoying it more than teaching at any fancy institution. I’d been an asshole b­ ecause my co-­workers are intelligent and in­ter­est­ ing, but I had been looking down on what they do, declaring it my biggest fear and failure. I’d been an asshole ­because I thought that having a doctorate made me special or better or smarter, when, in fact, all it made me was, well, an asshole. I looked back at t­ hose parties where I took pride in thinking I w ­ asn’t tainted by academia’s snobbery, when r­ eally, I was just as much of an elitist as any of them. Hello, hy­poc­risy. Confronting my own elitism has been embarrassing. Realizing that e­ very time I was asked what I did for a living, I got plea­sure from saying I taught at Yale or Harvard was cringe-­worthy. And yet, I try not to be too hard on myself. ­A fter all, academia cultivates and nurtures elitism and entitlement. Clearly, being critical of it d­ idn’t make me immune to it; elitism can creep up on you. I became proud to say “I’m a waitress.” We pooled tips at my bar. This made for a community where we all have each other’s backs, and if someone d­ oesn’t, ­they’re called out. Unlike the competitive environment of academia, working at my bar was actually about being in a place where p­ eople want you to do well ­because that means we all do well. I’m painting an idyllic picture h ­ ere; ­there w ­ ere definitely rough moments and nights and days where t­ hings fell flat. I knew about the debate over banning tips and raising the minimum wage. I was not sure how I felt about it then,

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and from what I can tell, my co-­workers ­didn’t e­ ither. ­People can be awful, and not all bars are like that one. I am aware that many servers have shitty jobs for shitty pay. And let’s be real: it i­ sn’t enough money. But ­here is the t­ hing: being a part-­time lecturer in academia never paid me enough e­ ither.7 Recently, I was talking to a sociologist about leaving academia to become a waitress. I told him I thought that higher education was falling apart. He ­didn’t seem interested in my opinion and started explaining how neoliberalism was destroying academia. I looked at him, laughed, and said, “What­ever the reason, I like being a waitress, it’s much better for my m ­ ental health.” I d­ idn’t have the heart to tell him that waitressing had taught me more about the world than academia ever had. Plus, I ­didn’t want to waste my breath.

Beyond Being an Asshole ­There’s more. The racism and sexism. Did I mention t­ hose ­things? No, I ­didn’t. Only the elitism. But pile on ­these ­factors and it makes for an environment that is more than the making of an asshole. It makes for a toxicity that is debilitating, anxiety provoking, personhood questioning—an environment that exacerbates ­mental illness in the worst ways pos­si­ble, not to mention exiles ­those who suffer from it.8 How can you be productive when your entire existence and worth is questioned, when you are being annihilated at the very core of your being? It sounds dramatic, I’m sure. But unfortunately, it’s profoundly true. Take just one instance where the chair of a department I was working for wrote me a letter of recommendation while I was on the market. White man, power­ful, older, with the ego the size of Texas (he taught Victorian lit­er­a­ture; it’s hilarious that someone who teaches Victorian lit­er­a­ture thinks they are so special). I had a friend at one of the schools I had applied for a job at. She called me. She told me that I had what they call a “poisoned letter”: a letter designed to indicate to hiring committees (in a nonexplicit way) that I was a bad egg and not worth the time. My friend told me that he had written, “despite her flamboyant clothing, she does an excellent job.” I ­will never ever forget hearing ­those words. I knew he d­ idn’t like me but was naive enough to think he was ethical. You need letters from what­ever department you are in—­working or student. The chair is the “go to” person. His letter was a warning—­a gendered and sexualized one. It screamed: “­don’t hire her, she’s too dif­fer­ent, she calls attention to her body, she is trou­ble.” I ­hadn’t yet learned the “have-­to-­look-­boring” part of academia. And this is just one instance of racism and sexism I experienced among a slew of o­ thers that are the making of a novel, a play, a collection of personal essays, or a full-­blown memoir.

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Just a Laborer Then ­there are the years and years I spent looking for a job—­those e­ very two years moving and searching and then slowly becoming irrelevant ­because you have been out too long and ­there are younger ­people who can fill up the fancy postdoc roles. It’s a hard ­thing to become irrelevant. It is even harder to displace yourself e­ very two years. It is hard to build a new life and be superproductive at the same time. Some ­people are very able to do this. I ­wasn’t. At certain schools I was the representative for ethnic studies ­because, truly, they ­didn’t want to permanently hire someone ­doing ethnic studies, but they w ­ ere willing to take on someone temporary. The word “temporary” defines the acad­ emy now. It constitutes it. Th ­ ere is nothing permanent for most folks on the market.9 Nothing. How do you exist in a landscape of nonpermanency? In a landscape that mimics the very patterns of border policing and granting passports or not granting them. You ­aren’t a full-­blown citizen if you ­don’t have tenure. You ­don’t have a green card if you a­ ren’t on a tenure track. If you are a tenured person of color in the acad­emy, you ­aren’t immune to being disciplined by the institution. It is a permanent state of fear that you w ­ ill be deported.10 The liberal college is essentially a lie.11 The university is a nation, it has modeled itself upon nationhood, the very ­thing it has claimed to critique and belie (Mahtani, 2006; Pilger, 2001; Rodríguez, 2012). Ironic, ­isn’t it? So many instances of g­ oing to represent a department when a writer of color came to campus and no tenured or tenure-­track professor wanted to go. So. Many. Times. At least I got to meet some famous ­people. Big perks. Such big perks.

Life Goes On Since my time waitressing, I have done a ­couple of ­things to transition out of academia. Education is changing; we all know that. Online education is what academics tend to think of first ­because that’s the place they are hit—­starting to teach online, seeing the digital shift, getting paid less, the corporatization of the acad­emy alongside the rapid pace of technological advancement (D. E. Smith & Mitry, 2008; Yoshimura, 2008). But t­ here are other classrooms; they are just not within the traditional bound­aries of higher education. For example, ­there are boot camps. The technology world is booming. I joined one. I had taken a coding class in Ruby for ­women.12 I sucked. But I wanted to explore the start-up world. The boot camp I went to was a life coaching and ­career coaching guide, helping me figure out where I fit when I was switching c­ areers. It is definitively for p­ eople like me, or you, who are leaving academia and are completely lost. Unfortunately, no one taught us how the skills we developed

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in gradu­ate school actually apply outside academia. No one said, “­there are all ­these ways you can use ­these skills we are teaching you, and ­here are some of the them.” No one ever told me about getting internships and volunteering so I could build up a résumé for a contingency plan. Gradu­ate school needs to be guiding folks through alternative c­ areer paths. I had to go to a c­ areer center during one of my postdocs to learn this stuff. They are letting too many folks into gradu­ate school with the knowledge that the market for doctorates is in crisis;13 the least they can do is be honest. The boot camp I joined provided a “how to” guide for leaving a ­career. I was in class with accountants, l­ awyers, scientists, and advertising agents. I was the lone academic in a group of talented and smart folks, as talented and smart as all the p­ eople with whom I went to gradu­ate school. A very basic notion of supply and demand was presented: the scarcity model. When jobs are scarce, competition is fierce. When jobs are not scarce, competition gives way to networks, gives way to support. This is completely within a cap­i­tal­ist mode of production and existence. But it did bring to the forefront the prob­lems of academia and how it perpetuates some of the most intense competition and betrayal—­the kind you read in story­books about corporate Amer­i­ca. In contrast, the start-up world is filled with jobs, and the scarcity model d­ oesn’t apply (Anders, 2015; Barkey, Baldridge, et al., 2015). This is not to say (whatsoever), given that it is within a cap­i­tal­ist framework, that the scarcity model ­won’t apply to the start-up economy at some point; it prob­ably ­will. But at this moment it ­doesn’t. And for the purpose of analy­sis, contrasting the plentitude of jobs in the start-up world to the dearth of jobs in academe tells us a lot about what is wrong with the academic model. Too many p­ eople are getting doctorates.14 ­There is the promise that if you get a doctorate from a top five institution, you’ll be a “lucky one.” If you publish a book with Harvard University Press, you’ll magically be granted tenure. If you publish a book with Yale, you’ll suddenly get a tenure-­track job. I am hoping that every­one who is reading this knows how very untrue this all is.15 Then ­there are the ways in which this scarcity model intersects with race, sexuality, and gender, where p­ eople of color work against each other. I have stories, friends have stories, of w ­ omen of color fighting to ensure that they are that one person that gets tenure at that institution that proclaims to be liberal. The liberal institution wants to fill its quotas. This means that in most places ­there ­will be only one or two of each race and sexuality in a department. The percentage ­will always match the number, one person of color per ten. Two per twenty. Always a number that approximates one in ten, the “lucky one,” that is, the token or the “ethnic cover” (Hamamoto, 2014; Johnsrud & Sadao, 1998; Niemann, 1999). It is primitive math. As a result, paranoia and backstabbing are the norm—­particularly among the folks who are ­really supposed to support each other. It’s a mess.

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Very few folks outside the acad­emy care that you have a doctorate. They may be wowed for one minute, but then, it’s over. Also, your schedule changes and you d­ on’t have the time to do the t­ hings you might love: read, research, write, think critically. You have to make time and it ­isn’t easy. Then ­there is the sad fact that other academics ­don’t get it. They h ­ aven’t experienced it. They think inside their b­ ubble. Can you blame them? They d­ on’t r­ eally know anything e­ lse. Well, most ­don’t. And remember, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia (all the phobias and isms)—­they exist everywhere. The stuff I’ve seen outside is more explicit. Way more. So you need to decide which form you can put up with: the insidious kind that lives in the acad­emy or the explicit kind of the corporate workforce. A nonprofit might be a better space, but it d­ oesn’t mean it’s not ­there ­either. It is. Right before I started waitressing, I was offered a job at a small elite college near Boston. I had already displaced my husband and myself from the city we love most—­Baltimore—to a city we love least—­Boston. I did this to teach at Harvard in hopes that that year would be the year that I would get a job. That’s what academics tell you: “this is your year.” It ­wasn’t. And for you, it is prob­ ably not ­going to be e­ ither. Sorry. Some of you ­will get jobs; most of you w ­ on’t. I had a hard time trying to figure out ­whether I should take that job. It was a good deal, a good school, another notch on my ­belt of teaching at special fancy schools. I would run into academics who had tenure at schools that a­ ren’t considered elite and tell them about my dilemma. Their only response was, “Wow, that’ll look ­great on your c.v.” I could only look at them with bitterness and say, “I’ve taught at Harvard, Yale, and Johns Hopkins, and it ­hasn’t done much for me.” This time not out of pride or assholery, but to try and point out that it ­doesn’t m ­ atter anymore and although so many academics have penis envy (striving to work at the top five), the fact that they have a tenure-­track job or have tenure is the prize. The system makes you think that you have to work at Harvard when you should just be happy you have a job. I talked to my husband about it. He had always been encouraging. Obviously, he came with me to a city he ­didn’t want to live in. “What are you g­ oing to do a­ fter this year? When the gig is done?” he asked. “I ­don’t know.” “So we w ­ ill be back to square one?” “Yes.” “What’s it ­going to do for you that years of teaching ­hasn’t done. What’s the payoff? What’s the goal now?” I thought about it. He was right. I would have nothing on my résumé that I ­didn’t already have. I would have nothing to help me get out of academia. I would be one year older in a sea of millennials getting jobs—­jobs that I ­didn’t know how to do or anything about at all. I felt super dumb. I said no to that job. It kept me up for nights ­after and before. Wondering what to do and then

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wondering if I had made the right choice. Being thirty-­eight, starting from scratch, learning about the world beyond the walls of academia, I felt like a child. Then I wrote about some of my experiences, and ­these essays ­were published in big venues. They became clickbait,16 but ­people also seemed to connect with them. The introduction to this essay, for instance, brought me hate mail. It also brought me a slew of e-­mails from academics telling me their stories. A group of gradu­ate students from Turkey translated it, and I started getting e-­mails from folks in Istanbul, asking if I would chat with them on Google Hangouts.17 Gradu­ate students contacted me for advice. Folks who never cared about my existence ­were suddenly my friends. But only for a while. New news becomes news, and I was left with the real­ity again of having lost a big part of my identity. Of not being an academic anymore. ­Bitter in the mouth. Rewriting this chapter for Fight the Tower, for instance, I cringed at the idea of subtitles and footnotes, of theoretical language being imposed on me, ­because that ­isn’t who I am anymore. It is not how I write or want to write. I want to write clear, bold, and loud. But it’s also b­ ecause the world I left, well, I have so much anger ­toward it. Still, I de­cided to write this in hopes that it’ll help folks who find themselves where I did, so that they know that it is okay to leave and that they can. That is so very impor­tant. When you are never taught what exists outside of higher ed you ­can’t imagine an existence outside it. But ­there is one. I promise. I am not ­going to lie: the emotional toll is harsh. The world of academia is so small and incestuous that your entire identity is inextricably linked to it. When I left, I totally lost a sense of who I was. The breakup is rough. But so is being an adjunct professor or a wandering postdoc. So is being looked down at by folks b­ ecause you c­ an’t quote enough Kant. So is the fact that p­ eople of color fight for tenure-­track positions and as a result have to turn on each other (something I witnessed and was collateral damage to at one school). I d­ on’t miss the pressure to write and publish ­things I d­ on’t find in­ter­est­ing and that only a fraction of folks ­will read. I do miss reading and thinking and engaging with students who do want to learn. I now take writing classes to fill that void; it has worked. It is hard but I still think I made the right choice. My resentment for academia lingers. It ­will take a long time to get over the breakup. They often say that it takes half the time of the relationship to fully get over the breakup. That means eight years for me. I’ve got seven years left to heal.

Notes 1 An ­earlier version of this article first appeared in Salon​.­com, at http://­w ww​.­salon​ .­com. An online version remains in the Salon archives (Neutill, 2015). Reprinted with revisions with permission.

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2 In the category “other humanities,” 1,607 received doctorates the same year I did, in 2007 (Fiegener, 2009). 3 According to Laurance (2014, figure 1), 2007–2008 marked the start of a steep downward slide of advertised tenure track jobs versus the number of new doctorates. 4 “Two separate trends—an increase in the number of gradu­ates with doctoral degrees, and a decline in the number of jobs available for them—­have converged to create a glut of postdocs in the U.S.” (Marcus, 2014, n.p.). According to Kendall Powell (2015, n.p.), t­ here is a correlation between the increase in postdoc positions and the decline in tenure-­track positions. It amounts to a semipermanent academic underclass: “In December 2014, a committee convened by the U.S. National Academies [of Sciences] released a report aimed at highlighting and improving the postdoc’s plight. The committee called for a hike in salaries, from the current recommended starting salary of US$42,840 to $50,000, and a 5-­year limit on the length of postdocs.” Th ­ ese amounts are for postdocs in the sciences; humanities positions are generally much lower paid. According to data drawn from 2004, “The earnings of full professors in the humanities ­were somewhat less than ­those of associate professors in engineering, health sciences, and business” (emphasis added; American Acad­emy of Arts & Sciences, n.p.). 5 Gilles Deleuze is a French literary and cultural studies theorist and writing partner of psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. 6 Editors’ note: For an analy­sis of this trend, see chapter 4. 7 Average annual pay for adjunct faculty working full-­time is between $20,000 and $25,000 (McKenna, 2015). 8 See chapter 3 in this volume. 9 The shift ­toward relying on adjunct faculty is well documented and functions as a de facto erosion of academic freedom (Belkin & Korn, 2015; Moser, 2014; S. A. Smith, 2015; Todd, 2004). 10 Sometimes this meta­phor even takes on a literal meaning when international professors find themselves in very vulnerable positions of possibly not getting tenure, losing their work visa as a result, and then having to also leave the country shortly ­a fter. See chapter 13. 11 The reframing of the university on a corporate model has increased in relation to its defunding (Davies, Gottsche, & Bansel, 2006; Newfield, 2011; Slaughter & Rhoades, 2000). 12 Ruby is a computer coding language. 13 Doctoral programs are taught by—­and designed to prepare students to become—­ tenure-­track professors at research universities. The prob­lem is that doctoral programs have to enroll enough students to justify the amount of resources spent on them, while tenure-­track jobs are decreasing, so they knowingly produce many more doctorates than ­there are tenure-­track jobs. In 2005, it was estimated that 43,385 doctorates would be granted, while in 2015, 55,006 ­were, showing a 1.86 ­percent increase (Lederman, 2016). Meanwhile, according to the AAUP report on “Tenure and Teaching-­Intensive Appointments,” “By 2007, almost 70 ­percent of faculty members ­were employed off the tenure track. . . . ​Faculty serving on a contingent basis generally work at significantly lower wages, often without health coverage and other benefits, and in positions that do not incorporate all aspects of university life or the full range of faculty rights and responsibilities” (p. 90).

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14 “Administrators need doctoral programs across fields to maintain the institution’s Car­ne­gie classification. One of the four major correlates of research activity used to mea­sure aggregate institutional per­for­mance is PhD conferrals” (Bousquet, 2015). 15 “As responsible analysts have understood since the mid-1990s, this i­ sn’t ­because of an oversupply of PhDs but an intentionally created undersupply of tenure-­stream positions. Beginning in 1970, administrators began systematically turning teaching-­intensive jobs into part-­time or non-­tenurable positions that—­they claim—­don’t require a PhD. As a result, many teaching-­intensive appointments are filled with students, staff members and other ­people who d­ on’t have doctorates—­while ­those with doctorates quit the acad­emy or take alternative academic jobs” (Bousquet, 2015). 16 “Clickbait” ­here refers to online sensationalist writing that serves to get the attention of readers and draw them to a par­tic­u­lar Web site. 17 Google Hangouts is the online video chat program as part of the Internet multiverse applications provided by Google. Google is the multinational search engine corporation with a myriad of online enterprises.

References American Acad­emy of Arts & Sciences. (n.d.). Faculty earnings. Humanities Indicators. Retrieved from www​.­humanitiesindicators​.­org​/­content​/i­ ndicatordoc​.a­ spx​?­i​=­317 American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Committee on Contingency and the Profession (2010, September). Report on “Tenure and Teaching-­Intensive Appointments.” Retrieved from https://­w ww​.a­ aup​.o­ rg​/ ­NR​/­rdonlyres​/­3B21B7EB​ -­86D7​-­498D​-­9498​-­10978175B5DA​/­0​/T ­ enureTeachersRpt​.­pdf Anders, G. (2015, August 17). That “useless” liberal arts degree has become tech’s hottest ticket. Forbes. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­forbes​.­com​/­sites​/­georgeanders​/­2015​/­07​/­29​ /­liberal​-­arts​-­degree​-­tech​/­#3b2bd5785a75 Barkey, P. M., Baldridge, J., Henderson, C., & Furniss, S. (2015). High growth for high-­tech. Montana Business Quarterly, 53(2), 2. Belkin, D., & Korn, M. (2015, February 17). Colleges’ use of adjuncts comes u­ nder pressure. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­wsj​.­com​/­articles​/­colleges​-­use​-­of​ -­adjunct​-i­ nstructors​-­comes​-­under​-p­ ressure​-­1424118108 Bousquet, M. (2015, October 20). Moving the goalposts in gradu­ate education. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­insidehighered​.­com​/­views​/­2015​/­10​/­20​/­phd​ -­should​-­result​-­tenure​-­track​-­job​-­not​-­a lt​-a­ c​-­one​-­essay Davies, B., Gottsche, M., & Bansel, P. (2006). The rise and fall of the neo-­liberal university. Eu­ro­pean Journal of Education, 41, 305–319. doi:10.1111/j.1465-3435.2006.00261.x Feldman, D. C., & Maynard, D. C. 2011. A ­labor economic perspective on overqualification. Industrial and Orga­nizational Psy­chol­ogy, 4, 233–235. doi:10.1111/j.1754-9434.2011.01331.x Fiegener, M. (2009, November). Numbers of U.S. Doctorates Awarded Rise for Sixth Year, but Growth Slower. National Science Foundation, NSF 10-308. Retrieved from https://­wayback​.­archive​-­it​.­org​/­5902​/­20160210152245​/­http://­w ww​.­nsf​.­gov​/­statistics​ /­infbrief​/n ­ sf10308​/­ Flaherty, C. (2014, April 9). So much to do, so l­ ittle time.” Inside Higher Ed. Online. Hamamoto, D. Y. (2014). Servitors of empire: Studies in the dark side of Asian Amer­i­ca. Waterville, OR: Trine Day.

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Johnsrud, L. K., & Sadao, K. C. (1998). The common experience of “otherness”: Ethnic and racial minority faculty. Review of Higher Education, 21, 315–342. doi:10.1353/ rhe.1998.0010 Laurance, D. (2014, February 26). Our PhD employment prob­lem, part I. Trend. Retrieved from https://­mlaresearch​.­mla​.­hcommons​.­org​/­2014​/­02​/2­ 6​/­our​-­phd​-­employment​ -­problem/ Lederman. D. (2016, December 9). New federal data show American universities awarded a rec­ord number of Ph.D.s in 2015. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://­w ww​ .­insidehighered​.­com​/­news​/­2016​/­12​/­09​/­phd​-­recipients​-­increase​-­number​-­job​-­prospects​ -­vary​-­new​-­us​-­data​-­show Ma, K. (2009, January 13). Is a GED more valuable than a PhD? Daily Beast. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­thedailybeast​.­com​/­articles​/­2009​/­01​/1­ 3​/­is​-­a​-­ged​-­more​-­valuable​-­than​ -­a​-­phd​.­html Mahtani, M. (2006). Challenging the ivory tower: Proposing anti-­racist geographies within the acad­emy. Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 13(1), 21–25. doi:10.1080/09663690500530909 Marcus, J. (2014, December 11). Too many postdocs, not enough research jobs: Fears rise in the U.S. that talented early ­career scientists are being driven out of the sector ­because of lack of opportunities. Times: Higher Education. Retrieved from https://­w ww​ .­timeshighereducation​.­com​/­news​/­too​-­many​-­postdocs​-­not​-­enough​-­research​-­jobs​ /­2017415​.­article McKenna, L. (2015, September 24). The college president-­to-­adjunct pay ratio. Atlantic. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­theatlantic​.­com​/­education​/­archive​/­2015​/­09​/­income​ -­inequality​-­in​-­higher​-e­ ducation​-­the​-­college​-p­ resident​-­to​-­adjunct​-­pay​-­ratio​/­407029/ Moser, R. (2014). Overuse and abuse of adjunct faculty members threaten core academic values. Chronicle of Higher Education, 60(18), A19–­A 20. Neutill, R. (2015, December 20). Sixteen years in academia made me an a-­hole. Salon​.­com. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­salon​.c­ om​/­2015​/­12​/­20​/­sixteen​_ y­ ears​_­in​_ ­academia​_­made​ _­me​_ ­an​_ ­a _​ ­hole​/­. Reprinted with revisions with permission. Newfield, C. (2011). Unmaking the public university: The forty-­year assault on the ­middle class. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Niemann, Y. F. (1999). The making of a token: A case study of ste­reo­t ype threat, stigma, racism, and tokenism in academe. Frontiers: A Journal of W ­ omen Studies, 20(1), 111–134. doi:10.2307/3346994 Patton, T. O. (2004). Reflections of a black w ­ oman professor: Racism and sexism in academia. Howard Journal of Communications, 15, 185–200. Pilger, J. (2001, April 30). Academia is ­silent on imperialism, as German universities ­were during the rise of the Nazis. New Statesman, 130, 26. Retrieved from https://­w ww​ .­newstatesman​.­com​/­node​/1­ 53328 Powell, K. (2015, April 9). The ­f uture of the postdoc. Nature: International Weekly Journal of Science, 520, 144–147 doi:10.1038/520144a Rodríguez, D. (2012). Racial/colonial genocide and the “neoliberal acad­emy”: In excess of a problematic. American Quarterly, 64, 809–813. Slaughter, S., & Rhoades, G. (2000). The neo-­liberal university. New L ­ abor Forum, 6, 73–79. Smith, D. E., & Mitry, D. J. (2008). Investigation of higher education: The real costs and quality of online programs. Journal of Education for Business, 83, 147–152. Smith, S. A. (2015). Contingent faculty and academic freedom in the twenty-­first ­century. First Amendment Studies, 49(1). doi:10.1080/21689725.2015.1016362

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Todd, J. G. (2004). Adjunct faculty: A crisis of justice in higher education. Phi Kappa Phi Forum, 84(4), 17–18. Yoshimura, M. (2008). Educators in American online universities: Understanding the corporate influence on higher education. Journal of Education for Teaching, 34, 295–305. doi:10.1080/02607470802401412

Part IV

“Do. Or Do Not. ­There Is No Try” Radical Love as Pedagogy and Practice While training Luke Skywalker to hone his use of the Force, Master Yoda becomes frustrated with his self-­defeatist student; sighing and shaking his head, Yoda asks Luke to “Unlearn what you have learned.” Education for Luke has been what it has been for most of us: an indoctrination in limitations rather than an education in liberation.1 Part 4 describes how Asian American ­women faculty resist the pressures of academia through their decisions to foreground “radical love,”2 caring, collaboration, community, and healing in their pedagogy, ser­vice, and research. Radical love, as articulated by a myriad of scholars, including bell hooks and Andrew Jolivétte, focuses on healing and community rather than binary oppositional thinking. In Radical Love: Introduction to Queer Theology, Patrick Cheng (2011) argues that radical love dissolves bound­aries. Radical love, like the Force, is about making connections and maintaining our awareness in order to liberate ourselves from oppressive indoctrination. W. P.’s poem for this section, “She S­ hall Not Be Moved,” invokes a goddess to “play and shake the earth and sky. Let her be / Your ­mother of truth. You know she ­shall not be moved till the job is done.” Radical love starts with the self—­self-­compassion and self-­care in this context; it also means reaching out to ­others to form a community of mutual support and compassion. Mutual 269

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support and compassion between tenure-­track and adjunct faculty may seem challenging, or even impossible, given the extreme differences in their working conditions despite that fact that many adjunct faculty have the same credentials as t­ hose on the tenure track, but it is what we need to change the system (Figlio, Schapiro, & Soter, 2015; Ott & Dippold, 2017). The division between the care work that must be provided to students and colleagues and the failure of the university to value this care work is emblematic of the disjunction between the university’s carefully constructed image as a site of liberatory education, social justice, academic freedom, and rationality and the real­ity of the university as a dysfunctional, abusive workplace. Brett Esaki’s essay, in chapter 9, outlines the brutal nature of academia that is disguised in merit-­based rationality. The lack of care provided by academic institutions is often partially mitigated by care work provided by individual colleagues. Wei Ming Dariotis and Grace J. Yoo’s contribution in chapter 10 documents the meaning, value, and cost of care work provided by Asian American w ­ omen in higher education. The findings show that Asian American w ­ omen often do uncompensated, unrewarded care work, particularly as they provide noncognitive support, especially to students who are low-­income, first-­generation in college, immigrant, or are other­wise facing additional significant challenges and barriers to academic success. Shifting systems sometimes involves shifting the kind of work that we produce. By studying six Pinay (empowered Filipina) scholar activists, Melissa-­Ann Nievera-­Lozano’s contribution, in chapter 11, functions as a model for a new way to conduct research that refuses to condone violation of the subject, while using oral history to illuminate the par­tic­u­lar situations of Pinays in academia. Similarly, Allyson Tintiangco-­Cubales—­the founder of Pinayim theory, which centers Pinays in a theory of “strug­gle, survival, ser­vice, sisterhood, and strength. It is an individual and communal pro­cess of decolonization, humanization, self-­determination, and relationship building, ultimately moving ­toward liberation”—­explores how she came to be empowered by relying on ­others (Tintiangco-­Cubales and & Sacramento, 2009, p. 180). In chapter 12, Allyson Tintiangco-­Cubales confesses her feelings of inadequacy, which are structured by a system that opposes mothering against scholarship and teaching. Although this book is about shifting academia, it is r­ eally about how we live our lives. In chapter 13,3 Genevieve Erin O’Brien shares the intimate daily realities of being a “freeway flyer,” as adjunct faculty are often known for their tendency to have to drive for hours between teaching jobs at vari­ous institutions (Strope, 2015). She also shows what re­sis­tance can look like, in the form of the social media network she created in just a few short months, a secret online group that has provided solace, support, and sisterhood for over 10,000 ­women and nonbinary academics of color.

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Rounding off this section, in chapter 14, Wei Ming Dariotis posits that academia should ultimately be about rejecting “pain, domination, and shaming as norms of academia,” while creating “joy, love, and mutual support” in its place, or academic symbiosis. Dariotis offers a manifesto on tenure and promotion that challenges us to imagine a more just university with equitable practices as the new academic norm—­after the ­battles have been won. The chapters in this section center around “radical love”—­not only as pedagogy and scholarship but also in daily life. Radical love is not to be mistaken for just being nice; radical love challenges and creates opportunities for change. Radical love grows out of justifiable anger and is transformative. Sometimes radical love means transforming the system; sometimes radical love means changing our teaching and scholarship; and sometimes it means leaving an abusive relationship that cannot be changed or that is changing too slowly to save our lives.

Notes 1 As Paulo Freire (1970) states in the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, “no pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the strug­g le for their redemption” (p. 54). The oppressed must become their own examples as they seek their own liberation in which their pedagogy becomes their instruments of liberation. Th ­ ere has to be a need in creating spaces in which one is able to “redeem and reclaim the past, legacies of pain, suffering, and triumph in ways that transform pre­sent real­ity” (hooks, 2004, p.155). However, in order to do so, one must first develop critical awareness of the oppression and then fight against the institutions that put up a re­sis­tance to knowledge (Kumashiro, 2000). 2 As Andrew Jolivétte (2010) states, the concept of “radical love” is “giving back to the community” and “strengthening the relationship of all who are involved in the pro­cess” (p. 157). 3 The title of chapter 13, “Re­sis­tance Is Not Futile,” is a reference to the Star Trek Borg tag­line, “re­sis­tance is futile.”

References Cheng, P. (2011). Radical love: Introduction to queer theology. New York: Seabury Books. Figlio, D. N., Schapiro, M. O., & Soter, K. B. (2015). Are tenure track professors better teachers? Review of Economics and Statistics, 97, 715–724. Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder. hooks, b. (2004). Choosing the margin as a space of radical openness. In S. Harding (Ed.), The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Po­liti­cal Controversies. London: Psy­chol­ogy Press. Jolivétte, A. (2010). Critical mixed race studies: New directions in the politics of race and repre­sen­ta­tion. Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies, 1(1), 149–161.

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Kumashiro, K. K. (2000). ­Toward a theory of anti-­oppressive education. Review of Educational research, 70(1), 25–53. Ott, M., & Dippold, L. (2018). Part-­time faculty involvement in decision-­making. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 42(6), 452–455. https://­doi​.­org​/­10​ .­1080​/­10668926​.2­ 017​.­1321057 Strope, M. (2015). “Freeway flyers” now make up the bulk of faculty. Guild Freelancers. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­g uildfreelancers​.­org​/­news​/­2015​/­4​/­15​/f­ reeway​-­flyers​-m ­ ake​ -­up​-­the​-­bulk​-­of​-­faculty Tintiangco-­Cubales, A., & Sacramento, J. (2009). Practicing Pinayist pedagogy. Amerasia Journal, 35(1), 179–187. Retrieved from http://­fi lameducation​.­com​/­wp​-­content​/u­ ploads​ /­pinayism​.­pdf

She S ­ hall Not Be Moved A “Golden Shovel” Sonnet ­after Gwendolyn Brooks’s “you did not know you ­were Afrika” BY W. P. You order me to grow up and stop throwing “rage” around, and your Snow White secretary scorns and scolds and sets up roadblocks for my work Then reports them as proof of my yellow chaos/plague/incompetence so that You, Excellency can summon me to your alabaster tower to explain why I was Such a “CHALLENGE” for every­one. But who’s every­one and what have I done Apart from making “stars” for the college with my blood? What evidence to Back the charges you c­ an’t even name? Moxuyou1—­shadow dagger thrusts, to be Lodged in my organs . . . ​I was your Poster Babe, my art and teaching have done You much glory, now I’m worse than a ghost—­unseen, unheard, unspoken to Only daggers of moxuyou . . . ​just ­because I said NO . . . ​if this is your justice, let it be Flooded with the agave of truth . . . ​if this is your grown up world, then I’m done With your game of lies, revenge, hy­poc­risy . . . ​Let me sing in agony . . . ​To live is to To fulfill a child’s dream . . . ​Let her play and shake the earth and sky. Let her be Your ­mother of truth. You know she s­ hall not be moved till the job is done 273

274  •  W. P.

Narrative I returned to the college to teach, knowing it would not be easy. But I had no clue how toxic my workplace would become, a hundred times worse than during the pre-­settlement. The department coordinator would scorn and insult me daily in front of my students. She would charge into my office and tell me, “organ­ization is not your forte.” She would sabotage my work, then report me as incompetent and uncooperative to the chairs, the staff director, and the provost. The chair would tell me I was talking nonsense and “throwing tantrums like a child” and order me to “grow up” and “behave like a grown-up” for once. The employment director would call me into his office and reprimand me for using my “professor” position to oppress the “poor secretary.” The provost would summon me to her office, asking me why I cannot get along with anybody and why I am so disor­ga­nized and such a “challenge” to every­one. All my grants ­were denied. My students ­were scorned and punished. I tried to sneak in and out of my office in the early morning and late eve­ning, when no one was around, to avoid the daily insults. I developed ulcers, arthritis, depression, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, pinched nerves. My body was pinched up, twisted, and burning with pain day and night. I could not eat, sit, stand, walk, sleep, write. I forced all my energy together for teaching. I knew if I took one day off, the employment director would threaten to fire me. The pain was so intense, I sometimes wanted to jump through the win­dow to end it all. But I held it all in, b­ ecause I once told the chair about my pain, and he immediately reported to the provost, threatening to send me to psychiatric ward. My comfort was teaching and watching my students grow as warriors, one at a time. Poetry was the medicine soothing wounds from invisible knives.

Notes This poem was previously published in P. Wang, “She ­Shall Not Be Moved,” in P. Kahn, R. Shankar, & P. Smith (Eds.), The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks (Fayetteville, AK: University of Arkansas Press, 2017), pp. 218–219. 1 Moxuyou is a Chinese term that dates to the Song Dynasty (twelfth ­century), when the emperor charged and killed his general Yue Fei for treason on the basis of lies, rumors, and whatever—­nonexistent—­the literal translation of Moxuyou. The term has become a synonym for groundless rumors, charges, and persecution.

9

Attack on the Spirit by the “Rational World” (and Spiritual Recovery from It) BRE T T J. ESAKI

Abstract Professor Esaki utilizes Peter Berger’s theory of the nomos (world) to articulate the rationale b­ ehind caustic academic environments and why Asian American ­women turn to spirituality to recover from it. He outlines foundations of academia’s “rational world” in critical analy­sis and positivism that cultivate the rational, objective, and autonomous thinker, which is based in a conception of a white male. This structural disadvantage for Asian American w ­ omen bolsters charges that they do not belong in academia, and as a result they feel ostracized from its rational world—or feel crazy. Further, unprovable attacks on character amplify the sense that academia is not rational; rather, the attacks are degradations of the self, a war on the spirit. As they attest, candidates in po­liti­cally fraught cases respond accordingly by engaging con­temporary spirituality and Asian religions; ­these practices outside of the oppressive “rational world” provide relief, healing, and solidarity.

275

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Introduction ­ ere is a romantic air around higher education; college is seen as a place where Th minds can be uplifted and ­futures forged. When I was a freshman at a small, private, liberal arts school, I was living out ideals of the examined life, but this feeling was abruptly shaken when the college pressured the departure of a favorite professor before she could apply for tenure. She tried to console me, informing me about the politics of an incident in which she inadvertently offended a major donor (it was a small, private school, a­ fter all). L ­ ater, in my master’s degree program, a professor who I thought would be on my thesis committee voluntarily left academia. In the months coming up to his departure, he described to me the psychic damage of the profession. A few years prior, he had come to the point where he looked in the mirror and felt like his suit and tie ­were burning into his skin. Consequently, by the time I met him, he had ­adopted the dress of the Tanzanian p­ eople to retain some sanity of self, but despite his efforts, the pressure became too much and he had to depart (literally for Africa). ­These examples of halted c­ areers that I witnessed in my early college years ­were of a white ­woman and African American man, respectively. In retrospect, I added to their prob­lems by seeking mentorship, which took up some of their valuable research and publication time. If I ­were to ask them ­today, they would prob­ably both say that they ­were glad to help ­because of dedication to students and perhaps a duty to support marginalized ­peoples. However, the point remains: the politics of academia and its psychic demands can destroy c­ areers. For ­women of color, ­these pressures and costs multiply significantly. Based on my experience, it was not a surprise for me rationally that during my doctoral degree program I witnessed yet another mentor—an Asian American ­woman—­being denied tenure. Psychically, however, this one hit hard b­ ecause her work was foundational to my own, and her areas of research ­were nearly identical to mine. Fellow gradu­ate student mentees gathered in person and online in order to cope with the university’s denial of her tenure. We saw it as a declaration that her work—­and by extension our work—­was not seen as worthy by the acad­emy. Our pursuit of knowledge and developing self-­image as academics w ­ ere startled, and we came to view our minds as without value, our work as disposable, and our goals as futile. I was confronted, yet again, with the contradictions of a rational academic world and its destructiveness. Upon closer examination, however, what appear to be contradictions are actually intrinsic to academia. The structures of reason are cold or, as proponents assert, “universal” and “objective.” Think, for example, of how Galileo articulated the universal acceleration of gravity by removing the sentiment around the lightness of feathers and how an astronaut demonstrated gravity’s universal truth by si­mul­ta­neously dropping a feather and a hammer on the

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moon. By contrast, for ­those raised with an ethic of care and responsibility, it is not reasonable to see academic work and our students from a distance, even while we are professionalized to apply rigorous rationality to scholarship and to compartmentalize time with students as “ser­vice.” For ­those in contested promotion and tenure cases, the balance between detached reason and loving responsibility is interrogated, albeit not in ­these terms. Evaluators ask: does this file represent a professor of reason and purveyor of knowledge or one who is incapable of sufficient rationality or who has been distracted by illogic (that is, “cares too much” and is “biased”)? In this pressure cooker of rationality divorced from care, compounded by dynamics of race, gender, and class, Asian American w ­ omen sometimes can muster enough cold reason to raise their professional status. However, as o­ thers in this volume attest, when they are attacked, they are not necessarily confronted with mea­sur­able shortcomings but rather with nebulous questions about their character, phrased as “presence” in the classroom and “collegiality” in the department (Haag, 2005; Valverde, 2013). This is in addition to racist and misogynistic microaggressions experienced throughout their ­careers (Louis, Rawls, et al., 2016). Such multipronged defamation does not inspire more reason. Instead, I learned through side conversations and l­ ater formal research that many Asian American w ­ omen facing contested promotion and tenure cases turn to forms of reason outside of academia’s rationality. If only in private, they recognize their situation for what it is: an attack on the spirit (see chapter 6). To cope with the psychic vio­lence, they recognize that ­there are resources available to them that are not found in Western forms of rationality, namely, Asian traditional religions and forms of con­temporary spirituality rooted in them. This caustic academic context affects a small subset of Asian Americans, but the turn to Asian religions and con­temporary spirituality is quite common for Asian Americans generally. In so­cio­log­i­cal surveys, Asian Americans have consistently had the highest percentage among American racial groups of not affiliating with religious organ­izations (J. Z. Park, 2009; Pew Research Center, 2012). This may be higher for Asian Americans in ethnic studies, which has foundations in Marxist social analy­sis that tends to view religion as antithetical to liberation. As Russell Jeung and I have analyzed, not affiliating with religion does not mean that Asian Americans cease to hold religious beliefs and practices (Chen & Jeung, 2012; Jeung, Esaki, & Liu, 2015). Similar to other nonaffiliated Americans, nonaffiliated Asian Americans hold religious beliefs, such as beliefs in God and heaven. Unlike other Americans, Asian Americans utilize nonaffiliation to practice aspects of Asian religions, such as meditating at home altars, and to carry out modernized and adapted Asian indigenous traditions, which are found in ethnic cele­brations and through their commitment to ­family, reciprocal obligations, and empathetic mentorship.

278  •  Brett J. Esaki

To see why ­these spiritualities and Asian religions are appealing to Asian American w ­ omen in contested tenure and promotion cases, I turn to sociologist of religion Peter Berger, who outlined a theory of a world (called a nomos) that explains the turn to spirituality in the analogous context of the 1960s and its pressures to conform to “reason.” I also informally talked in casual settings and academic conferences with Asian American ­women who have had contested promotion cases about their experiences. More directly, I performed formal interviews with a handful of Asian American ­women associate and full professors who have “survived” the pro­cess. ­These ­were e-­mail interviews with open-­ended questions and a few examples to inform the interviewee about the wide spectrum of responses that they may be able to provide. I carefully crafted the pro­cess and consent information, with approval by the institutional review board, to protect confidentiality given the sensitive nature of this proj­ect. Accordingly, I generalize details provided in this chapter, and I chose quotations that are sufficiently general to protect the participants’ identities. Participation in the formal survey was ­limited (five participants), and several ­others verbally committed but did not participate, which was a surprise to me given that ­these potential participants have dedicated themselves publicly to halting the marginalization of Asian American ­women in academia. I presume that the low participation rate is due to the painfulness of recounting the traumas of their contested promotion cases as well as the ongoing professional demands to publish, teach, or­ga­nize, and speak in public. With Berger’s theoretical framework and ­these testimonies about spiritual healing, I articulate the structures of academia’s rational world and illustrate how and why Asian American ­women academics use religious and spiritual resources to recover from it. My analy­sis reveals dynamics of the context, choices, and experiences of Asian American w ­ omen in academia. I w ­ ill demonstrate that the social pressure of the “rational world” cultivates a state of mind that views no clear choices for a self that is professional and rational; what is outside of academia is the only place for a sane, intelligent, and modern self. This explains, in part, why Western medical care with its academic rationality may not adequately help Asian American ­women in academia. Further, rationality for modern Asian thought involves an ethic of care, openness to other cultures’ ideas, and commitment to cultivating relationships with communities that are studied, meaning that their scholarly paths go against the grain of academia. I ­will argue that, exacerbating the conflicts of social pressure and scholarship, the context of the “rational world” contributes to the devaluation of the selves and work of Asian American w ­ omen in scholarly portfolios and in the classroom (see chapter 2). In academia, the combination of pressure, devaluation, and lack of supportive health care puts choices of spirituality in perspective; t­ here is both an attack on the spirit and spiritual recovery from it.

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The Rational World Many may be familiar with Peter Berger’s work on the sociology of knowledge, especially The Social Construction of Real­ity, co-­written with Thomas Luckmann. This work is foundational to understanding how social environments shape the knowledge they produce. ­Those outside of religious studies may be unaware that Berger also created foundational work in the sociology of religion. In several groundbreaking books, he applies the sociology of knowledge to the production of religious ideas and worldviews. In par­tic­u­lar, he responds to two issues of the de­cades ­after the 1960s: the rise of counterculture, nontraditional spirituality and the decline of traditional religious views. Berger connects ­these two issues to the rising pluralism that unsettled American society and worldviews. In this section, I w ­ ill focus on the role of rationality in this social shift. Berger argued that rationality was seen as oppressive and part of or­ga­nized religion, whereas spirit and spirituality freed one from the binds of rationality. Con­temporary academia follows an analogous sociology of knowledge, which has the effects of marginalizing Asian American ­women and inspiring their spiritual rejection of academic rationality. Following Marx’s insight that consciousness is determined by one’s social being, Berger and Luckmann (1990) argue in The Social Construction of Real­ ity that we come to know through social organ­ization and that our truths are confirmed by our society. ­These insights have become axiomatic in con­ temporary sociology and continental philosophy, so I do not need to repeat arguments regarding ­these points. However, t­ here are a few insights that Berger brings into the study of religion that are useful for our pre­sent discussion. Berger argues that ­humans create environments for themselves through language, law, institutions, and habits. Over time, ­these environments, such as communities, religious organ­izations, and nations, morph to seem like objects that ­were not created by ­humans, and ­these objectivized environments seem to act upon h ­ umans. For example, it seems like socie­ties feed and imprison ­people, whereas ­people, not the socie­ties, the laws, or the ­earlier p­ eople who created them, do the feeding and jailing. In The Sacred Canopy, Berger (1967) applies ­these insights to religion, adding the term nomos or “world” to describe the objectivized social environment, along with its language, rules, and institutions. In a religious world, the institutions, laws, and so forth are declared sacred, and this provides “an ultimate sense of rightness, both cognitively and normatively, in the roles [the individual] is expected to play in society.” For example, when confronted with opposing views and alternate roles, one can argue that one’s worldview is rooted in a God or transcendent Truth in order to secure it from t­ hese con­temporary trends or arguments. This sense of rightness finds a true test in American pluralism that expanded in the 1960s (with the Civil Rights Movement and the 1965 Immigration Act

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both contributing to this shift). Also at this time, secularization deteriorated the absoluteness of religious worlds. Secularization creates social worlds that are not rooted in a single sacred idea, and thus t­ hose living in a secular society hold less overall validity for sacred knowledge. Further, Western science offers scientific truths that can replace religious truths in a secular world. Berger argues that, faced with pluralism and secularization, American religious groups have adapted by asserting truths less absolutely, intertwining some Western scientific theories, and fitting into the market mentality of American cap­i­tal­ists. Berger felt that the forces of pluralism and secularization w ­ ere destroying traditional religion and providing foundations for new religions, and it is this moment of societal transition that I believe is analogous to the situation of Asian American ­women in the acad­emy. Following Marxist logic, Peter Berger, Brigitte Berger, and Hansfried Kellner (1973) in The Homeless Mind argue that secular, industrial, technological production requires that “­those who participate in it define each other as anonymous functionaries” (p. 31) in order for their mechanistic work to flow smoothly. As a result, day-­to-­day life requires psychological management where the work world is separated from their internal, private, “real” world. Likewise, the secular world demands more segmentation or pluralization, and if one maintains a religion, it must be thoroughly restricted to the private world to fit alongside other, public worlds. With such a multiplicity of worlds to negotiate and none to find as the absolute center, Berger et al. (1973) state: “modern man has suffered from a deepening condition of ‘homelessness’ ” (p. 82).1 As they articulate it, the context and results of this homelessness are analogous to the situation of Asian American ­women in contested promotion and tenure cases. Berger and colleagues (1973) list the following psychological symptoms of spiritual homelessness: inability to explain suffering and injustice; and no amelioration of finitude, fragility, and mortality; with no solution to ­these issues, ­people experience anguish. Only within the private sphere is one allowed to express “ ‘repressed’ irrational impulses” (pp. 185–186), and ­these religious and “spiritual” solutions do not have the more comprehensive social reification of secular ideas (Berger et al., 1973). Further, the only rights that make sense to the modern world are individual rights, so ­those who stand for collective rights, such as postcolonial movements and Black nationalism, seem to stand against the State’s modernization proj­ect of compartmentalization (Berger et al., 1973). Given ­these transformations and countermovements, Berger and colleagues argue that “modernization, counter-­modernization, and demodernization must, therefore, be seen as concurrent pro­cesses” (Berger et al., 1973, p. 189; emphasis removed). In this context, the counterculture movement and its spirituality arose, and below I sample the aspects that mirror the con­temporary academic context and

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academics’ rejection of its foundational logic through spirituality.2 Against industrialization, the counterculture movement embraced naturalness. Instead of mass manipulation and rational thought, the counterculture embraced feeling and sensitivity. Counterculture spirituality included transcendental unity with nature, the sacramental significance of sexual discovery, and ecstatic surrender to drugs and rock m ­ usic (Berger et al., 1973). Th ­ ese developments w ­ ere against “functional rationality,” or “the imposition of rational controls over the material universe, over social relations and fi­nally over the self” (Berger et al., 1973, p. 202). They also rejected modernity’s segmentation of real­ity, including life planning, “ambition and the desire to achieve status,” superficial relationships, repressive politics, and institutionalism (Berger et al., 1973, p. 206). In essence, Berger and colleagues illustrate that counterculture spirituality was a response to the spiritual homelessness of modernization and its functional rationality. This movement embraced what is now known as “spirituality,” which is short for “spiritual-­but-­not-­religious,” or a spirituality that is not delimited by institutional, or­ga­nized, modernized religion. It is impor­tant to note that I am not arguing that con­temporary Asian American w ­ omen are turning to the spirituality of the 1960s. This is especially impor­tant to note b­ ecause some strains of white counterculture spirituality have treated Asian, Native American, and African religions as cultures to be appropriated instead of communities to be engaged and respected. Rather, I am illustrating how the context in which counterculture spirituality arose is analogous to the academic context for con­temporary Asian American w ­ omen, a context which my in­for­mants, as well as the contributors to Presumed Incompetent and other writings, confirm is toxic (Gutierrez y Muhs, Niemann, et al., 2012; Reyes, Kupenda, et al., 2014). Promotion and tenure cases are determinations of professional status; analogous to the functional rationality of the 1960s, candidates must prove their academic rationality, which includes the subjugation of social relations u­ nder reason, professional ambition and c­ areer planning, superficial academic networks, po­liti­cal neutrality, and a dedication to academic institutions (Gutierrez y Muhs et al., 2012; Reyes et al., 2014). As I ­will demonstrate, ­these aspects of academic rationality work directly against cultures of care and collective justice. Where empathy demands action, academia demands separation, control, and institutional identification. Moreover, the caustic environments of contested promotions pressure the candidate to psychically crack between worlds of academia and the life worlds of Asian American w ­ omen. Th ­ ese m ­ ental breaks confirm to the academic power structure that the candidate is insufficiently rational—in short, the world of academia creates insanity and amplifies the image of insanity. I argue that academic rationality has been built on philosophic structures that intrinsically disadvantage Asian American ­women, putting them in a more precarious situation than many ­others in academia. This applies to both the

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humanities and the sciences, ­because both traditions are grounded in academic rationality. The humanities tradition cultivates critical analy­sis, which Plato phrased as the “examined life.” In this philosophic tradition, reason can unearth transcendent (read: not contextual) truths from opaque existence. This includes rigorously analyzing one’s own life choices and virtues. Upon this basic foundation, the humanities ­were constructed. Modern Western science emerged ­later but was founded on a similar rationality—­namely, with rigorous and detailed experiments, reproducibility, and careful observation, we can uncover and confirm universal truths. The system of verification is meant to be cumulative, meaning that scientists seek to further confirm and to build upon previous scientists’ insights—­a goal of positivism and progressive development. That is, both the sciences and the humanities ­were founded in rigorous rational inquiry that seeks truths that are objective and not based in perspective and context. Although this image of truth and reason is idealized in academia, many phi­ los­o­phers, theologians, cultural critics, and scientists have argued that truths are not in­de­pen­dent of their contexts. Along the lines of Berger and Luckmann’s (1990) method, scholars have applied the sociology of knowledge to their fields and uncovered ideals, examples, and practices of inquiry that are based in social environments. For example, Sandra Harding (2008) has illustrated that scientific preferences, like universalism and objectivity, have been founded on a white male colonial distance from social and embodied realities, whereas w ­ omen and ­people of color engage a more self-­critical pro­cess of questioning and tend to be more social in their pro­cess of discovery. Lucius Outlaw (1996, pp. 53–59) argues that Western philosophy’s ideal of rationality is supported by the Eu­ro­pean imperial spread of “civilization” to ­others, who w ­ ere supposedly less h ­ uman and rational. Similarly, James Perkinson (2004) traces the history of the association of Christian superiority to white supremacy. Perkinson argues that this connection was rooted in “theological meanings invested in epidermal appearances . . . ​legitimizing the exploitation of both (indigenous) native and (imported) slave l­abor for Eu­ro­pean colonial and l­ ater imperial enterprises” (p. 157) along with “a Cartesian self-­ consciousness crystallizing its identity in a unitary and individualized form of subjectivity claiming universal valence . . . ​a scientific form of rationality seeking to prove its own transcendence by metaphysically categorizing the entire objective world (including dark-­skinned ­human beings . . . ) in a totalized taxonomy, [and a] Calvinist notion of predestination that sought eternal confirmations in surface significations (like success in business or skin-­color in race)” (p. 159). In short, Christian superiority and white supremacy mutually justified one another and ­were entrenched in a vision of rationality. Or, as Deloria (2003) illustrates, “world history as it is presently conceived in the Christian nations is the story of the West’s conquest of the remainder of the world and the

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subsequent rise to technological sophistication” (p. 107). In order to detangle Chris­tian­ity from supremacy, he argues that “we must surrender the comfortable feeling that we can find a direct line from ancient times to the modern world via the Christian religion. This involves, of course, giving up the claim by Chris­tian­ity of its universal truth and validity” (Deloria, 2003, p. 108). This means that imperial Chris­tian­ity entails a g­ rand historical view of spiritual, technological, and po­liti­cal pro­gress and ever-­unfolding universal truth and validity, legitimizing its domination of ­peoples and its ignorance of their genius. Outlaw (1996), Perkinson (2004), and Deloria (2003) thus demonstrate that Western rationality has been tied to environments and ideologies of white and Christian supremacy and consequently is presumed universal, transcendent, civilized, and deserving of progressive dominance, while it has been distanced from the intellect, religions, and bodies of nonwhite ­peoples and ­those othered as nonwhite. Add the insights of Harding and other feminist phi­los­o­phers, and we understand that this form of rationality is tied to patriarchy, leading to its separation from embodied and social knowledge. To structure an environment around academic rationality is therefore to structurally disadvantage ­women of color. This “rational world” has several impacts on the promotion cases of w ­ omen of color, many of which have been detailed elsewhere in this volume as well as in Presumed Incompetent (Gutierrez y Muhs et al., 2012). Th ­ ere is a presumption that w ­ omen—­and ­women of color in particular—­will counsel students beyond their academic concerns.3 Immediately listening to students’ nonacademic issues consumes emotional energy and takes time away from research and publications (see chapters 3 and 10). Opting, in a professional manner, to postpone counseling sessions to office hours or to direct students t­ oward university psychological ser­vices can be interpreted as coldness and condescension, often leading to lower student evaluations (Bavishi, Madera, & Hebl, 2010; Macnell, Driscoll, & Hunt, 2014; Miller & Chamberlin, 2000; Stanley, 2006). Additionally, it may be difficult for w ­ omen of color faculty to deny students immediate emotional support b­ ecause they often want to help students negotiate their strug­g les, having themselves experienced difficulties in college as ­women, p­ eople of color, first-­generation college students, and so on (see chapter 12; Ngo, 2006). The rational world does not value such contributions and interprets them as distractions and a diminishment of professional development. Despite the lack of value given to supporting students, lower student evaluations are seen as a testament to the poor quality of instruction and dearth of personability and thus bolsters the presumption of incompetence. Likewise, the goals of community building, both in professional networks and in public outreach, are not valued in traditional academic evaluations of faculty (see chapters 2 and 12; S. M. Park, 1996; Turner, Gonzalez, & Wong,

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2011). In writing, the rational world lauds allies only in academia and public intervention, since ­these build the reputation of the scholar and the university. However, community building that is or­ga­nized around politics, gender, race, or sexuality or around subfields that empower the marginalized are viewed as antithetical and irrational compared with the ideals of universal knowledge, disembodied solidarity, dispassionate raising of civilization, and the progressive dominance of Western thought and technology. Such efforts appear to question the very foundations of academic rationality, not reinforce it. In addition, academic work on oppressed communities often requires long-­term engagement to build trust and to open ave­nues of access. This is b­ ecause marginalized communities have been exploited and ignored by ­those in power, so they require an extra investment of time to study. Consequently, community building takes time, which can seem inefficient to academia, and the scholarly reputations that ­women of color tend to develop based on community building in the profession and in public can seem dangerous to the rational world. As o­ thers in this volume attest, the university and academia react to this perceived threat with institutional marginalization from positions of power and from funding opportunities (prologue and chapter 14, this volume; Valverde, 2013). They silence public pre­sen­ta­tions, ban speakers, and suppress social media posts. Further, career-­minded gradu­ate students ­will be wary of taking such professors as advisors, lest their reputation be permanently stained by association. The rational assessment of an academic ­career is also supposed to be supported by structural support of f­ amily care, yet exercising t­ hese rights can undermine the appearance of academic rationality. I am speaking about having c­ hildren, but I would also add caring for one’s elders (Yoo & Kim, 2014). ­There may be rational protections (which are mostly extensions to the period being evaluated), but taking t­ hose protections conveys that one has chosen nonacademic bodies over academic rational goals. Moreover, this “choice” provides an excuse to ­those in power to limit access to funds and research facilities (Turner et al., 2011). Numerically, increasing the period of evaluation granted by birth and elder care (when available at institutions of higher learning) lowers the ratio of publications to years in the position, even though this calculation is not supposed to occur in the minds of evaluators (Misra, Lundquist, & Templer, 2012; Sax, Hagedorn, et al., 2002). However, rationally, the numbers are diminished, and this numeric evaluation supersedes the personal realities of life. In cruel irony, rationality does not take into account rational protections. In addition, the academic research of w ­ omen of color sometimes has a tangential relationship to academic rationality, instead of a primary foundation in it. Examining the influence of ­women’s ways of knowing on modern Western science utilizes rational inquiry yet reveals the limitations of male

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scientific research. As chief justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts recently inquired in a Supreme Court case concerning affirmative action, “What unique perspective does a minority student bring to a physics class?” (Savage, 2015, n.p.). The implication of Roberts’s question is that purely rational inquiry, represented by the Western science of physics, stands outside of social location. In fact, the researched answer to the question reveals the limitations of science carried out solely by white men, demonstrating that the results of this practice of rational inquiry are less complete and likely slower to be discovered compared with inquiry utilizing diverse perspectives and methods (Harding, 2008). Likewise, analyses of marginalized communities through social scientific and humanities methods of inquiry demonstrate the shortcomings and dangers of academic rationality. Compounding this issue is the fact that Asian American ­women may do research carried out with alternative epistemologies and published in language more true to that of their research subjects. In reaction to research on the borderlands of academic rationality, academia “strikes back,” as other sections in this volume assert (see chapters 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, and 13). In sum, the rational world of academia is structured to disadvantage teaching, responsibilities, academic interests, ways of knowing, and publications of ­women of color. The disembodied, universal, transcendent, civilization-­ bringing, dominating, and progressive rationality demanded by the academic hierarchy makes their tenure profiles seem insufficient. W ­ omen of color in academia are faced with difficult decisions: do they develop more academic rationality and compromise their commitment to well-­rounded knowledge, separate themselves from their cultures, and distance themselves from students and colleagues from marginalized communities; or do they maintain a tangential commitment to both, thus diminishing both; or do they commit to well-­ rounded knowledge and community building and in so ­doing risk marginalization within the rational world? This is an overall question for tenure and promotion but also involves a g­ reat deal of social pressure and self-­image. Not fully committing to academic rationality means that colleagues may marginalize, ignore, or shun them, while not fully committing to marginalized communities may cut ties to t­ hese groups. Not fully committing to both means their self-­images are potentially questioned at e­ very academic and personal encounter, since neither colleagues nor community w ­ ill fully embrace t­ hose who have not fully embraced them (Levin, Walker, et al., 2013). As one of my interviewees noted, t­ hese choices can be characterized as racial betrayal; she was accused of “disidentifying with [her] matrilineal heritage.” A sense of self-­ loathing may develop ­because one is erasing a part of one’s self—­one’s culture, extended community, reputation, or c­ areer—­with tangible consequences, such as further marginalizing other ­people of color and their ways of knowing as well as lowering one’s growth as an academic (Turner et al., 2011). Add to this

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the pressure of contested promotion—­which tests one’s belonging and worth—­ and the psychic war is on. This structure generally applies to ­women of color in academia, but how might this affect Asian American w ­ omen in par­tic­u­lar? One key comes from phi­los­o­pher David Haekwon Kim (2007), who argues that, even though the field of philosophy may not accept modern Asian and Asian American thought into its scope, modern Asian Americans do philosophically reflect upon common historical experiences of colonialism and discourses of Orientalism. Th ­ ese experiences and discourses have been pre­sent across nations where Asians live and across religions that they practice and encounter. Pondering far-­reaching issues of war, domination, exploitation, terror, immigration and displacement, racial and religious difference, and exotification, Asian Americans develop “not simply an interest in but an ethical mandate to stand with threatened humanity,” w ­ hether the victims are Asian or not (Kim, 2007, pp. 249, 252). To be a modern thinker with an Asian American background entails an ethic of care and a sense of belonging with ­others—an expansive sense of community (see chapter 10). Similarly, Christian theologian Fumitaka Matsuoka argues that the social experience of Asian Americans cultivates an empathic spiritual orientation that cuts across religious affiliations. Asian Americans are faced with an ambiguous racial location, where they are alternately the model minority and dangerous foreigner and where they are often “not at home in our own home, displaced in the very society we live” (Matsuoka, 2012, p. 224; emphasis removed). As a result, Asian Americans learn to recognize ­others who are similarly tentatively praised, demonized in public, and displaced. He calls this a “sensitivity to pathos” (Matsuoka, 2012) that inspires Asian Americans to identify across race and religion and to develop faiths consisting of a myriad of religious traditions. Combining this insight with Kim’s, we see that to be a responsible person as well as a reflective and modern thinker—­that is, to be rational from an Asian American lens—is to care, to stand against an imperial universality, not to force a vision of civilization upon o­ thers, and not to view history as a g­ rand historical sweep ­toward pro­gress. Modern Asian American rationality is precisely not academic rationality. In addition to an empathic openness to ­others’ ideas, the turn to spirituality makes sense when taking into account the academic training of Asian American w ­ omen. Many in the humanities have been trained in Marxist social analy­sis, which for the most part is strictly materialist. According to this tradition, or­ga­nized religion is the “sigh of the oppressed” and the “opium of the ­people” (Marx, 1970). Religion colludes with class structures to enforce domination, and the oppressed use religion to cope with their domination instead of pursuing material goals for liberation. In this view, religion has no role to play, is outside the scope of analy­sis, or is obstructing the liberation of the

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oppressed. For t­ hose trained in the sciences, religious truths sometimes compete with scientific discoveries. For example, Christian creationism can contest an evolutionary view of time (taking thousands of years instead of billions) and of biological development (intentional design instead of evolutionary pressure). If a scientist holds such religious beliefs, t­hese are often modified or compartmentalized as private views not to be engaged in the workplace. In both situations, Asian American w ­ omen in academia are professionalized to ignore, to compartmentalize, or to reject religious perspectives but not necessarily to distance themselves from open and modern spiritual perspectives. Facing contested promotion, Asian American w ­ omen may continue utilizing an a-­religious yet transcendent rationality in an effort to prove their belonging in the acad­ emy. This may involve bolstering impressions of their unshakeable rationality. They may also adopt rationally acceptable remedies, such as networking luncheons. Outside of ­these few tactics, remedies can reinforce the impression of irrationality, rejection of the rational fields of academia, and outright insanity. However, ­these nonrational, spiritual remedies may make the most sense given that the alternatives—­tactics approved by academic rationality—­insert oneself more within the destructive environment of academia. Additionally, choosing spirituality may be more true to the selves of Asian American w ­ omen who embrace ethics of care, a sense of belonging, and empathy across cultures and religions, which as previously stated stand outside of academic rationality (see chapter 10; O’Laughlin & Bischoff, 2005).

Spiritual Recovery To reiterate, my use of the term “spiritual” does not imply that Asian American ­women are mimicking 1960s countercultural, white Amer­i­ca; instead, their engagement with spirituality is a direct rectification of the spiritual damage done by the rational world of academia. Nevertheless, turning away from academic rationality often relies upon white traditions of spirituality developed in the 1960s that continue to evolve in the pre­sent. Asian American w ­ omen who find the rational world too caustic w ­ ill search for alternatives, and some traditions of con­temporary spirituality have flooded the market, so it makes sense that they may choose t­ hese. Additionally, several of t­ hese traditions have been built upon interpretations of Asian religions, so they often—at least on the surface—­seem welcoming and culturally appropriate for Asian American ­women. If one digs deeper, u­ nder the surface of t­ hese seemingly assimilated practices, one can find a history of anti-­colonial movements. Based on my informal talks with and a formal survey of Asian American w ­ omen in academia, I ­will lay out the landscape of t­ hese alternatives and why they are persuasive. I ­will begin with secular alternatives of spiritual recovery and move t­ oward religious ave­nues from Asian cultures.

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Secular—­and secular-­sounding—­alternatives to the world of academia are appealing ­because they generally stay within the system of academic rationality. Counseling and psychiatry are available, often through employer-­sponsored health plans. As noted ­earlier, this runs the risk of having colleagues discover the now medically documented (in other words academically rationalized) ­mental illnesses from which one suffers. Further, w ­ omen may themselves feel insufficiently rational thanks to Western medicine asserting that their suffering is their own illness, rather than a response to a caustic environment (see chapter 6). In addition, ­mental health may stink of the academic world, which means that engaging it can reiterate more m ­ ental trauma than it removes and it may not be the appropriate means to address the under­lying conflict of reason. As one interviewee noted, counseling and psychiatry w ­ ere “not only useless but pretty damaging to my psyche and body,” as therapists “kept pushing medi­cation on me” instead of offering “any real spiritual or rational guidance.” In ­these ways, Western ­mental health care may put Asian American ­women into deeper m ­ ental illness through its context, diagnoses, and prescriptions. Some have actually had ­mental breakdowns ­under the high pressure of tenure and promotion cases, and in such cases ­mental health rushes to supply medicine approved by academic rationality (Arnold, 2014; Smith, Yosso, & Solórzano, 2011; Valverde, 2013). Once the academic is unable to continue work ­because her irrationality has been proven by academic rationality, the evaluating department and university have evidence of, language to describe, and a vision of insufficiency. Forms of m ­ ental health therapy often adopt models of psychoanalysis, which can interpret religious ideas in a secular way. For example, Jungian psychoanalysis is founded upon a theory of the collective unconscious that is the primitive foundation of the psyche. The life of the unconscious communicates through symbol and myth, and uncovering ­these messages requires a divining of sorts. Unsurprisingly, transpersonal psy­chol­ogy (the general and con­ temporary name of this form of psychoanalysis) continues to be popu­lar as a form of secular spirituality. Asian American w ­ omen who utilize such care can feel less pressured to conform to a strict academic rationality while they heal psychic pain. A common secular solution for spiritual health is the practice of art, which several interviewees cited. One can create ­music, dance, paint, write poetry, and sing karaoke, for example, in order to utilize a dif­fer­ent way of thinking or to create the sense of a nonacademic environment. This practice prevents one from recalling the caustic context of the rational world, at least for a time. One interviewee noted the need to do a complete secular make­over of her home, including surrounding herself with lots of new bedding, soothing colors, aquar­iums, and images of gardens and other natu­ral features. Attending concerts, viewing art, and watching film and television—­“ binge watching”—­works similarly.

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I also heard the proclamation “retail therapy!” for the purpose of taking one’s mind away from academia and to improve one’s self-­image at the same time. ­These secular methods are approved as “pastimes” or “entertainment” by the rational world. Another common secular solution is something that may be taboo though from my experience seems ever pre­sent: self-­medication (Gee, Delva, & Takeuchi, 2007; Makimoto, 1998; Price, Risk, et al., 2002). Instead of relying upon the ­mental health establishment, including the potentially humiliating pro­cess of setting appointments and explaining one’s situation to a medical professional, one need only tip back a glass of wine. Alcohol may be ­legal and secularly approved, but it is a drug and this pro­cess is self-­medication. Alongside alcohol, cigarettes, and prescription drugs, some self-­medicate through less ­legal ave­ nues. Th ­ ese pro­cesses are taboo ­because they seem to acknowledge failure, may lead to addiction, and thus may contribute to a cycle of self-­condemnation for one’s weakness in c­ areer and inability to resist drug use. However, in re­spect to the kind of psychic damage of the rational world, self-­medication is perfectly understandable, and it has the benefit of retaining the rational world’s division of mind and body. Moving outward from purely secular methods of healing, interviewees noted practicing forms of spirituality that have been thoroughly integrated into the medical system, and many of t­ hese ­were derived from Asian religions. For example, in hospitals, counseling offices, and white and Asian spiritual centers, ­there is a common practice of mindfulness meditation to promote well-­being. Mindfulness derives from Buddhism, and its traditional purpose is to cultivate one’s ability to see the world for what it is, including its impermanence and one’s own psychic attachment to impermanent ­things. Based on negotiations by Burmese teachers and white American converts, mindfulness was divorced from its religious, metaphysical claims and transcribed into therapy in American medicine. An impor­tant transformation in this pro­cess was uniting forms of meditation across Buddhist traditions, blending Japa­nese and Tibetan practices with Burmese traditions. This blending added the cultural capital of Japan and Tibet, countries that both ally with American democracy and propitiate American po­liti­cal and military power. Additionally in its American form, the link to Buddhist religious ideas was downplayed, and aspects of loving kindness— an ideal emphasized for ­children in Asia—­were uplifted. In recent de­cades, ­there has been a concerted effort to use studies of the brain and healing to prove mindfulness’s medical benefits (Wilson, 2014). Thus, ­those seeking an academically approved form of healing that emerges outside of Western medicine can find this form of mindfulness at their local hospitals and counseling centers. To be more nuanced, as Joseph Cheah (2004) has argued, mindfulness was innovated in Burma as part of a postcolonial movement. British imperial control deeply transformed Buddhism in Burma, deteriorating institutions and

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diminishing common knowledge of Buddhism. In response, Buddhist monks, supported by some members of the government, simplified mindfulness meditation in order to open it to the masses and to teach some of the founding ideas of Buddhism. Mindfulness would not replace the comprehensive training of monks and nuns but was supposed to aid Buddhism’s transition into the modern Burmese landscape of common ­people’s busy schedules and reduced religious knowledge (which w ­ ere ramifications of British colonialism). In the American context, as previously mentioned, mindfulness incorporates ele­ments from other forms of Buddhism, which masks its specific religious message ­under an image of pro-­Western Asian culture. In ­these ways, though transformed to fit American medicine and thus being further removed from its religious foundations, mindfulness can be a way for Asian American ­women to connect with some aspect of their heritage. In fact, if they come from a Buddhist ­house­hold, it may feel quite comfortable to incorporate mindfulness into their spirituality, being a mixture of their traditions and academic rationality. Or, ­because it emerged out of a postcolonial context, one might recognize and value its historical links to social justice and rejection of academic rationality. A similarly transformed and commonly available practice is yoga, which interviewees frequently cited. Like mindfulness, yoga was transformed to fit the American context, in this case by Hindus in India and white Americans. In traditional Hinduism, yoga takes many forms, and ­these forms have religious purposes of expanding the self beyond earthly limits. In the United States, yoga began in the late nineteenth and early twentieth c­ entury as a mixture of hatha yoga (yoga focused on physical exercises) and other body-­focused spiritualities (Jain, 2011; Schmidt, 2010). ­Later, a form of hatha yoga emerged in India that focused on postures (called asanas). As with the Burmese construction of mindfulness, t­hese Indian innovators w ­ ere responding to British colonialism; in their case, they created a form of exercise that might rival Western physical cultures yet was derived from Indian culture (Singleton, 2010). Moreover, adaptations of yoga to the American context utilized scientific studies to prove its health benefits and its fit into the nonreligious category of exercise, akin to the methods of fitting mindfulness into the category of therapy. T ­ oday, this transformed form of yoga can be found in the United States and throughout the West anywhere exercise is found, including gyms, local exercise studios, and hospital wellness programs. None of my in­for­mants are of South Asian background, yet many of them cited using yoga. Yoga focuses on breath control and generally takes place in a serene environment—­two ele­ments that contrast with the frantic anxiety of the rational world, yet t­ hese ele­ments are acceptable to academic rationality when seen as exercise. Perhaps yoga, like drinking wine and entertainment, can seem to belong to a compartment separated from the work world: a pastime or diversion. As exercise, it has the benefit of building strength, flexibility, and

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stability, which can be impor­tant c­ ounters to the deterioration of one’s self-­ image in the academic context. Unlike many other forms of exercise, it is generally noncompetitive and seen as gentle and relaxing, thus making it welcoming for ­those who might find other forms of exercise culturally uncomfortable. Additionally, I would contend that it has ele­ments of Asian traditional religion, similar to mindfulness, that can be appealing to Asian American ­women. In many forms of yoga in Amer­i­ca, teachers include time for meditation and ritual mantras (repeated religious phrases), and they use Sanskrit words for ­these mantras as well as for postures, the breath, and acknowl­edgment of o­ thers’ spirits. The otherness of the foreign language can be appealing to white spirituality that often searches for non-­Western religious rituals detached from or­ga­ nized religion. For Asian Americans, the generalized Hindu practices have an additional benefit: Asian Americans of vari­ous backgrounds can interpret the Hindu ideas as similar to ideas from their own cultures. For example, prana (Sanskrit for “breath”) can be seen as similar to qi, which is an energy engaged by Chinese religions. Similarly, namaste (Sanskrit for “identifying your spirit” and used as a greeting) can be like aloha, which is a greeting of another’s spirit for Polynesians, and kami, which is one’s spirit in Japa­nese. Thus, for Asian American ­women who utilize yoga to cope with the rational academic world, ­there is the added personal benefit of engaging their Asian religious heritages even for t­ hose who are not South Asian and the further benefit of seeming acceptable to the rational world as exercise. And, like mindfulness, one looking deeper within yoga can find an alternative to academic rationality that is rooted in Asian religions and postcolonialism. From this discussion, it should not be surprising that several in­for­mants cited yoga, meditation, and exercise (Western or Asian) in the same phrase—­suggesting that it represents a piece of holistic balance outside of the painful acad­emy. In addition to ­these indirect connections to Asian religions, Asian American ­women also turn directly to Asian traditional religions. Rituals and meditations performed on behalf of f­ amily and ancestors can connect one to one’s larger f­ amily, history of survival, and cultural framework. As Jane Iwamura describes in “Altared States,” preserving and meditating in front of ritual altars (bustudan for Japa­nese Buddhists) “(re)creates and (re)orients” the self within ­family, history, and tradition even for Japa­nese Americans distanced from their Buddhist heritage (Iwamura, 2003, p. 276). The pro­cess of self-­creation and re­orientation can be essential for t­ hose in a crisis of self brought on by the rational world. Group prayer, cleansing rituals, and attuning rituals, like Buddhist walking meditation, ­were cited as ways to cultivate a wider spiritual awareness and a new pattern of health as a member of a larger spiritual community. Although none of my interviewees explic­itly mentioned it, other researchers have found that Asian rituals of shamanism, divination, and trance can work

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similarly to reconnect and recenter Asian Americans (Brock, Kim, et al., 2007; Chen & Jeung, 2012; Iwamura & Spickard, 2003). For t­ hose who are committed at any level to cultures of care, community building, or alternative forms of knowing, ­these traditions of ­family and ancestors legitimate and sanctify the same commitment. Further, finding spiritual strength in f­ amily and community confirms that ­these academics w ­ ere being true to themselves and investigating impor­tant phenomena in their academic life, even if the rational world ejects them for d­ oing so. Forms of Asian medicine ­were also cited by ­those surveyed, and ­these are directly rooted to Asian religions. The best known are ele­ments and extensions of Chinese religions, and interviewees noted acu­punc­ture, herbal medicine, and tai chi. In the religious traditions of Japa­nese Americans, one can find pressure massage and energy healing (Reiki). In addition, throughout Asia, the martial arts, dance, and m ­ usic per­for­mance are part of traditional religions and their systems of health. Some, like lion dancing and taiko drumming, have been translated to the American context as cultural arts that take place in public cele­brations. ­These forms of Asian medicine have varying degrees of availability for Asian American w ­ omen. Some, like acu­punc­ture and Reiki, have been translated to the American medical context, where one can include them in one’s medical regimen. O ­ thers, like herbal shops and fortune readers, where a practitioner can diagnose illness in a traditional way, are available in ethnic cultural centers (see chapter 5). Part of finding and utilizing traditional healers is a journey to rediscover ethnic practices about which one has a cultural awareness but not an expert understanding. One in­for­mant, for example, called for a traditional cleansing of her office space by experts from several ethnic groups when she became aware of its horrific history. Similarly, experimenting with cultural symbols held value for at least one interviewee, who has “developed a strong belief in the negative meaning of the number 4 [which is associated with death in East Asia] . . . ​and became very careful not to use that number or have it represented.” A rare few ethnic healing traditions have developed schools in the United States, and one in­for­mant took classes available at such a school. By practicing and learning Asian traditional medicine and modern derivatives, Asian American ­women can heal from the psychic damage of the rational world and operate from a dif­ fer­ent form of rationality. ­A fter drawing from Asian traditional healing, one interviewee concluded, “I feel so much more spiritually grounded than before. . . . ​I am grateful to have had the spiritual experiences and have since sought out ­others that have the kind of understanding that helps them relate to my worldview.” This cultural fluency provides a sense of centeredness and a sense of self in addition to the a­ ctual healing done in the pro­cess (see chapters 6 and 12).

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This brings us to the final and ubiquitous form of spiritual recovery: finding community with ­others. ­There are supportive academic networks that Asian American w ­ omen have engaged, including t­ hose studying the same or related fields and communities that they themselves helped to build (see chapter 13). Interviewees noted the value of cultivating this scholarly community, and many rededicated themselves to mentoring, forming support groups, and organ­izing po­liti­cally (see chapters 6, 12, and 13). Reflecting upon the value of opening up about academic challenges, one interviewee effused, “The more that I realized my openness helped o­ thers, the more I felt encouraged to be an activist in support of faculty rights. . . . ​Activism helped me feel empowered, and helped me refocus externally.” Utilizing Asian medicine brings one in touch with Asian p­ eople, notably wise healers and elders, who actually care for their well-­being and can critique the rational world for the stress and health prob­lems that it inflicts upon them. Asian traditional arts can put one in touch with ethnic communities, even if the art is not from one’s own ethnic heritage. For example, I, a Japa­nese American, learned a basic Chinese lion dance for Lunar New Year (which is not Japan’s New Year). Likewise, p­ eople of all races can come to a Japa­nese American Obon (Festival for the Dead) cele­bration in the summer and learn to dance. In t­ hese examples of dance, one can meet t­ hose of one’s own ethnic background, other Asian ethnicities, and sometimes o­ thers. The Asian-­derived spiritual practices of mindfulness and yoga can put Asian American w ­ omen in contact with o­ thers in a hospital wellness program as well as at local ­temples and gyms, and in the pro­cess they can meet ­others dealing with stress, other professionals, the local community, and ethnic communities. W ­ hether it is directly part of the experience, like ethnic holiday cele­brations, or tangential to the experience, like programs at a gym, Asian American w ­ omen have chosen spiritual recovery methods that involve community. Even activities that could be solitary, like watching tele­vi­sion and self-­medicating, are often done in community—­and many cited the essentialness of honest conversations, venting, relaxing, and feeling supported by o­ thers. By finding community, Asian American ­women are reaffirmed that ethics of care, ­family bonds, community building, and the body are impor­tant to life. ­These aspects of community are not coherent with academic rationality, and the rational world does not include them and often considers them irrational. Like Peter Berger highlighted for 1960s social movements, nearly all of my in­for­mants argued that the rational world split the self and suppressed impor­ tant aspects of it, and by contrast spirituality and Asian religions provided a means to recapture ­these aspects and to cultivate a more ­whole self. That is, the rational world is enacting spiritual war on Asian American ­women in contested promotion and tenure cases, unmooring them from a holistic self. Given this

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landscape, on one hand you have the rational world that asserts that life has value when it has a disembodied, transcendent rationality; and on the other hand you have spirituality that asserts that life has value when it is embodied and embedded in layers of community—­a world of no life and a world of life. The instinct or decision to choose the latter seems the only reasonable response. However, several in­for­mants let me know that while ­there w ­ ere many ave­ nues for spiritual recovery that they would have liked to pursue, they just did not have the time to do so. Instead, they went into “survival mode” and “worked myself to the bone” within the rational world to advance the status of their promotion file (see chapter 7; Valverde, 2013). They did so b­ ecause the demands of building this profile became all consuming; as other contributors to this volume attest, they must prove their belonging in the rational world by publishing material that is sufficiently rational and by acting collegially in a rational way, while si­mul­ta­neously contesting claims that their publications have insufficient impact on rational academics and that colleagues and students have been offended by “irrational” be­hav­ior (see chapter 2). And, to reiterate, all of this strug­gle may occur in addition to responsibilities of home, f­ amily, and community (see chapters 11 and 12). This spiritual war wages insecurity, stress, and anxiety, and fighting it demands ­great effort t­ oward an uncertain and perhaps unattainable goal. Some are able to w ­ ill themselves through the pro­cess, and some may even be tenured or promoted. Even then, surviving—as in getting promoted—­does not mean that the spiritual war does not take its toll and does not mean that survivors would not have preferred spiritual healing during the pro­cess. They know why they chose “survival mode”: the rational world is their c­ areer and thinking with academic rationality is their training, whereas the world of spiritual recovery may seem irrational and engaging it may seem like an acknowl­edgment—at least at an unconscious level—­that they are lacking in academic rationality, that they have wounds that need addressing, or that academic rationality cannot address them (see chapter 6). Spiritual alternatives may have been foreclosed as t­ hese academics built their professional self-­image, and continuing to ignore them seems dignified and appropriate for an academic professional. Eventually, however, they may come to recognize that they have invested in a world that is cold and does not reciprocate care. Phrases like “breakneck,” “full speed ahead,” “alone,” “silenced by shame,” “useless,” and “failure” litter interviewees’ retrospective illustrations of their experiences in the academic world. ­A fter the resolution of their case, ­whether “successful” or not, they may see the scars of the spiritual war and can appreciate the value of spiritual healing; words respondents used to describe the world outside of academia include “calm,” “positive energy,” “survivor,” “cured,” “balance,” “creative,” “love,” “support,” “making time,” “relax,” and “fun.” ­Others are less fortunate and literally collapse during the

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war; if they had not realized it already by that point, they would soon come to know the destructive power of the rational world.

Afterword In closing, I would like to note that many Asian American ­women surveyed who have experienced contested promotion and tenure cases at first ­were reluctant to engage a spectrum of healing alternatives, perhaps b­ ecause their training did not value religious ideas or it may have felt shameful to need spiritual recovery. Even with oral commitments to participate in this study and with the interview pro­cess’s high levels of confidentiality, participation was ­limited. Several potential interviewees explained that they would not participate ­because they felt that their choices ­were uninteresting. My interpretation of this hesitation to take time for their own healing or to discuss their healing tactics is that the demands of the academic world remain so g­ reat that they may not feel that it is worth their time to write about t­ hese experiences. Further, many might feel embarrassed if their colleagues ­were to learn of their engagement with seemingly nonrational spiritual rituals; this may confirm to condescending colleagues that they ­were not rational enough for tenure in the first place. Even with all of the pain, they also may not want to acknowledge that they came to a place where they needed some form of ­mental and spiritual healing. In this chapter, I have not argued that t­ hese ave­nues for spiritual recovery are in perfect alignment with the rational world, and I have not promoted any par­tic­u­lar religious or spiritual practice. In this sense, I am not claiming that spirituality is the best choice and that it is irrational not to choose spirituality. I also am not arguing that the academic world should incorporate Asian American ­women’s choices of spirituality and Asian religions into its institutional scope. Rather, I am illustrating how the choices of spiritual healing are indictments of academia for its cultivation of caustic working environments; in short, the rational world is not as rational (as in universal) as it purports to be. Its structures disadvantage Asian American w ­ omen, and when academia enforces further academic rationality on them, it can greatly damage their ­mental, physical, and spiritual health. Instead of reason, the rational world pre­sents irrational force, pressure, and lack of perspective. In this context of irrationality, academic rationality shows its tyrannical nature (see chapter 2). How can one see this and not see the history of imperialism, patriarchy, exploitation, and exotification b­ ehind it? Face to face with the tyranny of academic reason, Asian American ­women fight it directly or utilize alternative forms of reason. Some of the related spiritualities emerged within colonial contexts in Asia to compete with and to cope with colonial powers, and o­ thers originated in Asian religions and survived colonial erasure. In this light, spirituality is both the rejection of imperial

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cultures and the embrace of modern Asian (postcolonial) cultures. That is, the politics of academia inspires some Asian American ­women to take up the radical embrace of spirituality. Last, speaking for myself, an unfortunate lesson that I learned from the experiences of Asian American w ­ omen in the acad­emy is that—­although I am pre-­tenure—­I should focus on the rational world before any other form of rationality or humanity. In the wake of mentors who ­were fired, who ­were denied tenure, and who escaped the academic world for sanity, I have on occasion passed on opportunities to care for ­others and instead pursued goals set by the rational world. ­These ­career choices and an awareness of my peripheral participation in the spiritual war of the rational world do not align with my sense of justice and my sense of self. With the aim of acting from my better, more humane self, I have in this chapter lent my modicum of expertise to dissect the rational world and to support t­hose who have suffered from it. In this re­spect, I consider it a profound honor to contribute to this volume. I hope that I can live up to the model set by my Asian American ­women mentors and other guides of color and loosen the grip of academic rationality on myself and ­others.

Notes 1 Berger articulates modernity and its impact on religion in other books as well. See, for example, Berger (1979, 2004). 2 Berger argues that traditional Chris­tian­ity also resolves the prob­lem but with a more solid spiritual home (Berger, 1979, 2004). 3 Studies find that both male and female students tend to feel more comfortable talking with female faculty, thus putting an additional workload on female faculty to counsel students of both genders (O’Meara, et al., 2017). Additionally, the high ratio of Asian American students to Asian American faculty at most universities suggests that Asian American ­women faculty w ­ ill have a higher rate of student mentoring and counseling than most other faculty of color (see chapters 3 and 14, this volume).

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10

Care Work The Invisible ­Labor of Asian American W ­ omen in Academia WEI MING DARIOTIS AND GR ACE J. YOO

Abstract Care work performed by Asian American ­women in the acad­emy is a form of ­labor that involves intentional caring that allows ­others to feel cared for and—­ when emotions are concerned—­may require withholding one’s own emotions for the betterment of o­ thers. Not all who care can perform the emotion work that is the primary component of care work, but it is often expected of and thus performed by Asian American ­women ­because of ste­reo­types of Asian American ­women as nurturing caregivers. ­Because of the need to carefully regulate and control one’s own emotions, this work can lead to emotional exhaustion, sometimes culminating in physical and emotional health prob­lems.1 In this chapter, the authors use surveys of Asian American w ­ omen professors in Asian American studies and ethnic studies who have performed care work in the acad­ emy for many years to explore the complexities of care work as a form of ­labor conducted to support the emotional well-­being of students and colleagues, as well as the university itself. The findings show that Asian American ­women often do uncompensated, unrewarded care work, particularly as they provide 300

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noncognitive support, especially to students who are low-­income or first generation in college, immigrants, or facing additional significant challenges and barriers to academic success.

Introduction The student had written, “I hate this teacher. This class is the worst.” What followed ­were pages and pages of unrelenting diatribe against me and my class.2 My breath fled as sharply as if I had been knocked into a wall. But this was not a student evaluation of my teaching—it was this student’s homework assignment, which was supposed to be a journal kept in response to the course readings. It was the first ­thing this student had turned in the ­whole semester, of which we ­were nearly at the end. Momentarily, a large, bright red “F” clouded my vision, but then my breath came back. My mind quieted, and I knew that—­whatever was ­going on—it was not about me, nor was it about the class. Breathing in deeply, I wrote, “I think we should talk. Please make an appointment to meet me during office hours.” I declined to grade the assignment. When we met, the student shared a devastating story of a personal tragedy that occurred just before the semester started. However, tuition had already been paid for and the student felt it was not pos­si­ble to lose the time and the money. In the student’s mind, t­ here was no choice. “Just do the work” was the thought motivating this student. Just get through it. But, in my class, in which we read poetry and talked about the emotional dimensions of the Asian American experience, the student was not able to keep feelings locked tightly in a box. As the student’s emotional wall cracked, self-­directed anger was displaced onto me. The journal had been an attempt to goad me into giving an “F” to further justify the anger that needed an outlet. When I instead showed compassion (through what I had felt was a relatively neutral note), the student broke down and fi­nally confronted the pain that had been precariously held at bay. We talked for a long time; I then directed the student to the overextended campus counseling ser­vices3 and continued to work with the student to negotiate ­these emotional issues in the context of the coursework. This incident exemplifies many experiences with care work over two de­cades of both authors’ experiences teaching in higher education. What is the work of the acad­emy? To create knowledge and to teach it? How do teachers teach when their students are too emotionally wounded to function well within a learning community? Both authors have experienced many students sharing with us the burden of their grief, shame, and self-­directed anger; ­whether this occurs in office hours, in the hallways, or in the classroom, ­these moments have taught us that learning requires a certain amount of ­mental health and well-­being.

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Learning is not merely an intellectual exercise; true learning and true education involve the heart as well as the mind. In order to open the minds of our students, we also have to help them break down the emotional walls that keep them separate from the learning communities4 with which they must engage in order to learn. Sometimes this means asking them to suspend judgment of their classmates, and thus be ­free of their own fear of being judged. Sometimes it means supporting their journey to self-­forgiveness and self-­love from a past in which they w ­ ere taught to believe themselves unworthy and undeserving, including through their prior educational experiences in which “merit” often divides students into ­those who are worthy and deserving of the resources being expended on them and ­those who are not (Zirkel & Pollack, 2016). In other words, effective teaching by definition involves some level of care work. The questions are, however, who does this work and how is it valued? As Asian American w ­ omen, not only do we often find ourselves ­doing care work for students directly in relation to our classes, but we also do this work for our colleagues’ students. In other words, when students have experiences in their other classes that they need to pro­cess, such as experiences of microaggressions or even overt racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia from classmates and teachers, not feeling safe in t­ hose spaces, they come to us. In addition to this emotional support, we often find ourselves providing noncognitive, skills-­focused support, including guiding students around the intricacies of university life; helping them apply to scholarships, gradu­ate school, and jobs; helping them with writing skills; and supporting the development of information literacy and research skills. Although not all Asian American ­women faculty draw this kind of student request for support, Asian American w ­ omen, by virtue of gendered racial expectations,5 are seen both as being good at providing t­ hese ser­vices and as being safe for students to approach in the heightened vulnerability that is engaged even for so s­ imple a t­ hing as asking for a letter of recommendation. We could reject ­these requests or develop cold or intimidating personas in order to prevent them, and certainly, some Asian American w ­ omen faculty do this by design or by innate personality. But quite often, the expectations on Asian American w ­ omen faculty, including both external ste­reo­types and our internal culturally generated self-­expectations, determine that we often must respond favorably to ­these requests. This is not, however, to say that Asian American ­women function as martyrs in academia. Rather, our study, based on in-­depth surveys of twelve Asian American ­women professors, shows that Asian American ­women often find ways to be personally regenerated through care work and find their research and teaching transformed by performing care work—­ even as they strug­gle to maintain a livable balance.6 It is impor­tant that we move beyond the Jungian “wounded healer” or, in this case, “wounded teacher” archetype.7 Our purpose in conducting this study

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was not to encourage Asian American w ­ omen to sacrifice themselves for their students but rather to (1) show the critical need for this work; (2) ask that administrators and colleagues value and re­spect this work; and (3) demand that space and time be provided for this work to be accomplished successfully. We know it needs to be done. We know we are g­ oing to do it. We need to be paid, respected, and valued for d­ oing this impor­tant ­labor that helps students and thus universities to succeed.

Defining Care Work Care work is a so­cio­log­i­cal construct defined as the physical, ­mental and emotional work put into nurturing and supporting another individual. Care work involves “thinking and feeling, acting and receiving, reasoning and empathising” (Mariskind, 2014, pp. 309–310). Care work is considered a “unique ­labor pro­cess” rooted in relationships and feelings (Duffy, Albelda, & Hammonds, 2013). Although it has been understood as a part of the teaching profession in par­tic­u ­lar in kindergarten through twelfth grade education, ­there has been less discussion of care work in higher education as research on such students has focused on them as autonomous, self-­directed adult learners. Thus, researchers have prioritized understanding college students in the context of logical reasoning, critical thinking, and objectivity (Merriam, Caffarella, & Baumgartner, 2007). Thus, in the context of higher education, emotions in general and the construct of “caring” have not been well mea­sured and fully understood. However, despite this gap in research, caring in higher education is known to be impor­tant and vital to student retention and graduation (J. N. Olson & Car­ter, 2014). The few available past studies have identified specific markers of a caring faculty in higher education: listening, empathizing, supporting, fostering learning, giving encouraging feedback, having high expectations, and showing concern in student’s personal lives (Walker & Gleaves, 2016). Trying to understand the faculty role, J. N. Olson and Car­ter (2014) identified faculty caring be­hav­iors essential to retention and graduation; t­ hese include projecting a welcoming demeanor, fostering openness and accessibility, showing unconditional positive regard, setting high achievable expectations, and instilling confidence. Th ­ ese actions provide many benefits for students; however, as described in the story at the start of this chapter, holding such space can be emotionally taxing on the faculty member. As suggested, the care work provided by faculty includes providing noncognitive support8 to t­ hose who are low-­income students; first-­generation college students; and students at risk of being failed by educational institutions. While graduation rates and other traditional markers of success for ­these students are low, studies show that when such students take ethnic studies courses, they are

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more likely to succeed in their academic c­ areers overall, with the effects of taking just one ethnic studies course being dramatically as significant as an increase in grade point average of 1.4 points (Dee & Penner, 2016; Donald, 2016).9 We speculate, pending further investigation, that the care work often provided by ethnic studies faculty may be a significant f­ actor in this increased student success. In addition to helping students develop noncognitive skills, a major component of care work in higher education specifically involves emotion work. Arlie Hochschild, a sociologist, coined the term “emotional l­ abor,” which she describes as the requirement that t­ hose d­ oing ser­vice work have to manage their emotions as part of their job (Hochschild, 2012). Researchers have chronicled the personal cost of managing one’s emotions in educational settings (Ogbonna & Harris, 2004). Several studies have specifically found evidence of a link between emotional ­labor and emotional exhaustion (Brotheridge & Lee, 2003). In her study, Bellas (1999) argues that ­women faculty spend the most time on the activities that are most culturally defined as feminine in faculty l­ abor: teaching and ser­vice. The emotional ­labor inherent in this work is not valued or rewarded b­ ecause it is seen as “female” (Gutiérrez-­Rodríguez, 2010). In contrast, male faculty are more likely to be involved in research and administration, which are seen as masculine and are emphasized and highly compensated; additionally, the achievement of tenure mitigates the emotional l­abor of male faculty but heightens the stress experienced by female faculty (Bellas, 1999; Tunguz, 2016).

Asian American Studies as a Locus of Care Work As a discipline, Asian American studies10 is an impor­tant locus for care work in the acad­emy ­because of its roots in self-­determination (that is, the Third World Liberation Front Strike, or TWLF), holistic education, and community-­ based liberatory education. In 1968, the students of the TWLF fought for social justice by demanding self-­determination and shared governance in the creation of the College of Ethnic Studies. This revolutionary action created Asian American studies, and other ethnic studies disciplines, as transformative, liberatory pedagogies. The TWLF strikers who created the College of Ethnic Studies and Asian American Studies department sought to “describe and define our circumstances, issues, hopes, and expectations . . . ​looking for content and meaning relevant to our experience” (Asian American Studies, 2010). Over the years, however, Asian American studies and other ethnic studies disciplines have tended to become “professionalized”—­that is, in order to succeed within academic institutions, ­these departments and programs have strug­ gled with maintaining a balance between focusing on social justice and

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ensuring their faculty would be tenured and promoted. Facing marginalization in the journals of traditional academic disciplines, Asian American studies faculty set up their own journals, such as Amerasia Journal and the Journal of Asian American Studies, as well as their own professional association, the Association of Asian American Studies.11 Even with t­ hese institutionalized structures, however, departments and programs have often had to strug­g le with administrators and se­nior faculty from traditional disciplines who did not recognize or re­spect the self-­determination of Asian American studies faculty to determine their own academic professionalism. Consequently, many departments and programs have been forced to follow the traditional acad­emy’s mea­ sures of success, which too often leaves no room for the original social justice mission of Asian American studies and ethnic studies more generally. Asian American studies as a discipline, in the pro­cess of its institutionalization, has too often failed to remember its foundational roots of self-­ determination, care, voice, and ser­vice to the community. The pro­cess of institutionalizing disciplines often means that publications may become prioritized over relationships with colleagues, ser­vice to the community, or valuing student concerns. At San Francisco State University, the Asian American Studies Department mission statement has been reinvested with the princi­ ple of self-­determination by “developing the creative expressions, voices, critical pedagogies, and analyses of our communities” (Asian American Studies, 2010). As in many departments and programs that ­were founded following student unrest in the late 1960s, newer faculty, especially t­ hose beginning their journey on the tenure track, are understandably more cautious than their se­nior colleagues. The environment is tougher; the expectations for tenure and promotion now require not simply being good at one or two areas and excellent in one but demonstrating “excellence” in three or four areas (teaching, research, ser­vice, leadership) si­mul­ta­neously and to the standards set by administrators who are rarely from a field even close to ethnic studies and who, moreover, have become deeply invested in the idea of the university as a business or factory in which faculty l­abor, first, as producers of publications, and, only second, as producers of gradu­ates (not of students). Graduation rates become one primary metric of success, while the other is not only publications but the number of citations of t­ hose publications by other scholars.12 It is in this environment that many faculty in our department attempt to practice care work through our “re­spect for differences” for the ethnic makeup of students (Asian American Studies, 2010, n.p.). This philosophy is, in itself, a form of care work. By respecting student diversity, Asian American studies allows for experiences outside the hegemony not to be exoticized or made the “other.” This creates a learning environment where cultural difference is valued and the emotional needs of students thrive. ­Because of this focus on

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emotional fulfillment, Asian American studies as an academic discipline is inseparable from care work, which is not surprising given the department’s purpose to fulfill the TWLF’s original mission to include Asian American histories in higher education out of re­spect for Asian American students13 as ­whole ­people who have often experienced damage in their educational lives. This damage is explained by Umemoto (1989), who summarizes that the San Francisco State College strikes stemmed from a “strug­gle over cultural hegemony” (p. 25) in which strikers believed education at the higher level should “serve the needs of their communities” (p. 25) rather than hegemonic white power structures. One activist, identified as P. N., who participated in the May 1968 sit-in at President Summerskill’s office, offers a historical and personal connection to this philosophy: in the eyes of minority students and TWLF strikers, “­there was an existing deficit in the way history brings us [knowledge]—­ there are subjects we ­weren’t taught” (p. 43)—­these “subjects,” of course, being their own ethnocultural histories and the “existing deficit” being the absence of ­these histories in what they ­were being taught. Collier and Gonzalez (2009) summarize this impor­tant point: “Like most of our ­earlier formal schooling, the existing college curriculum was largely disconnected from the lives and worlds of our families and communities” (Collier & Gonzales, 2009, p. 7). In advocating for the inclusion of nonhegemonic histories in the curriculum, a core pillar of care work naturally arose within the field (Umemoto, 1989). When nonhegemonic histories are not accounted for (­whether intentionally or unintentionally) in curriculum, ethnic diversity is marginalized within the classroom. Lindsey (1998) recounts a university class assignment that did not allow room for student experiences outside the white, middle-­class hegemony of postsecondary education to be shared equally. As part of the assignment, students w ­ ere instructed to celebrate their literacy by bringing in their favorite ­children’s book on the final day of instruction. The ­mistake lay in assuming that American ­children’s lit­er­a­ture was pre­sent in each student’s childhood, a discreetly hegemonic assumption that did not allow students with non-­English-­speaking childhood homes without such lit­er­a­ture to complete the task. One Hmong student arrived only to inform the instructor that she did not grow up reading American c­ hildren’s lit­er­a­ture and thus did not have a printed book to share. Instead, the student chose to recount a Hmong folktale to the class. ­Because the format of the assignment favored white students who had printed American c­ hildren’s lit­er­a­ture in their homes, the Hmong student’s pre­sen­ta­tion was recognized for its “difference,” applauded, and thus “exoticized” by nature of the applause displaying a reaction that contrasted with the classroom reaction to the other students’ narratives. In classrooms where ethnic diversity is not considered and assignment structures assume a fully assimilated background for all students, ethnic experiences may be received with such applause, the net effect of which frames nonhegemonic experiences

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as dif­fer­ent or “charming” (Lindsey, 1998). The instructor summarizes her regrets regarding the assignment: When teachers like me construct an audience of learners as being like themselves, they perpetuate the hegemonic structures of schooling by refusing to admit that ­there are significant perspectives about life other than the ones expressed by white, able, heterosexual, middle-­class norms. . . . ​I created an assignment as if every­one could be addressed in the same way. . . . ​I envisioned that all of my students would go home, spend a few minutes, as did I, deliberating over which of their many books would be the ones chosen to bring back to class. Then I used that notion of sameness to exoticize difference. (Lindsey, 1998, p. 162)

The effect is that students of ethnic backgrounds do not feel comfortable to share vital parts of themselves in learning environments that do not give room for ethnic diversity. This negatively impacts their sense of belonging within the classroom and thus impairs their academic success (Freeman, 2005; O’Shea, 2012;). ­Because Asian American studies’ mission is to foster re­spect, rather than voy­ eur­is­tic tolerance, for student diversity, the field, its curriculum, and its pedagogy are inherently inseparable from care work. Unfortunately, this also means that Asian American studies pedagogues cannot escape the institutional disadvantage that comes with providing this unrecognized yet essential form of ­labor.

The Study This chapter is based on surveys of twelve Asian American w ­ omen professors, mostly in Asian American and ethnic studies departments and programs across the nation, wherein the subject ­matter often creates emotional fluidity and the disciplinary pedagogy allows students to be more emotionally open. As one of the respondents puts it, Asian American Studies and Ethnic Studies become the safe space for ­women of color across campus. We, in a way, serve as a voice and space for colleagues of color who often may feel invalidated in their departments. We also become a safe space for t­ hose who have faced tenure b­ attles. Our work as Asian American Studies faculty is not simply l­ imited to texts and teaching but it is also about caring about the well-­being and survival of our colleagues across campus.

Asian American studies at San Francisco State University has developed culturally responsive teaching, a pedagogical practice that aids the education of ethnic minority students by recognizing and bridging cultural differences

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between student and classroom. Culturally responsive teaching is defined as “using the cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and per­ for­mance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning encounters more relevant and effective for them . . . ​the behavioral expressions of knowledge, beliefs, and values that recognize the importance of racial and cultural diversity in learning” (Gay, 2000, p. 31). Additionally, “Along with improving academic achievement, t­ hese approaches to teaching are committed to helping students of color maintain identity and connections with their ethnic groups and communities; develop a sense of community, camaraderie, and shared responsibility; and acquire an ethic of success” (Gay, 2000, p. 32). Culturally responsive teaching manifests itself in dif­f er­ent ways, from simply learning the correct pronunciation of student names to having bilingual instruction within the classroom (Gay, 2000; Taylor & Sobel, 2011). The style creates “optimal learning environments” for students of color by bridging gaps between school and culture. Culturally responsible pedagogy is in itself a form of care work, and culturally responsive tasks—­such as pronouncing a student’s name correctly or communicating with students in their native languages—­are not often required or even valued by the academic institution (Anonymous, 2016; Lucas & Katz, 1994; Swanson, Bianchini, & Lee, 2014).14 As such, faculty must juggle the culturally responsible meeting of needs of the classroom with the often culturally blind standards required by the educational system (Ngai, 2008). Asian American studies faculty practice a g­ reat deal of this form of culturally responsive care l­abor. Culturally responsible pedagogy is essential in optimizing the dynamics of their classrooms, which are often composed of students of varying ethnic, economic, religious, social, sexual, and immigration backgrounds (Huber-­Warring & Warring, 2005). Culturally responsive teaching is connected to “cultural humility,” a term coined by nurse prac­ti­tion­ers Melanie Tervalon and Jann Murray-­Garcia (Chavez, 2012). According to Mary Isaac­son (2014), cultural humility is distinct from cultural competency, as the former “illustrates the importance of including the patient’s views in the interpretation of culture, while cultural competence implies that the health care professional has an a priori understanding of the person’s culture before engaging with the patient” (p. 252). As demonstrated by our respondents, cultural humility is the basis from which the Asian American w ­ omen in this study approach the care work they provide, perhaps ­because they see themselves or their ­family members in their students; thus, they feel their students’ pain, but they do not pity them in a culturally dominant power dynamic. Part of the care work they provide involves protecting students from the othering gaze of faculty who might not approach supporting such students with this same perspective of cultural humility. Another part of the care work is the feeling many Asian American w ­ omen get that being able and positioned to provide this care work is an incredible privilege. The

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findings of this study show that Asian American w ­ omen often do uncompensated care work as they serve as bridges15 leading to academic success for students facing significant challenges and barriers.

Asian American W ­ omen as Carers, Nurturers, and Servants While the rewards of care work may be many, the associations of nurturing with ­women in general and Asian American w ­ omen, in par­tic­u­lar, as servants,16 creates a strange dynamic in which what is expected is si­mul­ta­neously devalued ­because of its associations with a par­tic­u­lar race and gender. Although white faculty, especially male faculty, may scoff at care work as a waste of time, they are also less expected to perform it. For many Asian American w ­ omen in academia, not performing care work is not an option, ­because of the pressures they face to perform it as well as b­ ecause of their personal values. The negative views of care work, sometimes even from other Asian American ­women faculty who have been trained to disdain it or associate it with an anti-­intellectual type of denigrated ser­vice, reduce it to both a feminized and racialized form of ser­vice and prevent it from being recognized as a valuable form of ­labor. ­There are no studies on the unique contributions of Asian American studies w ­ omen in the acad­emy in the area of care work. This chapter, in rectifying this absence, asks the following questions: 1. 2. 3.

What are the dif­fer­ent ways that Asian American w ­ omen faculty members perform care work in the acad­emy? What kinds of care work do they perform inside and outside the classroom? In what ways does their care work fill a gap for needed student ser­vices on campus and more support for ­women of color faculty on campus?

Methods Data collection commenced in 2016. Prospective participants in Asian American studies and ethnic studies ­were directly e-­mailed an invitation to take part in a survey. In addition, the study was also advertised on the Community of Asian American Studies social media site. Th ­ ose who ­were interested in participating clicked on a designated link to the Qualtrics survey. From the outset of the survey, the voluntary nature of the study was stressed and participants ­were told they had the right to refuse to participate in the study. The survey, taking about ten to twenty minutes to complete, consisted of questions about participants’ demographic background and the vari­ous kinds of care work they conduct inside and outside the classroom. Utilizing qualitative data analy­sis, we identified and analyzed themes to answer our main research questions.

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Findings Care Work: Providing Noncognitive Support to Students Asian American ­women in positions of power as faculty provide vari­ous types of nonacademic counseling as a form of care work: connecting students with jobs, helping students navigate financial aid, providing and directing students to psychological counseling, and providing additional writing instruction and other skills development. This respondent provides an exhaustive list of the kinds of support she provides as care work: Comforting students when they are experiencing personal or academic issues; Helping students seek out counseling; advising them on options for transfer, grad school, and/or ­careers; writing letters and emails of support and recommendation; Organ­izing potluck gatherings and class parties; Giving encouragement; Giving feedback on drafts of essays, applications, and other professional and academic documents; Approaching administrators, faculty colleagues, and ­others on their behalf; Buying them food and drink; Checking in on them on email, text, and FaceBook; Forwarding them in­ter­est­ing employment, internship, and other opportunities; Welcoming them to bring ­children to class; Being a safe person for them to cry and be vulnerable with; Following up with them a­ fter ­they’ve been my student.

A similar list points to how Asian American ­women faculty function as a “catch-­all” of care work that supports students in multiple vectors of student life: [I] mentor them about academic advising personal prob­lems, financial prob­ lems; intergenerational, gender, and sexuality issues that are triggered from course materials; ­career advising; advocating on their behalf to other parts of the university; hiring them as research assistants; in­de­pen­dent studies (I d­ on’t get credit for this kind of teaching); creating pipelines into community nonprofits; advising student groups; attending student group events.

In the above response, the respondent also points to the lack of recognition given to such faculty for performing this l­ abor when she writes as an aside, “I ­don’t get credit.” Asian American ­women faculty often provide this support with additional care and emotional support around the imposter syndrome (Parkman, 2016), which has been documented in relation to Asian American students in the context of the model minority myth (Kwan, 2015). Of this work, the emotional

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support provided to students is the most difficult and taxing. Addressing the imposter syndrome as part of conducting emotion work helps students address issues under­lying their emotional difficulties, as the following three respondents note: Often, they are feeling “imposter syndrome,” so I need to let them know what is good about their writing or valuable about their thinking, and give them small tasks to build up to the big paper or what­ever other assignments have them daunted. I teach my students to make and receive appreciation; I let them know that the class is never the same, b­ ecause it always depends on who comes—­that they as individuals are part of the educational experience of each of the classmates—­ and of me, their teacher, as well. I w ­ ouldn’t keep coming back if I ­d idn’t learn something new e­ very semester. Most of our students ­don’t know how much they ­matter, and that makes me sad and angry. I listen to my students. . . . ​I think my students or hope my students know that they can come talk to me in office hours about the ­things that are impacting them.

The Asian American model minority myth cuts both ways in this dynamic. Just as it may make Asian American students feel they are unworthy of their position as students, so may it also make them feel drawn to Asian American ­women faculty, who are seen as the ideal caregivers due to the convergence of the model minority myth, with gendered and racialized expectations of ­women as caregivers and Asian American ­women as nurses, nannies, and maids (Chung, Gerstel, et al., 2016; Foo, 2002; Le Espiritu, 2008;). As the following response suggests, students may turn to Asian American w ­ omen faculty in par­tic­u­lar ­because they have a preconceived notion of the emotional availability of such faculty as Asian American w ­ omen: I have had students disclose very personal traumatic issues that they have been or are g­ oing through (rape, death, chronic illness for themselves or loved ones) so I think that they know they can trust me with this personal information—­ that they can be vulnerable around me.

The way that ­people can feel vulnerable around Asian American ­women has been explored by Nguyen (2016), who suggests that students in par­tic­u­lar feel more safe and willing to be vulnerable around Asian American w ­ omen faculty by nature of their shifting of racist or sexist tensions into “pedagogical opportunities,” which then inspires and mentors other marginalized students. She shares:

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A South Asian professor recounted the story of a student who assumed she had bad grammar since she was not originally from the United States, even though she was raised speaking En­g lish in a former British colony (Asher, 2006). Her response was at first emotional, but then she told the class, “I w ­ ill answer the question. But first let’s discuss where the question is coming from” (Asher, 2006, p. 163). She shifted the tension in the question into a pedagogical opportunity. (Nguyen, 2016, p. 133)

Creating safe spaces17 for students is an impor­tant part of the care work performed by Asian American w ­ omen faculty. The following respondent discusses how the safe space of her office allows students to open up: I hold space for students to cry, to let go, and to feel ok working through their pain. So often, students come to talk about the work they have missed. Since I know it is rarely just an issue of being busy, I w ­ ill ask them what is g­ oing on in their lives. They often find my office to be warm and comforting, so they let go all t­ hey’ve been trying to hold together. Then, we can address some of the fundamental issues that are standing in the way of them d­ oing the work. If I just gave them academic advising, many of them would not be able to turn in adequate work, or would do so only at g­ reat psychic and emotional cost.

Many campuses do not have counseling resources that meet student needs, especially the par­tic­u­lar needs of Asian American students experiencing intersections of issues such as race, immigration, language, the imposter syndrome, and the model minority myth. One respondent mentions that it is only when students have ­really serious issues that she refers them to formal counseling ser­vices: Sometimes, their issues are more profound—­loss of a parent, overwhelming financial obligations to their families, drug use, abortions, e­ tc. In ­these cases, I ­will refer them to [San Francisco State University] counseling ser­vices; if they need it, I ­w ill walk them over myself and make sure they see a counselor I know personally.

However, when counseling ser­vices are overwhelmed, or when students do not realize the emotional component of the issues with which they are struggling (­doing poorly in their academic lives, time management, and so forth), the faculty member may be not only their first line of defense but the repeated resource on which they depend. Turner (2002) explains that ­women of color faculty often find themselves overworked and simply unable to provide the sheer amount of mentorship needed by female students and students of color, which may not be provided

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to ­these students by other faculty. As such, w ­ omen of color faculty often find themselves balancing strenuous care work with the differently rigorous l­abor of research and publication demanded from them by the institution. In Turner’s (2002) work, one faculty member recounts: As teacher/mentor, the main issue has been balancing. When I first arrived, I was overwhelmed by the amounts of students who came to me to ask for guidance (not always in so many words)—­mostly ­women of color, feeling like most other faculty did not acknowledge their existence. It is difficult to balance this with the research and publication pressures, and course preparation (Turner, 2002, p. 83).

Care Work for Co-­Workers: Supporting ­Women of Color Faculty The f­ actors causing Asian American w ­ omen both to be sought a­ fter and to see themselves as responsible for providing care is not l­ imited to working with students; it is also part of working with colleagues. Just as Asian American ­women are expected to perform extra ser­vice work in academic institutions, so, too, do they perform extraordinary levels of care work for their colleagues. As with students, this kind of work encompasses both the provision of ser­vice support and emotional support. In the former category are activities that might be categorized as mentoring, as described by this respondent: Colleagues across campus have come to tell me of the micro-­aggressions or the downright discriminatory actions they have received. Th ­ ere is an invisibility to the discrimination that Asian American w ­ omen experience in the acad­emy.

Although ­these activities might be seen as a normal part of the faculty workload, this kind of mentoring is not systematically practiced in academia, a fact that particularly disadvantages faculty of color and w ­ omen faculty. In fact, it is primarily white men who benefit from and have easier access to academic mentoring (Milkman, Akinola, & Chugh, 2014); ­because of the barriers between ­women of color faculty and tenure18 and promotion (Flaherty, 2016a; Wu & Jing, 2011), they have to create networks among faculty who are more likely to be at the same rank, and thus they reap less benefit from the mentoring provided by more se­nior faculty, who are predominantly male and white (Milkman et al., 2014). The following two responses illustrate vari­ous aspects of this strug­gle: I think we have a pretty strong network for faculty of color who support one another by listening, caring—­being friends outside of school, strategizing, and actually helping one another navigate the system if we have any power to do so. For example, I have helped read tenure and promotion narratives, taken friends out for meals, put ­people in touch with other ­people to smooth over relationships, e­ tc.

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I have long been a care worker in support of faculty in my department, college, and across campus. They would share their strug­gles, their experiences with co-­worker bullies, with administrative oppression, and with racist and sexist students.

Providing this care work for colleagues may seem to be an activity that is freely chosen by ­those who perform it—­­after all, unlike with care work provided to students, t­ here is no formal system of evaluation by which all colleagues are solicited for periodic reviews that might be negative if this care work is not performed. Given that much of the care work provided for colleagues is performed for t­ hose who are our equals or ju­niors, and who are thus not in positions of judgment above us, the per­for­mance of care work for colleagues might be dismissed as an unnecessary burden that is self-­imposed by t­ hose who undertake it. According to this logic, a “smart” or strategic faculty member would avoid this l­ abor and instead allocate time and energy to her own c­ areer. However, we argue that mutual support u­ nder such dire institutional neglect ultimately provides some form of emotional comfort and even tangible c­ areer assistance. For ­those Asian American ­women who are particularly isolated ­either in their departments of their institutions, the care work they perform is especially critical to themselves, other Asian American w ­ omen, and other faculty of color and ­women faculty: Among ju­nior faculty (like myself), ­there are only two other Asian American ­women besides me at our college (but not our larger university). One of t­ hese two ­women and I are very close, and each time we are on campus together [Monday, Wednesday, and Friday] we always commiserate. She has come into my office a few times crying ­a fter par­tic­u­lar hostile encounters with students.

Another respondent shares: For example, we had a wonderful opportunity to propose a joint hire for a Native American Studies tenure-­track position with our ethnic studies program and my colleagues w ­ ere not in ­favor of it ­because it MIGHT “take away” from the other positions they wanted the department to have. As the only minority tenured in the history of my department, I gave it to them straight and told them as considerately and bluntly as I could that this position was of critical importance, more impor­tant than the other positions they wanted.

Asian American ­women faculty must work extra hard to create support networks, without which their isolation could be debilitating (see chapter 13). ­These networks are created ­because the institutionalized systems of support in academia often fail Asian American ­women, as this respondent suggests:

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But when I was elected president of the faculty u­ nion, many faculty of color, especially ­women, came to me regarding their tenure and promotion ­battles, saying that they would not have sought support from the u­ nion if I had not been the president. They viewed the u­ nion as a bastion of whiteness, and felt the u­ nion would not be sensitive to issues of race and gender.

Asian American w ­ omen may feel unwelcome in the structures designed to support faculty b­ ecause academic institutional leadership, even in oppositional spaces like faculty u­ nions, is dominated by white men (Murphy & Louis, 1999). In order to maximize the power of ­those systems that do function, Asian American ­women may seek to position themselves strategically, serving on hiring, retention, tenure, and promotion committees, gradu­ate student admission committees, conference and professional organ­ization boards, and editorial boards of journals. This overextended ser­vice, often fraught with deeply emotional situations such as hiring, retention, and tenure, thus becomes another form of care work. The following respondent lists the many forms of ser­vice she has performed in the interest of supporting her colleagues and students: I have positioned myself now a­ fter eight years as being someone who supports minority faculty, staff and students. I’m on several tenure and promotion committees for minority faculty. I have read drafts of journal article that minority faculty have written for submission to journals. I have tried to provide opportunities for building community networks and resources and events that bring communities together. I have written letters of recommendation for colleagues. I have played “mediator” when asked to resolve conflicts. I have advocated for positions and programs that better our education in more inclusive ways.

Although it is work that is rarely recognized or valued within academia, functioning as informal diversity advocates and ad hoc ombudspeople can feel critical to Asian American ­women faculty who themselves have faced many hurdles to achieve their positions. Many Asian American ­women are deeply sensitive to injustice; given any institutionalized power, the respondents in our study seemed unanimously determined to advocate not only for themselves but for all ­those they could support. Within the larger category of Asian American w ­ omen, Asian immigrant ­women faculty are particularly vulnerable to institutional employment structures (Skachkova, 2007). Asians may be conglomerated together for the purposes of university “diversity” tracking (Flaherty, 2016b), but Asian American ­women are aware of the distinctions between themselves and more recent immigrants from Asia, as this respondent recognizes:

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I have seen Asian immigrant w ­ omen in the acad­emy being treated the worst. ­There is a racial hierarchy of who in acad­emy that you can easily dispense first. Asian immigrant w ­ omen are used for their l­ abor but dispensed if they ­don’t fit into your club. As an Asian American studies faculty member, I serve as support to many of t­ hese ­women.

While ­there are many overlapping and interrelated challenges, the issues facing Asian immigrant ­women faculty that are distinct from ­those of Asian American w ­ omen include written En­glish proficiency, accent bias, acculturation, l­ egal residency, and general anti-­immigrant bias (see chapter 7).

Care Work as Overload: The Value and Devaluation of Care Work This care work is overwhelming and can take a significant toll on the physical and emotional well-­being of the faculty called upon to do this work. When work is devalued by supervisors, workers in general find less satisfaction in their work (Society for ­Human Resource Management, 2016), but faculty also have the burden of proving the worth of the work that they do when it does not fall into the traditional categories by which their ­labor is assessed. That they bear the burden of proof may simply act as a disincentive for ­those who have the option or who are not expected to do care work, but for Asian American w ­ omen faculty, it becomes yet another kind of ­labor, as the following respondent describes what she strug­g les with most in providing care work: Fighting with administration and my colleagues about how impor­tant care work is for minorities on our campus and our society. So many b­ attles, so many times that they just d­ on’t understand the need, d­ on’t understand how ­they’re being insensitive or unprofessional or just ­don’t understand reason for ­doing such ­things that might help promote better relations on our campus. Sometimes I feel like as long as I am in my office, ­there w ­ ill be a line out the door. I have to claim a “potty break” just to get a few minutes to myself. It is also exhausting when se­nior faculty or administrators belittle the work, as they often do b­ ecause they find it threatening, or they d­ on’t understand it. Our society and culture are changing; we have the opportunity to make it more compassionate and supportive.

When the care work that Asian American w ­ omen faculty provide is in the ser­ vice of other Asian Americans, who are often falsely considered “overrepresented” in academia (Mack, Watson, & Camacho, 2012; Yeung, 2013), the work can be even further devalued. The following respondent describes this as a mea­ sure of the scant worth ascribed to Asian American students, as she states bluntly: “I was told by my chair [in a non-­Asian American studies department]

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to stop spending so much time with my ‘­little Asian students’ and focus on our department majors.” The emotional toll of performing care work or “emotion management” has been well documented (Mann, 2004; R. E. Olson & Prosser, 2012). Asian American w ­ omen faculty often feel that they have ­little choice in ­whether to provide care work, even when ­doing this work comes at the expense of their own emotional and physical health. One respondent laments the fact that I have to do it. In other words, I wish I ­didn’t have undergrad students suffering sexual trauma who share their histories of assault and harassment. That’s exhausting. Or colleagues who tell me about the microaggressions that they are experiencing in their departments over intersectional oppression. Or the issues of harassment that my [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer] students experience—­it’s exhausting to hear their stories and feel frustrated and to wish that we could change society.

One respondent states simply: “I’m not a trained social worker or psychologist, and it is emotionally draining.” Another notes the inescapability of being impacted by this work: “The emotional stress often transfers to me since I am a ­human being who practices empathy. . . . ​When some students fall between the crack or some ­don’t respond to me reaching out, it can be stressful and I can feel a lot of guilt around this.” Some faculty who have themselves needed emotional care during their own ­battles against racism and sexism in the acad­ emy l­ ater become caregivers to ­others who need support: I actually think [the hardest aspect of care work] is accompanying faculty members g­ oing through interpersonal fights in their departments. I used to be this person, taking LOTS of emotional care from other colleagues. I just needed to pro­cess and complain and get some advice and I ­didn’t know how to manage this. Now I find that when o­ thers are ­going through this, I realize how emotionally draining it is to witness. I try my best to hear, offer advice where appropriate, and help the person move forward but it ­doesn’t always work and that is exhausting. Plus, it just sucks for them and ­there’s often nothing anyone can do about it.

The feeling that t­ hese situations are endemic within the institution and unresolvable can add to the stress of trying to provide support for ­those experiencing bullying, oppression, and other manifestations of the racism and sexism permeating the structure of the university. However, this work is not only emotionally taxing; it can also be deleterious to academic c­ areers b­ ecause of the relative time and energy spent on care work by Asian American ­women faculty, such as the following, who is daunted to quantify the amount of time she spends on it:

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It’s not quantifiable even though it takes up so much of my time/energy. Compared to my male/white colleagues, I d­ on’t feel as energized to apply for grants or fellowships (or even get the application package together to seek employment at another institution). The fact that I have been awarded smaller grants and have a consistent rec­ord of publications (some with my [person of color] students) are both huge wins for me (but not always in the eyes of ­others). Feeling like I have to consistently prove my worth is a horrible feeling.

The impact on this scholar’s ability to apply for grants or fellowships is not recognized by her peers or administration as part of the cost of ­doing valuable ­labor in the form of care work. This impacts her feelings of job satisfaction as she strug­gles to prove her worth within a system that does not value the work she feels compelled to do. Despite ­these negative effects on emotional and physical health and on ­careers, care work continues to be practiced by Asian American ­women faculty. While it can be exhausting, care work is also “transformational,” as the following respondent says: Care work is transformational. Through care work, I can help students and colleagues work through issues that hold them back. Reflecting on t­ hese experiences, I have also been able to move myself forward. Holding a space for ­people to share their emotions is exhausting, but it is also liberating and exhilarating. ­These are like epiphanies, or the steps one needs to take ­towards epiphany. It seems like what life is about—­connecting with and supporting other ­human beings to help them be their best selves. Other than actually saving p­ eople’s lives, I cannot think of more impor­tant work to do.

Although the institution, and even other colleagues, may not fully value the care work performed by Asian American w ­ omen faculty, the value that they themselves place on it may offset this external devaluation.

Conclusion: Valuing Care Work in the Acad­emy A key finding of this study is that Asian American ­women faculty fill the gap for so many infrastructure needs on college campuses. Rather than offering resources in student ser­vices in terms of advising for a host of noncognitive support needs, most colleges and universities often are void of t­ hese ser­vices or lack staff that might be of ­these backgrounds or have familiarity with them. ­Because of t­ hese gaps by the system, Asian American w ­ omen faculty end up caring more sometimes at the expense of their own professional development and health. At the same time, b­ ecause university systems continue to marginalize Asian American w ­ omen faculty, they can become a key resource and

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support for faculty across campus fighting to stay alive in their department. Asian American studies ­women faculty perform care work for colleagues of color across campus who face insensitivity and tenure ­battles from their departments. Care work is thus a form of ­labor that ­will continue to be performed by Asian American w ­ omen faculty, often at a high cost to them. Recognizing and valuing this work, no m ­ atter who performs it, would benefit academic institutions in many ways ­because this work ultimately enhances student learning, retention, and success. One might even think of it as increasing efficiency and graduation rates b­ ecause students who need care work but who are not getting it may drop out or strug­gle academically. Thus, we argue that an academic institution that fails to value care work not only fails its faculty but also fails its students and thus its mission.

Notes The authors wish to thank the following research assistants for their special attention to this essay: Phillip Nguyen, Leslie Đỗ, and Simeon Alojipan. 1 See chapters 3, 6, and 9 of this volume for studies and examples of how this stress leads to physical and ­mental health impacts. 2 This narrative is based on the experience of Wei Ming Dariotis, with details withheld to protect student anonymity. 3 According to the International Association of Counseling Ser­vices, the recommended ratio is one counselor for e­ very 1,500 students, but according to a California Faculty Association (CFA) report, Counseling in the CSU: A Risky Underinvestment (March 2016), twenty of twenty-­three California State University campuses failed to comply to recommended levels. For example, at San Francisco State, the ratio in fall 2015 was one counselor for e­ very 2,873 students, which is nearly half what is recommended. The CFA report also notes that “between 2004 and 2014, the number of full-­time equivalent tenure-­line counselors decreased by 10 ­percent, while temporary counselors increased by 286 ­percent” (Bommersbach, n.d.). 4 “Learning communities” are defined as groups of individuals who are interested in a common topic or area and who engage in knowledge-­related transactions as well as transformations within it and can include the students and teachers and also their families and even larger communities (Fulton & Riel, 1999). 5 Asian American w ­ omen are ste­reo­t yped as safe, approachable caregivers and supporters. A ­factor that contributes to perpetuating this ste­reo­t ype is how, for many Asian Americans, caregiving is culturally embedded into their families (Pharr, Dodge Francis, et al., 2014). However, this role of caregiving is often forced upon the ­women of the f­ amily due to cultural role expectations that assume ­women to be the caregivers of the ­family (Pharr et al., 2014). Thus, an unintended consequence is the perpetuation of the ste­reo­t ype that Asian American ­women are seen as approachable caregivers and supporters. 6 Allyson Tintiangco-­Cubales (chapter 12) and ­others express the ways in which academics must transform the structure of the acad­emy in order to be regenerated rather than drained by such work.

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7 Carl Jung described the “wounded healer” as the only one capable of healing. That is, in psychotherapy, the only competent therapists are the ones who have under­gone their own thorough self-­analysis (Dunne, 2015). 8 Noncognitive skills support includes improvements in reading, writing, and mathe­matics per­for­mance among college students (García, 2016). 9 From the Stanford Gradu­ate School of Education, a Stanford study suggests ­there are academic benefits to ethnic studies courses (Donald, 2016). 10 “Since Fall 1969, the Asian American Studies Department at San Francisco State University has furthered the understanding of the histories and cultures of Asian Americans and the vari­ous identities and experiences of our communities. Through teaching, community ser­vice, and research, we use interdisciplinary approaches to address the structural and ideological forces that shape the lives of Asian Americans. We support self-­determination by developing the creative expressions, voices, critical pedagogies, and analyses of our communities. Social justice, equity, and activism within Asian American communities, and re­spect for differences, especially ethnic diversity, are fundamental princi­ples that guide our work” (Asian American Studies, 2010). 11 Amerasia Journal, the Association of Asian American Studies, and the Journal of Asian American Studies, ­were founded in 1971, 1979, and 1998, respectively. 12 The use of citations as a mea­sure of the value of scholarly work can be infinitely disputed, but one need only use literary studies as an example: writing on a popu­lar or well-­known author automatically guarantees that all the o­ thers also studying this author ­will at least review your work and thus w ­ ill prob­ably cite it. Asian American authors are relatively unknown compared with Eu­ro­pean American authors. The best known, such as Amy Tan or Maxine Hong Kingston, are still marginalized in literary studies in En­g lish. Thus, if a scholar’s research takes them to obscure Asian American poets, for example, even an excellent piece of scholarship is likely to receive few citations. 13 This demand motivated was by the lack of such curriculum at what was then called San Francisco State College at the time (Springer, 2008). 14 “Cultural humility” is defined by Vivian Chavez (Chavez, 2012, p.8) as having three main areas: 1. Lifelong learning and critical self-­reflection 2. Recognizing and changing power imbalances 3. Developing institutional accountability 15 The image of the ­woman of color as bridge is power­f ul and per­sis­tent. The seminal anthology This Bridge Called My Back reveals that while the position of being a bridge can be power­f ul in the development of co­a li­tions, it can also be draining and exhausting to t­ hose in that position (Moraga & Anzaldúa, 2015). 16 Additionally, ste­reo­t ypes of Asian American ­women “as exotic and docile . . . ​ increases the chances of us becoming victims of ‘racialized sexual harassment,’ ” ­because employers perceive Asian American w ­ omen as ‘model minorities’ who are less likely to file a complaint (Gutiérrez y Muhs, Niemann, et al., 2012, p. 104). 17 Being in a “safe space” in the classroom impacts both the amount and subjects that students learn (Holley & Steiner, 2005). 18 Reasons for tenure denial are often shrouded in departmental secrecy (Fox, 2010). As such, reportage on this type of institutional discrimination is often barred from further inquiry, as demonstrated in the high-­profile case of Aimee Bahng, an assistant professor of En­g lish at Dartmouth College who was unanimously

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approved by her department’s tenure committee yet was still denied tenure, which sparked the Twitter hashtags #Fight4FaultyOfColor and #DontDoDartmouth. State University of New York at Buffalo associate professor of transnational studies Cynthia Wu wrote to Dartmouth president Phil Hanlon in Bahng’s defense, saying: “I have witnessed the dismantling of Asian-­A merican studies through institutional refusals to retain faculty who teach and do research in this area. . . . ​I lament that so many specialists in Asian-­A merican studies have fallen through the cracks ­because of ­these institutional failures” (Flaherty, 2016b).

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Moraga, C., & Anzaldúa, G. (Eds.). (2015). This bridge called my back: Writings by radical ­women of color. Albany: State University of New York Press. Murphy, J., & Louis, K. S. (1999). Handbook of research on educational administration: A proj­ect of the American Educational Research Association. San Francisco: Jossey-­Bass. Ngai, P.B.Y. (2006). Grassroots suggestions for linking Native-­language learning, Native American studies, and mainstream education in reservation schools with mixed Indian and white student populations. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 19, 220–236. Nguyen, C. F. (2016). Asian American ­women faculty: Ste­reo­t ypes and triumphs. In B. Taylor (Ed.), Listening to the voices: Multi-­ethnic w ­ omen in education (pp. 129–136). San Francisco, CA: University of San Francisco. Nieto, S. (2000). Placing equity front and center: Some thoughts on transforming teacher education for a new ­century. Journal of Teacher Education, 51, 180–187. Ogbonna, E., & Harris, L. C. (2004). Work intensification and emotional ­labour among UK university lecturers: An exploratory Study. Organ­ization Studies, 25(7), 1185–1203. doi:10.1177/0170840604046315 Olson, J. N., & Car­ter, J. A. (2014). Caring and the college professor. Caring, 8(1), 1–9. Olson, R. E., & Prosser, B. (2012). ­Human care work and emotion: A call to re-­examine theory. Proceedings of the Australian So­cio­log­i­cal Association Annual Conference (TASA 2012): Emerging and Enduring Inequalities: St Lucia, Queensland, Australia, 26-29 November 2012. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.t­ asa​.o­ rg​.­au​/­tasa​-­conference​/­2012​-­tasa​ -­conference/ O’Shea, K. (2012). Students’ experiences and teachers’ perceptions of student belonging in one elementary school. (Master’s thesis). Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. Parkman, A. (2016). The imposter phenomenon in higher education: Incidence and impact. Journal of Higher Education Theory & Practice, 16(1), 51–60. Pharr, J. R., Dodge Francis, C., Terry, C., & Clark, M. C. (2014). Culture, caregiving, and health: exploring the influence of culture on ­family caregiver experiences. ISRN Public Health, 2014. http://­d x​.d­ oi​.o­ rg​/1­ 0​.1­ 155​/2­ 014​/6 ­ 89826 San Francisco State University. (2017). San Francisco State University—­A brief history. Retrieved from https://­budget​.­sfsu​.­edu​/­2016​-­2017​/­san​-­francisco​-­state​-­university​-­brief​ -­history Skachkova, P. (2007). Academic ­careers of immigrant ­women professors in the U.S. Higher Education, 53, 697–738. Society for H ­ uman Resource Management. (2016). Employee job satisfaction and engagement: Revitalizing a changing workforce. Alexandria, VA: Author. Springer, D. (2008, September 22). Campus commemorates 1968 student-­led strike. SF State News. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­sfsu​.­edu​/­news​/­2008​/­fall​/­8​.­html Swanson, L. H., Bianchini, J. A., & Lee, J. S. (2014). Engaging in argument and communicating information: A case study of En­glish language learners and their science teacher in an urban high school. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 51(1), 31–64. Taylor, S. V., & Sobel, D. M. (2011). Culturally responsive pedagogy: Teaching like our students’ lives ­matter (Vol. 4). Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. Tunguz, S. (2016). In the eye of the beholder: Emotional l­ abor in academia varies with tenure and gender. Studies in Higher Education, 41(1), 3–20. Turner, C.S.V. (2002). W ­ omen of color in academe: Living with multiple marginality. Journal of Higher Education, 73(1), 74–93. Umemoto, K. (1989). On strike! San Francisco State College strike, 1968–69: The role of Asian American students. Amerasia Journal, 15(1), 3–41.

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Walker, C., & Gleaves, A. (2016). Constructing the caring higher education teacher: A theoretical framework. Teaching and Teacher Education, 54, 65–76. Wu, L., & Jing, W. (2011). Real numbers: Asian w ­ omen in STEM ­careers: An invisible minority in a double blind. Issues in Science and Technology, 28(1), Retrieved from https://­issues​.­org​/r­ ealnumbers​-­29/ Yeung, F. P. (2013). Strug­g les for professional and intellectual legitimacy: Experiences of Asian and Asian American female faculty members. In S. D. Museus, D. C. Maramba, & R. T. Teranishi (Eds.), The misrepresented minority: New insights on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and the implications for higher education (pp. 281–293). Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing. Zirkel, S., & Pollack, T. M. (2016). Just let the worst students go: A critical case analy­sis of public discourse about race, merit, and worth. American Educational Research Journal, 53(6), pp. 1522–1555.

11

Pain + Love = Growth The L­ abor of Pinayist Pedagogical Praxis MELISSA-­A NN NIE VER A-­L OZ ANO

Abstract This study features conversations with six Pinay scholar activists to explore a critical looking inward of private (and often painful) formations of race, class, and gender, ultimately revealing the unstable growth of a Pinay scholar activist’s personal–­political identity. By drawing from an assembled, unorthodox framework of decolonized feminist thought and Buddhist philosophy, this study operationalizes the methodology of sutured portraiture to capture, interpret, and illustrate the ways in which transformative moments in t­ hese scholars’ lives shape their work. What surfaces is a shared story of how ­these w ­ omen of color come to inhabit their paradoxical positions within empire through the experiences and practices of silence and anger—as well as the creation and participation of resistant socialities—­helping to extend the work of Pinayist pedagogical praxis.

Unraveling the Cocoon: Pain + Love = Growth This transition was not about becoming someone better, but about fi­nally allowing herself to become who s­ he’d always been. —­A my Rubin 325

326  •  Melissa-­Ann Nievera-­Lozano

I rise to the sound of shades being drawn this early February morning, 2016. Nearly three years have passed since I last visited Rowena, Ate Leny,1 Liza, Robyn, Dawn, and Sarita.2 At my win­dow, I stand and stretch to be pre­sent with the day beginning. ­Here on the second story of our complex, I rise to the trees springing upward, the white blossoms emerging, the bees dancing about. I give an inner bow of acknowl­edgment to t­ hese miracles. Seeing nature in its truest form seems small and s­ imple. Yet as of late, it has proven to be the most harrowing mind voyage for me. It’s been seven months since my youn­gest s­ ister passed peacefully in her sleep at the tender age of twenty. Some minutes a­ fter midnight, her heart ­stopped beating, her body unable to withstand the chemistry of substances she consumed. I have been trying to understand this newfangled truth of ours—­this truth of her journeying on, of our relationship in a form beyond the physical, of our histories that signal us to this pre­sent moment as well as to our f­utures. Her name—­coincidentally or not so coincidentally—is Pinay,3 short for Filipina Jasmin Nielo Pascasio. We are born from the same womb, took that similar passage to enter into this world, and now we are apart. Pinay’s passing brought on many visits from many butterflies in the days and months that followed that fateful July night. In order to move through the mourning, I had to come to a new understanding of the life cycle—­her life, my life, and what it all means. All of this work on Pinay scholarship all t­ hese years, in a supposed fight for the spiritual, emotional, intellectual livelihood of Pinays, and I ­couldn’t save my own s­ ister. I c­ ouldn’t save Pinay. In this deep and arduous grieving, I am at the crosswinds—­where her transition bumps up against the direction in which (I thought) I was headed. But as we know, the universe always has other plans. I emerge with a lens that gives a gentle glance across our lives as s­ isters (Pinay and me, as well as the four s­ isters born between us); and unavoidably across the lives of t­ hese Pinay scholars: Rowena, Ate Leny, Liza, Robyn, Dawn, and Sarita.4

­Toward Sutured Portraiture The methodology I developed for my dissertation research shared in this chapter aims to portraitize ­these ­women’s “flesh blood experiences” (Cameron, 1981) or what Cherrie Moraga might call “theories in the flesh” (Moraga & Anzaldúa, 1983). With “endarkened feminist epistemologies” illuminating the wealth of wisdom from their lives, I want to show how their portraits are “a place from which to theorize the leadership and [academic/community] realities of [Pin@y scholars] through situating knowledge and action in the cultural spaces out of which they arose” (Dillard, 2000, p. 670). And I want to ask, “Are

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t­ here patterns of epistemology that can help us to decipher the patterns of leadership lives, ­those situated po­liti­cal strug­gles and personal passions that lie at the nexus of scholarship and activism?” (Dillard, 2000, p. 671). If so, what are these patterns? The necessary task of seeing patterns ­shaped my role as a ­portraitist in such a way that I became aware that while I stood inside and with these conversations (actively participating, contributing, and ­co-­constructing their stories), I also had to stand way outside from a critical distance in order to tell the story, to show how ­these patterns stitch together and how ­these ­patterns create a quilt of experience. The work that each of ­these stories offers is a sort of pedagogy of how to be in conversation with one another around scholarship and activism as Pinay academics. Their seemingly separate portraits stand together more than they stand on their own. They connect, like a quilt, and my role can be described as the weaver who stitches or sutures ­these portraits together so that they can talk to each other. Like patches or strewn pieces of fabric, their portraits together give us the landscape. We can hold up this quilt and appreciate it as the backdrop of a larger story.5 As a weaver, sure, I suture together six portraits. But each portrait is also a suturing of the wound, a stitching together of memories of strug­gle and joy that make up one’s current self. In t­ hese portraits, I suture together split selves, or what Ate Leny calls the “split-­psyche” (Strobel, 2010). And this suturing is intellectual work. Each portrait is a story of transformation. The experience of sitting with ­these ­women and writing their stories with thoughtful intention has not only been a suturing of their portraits together but also in some ways a weaving of my cocoon, a chamber for spiritual and intellectual metamorphosis. ­Here is where we unravel this cocoon.

Metamorphosis: Transformations through the Weaving What I found across all conversations with Rowena, Ate Leny, Liza, Dawn, Robyn, and Sarita is that ­there is a connection, a specific relationship, I have with each of them. Often the word “we” shows up in my writing. It refers to multiple “we”s, depending on the relationship between myself and the person whose story I’m co-­writing. We, ­women faculty of color. We, Pinays. We, of the second generation born to immigrant parents. As I sat with each Pinay scholar activist with interest and inquiry into her life and her transformation, I was in effect receiving mentorship. Just as I had gained insight from the life of my baby ­sister, I gained wisdom from ­these ­women who in some ways ­were like older ­sisters—­older ­sisters from an academic ­family, with an academic genealogy.6

328  •  Melissa-­Ann Nievera-­Lozano

A New Analy­sis: Fresh but Lasting Impressions This chapter generates three themes for analy­sis—(1) the disenchantment of empire, (2) resistant socialities, and (3) Pinayist pedagogical praxis—to demonstrate the interconnectedness of ­these ­women’s multiple transformations. I ­will first describe each of ­these analytic themes in succession, laying out a road map for the reader. I ­will then drift across slices of each of the portraits to mine threads of evidence, as I point back to t­ hese analytic themes. As a portraitist, I must briefly underline the difficulty in this analytic work. In highlighting par­tic­u­lar themes, I set myself up to “prove a point” as required by the acad­emy. And I do this by taking data essentially out of context. I slice and dice up portraits in order to prove my points. This is inevitable in the vio­ lence of social science research—­cutting up narratives and prioritizing “findings.” This exercise is a temporary “submission to colonialism” (Lowe, 1998)—­brutal and inescapable in the empire within which I write. Nonetheless, portraiture tries to mitigate epistemic vio­lence by d­ oing its best to keep storytellers as “­whole” and alive as pos­si­ble, only to reveal that the life of a Pinay scholar activist (as a w ­ oman of color) is not necessarily about w ­ holeness. Her life is about maneuvering through the contradictions and the discomfort. It is a life that is always unsettled. We learn to live in that liminal space. Let us now look at t­ hose liminal spaces in the acad­emy—­these shared instances that connect ­these portraits to one another—­throughout the discussion of each analytic theme. As Ate Leny insists, “I want the gift of story. Story as medicine for our souls” (Strobel, 2005, p. 17). With our stories as insight, ­here is how we unfold our wings.

Disenchantment of Empire “­Really,” I’ve recently been asked, “What is this Filipina story coming through (in your research)? What makes it ‘Pinay’?” Big question. Huge question. Rather than reduce ­these stories to essentialist notions of what is and is not “Pinay,” I share only a handful of the innumerous ways we can point to their stories as distinctively “Pinay.” To begin, it is the story of empire (Coloma, 2006a; Lowe, 2009; Maese-­ Cohen, 2010)—­that is, a story of how ­these Pinays come to inhabit their paradoxical position within empire (empire, as the place in which the long-­standing power of colonialism’s history exists). More specifically, the Pinay scholar activist’s positionality and predicament are of being born in or the offspring of a parent born in the “colonized periphery,” the Philippines; who chased ­labor demands or f­ amily reunification u­ nder immigration policies pulling them to this “center of colonial power,” the United States (Lowe, 2009, p. 110).7 ­Here, she not only sees empire (the power or damage of coloniality); she works to

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expose it, trou­ble it, and undo its harm. She is about the disenchantment of empire; she is about seeking and setting up the conditions for decolonization particularly in the institution of the university—­this critical site we work to dismantle while building our power, our name, our identity, and our livelihood within it. It is a tragic endeavor, it seems, but we find ways. Critical pedagogy researcher Zeus Leonardo (2010) would point to it as an impor­tant move in academia, as it holds colonialism, coloniality, and empire: “not just in the negative sense (or as a burden in the Fanonian way) but as [something that] offers a more complex understanding [of] our experiences, our standpoint, our epistemologies [which] are fundamentally filtered through t­ hese real histories of colonialism; and so let’s talk about colonialism as a place to talk about survival” (Leonardo, pre­sen­ta­tion). Survival, however, is not the final purpose. Yes, we must be able to breathe. But also, as you ­will see bits and pieces of ­people showing how they disenchanted themselves, you ­will also see the active envisioning and creation of dif­fer­ent futurities and selves, over and over again in order to thrive. Allow me to taper down this theme of “disenchanting empire” to make even more specific connections looking at (1) legacies of empire and bridges for migration (Sassen, 1993), (2) the silence that upholds empire, and (3) anger and its uses (Lorde, 1984) for the Pinay who digs up empire to see the light of liberation.

Looking at Legacies of Empire: Bridges for Migration of Body, Mind, and Soul Legacies of empire can be mapped through what po­liti­cal economy theorist Saskia Sassen (1993) calls “patterns of linkages” or “bridges for migration.” The word “empire” “situates [­these Pinays and their bodies] in relation to the global history of colonialism and its division of ­labor” (Lowe, 2009, p. 109). It is the story of how “We d­ idn’t cross the border. The border crossed us.”8 For Pinays, empire “references the U.S.-­controlled school system in the Philippines [itself], which helped to bring [us and] our families over” (Coloma, 2006b, p. 644). However, stories of empire are not simply about someone getting on a plane, leaving “the colony,” and settling in the United States. Let’s step back and think bigger, considering what it means to hold legacies of empire—­beginning with ­these bridges of migration—in our bodies and in our memory. I think of Sarita’s articulation of the biographical as “totally connected to the historical,” as her research interests (of empire) rest deep in the womb of her ­family birth history: “my f­ ather is from Singapore, a former British colony, and my m ­ other is the d­ aughter of a former American and Spanish colony.” And on public radio, she declares: “All I have to remember is my Cantonese-­speaking ­father who took a government scholarship as a ticket out of the ghetto, as a ticket to Singapore’s elite English-­speaking bureaucracy. This was a bureaucracy

330  •  Melissa-­Ann Nievera-­Lozano

that would reward him and reward him, yet mark him ultimately as a Chinaman from Chinatown” (Mak, 2008). From the field of medicine, we note that Rowena’s and Robyn’s ­mothers ­were nurses. Liza learned only recently that her ­mother actually holds a degree in medical technology. Most Filipino families can easily name a Pinay relative (­mother, aunt, godmother) in the medical field. Filipina historian Catherine Ceniza Choy demonstrates in her book Empire of Care (2003) that the Philippines in par­tic­u­lar provides the largest number of foreign-­trained nurses by far. This nursing “migration bridge” is both racialized and gendered and has operated since as early as 1904, some years ­after the United States acquired the Philippines as “property.” One must won­der how this caregiving legacy in our families affects Pinay academics in their work, caring for their students and communities differently than the traditional academic sitting at his desk during office hours (see chapter 10). Then ­there are the U.S. Armed Forces. Dawn and I are both grand­daughters of World War II veterans. We both have marched and advocated for equity compensation for our veteranos; as her lolo (grand­father) fought in the First Filipino Infantry Regiment, my lolo served as guerilla fighter alongside the United States. His feet are covered in scars from having raced through the juggle without shoes. Liza and I are both ­daughters of Navy men. ­These linkages show the long migration of Filipino men lured into this “land of milk and honey” (that is, economic stability) through U.S. military enlistment but are also manifestations of the uneven relationship of militarism and warfare between the homeland and the United States. As a US Army veteran’s child, I can tell you that academia is like the military—­operating and depending heavi­ly on a hierarchy that is centuries old. And we sit at the bottom looking up, wondering what we got ourselves into. Carrying a variety of jobs, si­mul­ta­neously or across time, to stay afloat is all too common for the immigrant f­ amily, trying to get comfortable from the “colonized periphery” to “colonial center.” Dawn, also the d­ aughter of farmworkers, was born and raised in Stockton where a “massive stream of Filipinas/os” came as early as 1898 for work in the fields or domestic ser­vice (Mabalon, 2013, p. 5). Sarita’s grand­father had his stint in domestic work while attending university. Liza’s m ­ other found work across racialized, classed, and gendered l­ abor queues: from pineapple canneries in Hawaii, to military officers’ quarters in Alaska as a ­house worker, to the electronic assembly line in Rhode Island, wherever Liza’s f­ ather was stationed next, before spending most of the rest of her life in California as a certified nursing assistant—­never quite having the chance to use her medical technology degree to its fullest potential. This unsettledness. All the years of schooling and work experience w ­ e’ve logged to ensure ourselves of the very t­ hing we d­ on’t have—­job security. It is a distressful situation we see also in the position of faculty, particularly adjunct faculty. And on that long march to tenure, adjunct gigs w ­ ere part of the game.

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Dawn can attest to the rattling nightmare. At one point, she was at San Francisco State, Berkeley, and Stanford, trying to make ends meet. Embarrassingly, she missed the first day of class at Berkeley “ ’Cuz I got all confused with my dates!” she exclaimed. It was 2004 when she faced her “summer of extreme poverty, which is kind of what happens in the timing of the academic world!” Dawn remarked and then shared at length: So I remember I got an eviction notice. I mean it was crazy! When y­ ou’re in grad school, it’s like grant check to grant check. Loan check to loan check. I had this summer where I ­didn’t have any paychecks and I explained to my landlord, “Look, I got this job at State. I’m gonna actually have real pay in September. I swear.” She’s like, “Okay I’m gonna have to still give you an eviction notice b­ ecause that’s still technically what I’m supposed to, but I’m not gonna evict you.” We learn how to survive in t­ hose ways. Coming from a working class background, we learn how to hustle, how to get by. I look back at t­ hose lean years and I won­der, wow.

While we see this anxiety in our own work lives, we understand that our immigrant f­ amily members before us traveled this, too, modeling resilience and fortitude. Each one of the storytellers in my dissertation traces their f­ amily’s bridges for migration—­not for the sake of nostalgia but as a way to look back critically (Alexander, 2009). This all goes back to their families and ancestors—­ those in their bloodline who walked through the world before them, navigated empire before them. In looking at how they navigated through the generations, we see the “long brutal encounter with colonial modernity through the memory of the objects, expressions, traces, and . . . ​archaeology that condense and allude to this longer history” (Lowe, 1998, p. 162). I disentangle relationships between t­hese Pinay scholar activists and their parents and grandparents9 to recognize ­those ­things that are passed down—­practices of empire that are learned from the colonial power, reiterated in Filipino f­ amily culture and childrearing, and then “displaced both clumsily and deliberately in embodied practices” (Lowe, 1998, p. 163).

The Silences that Uphold Empire: Instances of Invalidation We understand how the practice of silence gets passed from one generation to another. Our job as scholars is to pick apart why t­ hese silences are so power­ful. I want to talk about silence as a theme that emerges from ­these portraits in two ways. One is the silence that is practiced in our families: of self-­contempt, self-­ effacement, of grateful servitude, and a tiisin mo lang (“just grin and bear it”) mentality that is tangled up with hiya (the feeling of shame or the practice of shaming)—­all of this spiritually and emotionally passed down by empire. We ­don’t need to talk to one another much—we just get up in the morning and

332  •  Melissa-­Ann Nievera-­Lozano

survive. B ­ ecause surviving is the everyday chore. Th ­ ese silences are brought on by external forces such as the immigration policy that allowed our ­family to escape the po­liti­cal regime, the job offer that helped us come over, and so on. We can name many times we felt forced to learn empire and internalize it, so that a fog thickens before our eyes and we cannot see. But in the silence between self and parents and grandparents lies t­ hese questions: “What happened? Why are you, and why are we s­ ilent? Why do I not know your story? It is my story, too.” Parents and grandparents carry this legacy of empire building, which becomes part of the contradictions of what is passed down to critically engaged Pinay scholars. And this silence as a “Filipin@ cultural practice” gets tangled up in the experience of being silenced in the acad­emy. That uncomfortable silence in our families comes up in my conversations with Liza. We ­don’t talk. Not about feelings or about any kind of truth that might hurt. We avoid confrontation. We are too prideful to be vulnerable. We are fearful of hiya (shame). Growing up, we saw this silence even in the mundane, in the everyday, as our parents become too preoccupied working, and we become too preoccupied schooling—­all of us trying to feel our way through this Amer­i­ca—we d­ on’t get to sit and share deeply. Only now as a grown, married ­woman with two ­children is Liza learning snippets of facts about her parents’ lives. She visits with aunties who tell her bits and pieces and is slowly coming around to asking her parents herself—­because it’s time, now that she has demystified empire, now that she has done all the theoretical research and memoir reading to inform her teaching around colonial mentality and the Filipino ­family. In an essay called “A Letter to Ma” in This Bridge Called My Back (1983), Merle Woo tries to unpack the silences between herself and her ­mother. In t­ hese silences, she senses the ruptures: I am your ­daughter, you are my ­mother, and we are keeping each other com­pany, and that is [supposed to be] enough. . . . ​But it is not enough ­because my life has been formed by your life. . . . ​Ma, I could never have [found my po­liti­cal voice] if you had not provided for me the opportunity to be f­ ree of the binds that have held you down, and to be in the pro­cess of self-­affirmation. . . . ​ And while I affirm myself, Ma, I affirm you” (Woo, 1983, p. 142).

Affirmations help us get through each day. It’s a practice we have to learn and relearn ­after having internalized that practice of silence for so long. So not only are we not speaking to or checking in with our parents, w ­ e’re not checking in with ourselves, not affirming ourselves. Tiisin mo lang (“just grin and bear it”), remember? That’s how we do. Even to the point where our energy is constantly spread thin and we are literally holding on to our last breath ­after years on that

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hamster wheel. We, ­women of color, know this hamster wheel. All too well. It is the place upon which our bodies l­ abor to no end, and the l­ abor pulls our bodies apart. For Dawn, ­there was a constant separation of mind ­running endless laps on that hamster wheel—­processing her personal politicization, researching history, building intellectuality, authoring original work, maneuvering through academic c­ areer checkpoints and ultimately painfully forgetting about her physicality.10 ­A fter fifteen years of ignoring her health (diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol, all of which developed in her first few years of incredibly stressful gradu­ate school), Dawn found herself terribly sick and suddenly undergoing a six-­hour surgery for an E. coli infection of her left ovary and fallopian tube on the left side of her body, as well as fibroids doctors discovered throughout. Her moment in the hospital became a violent truth. When she was told the procedure would put her out for six weeks, at first she panicked but then arrived at a new real­ity: “I just had to slow down. Like, I’m not ­running this race anymore. I d­ on’t need to. I have tenure. H ­ ere’s the book. But I feel like, a lot of my life has only been about go, go, go, go. And through the go, go, go, go—­a lot of health prob­lems. You know when p­ eople say, ‘Oh! ­You’re ssssuper this! You can do all ­these t­ hings!’ No, not ­really. Yeah, but at what cost? . . . ​I still feel my stitches.” Dawn’s stitches are a souvenir that now remind her of the necessity to affirm her body and soul’s right to live well through the rat race. Perhaps even to call this race over. And then ­there is the Pinay scholar activists’ experience of being silenced—­ instances of shame and invalidation in the university. Just thinking of ­these two ­things together—­shame and the acad­emy—it cuts deep. We know how shame is used to guilt us into complying within the oppressive structure, redirecting our attention from the strug­gles we face to our “reputations at stake.” We grow anxious through the longing of tenure, “good” evaluations, and promotion; and know that if we ­don’t achieve them, then all ­we’re left with is shame. Hiya. That is the trade-­off. Instances of invalidation in the university—­ pivotal moments in which Pinay scholar activists’ are told they cannot speak, should not speak, or ­don’t know what ­they’re talking about—­are all forms of silencing that crush and kill the spirit. We die inside. So, in this paradoxical position of empire, I provide a reading of instances of invalidation (of silence and shame), which signal to ­these Pinay scholar activists that it is time for a dif­fer­ent way of being. One of Sarita’s early memories of the academic rat race began during her gradu­ate studies at Columbia University in the office of a renowned scholar. “Omigod. I remember a conversation with Gayatri Spivak,” she gasped. Gayatri Spivak, a ­woman of color intellectual pioneer in postcolonial studies, required students to interview with her as part of their application to enroll in her seminar. Sarita’s ­didn’t quite go so well, as she recalled:

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So, ­she’d be looking at interviews of students while she’s interviewing you. I mean, you can just imagine. Utter fear. How hard it is to go in, knock on her door, y­ ou’re signing up. You go in and I just remember—­I completely frustrated her. Completely. I was just absolutely not qualified, in any way right, to take her seminar. She just—­she came in. Sat down, “Alright! Define capital for me!” And I was like, “I d­ on’t know what y­ ou’re talking about. I’m h ­ ere to learn.” I think I said something like that. This is a gradu­ate seminar on Marxist Feminist Thought or what­ever the hell it was. I ­really came h ­ ere to learn, you know. And she said, “I work with Bangladeshi farmers. They can define capitalism for me, and you cannot.” And I was just like [laughing incredulously]. And then she went on, on this rant about how she earns, with her teaching, she raises capital with her head, or something like that. I mean, it was just insane. It was insane. I was prob­ably 23, 24 at the time.

Even p­ eople whose work we deeply admire and re­spect for their interventions in the troublesome acad­emy—­they, too, can take us down as they become the academic empire, shaming us. For Robyn, we see this burden of silence as early as grad school as well. At Berkeley, she attended events where alumni would brandish their accomplishments, while current students stood in awe. In this demonstration of the “­whole pecking order,” the message was clear. She was at the bottom. Especially having gotten pregnant her second year in grad school, “Now I’m definitely not the star,” she grieved. As a new faculty member at Rutgers, in a room with “Harvards and Stanfords,” she silenced her politics in their presence. At home, she subscribed to the New Yorker to become versed in their world—­a “­whole realm of understanding” around film, travel, and current events that ­were actually of no interest to her. Small talk with colleagues was excruciating. A friend had to kick it to her straight: “We c­ an’t make up for over thirty years of this class education. We c­ an’t. No amount of reading is gonna get us to where [they] are.” Th ­ ere was all of this extra emotional and psychological ­labor, aside from the research and writing and teaching, and yet, Robyn revealed: Oftentimes tenure is about how much they just like you. Straight up! You know, how much you fit. And you know, “fitness” is racialized, is gendered, is sexualized right? So ­you’re more fit if ­you’re straight. ­You’re more fit if ­you’re married, if ­you’re settled. Less fit if y­ ou’re queer, you know. More fit if ­you’re white. I mean they [faculty gatherings] w ­ ere painful. I hate them. I still hate them.

We hate them ­because the silencing we experience feeds right into

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that imposter syndrome. It was such a strug­gle! It was so hard getting h ­ ere. . . . ​I mean for six years at Rutgers, I had to hide my politics. I had to live like this schizophrenic life where I kept my politics on the D [as in “DL” or down-­low] and work vigorously to earn my right to belong—­A tenured faculty member!

Dawn knows this pain all too well. It takes a toll on the psyche and spirit—to exist in this brown, constantly foreignized, female body—in the institution of the acad­emy, as she expounded: It’s about one’s own realization of self-­worth and self-­esteem. Racism and sexism and class and all ­these other ­things that made me think: PhD? Filipina? Professor? Why would I want to do that? I mean, who does that? I mean it is about me, a Filipina, working class girl, ­daughter of farmworkers, but also just—­this is a profession that we could do?

We c­ an’t talk about imposter syndrome without talking about the rat race—­ the practice of chasing par­tic­u­lar c­ areer milestones as the clock ticks. As p­ eople watch. As ­people judge. The individualistic quest for institutional recognition is lonely. And the isolation becomes another place of silence, as Dawn described: You can get r­ eally isolated and it’s just you and that book, and the burden of that book . . . ​and having to finish the book . . . ​all of ­those ­things that are ­really invisible to pretty much every­body ­else. Go[ing] through the maze, [­we’re the] hamster on the wheel like, “Ugh! I gotta get through this!”

Sifting through e-­mails from the copy editor, lesson planning at midnight before a morning class, attending a string of department committee meetings or community-­based meetings happening the same after­noon. This was Dawn’s hamster wheel for a good time. Fi­nally sending drafts to her publisher, she thought, “Oh good, thank God I’m done. I just need to get tenure. Give me the contract, so I can keep jumping through the hoops.” The obtainment of degrees, awards, and titles demands us to keep eyes ahead; never back, in reflection; never ­here, in the pre­sent—­only forward. We have to stay relevant and ­viable in the competition, jumping through t­ hose hoops. Quietly. ­We’re reminded of Rowena’s harrowing qualifying exams, a­ fter a laborious two years of coursework, conferences, and small publications. Two white Americanist professors on her committee provided some difficult feedback particularly with one of her research papers—­not the one articulating feminist theory, or the one surveying ethnic American w ­ omen writers, but the one covering nineteenth-­century American lit­er­a­ture. They recommended she “take additional courses” outside of the program with professors with whom she never

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worked “­because they felt that I needed to have a more academic style.” Devastated, she turned to her academic mentors who ­were faculty of color. While her African American professor strongly advocated for her, ironically, her Asian Americanist professor (who also taught w ­ omen’s studies) did not. Rowena recounted: “She essentially told me I just needed to do what they wanted me to do, [that] this hurdle would pass. [But] it would be compromising my integrity. I was being held to dif­fer­ent standards than the white gradu­ate students, adopting a voice that ­wasn’t necessarily my own.” The intensity of it all remained heavy on her chest for years with the hanging notion that “Basically, ­you’re a minority. You got in as a minority fellow. ­You’re not at that level we expect you to be.” When silence has us interrogating our conditions—­the pain and burdens we have carried over time—we might move to anger, as we find in the Pinay story. Through the journey comes a learning of a new truth, a turn to anger, and a reason to be fueled by such anger, as Woo expresses in her letter to her m ­ other: “I carry the anger from my own experience and the anger you ­couldn’t afford to express” (Woo, 1983, p. 142). What do we do with this anger? All ­these forms of silence got ­these ­women of color talking back.

The Anger: Digging up Empire What emerges across ­these portraits are points at which t­ hese Pinays feel cornered, assaulted, and assessed as incompetent. Although this is angering, we ­don’t turn away from it. D ­ oing so means “we turn from insight, saying we ­will accept only the designs already known, ­those deadly and safely familiar,” (Lorde, 1984, p. 131). Turning away from anger would mean accepting empire as is. Audre Lorde’s essay “The Uses of Anger: W ­ omen Responding to Racism” helps us to see the value in our anger. Her par­tic­u­lar tone of anger stems from racism, as she rec­ords: “I have lived with that anger, on that anger, beneath that anger, on top of that anger, ignoring that anger, feeding upon that anger, learning to use that anger. . . . ​Once I did it in silence, afraid of the weight of that anger. My fear of that anger taught me nothing. Your fear of that anger ­will teach you nothing, also” (Lorde, 1984, p. 124). In reaching out, she offers solace “to my s­ isters of Color who like me still t­ remble their rage u­ nder harness,” connecting anger (“rage”) to silence (“­under harness”) (p. 127). Pinays s­ hall take heed as Lorde nods to the power of co­ali­tion building: “When I speak of w ­ omen of Color, I do not only mean Black ­women. We are also Asian American, Ca­rib­ bean, Chicana, Latina, Hispanic, Native American, and we have a right to each of our names” (p. 127). Anger leads the Pinay scholar activist to a sharper analy­sis, a theoretical prism. “Loaded with information and energy” (Lorde, 1984, p. 127), anger fuels the takedown of empire. It begins with the digging: What are t­ hese stories of empire, ­these proj­ects and products of empire that have brought us to this

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pre­sent moment? The digging is a method of thinking and interrogating, which I w ­ ill l­ ater discuss in the last section of this analy­sis. Impor­tant to note for the moment is how the digging can change every­thing. Through the digging, we discover that “we are not h ­ ere as ­women examining racism in a po­liti­ cal and social vacuum. We operate in the teeth of [the] system,” of repressive conditions that must be examined and altered to “fashion a world where all our ­sisters can grow, where our ­children can love” (Lorde, 1984, p. 128). And we indeed make the choice to alter this world, with an anger that births the courage to do so. We have Ate Leny, who once gave a talk on the issues of power within interracial marriages (based on her lived experience as a Pinay married to a white American) at a Siklohiyong Pilipino (Filipino psy­chol­ogy) conference at Yale, where anthropologist Harold Conklin (known for his research on the indigenous Mangyan culture in the Philippines) was in attendance. “Pero puti [but white]?” I ask. She confirms, “Oo [yes], he’s a very big name.” Harold Conklin approached her, standing at roughly six-­foot and three-­inches and suggested, “You know, maybe you ­don’t need to decolonize yourself. You just need to de-­ professize yourself. And try not to theorize, but just think of the stories that you would like to tell.” Ate Leny walked away feeling slighted, shamed, and belittled—as if he w ­ ere telling her she w ­ asn’t fit for the intellectual work of theorizing. As if he ­were suggesting she stick to being a good-­natured caregiving Pinay who tells stories. His uninvited, gendered, and racialized bit of “advice” sends palpable waves of shock and anger. ­There was the moment Liza was caught by her f­ ather, as she was producing a college course paper on the problematic, heterosexist role of the Catholic Church. It angered him to see his ­daughter reduce their religion to this college paper. It angered her to realize the hypocritical nature of identifying as Catholic—­a religion that excludes w ­ omen from positions of power, denies the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community altogether—­while existing in a body that trou­bles the binary of male and female. “It just d­ idn’t make sense to me,” she resolved. Learning that we have been duped by the teachings of empire can be quite an infuriating experience. But this madness is all part of consciousness raising. The anger lies right h ­ ere, in the realization that we carry an added burden of our contradictions—­ between religion and an emerging feminism, as Liza did. And this is Pinay praxis—­learning how to live with ­these huge contradictions. ­There was the time when Sarita was in grad school and a male colleague pressed, “Sarita, you do know your theory, d­ on’t you?” The polarizing sentiment reverberated in her body years l­ater in Michigan when it was suggested that a par­tic­u­lar white male preacher-­turned-­professor would be perfect for an introductory class with 200 students. Th ­ ese two comments fetishize who is of intellect (of the mind) and who is not. Evidently, we are not. Empire dissects

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our bodies. Sarita’s mere presence in academic spaces as a Pinay scholar in some ways becomes an act of rebellion, raising hell on this stale colonized (mis)perception of who can read, write, and teach. This is especially true when we d­ on’t do what is expected of us. Remember, we w ­ ere “allowed” into the acad­emy. We must play the part of the forever grateful ­woman of color taking up space ­here, right? Be docile. D ­ on’t ask questions about unfair l­ abor practices. Count your blessings. You made it. We can see how the spiritual and emotional legacies of empire—­silence and anger—­engage Pinay scholar activists, as Woo (1983) expresses: “I feel now that I can begin to put our lives in a larger framework. The outlines for us are time and blood, [and] ­today, t­ here is breath” (p. 147). So, part of this Pinay story is finding that breath, in the pro­cess of coming to understand the interrelatedness of our colonized experiences with p­ eople we care about. Oftentimes, we take our anger to spaces where it can be received, understood, and engaged—­ where we can build with o­ thers to survive.

Resistant Socialities When Pinay scholar activists are fired up, they need a place11 where such anger can be transformed into “intentions that [can] affect the organ­ization of power” (Lugones, 2003, p. 15). Intentions such as t­ hese “need a sociality in order to move. That is, the formation of ­those intentions is social. . . . ​Enacting re­sis­tance as social and worldly requires an interactive understanding of intentions” (Lugones, 2003, p. 15). The state of education t­ oday is such that we are held up by its tentativeness. Th ­ ere is a war on the university about whose knowledge is valid, as ethnic studies programs across campuses nationwide are being axed. The strug­gle is to do the impor­tant work so that our communities not only survive but thrive. Pinay scholar activists answer this call by participating in making a “university within the university” as a way to contend with the contradictions of empire. I see Pinays finding each other in pockets where Asian American studies, Filipina/o American studies, critical diversity studies, ­women’s studies, intercultural studies, history, sociology, lit­er­a­ture, or art can hold space for their ideas, histories, and visions. For how do we exist within the belly of the beast?12 Especially when coloniality collides? The creation and being part of resistant socialities helps to tap into that very deep and power­ful well of shared experience and vision (see chapter 13). Like critical educational researcher Cindy Cruz, who uses this understanding of resistant socialities in her research of LGBTQ youth practices and small acts of re­sis­tance (Cruz, 2013), I draw from African American history scholar Robin D. G. Kelley to think about how Pinay scholar activists work through their “daily confrontations, evasive actions, and stifled thoughts” (Kelley, 1993, p. 77) with o­ thers.13 What strategies of re­sis­tance do they carry out, like t­ hose

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of other subjugated communities, “to negotiate the continuous scrutiny and containment by the power­ful” (Cruz, 2013, p. 3)? ­These are vital questions as research shows us that Building networks is crucial to professional success in academia. . . . ​­These [stories] suggest that allies are also essential for individual well-­being and the work of making the campus climate more hospitable for w ­ omen faculty of color. . . . ​The position brings with it the heavy burden of needing to serve a specific community without becoming overwhelmed by the demands for one’s time and attention. (Gutiérrez y Muhs, Niemann, et al., 2012, p. 9)

Robyn, a­ fter so many instances of invalidation in the ivory tower, found a sense of community with another ­woman of color who was Black and Puerto Rican while working t­ oward tenure at Rutgers. They connect and commiserate, “Just to be able to feel like w ­ e’re not crazy,” and eventually apply for funding to support a space for themselves, as she stressed: It was about building community, you know. I c­ ouldn’t be alone. ­Because when you choose for instance to do a topic related to your background, when you choose to do methods that are already considered marginal in your field, when you choose to continue to do—­I mean ­there ­were so many ­things that I chose that ­were always butting against the system [clapping her hands with each word.] How was I gonna survive myself? I had to build community with like-­minded p­ eople.

Similarly, Rowena, during her early years of teaching at De Anza, connected with a w ­ omen faculty of color group at De Anza called ­Women’s Allies, made up of mentors who had been radicalized in the late 1960s and the 1970s and deepened her thinking, so that together they could work to advance an equity agenda for their students. That work on campus she would ­later learn to translate in the streets with the Silicon Valley–­based grassroots organ­ization FOCUS (Filipino Community Support). When Ate Leny was ­doing her master of arts, she would or­ga­nize regular kapihans (conversations over coffee) ­every quarter with Pinoy scholars around the Bay Area. She expressed that we can get caught up in the scholarship of the ivory tower and forget the scholarship we still need to build from within our own community. ­These kapihans ­were sites of critical reflection where they got to sit together and question Western norms of scholarship. That practice gave her the tools to further the sharing of knowledge about our Filipino Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Practices through the establishment of the Center for Babaylan Studies. Dawn shakes her head in amusement, recalling that moment in the laundromat: two single gradu­ate student Pinays, arranging their clothes and

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thinking about Dawn’s next steps. Her best friend Allyson was teasing her about being too scared to go for a doctorate. This is how they roll. This is how they push each other. We need our ­sisters to push us, to have our backs like this when w ­ e’re questioning our abilities, talents, and strengths along this road in the acad­emy. Dawn was assured by Allyson that she would not be ­going a­ fter this doctorate alone, that Dawn had a village who would help raise her up should she fall (see chapter 12). Being that it was the mid-1990s, a special point in time in which Pin@ys ­were pursuing advanced degrees in considerable numbers, ­there was a growing influence to build with another on campus and in the academic world—­a “golden period” their generation holds in high regard. It would be an experience from which she could source some inspiration in her ­later establishment of Stockton’s ­Little Manila Foundation. Sarita’s co-­coordination of the Critical Ethnic Studies Conference comes to mind. Once her and her colleagues’ jobs w ­ ere stabilized, they went to work “on the side” or “on top of” their day jobs to put out a call for papers. To build a conference that would be meaningful to their collective interrogation of empire, they met at odd times, with Sarita flying back and forth from toxic Ann Arbor to sunny Southern California. Together, they realized how capable they ­were of pulling off something at such a tremendous scale. “Basically, we ­were saying we d­ idn’t know we ­were as power­ful as this!” Sarita exclaims. Strength in numbers. Strength in our resistant socialities. And how power­ ful it is when we not only gather in numbers for a shared purpose but when we see to it that t­ hose numbers grow, such as the case with Liza and the Kababayan Community at Skyline College. She recognized as a new faculty member that the program needed to be revived and that revival would help ensure her own survival in the game. Organ­izing closely with a dedicated team of educators and counselors, they brought it back to life and got to see siblings of former students also come through and benefit from the pipeline. Working in education, an arm of the state, can be quite the precarious job as we push back on the powers that be. As each of ­these Pinay scholar activists use alternative ways to talk about their experiences in the world, they find themselves through their thinking, writing, and teaching with ­others, “­because if you ­don’t find it, then all you get is what the hegemony gives you” (Cruz, 2016b, personal communication). They establish and join “­free spaces in which to articulate grievances and dreams . . . ​places that enable them to take back their bodies, to recuperate, to be together,” (Kelley, 1993, p.  84). All ­these portraits describe this practice of being with o­ thers, of “sustain[ing] bonds of community mutual support networks, and a collectivist ethos that s­haped” their po­liti­cal strug­gle (Kelley, 1993, p. 83). This is a difficult t­ hing indeed, working together in the very place that tells us only individual achievement ­matters. And when ­women co-­author a book, co-­teach a course, or co-­present at a conference, their collaborative efforts are devalued. Th ­ ese ­women, however, found individual

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endeavors to be isolating, exhausting, and perhaps even traumatizing. They created spaces within and outside the par­ameters of power, such that academic endeavors look dif­fer­ent in their classrooms, or in their books, often together with the ­people from whom they find solace. It is this Pinay’s understanding of her work that recognizes a “peopled sense” of the world (Lugones, 2010).

A Pinayist Pedagogical Praxis: What It Looks Like I wrestle with an assertion a Filipino professor once made during my master’s training in Asian American studies at San Francisco State University. He shared, “Someone asked me: What is all this talk about colonialism? Why do Filipino scholars keep talking about colonialism? Are we saying that by virtue of being Filipino, ­we’re fucked?” Throughout my academic journey, this comment has stuck with me. It is a power­ful comment ­because it is a foreclosure of agency or any possibility to do or be something e­ lse. It is a linear way of seeing a beginning and an end. Th ­ ese Pinayist prac­ti­tion­ers turn their back on this foreclosure. All of their instances of silence, invalidation, anger, and indignation could have easily forced the Pinay scholar activist to turn away from her work altogether. Instead, she recharted her own path with ­others, linking historiographies of pain and resilience—­all of it thus critical to the opening of a horizon of possibility, as it alludes to the desire for another order, an alternative order. [Our dialogues] inhabit the pre­sent as a time of always already disenchanted emancipatory proj­ects, [while] striv[ing] to create another time, a simultaneous conditional pre­sent in which anticolonial fury has not been exhausted and decolonization is still pos­si­ble: this conditional pre­sent temporality reckons with the failures of emancipation [such as our families immigrating for a better life, or our attempt to supposedly f­ ree our minds while in the prison of the university] yet revisits the time of anticolonial possibility without determining its final course or outcome. (Lowe, 2009, p. 111)

The Pinay scholar activist leaves it open with room to build. As such, I now extend the work of Allyson Tintiangco-­Cubales, who birthed the theory of Pinayism in 1995 (Tintiangco-­Cubales, 2005). We begin by understanding how the basic formula of Pinayism practice, “Pain + Love = Growth,” aims to engage the complexities . . . ​to understand how Pinay identities, perspectives, multiple subjectivities, negotiation of contradictions, and transformative re­sis­tance are birthed. [It is] a critical cultural production of . . . ​engaged scholarship that expresses Pinay perspectives and counternarratives . . . ​and a critical pedagogy of the teaching and learning of Pinay studies and the mentoring and reproduction of social justice educators. (Tintiangco-­Cubales, 2007, p. 157)

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I build on her theoretical groundwork to show how the par­tic­u­lar practices of ­these six w ­ omen are in fact Pinayism in motion. As Pinayism advises, “Pain + Love = Growth,” we indeed witness how digging up the truths of empire brings pain and how the “excavation of our honesties” allows us to approach such pain with love (Lorde, 1984). From this, we grow. Social scientists want to know: how do we observe this growth born of pain and love? Prac­ti­tion­ers want to know: what are the ­actual practices of disenchantment of empire? Th ­ ese practices of using their anger to fuel a digging up of stories gone s­ ilent for too long, t­ hese practices of reconciliation and learning to live in ­g reat contradictions, I refer to as Pinayist pedagogical praxis. According to education–­ethnic studies scholars Allyson Tintiangco-­Cubales and Jocyl Sacramento, who have published a Pinayist curriculum for teachers in the classroom, it is “a praxis asserting a transformative and transgressive agency that combines theory, practice, and personal reflection . . . ​connecting the global and local to the personal issues and stories” (Tintiangco-­Cubales & Sacramento, 2009, p. 179). The work of Pinay scholar activists in this study is Pinayist praxis in the sense that their mode of inquiry itself is a pro­cess of decolonizing or deimperializing that holds a vision that not only sees the “trace of [a] world historical encounter both enabled and disavowed by the Empire” (Lowe, 2009, p. 110), it centers it. Their scholarship is about this centering in “a radical politic” so that their “act[s] of testifying to the daily contradictions of living as w ­ omen of color in the U.S.” remain key (Cruz, 2016a, p. 3). As each of them “strug­gle to create the conditions necessary so that a new generation may not be disciplined by the same racial [classist, and heterosexist] vio­lence” (Lowe, 2009, p. 109) of empire, they gather with o­ thers as “active subjectivities” (Lugones, 2010, p. 211) in resistant socialities to think through and document their lived realities and untold histories. By ­doing so, they create other imaginings of what life could be, transforming their world. This seemingly myopic study of six extraordinary individuals aims to show all the texture unseen through general findings, presenting this shared method of thinking and of interrogating. An example comes from Robyn, whose early civic engagement work as a high school student began with the question, “What books are out ­there about Filipinos? My teachers d­ idn’t know about it; certainly ­people in the community ­didn’t know. They d­ idn’t have an answer to that.” Robyn was hit with the troubling realization that t­here is no history taught of Pinays and Pinoys, that “official knowledge” apparently does not mean or include Pinay histories and herstories. This realization radicalized Robyn, moving her ­toward a search for answers and the creation of alternative histories/herstories and other spaces of knowledge. Since Liza has begun demystifying empire as a college student, she has noticed through all the movement—­settling and resettling into dif­fer­ent homes

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and schools and jobs throughout the United States—­that Liza’s parents have largely kept ­silent. All Liza heard growing up was, “Do this. Do that. ­Don’t get into trou­ble.” What are their stories? Interestingly enough, Liza now stays put in California, teaching a book like Brown Skin, White Minds (David, 2013) to ­counter this silence ­a fter having helped to revitalize a dormant community college service-­learning program aimed at and building both the individual and collective voice through writing, per­for­mance, and mentorship. With Ate Leny looking at her f­ ather, the Bible-­clutching Methodist pastor, she knew one t­ hing for sure: “I want to be ­whole and spend the rest of my life feeling w ­ hole” (Strobel, 2010, p. 24). And biblical verses would not be the only rules to live by, the sole form of wisdom and teaching in her life. She would source another wisdom springing from within, gathered in dreams and in communion with o­ thers. She would write her own bibles of sorts, producing words across pages that pay reverence to her being. And she would help build an organ­ ization that embraces forms of spirituality, calling the wisdom of her ancestors who ­were all ­there before any missionary ever spoke to her ­father and changed him (as well as her ­family). Sarita reconciles her place in the academic industrial complex by hailing the memory of her ­father’s journey through empire, adding, “All I have to do is remember my Filipino grand­father who was ­house­boy to an American university president in Kansas, in the heartland, in the Midwest, where I now work. . . . ​ So I remember my legacy, the paternalism at the heart of this patrilineal legacy,” to which she lays claim as a Pinay. It is a legacy, sociology and education professor Roland Coloma would agree, that employs “techniques of imperialist patriarchal masculinity that privilege [white, Christian, straight] men and perpetuate their power” (Coloma, 2006b, p. 648). Sarita eloquently says, “I refuse to do honor to the production of colonial knowledge at the heart of this legacy. I refuse to belong to the ­house of the American university even as I work in it.” When Sarita speaks of this ­house of the American university, we ­can’t help but think of the myth of the h ­ ouse negro (Malcolm X, 1963), the Black slave who identified and empathized with his master no ­matter how oppressive his living conditions. Sarita wants us to see ­these insidious and inherently oppressive conditions in the centuries-­old ­house of the American university in which she works but makes it clear that she si­mul­ta­neously refuses to align herself with ­those in positions of power who perpetuate the vio­lence manufactured within its walls. Th ­ ose conditions are precisely that which must be destroyed. Any reiteration of such conditions ­will never get us to liberation— as Audre Lorde tells us, “the master’s tools ­will never dismantle the master’s h ­ ouse” (1984). All t­ hese moves t­ hese p­ eople make help to remediate not just their story but the story of their parents and grandparents from h ­ ere in the United States back to the Philippines. ­There is a pedagogy ­here, a way of life that ­people have

344  •  Melissa-­Ann Nievera-­Lozano

chosen, committing themselves to t­ hese moves. Th ­ ese scholars are the scholars they are ­because they saw their parents and grandparents navigating empire. We must exhume the lines of thought and experience that have preceded us in the bodies of our m ­ others, our f­ athers, grandparents, and ancestors—­before, through, and ­after colonization; before, through, and ­after immigration to the United States—­and use that wisdom as navigation, as compass to guide us in this work in the acad­emy. I share extensively in my dissertation (Nievera-­ Lozano, 2016) the psychic and cultural split wounding the immigrant families of ­these Pinay scholar activists. Their re-­discovery is about taking back an infinite knowing of themselves. Through it, they revise practices and pedagogies to undo the story of colonization in the institutions of ­family as well as the acad­emy. Furthermore, their productive pedagogies shape ­those with whom they build, as Tintiangco-­Cubales and Sacramento clarify: Pinayist educators use their role as teachers to reproduce p­ eople who choose to participate in transformational re­sis­tance. They resist reproductive theory suggesting that education produces workers to help maintain the cap­i­tal­ist economy. Instead, Pinayist educators create communities of social justice in the classroom. Their pedagogy provides a counterhegemonic, student-­centered, and culturally relevant teaching and learning experience that utilizes love, holistic health, and community to humanize the teacher, student, and Pinay. . . . ​It is an individual and communal pro­cess of decolonization, humanization, self-­ determination, and relationship building, ultimately moving t­ oward liberation (Tintiangco-­Cubales & Sacramento, 2009, p. 185).

This Pinayist pedagogy is practiced to “create another terrain of possibility” (Lowe, 2009, p. 109). The double work and double consciousness we must perform in the acad­emy is something to which Dawn can also attest. In one moment, she was writing her dissertation, knowing every­thing about her specialized topic; then told in the next moment, “­You’re teaching History of the United States to 80 students in 2 weeks.” “Fuck, I d­ on’t know even know what caused the Civil War. I gotta teach this shit? Omigod,” she gulped. The Pinay in academia has to know all the rules in order to break them. She has to know her U.S. history, in order to teach an alternative ethnic studies. She has to prove herself as an authority of dominant histories while she hones her craft in the writing and teaching of marginalized histories. She’s got to be equipped with the content. B ­ ecause she w ­ ill always be questioned, this Pinay. Rowena’s maternal grandparents come to mind when asked what inspires her work. She wishes she had more time with them. In their strug­gle to ­settle in the United States, her f­ amily d­ idn’t have the means to afford traveling back and forth to the Philippines to visit them. She holds stories, which she heard even before meeting them as a child, that they ­were amazingly generous ­people

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in their village town, especially to t­ hose who w ­ ere in ­great need. By the time they re­united in the United States, her grand­father, only in his fifties, was already sick and died soon ­after. Their memories together are few, but the stories she carries of them powerfully link her to the faith-­healing traditions in her maternal bloodline. In a gift of hilot (healing touch), she’s experienced being freed from ailment by her ­mother’s hands. This gift translates into a kind of legacy bridge work she brings to her students and faculty on campus.14 With Rowena’s qualifying exams, which could have broken her completely, she knew she was being held to dif­fer­ent standards. ­Today, she helps to set and shape standards at Berkeley City College; Rowena flips this, unapologetically wearing her name badge, which reads “president.” In some ways scarred by the stringent pipeline of work that forced her m ­ other to accept nursing assistant jobs across varied medical facilities, Rowena takes part in developing a pipeline for young folk at the community college. The badge on her shirt beneath her golden brown face says to younger Pinays and Asian American w ­ omen, “I see you. I’m ­here to connect with you in this space.” By working with a peopled sense of the world, ­these Pinays are not just agents of social change. In fact, I’d like to shift the notion of agency—­often read as “single authorship, individual responsibility, and individual accountability”—­ and move t­ oward the notion of “active subjectivity” whereby the creation of resistant socialities and “tactical strategic stances” (Lugones, 2003) of ­these ­women of color construct liberatory possibilities.

Flutter By and Fly On The anecdotes ­here are small samples from which we can draw further analy­ sis, like small petals in a garden of flowers from which we can draw nectar. Bit by bit, the taste merely points us to the next flower, so that we can see the abundant garden that is ­here. For a moment, I return to the questions asked of me in the midst of my fieldwork: “What is this Filipina story coming through the research? What makes it Pinay?” The narratives tell us, first, that the Pinay (scholar activist) story is defined by t­ hose unshakeable experiences of silence, invalidation, and anger, which disenchant her from empire and propel her to build resistant socialities where she can begin recharting new ways of teaching, writing, and thinking (crafting a Pinayist pedagogical praxis). The Pinay story stands at the foot of the power structure of academia and says, “We reclaim our being. We ­will work to undo your harm. We ­will get f­ ree.” As an academic, sitting with t­ hese stories and writing them as I did was quite the emotional, spiritual journey. What does it mean to honor the experiences as “data” in the world of research? ­Shall I be discounted if I do not triangulate, calculate; line all my ducks in a row so as to depict a reliable study? Such

346  •  Melissa-­Ann Nievera-­Lozano

questions set up an internal chaos—­that cocoon—­which has already para­ lyzed my writing for many years. ­Doing this research with fierce Pinay scholar activists whom I regard as mentors hardened my stance to continue fighting the tower. Developing critically conscious curriculums, disseminating knowledge about histories of oppression in the classroom, and documenting ongoing incidents of injustice in the acad­emy as members of it—­these are all ways we harden that stance. But then t­ here’s the simultaneous and inescapable journey of grief h ­ ere—­a dif­fer­ent cocoon I weave and unravel and weave again endlessly some days. Despite my hardened stance as a Pinay scholar activist b­ ehind t­ hese six ­women, my ­sister, Pinay’s, life cycle shapes my presence in the university in such a way that I, my inner voice, my self-­conscience (the manner at which I speak to myself) is softened. Through my grief journey, I learned personally how, in our ­human condition, we can become imprisoned by our own suffering. But our goal is liberation. To write my dissertation in the way I was led to write it, I had to be willing to ­pardon myself, to be gentle with myself, to ­free the ever debilitating self-­critic, and to unfold t­ hese wings on their own time. Just as Pinay’s wings opened and carried her to the light according to a greater plan. I hope you ­were able to r­ ide with the rhythm, the beat felt through the storytelling of each person, as we fluttered across and touched down on conversations about our fluidity. It was an analytical pro­cess for which I am grateful as it allowed me to see aspects of myself in return. We fly on.

Notes 1 When Leny Strobel accepted the invitation to participate in this study, she began signing her correspondence with “Ate Leny.” I honor her name by referring to her as such. Ate (pronounced Ah-­teh), means “older ­sister” in Filipino (Tagalog). It is a term of endearment or re­spect, regardless of blood relation. Manang is a similar term used in Filipino communities, deriving from other Filipino languages such as Ilokano. 2 Rowena Tomaneng is president of Berkeley College, ­a fter having taught and managed policies as vice president of instruction at De Anza College for twenty years during the time of this study. Leny Strobel is professor emeritus in American multicultural studies at Sonoma State University and proj­ect director at the Center for Babaylan Studies. Dawn Bohulano Mabalon was co-­founder of the ­Little Manila Foundation in her hometown of Stockton, California, and was associate professor of history at San Francisco State University. Sadly, Dawn passed away unexpectedly on August 10, 2018. Liza Erpelo is associate professor in the Language Arts Division and coordinator of the Kababayan Program at Skyline Community College. Robyn Rodriguez is professor and chair of Asian American studies at the University of California, Davis, and a member of the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns. Sarita See is professor in media and cultural studies at the University of California, Riverside; as well as the founder and executive director of the nonprofit, Web-­based organ­ization the Center for Art and Thought.

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3 Pinay (pronounced Pin-­Aye) is a nickname for Filipina Americans, first used by the earliest immigrants to Hawaii and the United States, almost exclusively by the working class. T ­ oday, Filipinas throughout the diaspora use this term and regard it as one of self-­empowerment and affection (Tintiangco-­Cubales, 2007). 4 This chapter offers an overview of data collected for my dissertation research in which I sat with six dif­fer­ent Pinay scholar activists in their homes or campuses to listen to their stories of immigration history, schooling, f­ amily, coming of age, community, coming to consciousness, and scholarship. In the full dissertation, each Pinay scholar activist portrait holds a chapter of its own, illustrating the ways in which transformative moments in each of their lives shape their work. See Nievera-­Lozano (2016) for more details. 5 Sutured portraiture might be ­imagined as a form of anthologizing to be further theorized, as found in the Santa Cruz Feminist of Color Collective’s (2014) essay. 6 See chapter 13, to read more about how ­women of color academics recognize legacies and lineages among one another. 7 Lowe (2009) reviews and cites Hazel Carby’s unpublished manuscript, “Child of Empire: Racializing Subjects in Post-­World War II Britain.” 8 This is a popu­lar activist chant, particularly among Mexican American and Latinx activists. 9 See Nievera-­Lozano (2016) for more on the relationships between t­ hese Pinay scholar activists and their parents and grandparents. 10 See chapter 3, on the ways in which academic life affects the health of Asian American ­women in par­tic­u­lar. 11 See chapter 13, on the practicalities and results of creating such a space in social media. 12 See chapter 1, which asks the same question. 13 See also Hanna (2015) for more strategies for w ­ omen of color to resist against the neoliberal acad­emy in ways in which collective healing becomes an act of decoloniality. 14 ­Future work might explore the notion of hilot pedagogy and academic practice, a term to describe ways of moving through academia as an intentional practice. The concept of hilot might help us imagine further a new articulation around our theories for ser­vice not only in the classroom but also in the gesture of being a mentor and colleague, for instance, with a hilot touch.

References Alexander, M. J. (2009). Working the conjunctions: Angela Davis & the radicalization of oppositional praxis. Presented at the Angela Davis: Legacies in the Making Conference, University of California, Santa Cruz. Cameron, B. (1981). Entering the lives of ­others: Theory in the flesh. In C. Moraga & G. Anzaldúa (Eds.), This bridge called my back: Writings by radical w ­ omen of color. New York: Kitchen ­Table Press. Choy, C. C. (2003). Empire of care: Nursing and migration in Filipino American history. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Retrieved from https://­books​.­google​.­com​/b­ ooks​ /­about​/E ­ mpire​_­of​_C ­ are​.­html​?­id​=­x HHuYGlS4EEC Coloma, R. (2006a). Disorienting race and education: Changing paradigms on the schooling of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Race, Ethnicity & Education, 9(1), 1–15.

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Coloma, R. S. (2006b). Putting queer to work: Examining empire and education. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 19, 639–657. Retrieved from http://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1080​/­09518390600886437 Cruz, C. (2013). LGBTQ street youth d­ oing re­sis­tance in infrapo­liti­cal worlds. In E. Tuck & K. W. Yang (Eds.), Youth re­sis­tance research and theories of change (p. 187–207). New York: Routledge. Retrieved from https://­books​.­google​.­com​/­books​/­about​/­Youth​ _ ­Resistance​_ ­Research​_­and​_­Theories​_­o​.­htl​?­id​=­c0o3AgAAQBAJ Cruz, C. (2016a, February). Notes ­toward a pedagogy of This Bridge Called My Back. Hamilton, NY: Colgate University. Cruz, C. (2016b, February 22). On this practice of being with o­ thers. Personal communication with the author. San Jose, CA. Csordas, T. (1990). Embodiment as a paradigm for anthropology. Ethos, 18(1), 5–47. David, E.J.R. (2013). Brown skin, white minds: Filipino-­/American postcolonial psy­chol­ogy. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Dillard, C. B. (2000). The substance of t­ hings hoped for, the evidence of ­things not seen: Examining an endarkened feminist epistemology in educational research and leadership. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 13, 661–681. Gutiérrez y Muhs, G., Niemann, Y. F., González, C. G., & Harris, A. P. (Eds.). (2012). Presumed incompetent: The intersections of race and class for w ­ omen in academia (1st ed.). Boulder: Colorado State University Press. Hanna, K. B. (2015, Fall). Living beyond survival: 11 Tips for ­women of color in academia. Hyphen Magazine, 29, 21–24. Kelley, R.D.G. (1993). “We are not what we seem”: Rethinking black working-­class opposition in the Jim Crow South. Journal of American History, 80(1), 75–112. Retrieved from http://­doi​.o­ rg​/­10​.­2307​/­2079698 Leonardo, Z. (2010). Rearticulating souls of Filipino folk: Deconstructing coloniality for the reconstruction of a postcolonial identity. Presented at the American Educational Research Association, Denver, CO, April 30–­May 4. Lorde, A. (1984). The uses of anger: W ­ omen responding to racism. In ­Sister outsider: Essays & speeches by Audre Lorde (Vol. 25, pp. 124–133). Freedom, CA: Crossing Press. Lowe, L. (1998). Memories of colonial modernity: Dogeaters. Amerasia Journal Amerasia Journal, 24, 161–164. Lowe, L. (2009). Autobiography out of empire. Small Axe, 13(1), 98–111. Retrieved from http://­doi​.­org ​/­10​.­1215​/­07990537​-­2008​-­009 Lugones, M. (2003). Pilgrimages/peregrinajes: Theorizing co­ali­tion against multiple oppressions. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Lugones, M. (2010). ­Toward a decolonial feminism. Hypatia, 25(4), 742–759. Retrieved from http://­doi​.o­ rg​/­10​.­1111​/­j​.1­ 527​-­2001​.­2010​.0 ­ 1137​.x­ Mabalon, D. B. (2013). ­Little Manila is in the heart: The making of the Filipina/o American community in Stockton, California. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Maese-­Cohen, M. (2010). Introduction: ­Toward planetary decolonial feminisms. Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences, 18(2), 3–27. Retrieved from http://­doi​ .­org​/­10​.­1353​/q­ ui​.­0​.­0015 Moraga, C., & Anzaldúa, G. (Eds.). (1983). This bridge called my back: Writings by radical ­women of color. New York: Kitchen ­Table Press. Nievera-­L ozano, M.-­A . (2016). Portraits of decolonizing praxis: How the lives of critically engaged Pinay scholars inform their work (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Th ­ eses database. (Accession or Order Number ucsc11029)

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Santa Cruz Feminist of Color Collective. (2014). Building on “the edge of each other’s ­battles”: A feminist of color multidimensional lens. Hypatia, 29(1), pp. 23–40. Sassen, S. (1993). Why migration? Population & Immigration, 4(2). Retrieved from http://­urbanhabitat​.­org​/­node​/­956 Strobel, L. M. (2005). A book of her own: Words and images to Honor the Babaylan. San Francisco: Tiboli Publishing. Strobel, L. M. (Ed.). (2010). Babaylan: Filipinos and the call of the indigenous (1st ed.). Davao City, Philippines: Ateneo de Davao University Research and Publications Office. Tintiangco-­Cubales, A. G. (2005). Pinayism. In M. L. de Jesús (Ed.), Pinay power: Peminist critical theory: Theorizing the Filipina/American experience (pp. 137–148). London: Psy­chol­ogy Press. Tintiangco-­Cubales, A. (2007). Pinayism unit. In A. Tintiangco-­Cubales (Ed.), Pin@y educational partnerships: A Filipino/o American studies sourcebook, Volume 2: Filipina/o American identities, activism, and ser­vice (pp. 155–196). Santa Clara, CA: Phoenix Publishing House International. Tintiangco-­Cubales, A., & Sacramento, J. (2009). Practicing Pinayist pedagogy. Amerasia Journal, 35(1), 179–187. Woo, M. (1983). Letter to ma. In C. Moraga & G. Anzaldúa (Eds.), This bridge called my back: Writings by radical w ­ omen of color (pp. 140–147). New York: Kitchen ­Table ­Women of Color Press X, Malcolm. (1963, January). The race prob­lem. Presented to the African Students Association and NAACP Chapter, Michigan State University, East Lansing.

12

Mothering Is Liberation Giving Birth to Alagaan Pedagogy (Pedagogy of Care) ALLYSON TINTIANGCO-­C UBALES

Abstract Professor Tintiangco-­Cubales discusses the obstacles that ­women in academia face when they choose to start their families and analyzes the discriminatory practices against un/tenured ­women who have ­children. She offers alternative ways to structure academia through integrating parenting into teaching and research. By offering a nontraditional, groundbreaking paradigm on mothering as a kind of pedagogy, she states that the holistic, reciprocal relationship between mothering and intellectual studies can sustain a professor’s health and psychological well-­being. Rather than being a setback to one’s academic c­ areer, mothering nurtures a motherscholar’s spiritual, emotional, and po­liti­cal growth and strengthens her resilience in academia.

Introduction Guilt. I feel filled with guilt. Am I spending enough time with my child? Am I giving enough attention to my partner? Am I publishing enough? Am I prepping enough for my teaching? Am I ­doing every­thing that I possibly can do to serve my community? Am I taking care of myself? Am I ­doing enough? I am 350

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asked over and over, “How do you do it all?” All t­ hese questions run through my mind on a daily basis; they are questions that are rooted in guilt and doubt. ­These feelings of guilt come from me, a Pinay1 who was born to immigrant parents in the United States. This guilt comes from someone who almost failed out of high school but ended up with a PhD. This guilt comes from being a full-­ time tenured professor, a published author, and a director of an ethnic studies pipeline at six urban school sites with over fifty volunteer teachers serving over 200 students. This guilt comes from one of the organizers who rallied the community to fight for ethnic studies to be instituted in San Francisco’s public schools. Th ­ ese feelings of guilt come from a wife who is trying to maintain a meaningful relationship with her partner. This guilt comes from a m ­ other who is raising her child to be proud of who she is even when society deems she should feel other­wise. This ­mother is on the Parent–­Teacher Association board, produces her d­ aughter’s school newsletter, volunteers in her child’s class once a week, acts as class mom for her ­daughter’s ballet program, and serves food at the food bank some Friday mornings. This is a motherscholar2 who is working with the school district to institute a Filipino bilingual–­bicultural pathway and works with credentialed teachers on a weekly basis to develop an ethnic studies curriculum that aims to serve all ­children. This exhausting list does not even include the numerous committees, speaking gigs, and community events in which this motherscholar participates. This does not even include the letters of recommendation to be written, meetings with students, serving on dissertation and thesis committees, and the endless hours of direct mentoring, counseling, and care. Even with this laundry list and curriculum vita, which can be misconstrued as a ­woman that can do it all with ease and without challenges and obstacles, I still combat my own internalized guilt—­a questioning of w ­ hether I am ­doing enough and what I am sacrificing in order to accomplish it all. This self-­blaming runs deep, but I believe I am far from alone with ­these feelings and have to ask, “how did I, how did we, get to this point?” Maybe the real question is not “how do we do it all?” but rather “how can we not do it all?”—­ meaning, mothering, teaching, ser­vice, and scholarship are not antithetical to each other. They are only seen as impossible ­because they are seen as being contradictory pro­cesses. To be a good scholar means to be analytical and detached, while to be a good m ­ other and a good teacher means to be engaged and caring. To serve meaningfully in the university too often means to take self-­ aggrandizing leadership roles, which again is seen as oppositional to what a good m ­ other does, which is self-­sacrifice. Writing this essay was as much a pro­cess of healing as it was about liberation. It allowed me to critically examine the challenges that I have faced at home, in the acad­emy, and in the community: spaces in which I have worked tirelessly to both serve ­others and to prove my academic worthiness, which the institution has told me are binarily oppositional but my heart tells me are the

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same. Moreover, I now recognize they inform each other b­ ecause it appears I have always utilized the essence of mothering, even before I was actually a ­mother. With my students and in the community, I have or­ga­nized efficiently like one would a ­house­hold. I have nurtured, patiently taught, and been open to learning from my p­ eople and the groups I serve how to be a better activist scholar. When I did become a m ­ other, I saw the value of exposing my ­daughter to academia and the community. The lessons in t­ hese arenas served to bring positive growth for my child, and she was able to see all aspects of her m ­ other. Seeing her growth has helped me to rearticulate my purpose in all of t­ hese spaces and the crossroads between them. Sharing my story of survival as a community-­engaged motherscholar of color also has afforded me a place to articulate my personal Alagaan pedagogy,3 which I expand below.

Guilt and Doubts as Microaggressions I have come to realize that my feelings of guilt are rooted in external and structural expectations that define what it means to be a m ­ other and what it means to be a scholar. Doubts from outside forces are microaggressions4 that often fuel my guilt. The following statements represents three types of doubts that I face daily: Doubt 1: “I had no idea that you w ­ ere a m ­ other.” I stood ­there for a minute trying to figure out what my fellow Asian American mother-­scholar-­colleague meant. “It’s just that you, you just, just do too much.” At that moment, faced with this statement, why did I feel like I ­wasn’t d­ oing enough? I felt pressured to live out preconceived notions of what a ­mother/motherscholar was supposed to be and expectations of my time management. It was implied that “good professors” ­don’t have time to be “good ­mothers.” ­These imposed limitations easily translate into inadequacies. I felt like her acknowl­edgment of my “­doing too much” might have meant that p­ eople viewed me as not being a good m ­ other, that maybe I ­didn’t give enough time to my child or my f­ amily. Doubt 2: “­You’re a professor? I would have never guessed. You just d­ on’t look like one.” With her blue eyes encased in her aged pale white skin, she gazed at and silently interrogated me from head to toe, examining my inappropriate-­ for-­a-­professor skin-­tight jeans. Then she stared at my skin, a complexion that surrendered the identity of my genes rooted in third-­world ancestry. I had no idea if it was meant to be a compliment that I ­didn’t look like a typical professor or if it was an attack on my inability and unwillingness to camouflage my youth, my woman-­ness, and the color of my skin. I felt even more awkward that ­these doubts ­were coming from another ­woman, a feminist whose scholarship was about giving voice to the lived experiences of ­women. Her comments fed into my feelings of being an “imposter” in the acad­emy (Clance & Imes, 1978; Gordon, 2003). Along with not “looking like” a professor, I also have expressed

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fundamental disagreements with what the purpose of education is supposed to be about, what a professor should be like, and how mothering is part of my role as a teacher. Doubt 3: “I heard getting a PhD and becoming a professor is selling out. Professors ­don’t have time to be involved in community work.” A young Pinay student activist came to me for gradu­ate school advice when I first started teaching as a tenure-­track professor and presented me with a ste­reo­type that I was destined to disprove. I am well aware of the suspicion and critiques that community members have of scholars, particularly ­those who do research or theorize about community-­based work and then do not lift a fin­ger to serve the community (Christopher, Watts, et al., 2008; Fletcher, Hammer & Hibbert, 2014). Although I do believe that research and theory can benefit communities, I also saw a need for me to have a more hands-on approach to my ser­vice. On top of the expectations of being an educator, a scholar, and a ­mother, I became deeply engaged in community work. This, of course, was discouraged by many of my colleagues as a death sentence to my tenure, but I was determined to prove other­wise. For nearly two de­cades, I have fought diligently against this guilt and t­ hese doubts—­mostly against internalizing them. The exhausting strug­gle to prove myself to t­ hose who cast doubt upon my ability, capacity, and integrity had to come to an end. Instead of allowing ­these doubts to consume my ­every action or reaction, I learned to categorize them as distractions and oppressions that I associate with a larger patriarchal design. I have come to accept that my very existence, as a community-­engaged motherscholar of color, threatens the patriarchal institutions of the acad­emy and even traditional notions of motherhood. Feminists of color have urged scholars, particularly ­those in the world of education, to think deeply about the three main shifts in which ­women—­especially ­mothers—­are often bound or burdened to participate. The first shift represents the “productive” work that ­women get (­under)paid for, and the second shift is the “reproductive” work that they do at home, which is often unpaid and undervalued. The third shift, as some ­women of color scholars have described, is the community participation or maintenance of personal and community survival that is often both expected and unrecognized (Dickson, 1997; Glenn, 1992; Tintiangco-­Cubales & Sacramento, 2009). For a tenured community-­engaged scholar of color, my mothering goes far beyond the raising of the one child that I have biologically birthed; instead, mothering has become a pro­cess of liberation, re­sis­tance, and power that is integrated in all of three of ­these shifts. Unfortunately, academic structures including retention, tenure, and promotion policies and practices do not value the “work” that is done beyond what is considered a legitimate part of the “job.” This is an autoethnographic reflection on the challenges and triumphs in my personal shifts of mothering at home, in school/academia, and in the

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community. Building on critical pedagogy, feminist theory, mothering epistemology, and Pinayism (Darder, 2002; Rendon, 2009; Tintiangco-­Cubales & Sacramento, 2009), I have “birthed” a personal Alagaan pedagogy, a pedagogy of care that humanizes self, f­ amily, community, teachers, and students in the pro­ cess t­ oward liberation. Alagaan pedagogy occurs in the following spaces: 1. 2. 3.

At Home: Mothering as Liberation At School/In Academia: Mothering as Education In a Critical Community: Mothering as a Collective

At Home: Mothering as Liberation “Liberation is thus a childbirth, a painful one” (Freire, 1970).

Immediately a­ fter giving birth to my ­daughter Mahalaya (“Mahal” means love and “Laya” means freedom in Tagalog), which was no doubt a painful childbirth, I may have still agreed with Freire. But now, years ­after the “­labor,” it has become clear to me that childbirth may not be the best meta­phor for liberation. Over time, I began to realize that childbirth in essence is an event that resulted in a product, a child. But childbirth also births a pro­cess of motherhood, the becoming of a ­mother; childbirth is the beginning of the real ­labor, which is mothering. Childbirth only describes the beginning of a painful pro­ cess of motherhood, of child rearing, the raising of ­children in a society full of contradictions and dangers, yet a society also full of hopes and possibilities. Oftentimes motherhood has seemed more painful than the birth itself, a pain that is rooted in my own doubt and guilt of not fulfilling my role as ­mother. It was not ­until I read Adrienne Rich’s (1976/1986) seminal book Of ­Woman Born, where she describes the tension between motherhood and mothering, that I realized the source of my guilt. The term “motherhood” refers to the patriarchal institution of motherhood that is male-­defined and controlled and is deeply oppressive to ­women, while the word “mothering” refers to ­women’s experiences with mothering that are female-­defined and centered and potentially empowering to ­women. Motherhood, as a patriarchal institution, has a stronghold on the ideology that has “ghettoized and degraded female potentialities” (Rich, 1986, p.1). This hegemony is based on the following beliefs: A.

Natu­ral intensive mothering: The m ­ other is the central caregiver and must be willing to devote all her time, energy, and material resources to her child. This of course means the denial of the m ­ other’s own selfhood. This also means the ­mother should be the sole provider of care (Rich, 1986; Rizzo, Schiffrin, & Liss, 2013).

Mothering Is Liberation • 355 B.

C.

Powerless responsibility: This denies the ­mother the authority and agency to determine her own experiences of mothering (O’Reilly, 2010; Rich, 1986). Motherhood as social control: Motherhood is a form of social control exercised over ­women as they bear and rear c­ hildren. According to the modern image, “good” m ­ others should be full-­time stay-­at-­home moms who are isolated in the private sphere and financially dependent on their husbands. ­Mothers are also agents of social control and teach their ­children how to fit well into society and follow accepted gender roles (Dally, 1982; Thurer, 1994).

­These expectations of motherhood controlled my understanding of the ­ other I could never become. I was not willing to relinquish my own selfhood, m nor was I capable of raising my child alone. I knew that I needed support from my partner, ­family, friends, and community. I was not willing to socialize Mahalaya to gender and racial norms that l­ imited her possibilities. And thus, ultimately, I wanted and needed to be the one to decide how I was g­ oing to ­mother. My decision to make my own decisions was part of how I chose to provide a dif­fer­ent example to my d­ aughter of how to be a Pinay. We are bombarded with a consumerism that tells us what to buy to be a good m ­ other, mainstream media images that show us how to be a good ­mother, and historical policies that mandate how we should be good ­mothers. This is compounded by constant pressure from external ridicule, unsolicited advice, and even the ­silent disapproving gaze of p­ eople who buy into patriarchal motherhood as an institution. In opposition to the oppressive institution of motherhood, ­there is a movement presenting counternarratives of mothering where motherhood is rearticulated as a site of re­sis­tance. For ­those of us from non-­Western cultures, this is nothing new. Native Americans, African Americans, Latinos, and Filipinos have strong traditions of viewing mothering as a site of power. Research on the African American tradition of motherhood distinguishes it from the Western patriarchal institution ­because, first, ­mothers and motherhood are valued and central to African American cultures; second, Black cultures recognize that ­mothers and mothering are what make pos­si­ble the physical and psychological well-­being and empowerment of African American ­people and the larger African American culture. As O’Reilly (2004) argues, “The focus of Black motherhood, in both practice and thought, is how to preserve, protect, and more generally empower Black c­ hildren so that they may resist racist practice that seek to harm them” (p. 4). This counternarrative of mothering informs how I articulate Alagaan pedagogy. Inspired by counternarratives of mothering and teaching, I looked deeply at how I imagine my role as a community-­engaged motherscholar of color, looking at how my scholarship affects how I ­mother and

356  •  Allyson Tintiangco-­Cubales

how I ­mother affects my scholarship. In my pedagogy of care, the act of mothering is not necessarily about providing your child with the skills and resources to assimilate into society; rather, mothering is a site of power that uses care to empower young ­people to resist racist, sexist, and classist practices “that seek to harm them.” My role as a ­mother has often made me the facilitator of discussions denouncing Barbie and helpless princesses like the infamous Cinderella. Challenging hegemonic heteronormative ideas about relationships and gender roles has been an everyday strug­gle. I feel like I am constantly deprogramming or decolonizing Mahalaya’s thinking when someone makes fun of her, bullies her, compares themselves to her, or a­ fter she watches some wack TV show that contributes to the construction of the traditional standard of beauty. We have been reminded by Kiri Davis, a New York high school student who re-­conducted the racial doll test5 and produced a short film entitled A Girl Like Me, that young ­children of color are still taught that “white is superior.” Fearing that my child might internalize racism and form some kind of self-­ hate, I have even thought about prohibiting her from any external entertainment or schooling that could possibly damage her self-­esteem. But Mahalaya’s ­father and I de­cided that removing her from the challenges that she may face is counterproductive to teaching her how to combat them. We have de­cided that isolation is not the answer that we choose. It is has been through constant dialogue with Mahalaya that we collaboratively deconstruct acts of injustice; this includes acts of injustice imposed on her and ­those she may impose on ­others or on herself. Teaching her how to love—­particularly loving herself and her beautiful brown skin in a world that e­ ither hates it or exotifies it—­has become a central purpose in my mothering; I thus reframe mothering as liberation. In many ways, Mahalaya’s ­father and I collaboratively practice what Patricia Hill Collins (1994) names “nurturance for re­sis­tance”; we both participate in mothering our ­daughter. Layered upon our mothering, Mahalaya is also mothered by our families and our community. She sees firsthand how ­others care for her as a model for how she should care for ­others. Mothering is about showing Mahalaya how to care for o­ thers while also caring for herself, how to humanize all p­ eople while also humanizing herself. This requires us to model ­these ways of care and thus has been a constant pro­cess of decolonizing our parenting. Mothering Mahalaya has not been just about providing pathways of liberation for her; mothering Mahalaya has also become a pathway to liberation for me and her f­ ather.

In the Acad­emy: Mothering as Education Motherhood and education are two sides of the same coin. Both ­were set up as patriarchal institutions that serve roles in a social reproduction of hierarchy

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(Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990). The role of ­mother and teacher both have the possibilities of ­either maintaining the status quo or disrupting it; both can ­either be oppressive or liberatory. Similar to inadequacies that I have felt in my inability to be a “good ­mother,” I have also been made to feel that I am not fully a “scholar” ­because academics are not encouraged to live lives of integration but rather to separate our lives into silos that not only do not touch but are also seen as oppositional. I came to San Francisco State University (SFSU) in 2000 ­because I thought that my most impor­tant role as a professor would be that of teacher—­a teacher who would provide students with the opportunities to become agents of social justice and change. When I made this choice, SFSU was revered as a top teaching university; it has since then leaned more ­toward attempting to appear to be a research institution. Within the last de­cade, SFSU’s administration has danced the cha-­cha with priorities between teaching and scholarship. This was a challenging time to go up for tenure. As a tenure-­track professor in Asian American studies, ethnic studies, and education, I was assigned to teach three to four interdisciplinary courses each semester, most of the time having three to four dif­f er­ent courses to prepare and over forty students per course. As my students and colleagues w ­ ill attest, I view teaching as my true vocation. I take seriously my role as teacher as also being a site of mothering. Similar to the practice of “othermothering,” the mothering of ­children other than your own, I see that as teachers we have the responsibility to care as a central part of our work of teaching our students how to learn (see chapter 10; Wane, 2000). As part of my Alagaan pedagogy, I care deeply about my students. What and how I teach Mahalaya is no dif­fer­ent than what and how I teach my students: teaching, like mothering, is about liberation. As a professor at SFSU, I am always surrounded by students of color, most them come from working-­class families and many of whom are working while being students. I am at a university that has one of the highest number of Filipino students in the nation.6 With my open-­door policy, I am rarely alone in my office. Students also frequent my home to study, meet, and eat. This is not a burden. The challenge, during the probationary period leading up to my tenure and promotion evaluation, was being able to serve students while I was also being expected to produce original research, publish numerous articles or books, and serve the campus and off-­campus communities as part of what I was to be evaluated on when I went up for tenure. In my second year at SFSU, with encouragement from my department, I de­cided to start Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP), a ser­vice learning and mentorship program developed initially particularly to address the needs of Filipino youths who ­were suffering from high dropout rates and intra-­and interethnic vio­lence. PEP started off as a modest proj­ect at one high school, which I felt was manageable. As the years went on, PEP became an educational

358  •  Allyson Tintiangco-­Cubales

pipeline training college students to teach ethnic studies and Filipina/o American studies from elementary school through to college. Along with the students in my courses at SFSU, I also serve the teachers in PEP and the students at the vari­ous public schools where we are located.7 I do not take lightly my role as m ­ other in the PEP space. As PEP grew, I received mixed messages about my community involvement. Whereas faculty mentors in my department felt that I was right on track and fulfilling the vision of ethnic studies, ­others at the college level and throughout the university expressed their feeling that I was compromising my tenure pro­cess. An example of this hostility ­toward my community work was a traumatic moment during which I was actually cursed at by an administrator who had the power to sign off on or deny my tenure. I ­will never forget his words: “Allyson, you are fucking up.” Luckily, he was demoted before I went up for tenure. During my first four years at SFSU, I worked tirelessly within the classroom and in the community, but I also realized that my tenure and biological clocks ­were both rapidly ticking. With only a c­ ouple of articles published and a few minor grants achieved, I r­ eally thought my academic c­ areer was over. A ­ fter trying to get pregnant for four years, I de­cided to give up. And then I was granted a sabbatical. I thought it was a miracle to be given an opportunity to complete a book, but another miracle happened. Right at the beginning of my sabbatical, I got pregnant. The timing could not have been better, right? Although I tried to be productive during my sabbatical, I found it impossible to balance a “risky” pregnancy and writing, not to mention that I was still the director of PEP, which at that time had just expanded into several schools and needed nurturing. I realized that I could not balance it all, so in the traditional view that one cannot be an effective scholar and mother-­teacher, my writing was compromised. On March 1, 2004, Mahalaya was born. Her birth brought ­great happiness and joy but also brought g­ reat challenges and fears about motherhood. It was so amazing for the first few weeks following her birth. We had my mom stay the first week, my husband’s mom stay another week, and my ­sister, my cousin, and close friends frequented our place; but then every­one went home. Without ­family close enough to watch her regularly, and with a husband who is also a dedicated public high school teacher, athletic director, and coach, in the first few stages of her life I was often home alone with her. I took her everywhere with me (and still do). I breastfed her in meetings and during speaking gigs. I carried her on stage with me when I would give keynote speeches. She went with me all over the country to conferences. I taught with her by my side and she colored in my office. ­There ­were times when I was not sure this was the best lifestyle for my child. Along with questioning my ability to be a good ­mother, I was also stressed out for fear that I was ­going to lose my job, not ­because I was a bad teacher or

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I did not fulfill my ser­vice to the university or the community, but b­ ecause I did not have enough publications. Forewarned by administrators and colleagues that this was ­going to be issue, I knew that I was in trou­ble, but I just had no idea how to do it all. I had no idea how to be a professor-­scholar, a ­mother, and serve my community all at the same time. My tenure clock continued to tick even during my sabbatical and my maternity leave. When I returned to teaching, I was already up for tenure, without much pro­gress on my publications. The glimmer of hope was that ­there was a change in the administration. A ­ fter meeting with administration to ask if t­ here was a way to stop my clock, I found out that the only way to do so was to take a partial leave without pay. For clarification, leave without pay did not mean that I took the semester or year off; it just meant that I taught one less course and did not get paid for it, which for my ­family was a significant reduction in pay. I was still teaching two classes a semester, which is still a heavier teaching load than that of the average research institution faculty member. But I had no other choice, I had to take this option even if it meant we ­were ­going to strug­ gle financially; in the long run, it could potentially save my job. I resented the ­whole pro­cess of tenure but I did what I had to do. During that year, I knew that just stopping my tenure clock was not ­going to be enough. I had to figure out how to make it all work. I had to think of my tenure as larger than myself. My tenure became a major concern, not only to me and my immediate f­ amily but also to the Filipino American community. Having had Filipino faculty mentors at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Los Angeles, who did not receive tenure, and with the recent tenure denial of a Filipino colleague in my own department at SFSU, I felt like ­there was historical lack of institutional support for Filipino faculty. Despite my tendency not to ask for help, I reached out to some of my closest friends, particularly Dawn Bohulano Mabalon,8 a Filipina American professor in history at SFSU and Mahalaya’s ninang (godmother). She helped me focus my time on my writing and spent countless hours editing my work. She launched a letter writing campaign that solicited support letters for my tenure. She also spent countless hours taking care of my child and me. I am forever indebted to her. Along with reaching out to my friend Dawn, I also found a way to integrate all of my work in the community with my campus responsibilities and even at home through PEP. I started integrating PEP as a ser­vice proj­ect in which students in my courses at SFSU could participate. It is also through the PEP lesson plans on Filipina/o American studies that I was able to author a sourcebook that was published by someone who saw the value in PEP’s impact. PEP teachers and students even offered to watch Mahalaya while I was writing or putting my tenure file together. With the help of colleagues, f­ amily, friends, and PEP, I was able to finish a book that secured my tenure and promotion. In so

360  •  Allyson Tintiangco-­Cubales

many ways, PEP became my second ­family. I was told by one of the PEP teachers, “You always take care of us, so let us take care of you.” Thus, what had once been seen as taking away from my research—my ser­vice and teaching—­became part of my research as both subject and support. I had created PEP out of necessity—­first offering the kinds of courses that my younger self once needed and then growing a pipeline of critical educators that would allow such courses to be taught much more widely than I could do myself. Ultimately, this support system for the kind of student I once was—­who had needed more than I was getting from the traditional Eurocentric educational model—­became a support system for the kind of motherscholar I wanted to be. We grew communities to do this work ­because that was what was needed, and PEP continued to grow as my mothering evolved.

Conclusion: Creating a Critical Community—­Mothering as a Collective This reciprocal care is oftentimes hard for e­ ither a m ­ other or educator to accept. It threatens our authority and our power and seems to negate the institutions of both motherhood, which is seen as private, and education, which is seen as only intellectual. We are often afraid that if we let someone e­ lse care for us that it means that we cannot take care of ourselves. It was extremely challenging for me to accept that my pedagogy of care was not only about the care that I give my child, my students, and my community, but it was just as much about the care that I have received from all of them. In a critical community such as PEP, mothering, like learning and teaching, is a collective and reciprocal act. Although some would imagine that my work with PEP is this overwhelming role that takes over my life and sucks all my energy away from being with my f­ amily and maybe even pulls me away from my scholarship, I see my work with PEP as a means for my survival. My role in PEP is about training teachers and educational leaders, but it has given me a role that Wane calls that of a “community m ­ other,” one who takes care of the community (Wane, 2000). This role is not about my ability to control the production of teachers or even to take credit for such a phenomenal organ­ization of p­ eople, but rather it allows me to ­mother, or to care for, a critical community of ­people who cares deeply about the welfare of underserved and undervalued youths. As a community ­mother, I take care of a community that takes care of me. We collectively practice Alagaan pedagogy, which is thus not about institutional motherhood in the sense of self-­sacrifice but is rather about a shared pro­cess of caring in order to heal and thus to liberate not only our students but also ourselves, including our male colleagues, as motherscholars.

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I have learned to ­mother in a critical community of educators. ­There are over sixty volunteer teachers in PEP who teach ethnic studies to youths from kindergarten to college. Over the past ten years, many of the PEP teachers and even some students have become parents, yet many of them still continue to be dedicated to providing an education to youths beyond their own ­children, as twenty-­three of have gone on to pursue doctorates and many have become faculty, and ­those who are not teachers have become social workers, nurses, and social justice entrepreneurs. Along with their commitment to the youths, they have built a f­ amily among themselves. In this f­ amily, the pedagogical pillars of this critical community ­were constructed: humanization, healing, history/herstory, hunger, health, hermeneutics, humility, home, and hope—­all of which are ele­ments of how I have re­imagined mothering. In turn, ­these have also become the ele­ments of my Alagaan pedagogy. What I created to nurture ­others thus nurtures me; being a motherscholar, far from compromising my research, now nourishes it and sustains me, my f­ amily, and my community. I have been blessed to be part of a community of ­people who have not only helped me raise my own child but that is engaged in raising many ­children and youths; it is a community dedicated to providing opportunities to imagine a better world. A central act of mothering as a collective must be to engage in acts of hope. I started this essay with a confession of guilt, but I end it with a proclamation of hope. My hope is based in what I have learned from the three pillars of being a motherscholar: my d­ aughter, my students, and my community. Each one taken separately might have overwhelmed me; however, by finding a way to connect them, I have not only survived but have thrived. I refuse to allow ­these areas of my life to be separated and treated as oppositional or antithetical to one another. Success in our lives as motherscholars is about believing that our minds, hearts, and bodies can work together to create spaces that unite all that is impor­tant to us. My hope is rooted in my experience that bridging t­ hese spaces and has brought me strength, sanity, and balance. In reference to my multiple roles as a community-­engaged motherscholar of color, I have been asked over and over, “how do you do it all?” And I think ­there’s a ­simple answer: “I d­ on’t do it alone.”

Notes 1 Editors’ note: In her definition of Pinayism, a Filipina feminism (or Pilipina Peminism), Tintiangco-­Cubales offers: “Pinay is a ­woman of Filipino descent, a Filipina in Amer­i­ca and/or a Filipina American. Dawn Mabalon . . . ​identifies the terms Pinay and Pinoy having roots in Filipino American history as far back as the 1920s and 1930s. Choosing to use Pinay + ism symbolically challenges traditional debates about P versus F (Pilipino versus Filipino) [the latter symbolizing Spanish colonialism]” (Tintiangco-­Cubales, 2005, p. 140).

362  •  Allyson Tintiangco-­Cubales

2 Motherscholar was a term that was introduced to me by Dr. Cheryl Matias in 2008. She had invited me to submit a paper for a panel proposal for the American Educational Research Association on being a “motherscholar.” The focus of the panel was to share the experiences that many of us shared trying to balance motherhood while also pursuing our professional lives as educational scholars. Recently, more attention is being paid to ­mother scholars—­for example, Mama, PhD: W ­ omen Write about Motherhood and Academic Life (Evans, E. & Grant, C. & Peskowitz, 2008). 3 Alagaan is a Tagalog word meaning to care for, to protect, to cherish, to comfort, to foster, and to provide asylum (Alagaan, n.d.). Pedagogy is the art of teaching and learning. Pedagogy is a philosophy of education informed by positionalities, ideologies, and standpoints. It takes into account the critical relationships between the purpose of education, the context of education, the content of what is being taught, and the methods by which it is taught. It also includes who is being taught, who is teaching, their relationship to each other, and their relationship to structure and power (Tintiangco-­Cubales, Kohli, et al., 2015). 4 Microaggressions are actions taken ­toward a person or a group that offends or hurts them when the original intent was not to. For example, Asian American students experience the perception that their cultural values and communication styles are less desirable than that of the white majority’s during academic settings in which participation is valued. By promoting the dominant majority’s way of communicating, many Asian American students are made to feel as if they have to conform to Western norms and values, which negates the value of the way they have been brought up (Sue, Bucceri, et al., 2009). 5 The famous racial doll test is discussed by Powell-­Hopson and Hopson (1988). 6 In 2012 (the last year Filipinos ­were disaggregated from Asian Americans), Filipinos ­were 8.8 ­percent of the student population, with a total of 2,155 (SFSU Fast Facts: http://­puboff​.­sfsu​.­edu​/s­ fsufact​/a­ rchive​/­0001​/­stud). 7 PEP is currently located at Longfellow Elementary, Denman ­Middle School, Balboa High School, Burton High School, Skyline Community College, and the University of San Francisco (a private university). It serves over 300 students weekly, trains sixty undergraduate and gradu­ate student interns annually, and is run by twenty coordinators and three directors. 8 Editors’ note: Dawn Bohulano Mabalon passed away on August 10, 2018.

References Alagaan. (n.d.). Tagalog Translate. Retrieved May 3, 2017, from http://­w ww​ .­tagalogtranslate​.­com​/­tl ​_­en​/­306​/­a lagaan Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J. C. (1990). Reproduction in education, society and culture (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Christopher, S., Watts, V., McCormick, A.K.H.G., & Young, S. (2008). Building and maintaining trust in a community-­based participatory research partnership. American Journal of Public Health, 98, 1398–1406. Retrieved from http://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­2105​/­AJPH​ .­2007​.­125757 Clance, P. R., & Imes, S. A. (1978). The impostor phenomenon among high achieving ­women: Dynamics and therapeutic intervention. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 15, 241–247.

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Collins, P. H. (1994). Shifting the center: Race, class, and feminist theorizing about motherhood. In E. Nakano (Ed.), Mothering: Ideology, experience, and agency, (pp. 45–65). New York: Routledge. Dally, A. (1982). Inventing motherhood: The consequences of an ideal. London: Burnett. Darder, A. (2002). Reinventing Paulo Frere: A pedagogy of love. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. De Jesus, M. L. (Ed.). (2005). Pinay power: Peminist critical theory: Theorizing the Filipina/ American experience. London: Psy­chol­ogy Press. Dickson, L. (1997). The third shift: Black ­women’s club activities in Denver, 1900–1925. In E. Higginbotham & M. Romero (Eds.), ­Women and work: Exploring race, ethnicity, and class (pp. 216–234). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Evans, E. & Grant, C. & Peskowitz (2008). Mama: PhD ­women write about motherhood and academic life. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Fletcher, F., Hammer, B., & Hibbert, A. (2014). “We know we are d­ oing something good, but what is it?”: The challenge of negotiating between ser­v ice delivery and research in a CBPR proj­ect. Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship, 7(2). Retrieved from http://­jces​.­ua ​.­edu​/­we​-­k now​-­we​-­a re​-­doing​-­something​-­good​-­but​-­what​ -­is​-­it​-t­ he​-­challenge​-o­ f​-­negotiating​-­between​-s­ ervice​-­delivery​-a­ nd​-­research​-­in​-­a​-­cbpr​ -­project​/­ Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Glenn, E. N. (1992). From servitude to ser­vice work: Historical continuities in the racial division of paid reproductive l­ abor. Signs: Journal of W ­ omen in Culture and Society, 18(1), 1–43. Gordon, R. S. (2003). Overcoming the systems librarian imposter syndrome. Libres, 13(2). Retrieved from https://­cpb​-u­ s​-­e1​.­wpmucdn​.­com​/­blogs​.­ntu​.­edu​.­sg​/­dist​/­8​/­644​/­fi les​ /­2014​/­06​/ V ­ ol13​_ ­I2​_­essop​_ s­ inger​_ ­gordon​.p­ df O’Reilly, A. (2004). From motherhood to mothering: The legacy of Adrienne Rich’s Of ­Woman Born. Albany: State University of New York Press. O’Reilly, A. (2010). Twenty-­first-­century motherhood: Experience, identity, policy, agency. New York: Columbia University Press. Powell-­Hopson, D., & Hopson, D. S. (1988). Implications of doll color preferences among black preschool c­ hildren and white preschool c­ hildren. Journal of Black Psy­chol­ogy, 14(2), 57–63. Rendon, L. (2009). Sentipensante pedagogy: Educating for w ­ holeness, social justice, and liberation. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing. Rich, A. (1986). Of ­woman born: Motherhood as experiences and institution. New York: Norton. Rizzo, K. M., Schiffrin, H. H., & Liss, M. (2013). Insight into the parenthood paradox: ­Mental health outcomes of intensive mothering. Journal of Child and F ­ amily Studies, 22, 614–620. Sue, D. W., Bucceri, J., Lin, A. I., et al. (2009). Racial microaggressions and the Asian American experience. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psy­chol­ogy, 13(1), 72–81 Thurer, S. (1994). The myths of motherhood: How culture reinvents the good m ­ other. New York: Penguin Press. Tintiangco-­Cubales, A. G. (2005).“Pinayism.” In de Jesus, M. (Ed.) Pinay Power: Peminist Critical Theory (pp. 137–148). New York: Routledge Press, 2005. Tintiangco-­Cubales, A., Kohli, R., Sacramento, J., et al. (2015). T ­ oward an ethnic studies pedagogy: Implications for K–12 schools from the research. Urban Review, 47(1), 104–125.

364  •  Allyson Tintiangco-­Cubales

Tintiangco-­Cubales, A., & Sacramento, J. (2009). Practicing Pinayist pedagogy. Amerasia Journal, 35, 179–187. Wane, N. N. (2000). Reflections on the mutuality of mothering: W ­ omen, ­children, and othermothering. Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement, 2(2), 105–116.

13

Re­sis­tance Is Not Futile From #adjuncthustle to Hell Yeah! GENE VIE VE ERIN O’BRIEN

Abstract Detailing the financial and other realities of working as an adjunct lecturer, O’Brien paints a compelling picture of the unsustainable nature of the lives of the adjunct faculty who comprise the majority of the academic workforce. Refusing to be disempowered, O’Brien worked with o­ thers to create a power­ ful movement to support ­women of color in academia by using a private social media platform, which at the time of publication has over 10,000 members. This essay details the evolution of this resource and movement.

Introduction: I Am an Adjunct The readings for the week centered on garment workers, domestic workers, and restaurant workers. As we w ­ ere reviewing the readings, I asked the class, “How are ­these workers exploited?” The students’ responses came steadily and quickly; and I wrote each one on the board: “They have to work long hours.” “They have production speed ups.” “They ­don’t get compensated for overtime.” “They ­don’t get any benefits.” “They have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet.” “They are paid by the job or the piece and not by the hour.” One student exclaimed, 365

366  •  Genevieve Erin O’Brien

“they have to pay for parking!” I think to myself, OK, where do you work that you ­don’t have to pay for parking? But I write it on the board anyway—­this is a brainstorm. “They d­ on’t have job security.” “They have prob­lems with [salary] payment.” “No paid time off or ­family medical leave.” “They ­can’t say ‘no’ when the boss asks them to work or they [­will] get blacklisted.” “They d­ on’t get breaks.” I turned around to look at the list and asked the class if we ­were missing anything. One student added, “Even if they work full time, they live paycheck to paycheck and have to depend on public assistance.” It struck me, as the students continued to add to the list, that ­every single one of ­those ­things listed applied to me, even the part about paying for parking. Although my life in no way compares to that of low-­wage immigrant workers who work in garment factories, I face conditions that could be described as exploitative in my occupation as an academic laborer. Even while working as a professor, I have also worked part time as a domestic worker and in the food ser­vice industry to make ends meet. I am a professor. I am an adjunct professor. Most days I have to t­ riple check what day it is to ensure I head to the right campus. When I first moved back to Los Angeles a­ fter my Fulbright Fellowship, the only car I could afford was a twenty-­year-­old Volvo. Though sturdy and reliable, it could not take the toll of my adjunct jobs at three dif­fer­ent campuses in addition to my other part-­time gigs. This exacerbated my already precarious work life as an adjunct. One day my car came to a complete stop on the 5 freeway. I was less than two miles from home and stuck where the 10 and the 5 freeway intersect. I was stressed out and it was only Wednesday. I knew the next day would be hard to manage without a car. The next morning, in true Los Angeles form, my day began at 7:30 a.m. at the mechanic. I had a small win­dow of time to grade so I quickly biked to a nearby coffee shop, worked ­until my car was fixed, then biked back to the mechanic. This par­tic­u­lar visit to my mechanic was resolved quickly but not cheaply—­the bill came to $650. I drove home, worked some more, ate lunch, took the 5 to the 10 to 110 to 1051 to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). Usually, I head in the opposite direction to get to one of the three campuses at which I teach, but on this day, I was picking up a guest artist. I had raised money and brought on co-­sponsors to program the groundbreaking work of artist Anida Yoeu Ali on our campus. This kind of programming is technically outside the scope of my work as an adjunct, but it is so impor­tant to me that my students have an enriched classroom experience, and I believe this kind of programming benefits the greater campus at large. I got to LAX and I had to drive around for forty-­five minutes ­because the artist’s flight was delayed. Once I was able to pick up our visiting artist, I took the 105 to 605 to 210. I ushered the guest artist into her sound tech on time and squeezed in two student meetings. A ­ fter the eve­ning artist talk, I took time to talk to students and, with a small group of students, took the visiting artist to eat dinner. Although I was

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able to secure funds from the dean’s office for the dinner with the artist and students, I, of course, have to pay for this out of pocket and get reimbursed. Though not an expensive meal, I spent $189. By this time, it was 11:30 p.m. and I had to get gas before the drive home, which was another $50. I took 10 West to fi­nally head home only to find that ­because of construction it was closed ­after 11 p.m. I was detoured to surface streets and then to the 605 to the 60 to the 5 to home. Sixteen hours (four hours in total driving time) and $892 l­ater, I arrived home well ­after midnight, grateful for the leftovers that would provide lunch and dinner the next day since I had not had a moment to get to the market, much less time to cook. I had to leave $100 cash for the dog walker, who gets paid weekly on Friday for her daily visits. I make an average of $500 per week per class to teach as an adjunct. Although part of what I spent would be reimbursed, hopefully before my next student loan is due, I had basically blown a week’s wages in one day. In order to work full time, I cobble together a few “part time” teaching jobs at three dif­f er­ent campuses. Last year, I taught five classes at three dif­f er­ent college campuses.2 Before taxes I made $31,200 for t­ hose five classes. I am privileged to earn at the top end of the pay scale for adjuncts; most adjuncts are paid far less per class.3 I drive an average of 750 miles a week to get to ­these campuses, about fifteen to twenty hours in the car depending on traffic. I live in Los Angeles and teach in Claremont, Santa Barbara, and Irvine—­not always at the same time. One spring quarter, I taught in Santa Barbara on Monday and Wednesdays and Claremont on Thursday and Fridays. This was my “easy” schedule—by easy, I mean easier than my previous fall schedule b­ ecause I was driving only 600 miles a week instead of 750 miles. A number of articles and documentaries document this phenomenon by which lecturer faculty are known as “freeway flyers” (Westervelt, 2015). On average, I spend anywhere from $100 to $175 per week on gas, parking, and a dog walker. As a part-­time worker, I am not eligible for benefits, which means I have to pay for my own health insurance. I am thankful for the Affordable Care Act b­ ecause without it I would not be covered. I have no job security, and I work contract to contract, quarter to quarter, or semester to semester. I have been asked to teach a class with as l­ ittle as three weeks’ notice. More often than not, I am offered classes for the following quarter/semester in the current quarter/semester. This means in October I might find out if I have a job in January, or in March or April I find out if I have a job in August. Without any assurances it is hard to make plans, particularly financial plans. My classes, although u­ nder contract, are not guaranteed. They can be canceled at any time for lack of enrollment or for funding considerations. Last spring, my class got canceled, and it meant the loss of $4,000 in my annual income.4 Speaking of paychecks, I get paid once a month. As a temporary contract worker, ­every quarter or semester I am also a new hire, so my first paycheck often

368  •  Genevieve Erin O’Brien

gets lost or mailed instead of direct deposited. I have often found myself calling ­human resources to hunt down my paycheck. Since I teach at both quarter and semester schools at the same time, I do not have a “Spring Break.” In Fall 2016, the quarter began on September 26, so the week before I prepared diligently for my two upcoming classes. It seems my contract began October 1, which meant that I ­wouldn’t get paid u­ ntil November. November! This means I worked for six weeks without a paycheck. I already work paycheck to paycheck. During the winter break and summer months, I am on unemployment and work other jobs where pos­si­ble. My c­ areer as an artist does not generate much income, but that’s a ­whole separate issue. We should pay artists any wage at all, much less a living wage. To supplement my income, I babysit the c­ hildren or walk the dog of a few tenured faculty families. I am also a private chef for a ­family of two tenured professors. I spend my only day off cooking their meals for the w ­ hole week and deliver them so that they have more time to write and do their research. While I love and care about ­these families that I work for, I have to acknowledge the irony of this situation (see chapter 8, this volume; Boldt, 2014; Unemployed Adjunct, 2012). If I ­were to spend a minimum of fifteen minutes per student grading papers or exams, one class of thirty-­two students would take me eight hours. Gratefully, I have an office to do this in, as many campuses do not even offer office space to adjunct faculty (Street, Maisto, et al., 2012). I have never had a teaching assistant for any class I teach. At the small liberal arts college, my classes are small, with an average of sixteen to twenty students per class. At the public universities, my classes average closer to forty to forty-­five students. ­Things that I generally have to say “no” to ­because I do not get paid or compensated for include writing letters of recommendation, serving as a faculty advisor for student groups or student research or proj­ects, attending student cultural events, or participating in student life on campus outside of class time. Students often ask me to read drafts of their papers, and frankly I ­don’t have enough hours in the week to do this for more than a select few students. In other words, mentorship for students has to happen in the classroom if I am to be paid for it; other­wise, I’m just a volunteer. I do not get to participate in shared governance and have no voice in the academic senate on any of my campuses (Beaky, Besosa, et al., 2013). Although I am invited to participate in my department meetings and events, due to my multi-­campus schedule, this is rarely pos­si­ble. ­People often ask, ­can’t you just get a tenure-­track job? I sure would like that. I mean, even if I could teach as an adjunct full time at just one campus, it would be so much easier. I have been on the academic tenure-­track job market for three years. Whereas adjunct positions used to be 30 ­percent, they are now 70 ­percent of academic jobs (Edmond, 2015). Being on the academic job market is like a

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part-­time job in and of itself. Applications take many hours to compile, each position asking for dif­fer­ent submission requirements. The basics, like cover letter, curriculum vitae, and portfolio, are always expected. Additionally, applications may require letters of recommendation, sample syllabi, student evaluations, and sometimes even samples of student work, past transcripts, and the designing of new syllabi for pos­si­ble classes. Designing a syllabus is time consuming; to do so for a class you might not even teach, for a job you might not even get, feels futile. So, yes, I can theoretically get a tenure-­track job, and I’m trying, but it is very difficult, and the chances are slim. When administrators can hire three adjuncts for the price of one tenure-­track faculty member and spend no money on benefits, it makes sense that 70 ­percent of faculty nationwide are contingent faculty. The number of tenure-­track jobs in my field is ­limited, and t­ here are anywhere from 100 to 400 applicants for each job for which I apply. This does not include the number of professional associations5 dues and conferences I should participate in to remain current and relevant in my field. Attendance at conferences is seen as a sign of a marketable candidate for tenure-­ track jobs. The cost for me to attend one conference to pre­sent my work or research can be anywhere from $800 to $1,500. I remember one year for the Association of Asian American Studies, all of my colleagues w ­ ere attending the conference from Thursday through Sunday in San Francisco. I teach on Thursdays and Fridays, and I ­can’t ­really leave my classes. I could not actually attend the conference in its entirety. Instead, I had to fly up Saturday morning and go straight to my panel for my pre­sen­ta­tion. The panel chair and the chair for another panel de­cided to combine the panels, which w ­ ere similar in topic. With twice as many panelists, my talk got shrunk by ten minutes. As academics do, every­one went over their time ever so slightly. The moderator leaned over to me and apologetically whispered, “We might not have time for your talk.” I was fighting back tears thinking of how much it cost me to get t­ here that morning. For tenure-­track faculty, t­ hese costs are often covered by their departments or by other campus funding sources. I, on the other hand, as an adjunct, am not eligible for this kind of funding and have to pay out of pocket. I found a letter on the copy machine at one of the campuses I teach at. The letter was for one of the tenured faculty in my department, detailing a travel funds grant in the amount of $1,700 to attend the same conference I had paid out of pocket to attend. I am grateful that I was actually able to give my truncated talk at the conference ­after all. I did not get to attend any of the other panels and only managed one dinner with conference attendees. My position as an adjunct is far more precarious as a queer ­woman of color. As it is, I teach in ethnic studies departments that are consistently subjected to scrutiny and subjected to bud­get cuts. The chair of my department has to

370  •  Genevieve Erin O’Brien

rationalize and justify the kinds of classes and curriculum offered by the department, particularly the interdisciplinary classes that I teach. The material I teach can be incredibly empowering for t­ hose who are centered in t­ hese classes. I teach Asian American ­Women’s Experience, Asian American Mixed Race Experience, Asian American LGBTQ Issues, Asian American Pop Culture, Asian American Art & Activism, and Comparative Minority Politics and Social Movements. The material can be challenging as it specifically looks at power structures, race, gender, and sexuality. Some of the material covers topics that make students in the majority, particularly white students, feel uncomfortable and acutely aware of their privilege. Some of the topics include sweatshops, domestic vio­lence, hate crimes, war, and militarization. The uncomfortable nature of the material is reflected in student evaluations, which, ultimately for me as an aspiring professor, weigh heavi­ly in my job applications and ­whether I continue to be able to teach, even as an adjunct. The student responses on evaluations are generally positive and include high praise with statements like “inspiring,” wonderful facilitator,” “creates a safe space,” “stimulates discussion and builds a sense of community,” “approachable and open,” “knowledgeable and enthusiastic.” What becomes more evident is that both the material I teach and my position as a queer w ­ oman of color in the acad­emy makes students uncomfortable, and their evaluations are reflective of that discomfort. “Classroom environment was pretty uncomfortable for most of the semester.” “Change Professor.” “I felt uncomfortable in this course + discriminated against—­this course had so much potential, but poor teaching destroyed my self esteem, self worth + self perspective.” “I r­ eally ­didn’t like putting all the blame on the whites. Feel like she made invalid arguments about racism when it came to white culture. Sometimes even offensive ­toward white culture.” Some of the comments are evidence of the impact on my capacity to teach as an adjunct with comments like “more availability outside of class,” “not enough office hours,” “only on campus two days a week.” ­There have been several studies that illustrate that student evaluations are biased and not a fair and accurate mea­sure of the quality of teaching (Cottom, 2013). What I do know is that my work in the classroom makes students of privilege feel uncomfortable and guilty, and they sometimes respond with negative evaluations that I have to submit to e­ very tenure-­track job I apply for, jeopardizing my f­ uture job prospects (Merritt, 2008). As an artist, my artwork is my scholarly research, and I need to maintain an active and strong rec­ord of exhibitions and professional achievement. The time I spend on my art is not paid and yet is considered a ­factor in w ­ hether I am a ­viable candidate for academic tenure-­track positions in my field. This past year alone I spent at least $9,000 just making my art: this does not include getting to per­for­mances, gigs, and shows. Although I did make a short film and fed

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over 400 p­ eople with my art, I only received grants to cover about one-­third of my costs to make the work. I teach at both public and private schools. I know many students are on scholarship and taking out numerous loans to fund their education. For middle-­ class students, access to higher education is becoming more and more difficult. For low-­income students, the financial burden can make higher education an impossible dream. Tuition is skyrocketing. At the University of California system, tuition starts at $14,000, not including fees, transportation, and living costs. At the private schools I teach at, the tuition is about $50,000 (Scripps, n.d.). Although most of my students are not wealthy, at some of the private schools I teach at t­ here is considerable wealth. A few weeks ago, I noticed a student in my class wearing $500 shoes, the same amount that I get paid to teach that class for one week. I know they are $500 shoes b­ ecause I just saw the same pair at the Rack on sale for $475! I have to tell you, I cried as I drove home reflecting on my own situation. One of the small liberal arts colleges I teach at proudly posted an article from CNN Money about the college with the title “Why Amer­i­ca’s Most Expensive College Is a Bargain” (Lobosco, 2015). The article details how gradu­ates get the best return on their $67,000 per year tuition b­ ecause “The median starting salary for the class of 2015 was $92,500,” which is twice what their contemporaries are earning with a bachelor’s degree and three times what I make as their professor. Granted, my students are getting jobs at Google and Apple, and I, conversely, believe that teaching is valuable and impor­tant, even when I have to do it at my own expense. I ­won’t even go into detail about my own gradu­ate student loans and the ballooning costs as the interest capitalizes on t­ hese loans. Let’s just say, at this rate, I ­will certainly be paying them back ­until I die. That’s with the federal government’s Income Based Repayment plan option. I live paycheck to paycheck. Recently, an unexpected vet visit, unplanned travel due to a death in the ­family, and a flat tire brought me to my knees financially. ­There are so many other fields that would pay me more to do less. I wish I d­ idn’t have to consider ­these options and could just do what I love and want to do—­teach and make art. I work hard. I am not lazy. I am committed to developing the skills and leadership of the next generation. I love what I do. I was supposed to have more options with more education, not less. Teaching was supposed to be an honorable and prestigious profession. As an artist, I needed a plan b­ ecause as a society we do not honor the work of artists with a wage. This life plan—to be a professor—­was supposed to be a step t­ oward a middle-­class life; instead, I make poverty wages and live paycheck to paycheck. This is just my story. I c­ an’t imagine how I could possibly support a ­family and manage financially as an adjunct faculty member. Something has to change. Starting by being transparent about my own personal experiences, I hope to build a movement t­ oward that change.

372  •  Genevieve Erin O’Brien

The “Secret” Movement Adjuncting has been such a challenge for me and I have employed so many strategies to keep my head above w ­ ater. I want to share the most successful and effective strategy, but first I have to acknowledge some of the challenges I face in talking about it. I created a virtual space for support, but in order to preserve the integrity and privacy of this group I cannot name the group. The creation of the secret online group, let’s call it “Starfleet,” came about in part ­because of my relationship with Anida Yoeu Ali over the years. When I started my gradu­ate program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), I was a l­ ittle dismayed to find that t­ here w ­ ere few other students of color. When I inquired about faculty of color, ­people at SAIC directed me to Kymberly Pynder, art historian and author of Race-­ing Art History: Critical Readings in Race and Art History. Aside from her scholarship addressing race in the art world, she was one of the few faculty of color at SAIC. I remember looking at the third person who suggested I seek her out and saying, “you know I’m Asian, right?” But with fewer than sixty faculty of color on the w ­ hole campus, with 846 faculty, it would stand to reason I was being directed to one of the few African American scholars. It quickly became clear that I would have a difficult time in gradu­ate school as a queer mixed-­race ­woman of color. The microaggressions I experienced could fill a book. I d­ idn’t want to have to spend all the time I had to make new work in the studio responding to the sheer whiteness of the school, but some of the comments and statements ­were so unbelievable. My first semester, during the year-­end critique panel, an older white ­woman professor, instead of responding directly to my work, came over and grabbed both of my hands and got r­ eally, ­really close and leaned up into my face. She looked into my eyes and said, “I protested that war”—by which I presumed she meant the Việt Nam War. Well, uh, good for you? Another faculty member on the critique panel, a young white male professor, excitedly told me that he studied my ­people. “Oh, ­really, how so?” I steeled myself for the canned model minority myth response, as he was a professor in mathe­matics. “Oh yes, my scholarly work is on poker. Viet­nam­ ese dominate the poker world.” I see. How was I to get any real, critical feedback on the work that I was developing when ­people ­couldn’t move beyond my ethnic identity? In addition to presenting one’s work to critique panels, gradu­ ate students are encouraged to participate in critiques as panel members. On one of ­these daylong critiques, an artist presented her paintings, which prominently featured a white w ­ oman in a kimono with bunny slippers and chopsticks in her hair, her face slathered in mayonnaise. As I confronted the situation and explained the concept of “yellowface,”6 a concept neither the artist nor the seven faculty-­member panel had ever heard of, I felt I was d­ oing basic Asian American 101, not just for the student but also for the other faculty members. At the

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end of the day of critiques, one of the older white male faculty members approached me and said, “You w ­ ere so articulate t­ oday.” For the rec­ord, when someone points out how articulate you are, it i­ sn’t a compliment. It means they are surprised ­because they ­didn’t expect you to be articulate (Clemetson, 2007; Powell, 2015).7 Given this racialized context, n ­ eedless to say, when Anida arrived at SAIC in the cohort ­after me, I was so grateful. I was grateful to have another Asian American and in par­tic­u­lar another Southeast Asian American (at SAIC the majority of Asian students are international students from K ­ orea). But more than anything, I was thrilled to have my friend and comrade to lean on. We ­were the only support for each other. Th ­ ere was no one e­ lse. Throughout gradu­ ate school we w ­ ere able to come to each other and listen to and support one another. Art school was particularly isolated from the real world and excessively uncomfortable with artistic work—­like ours—­that directly talks about race and gender. As I have found myself navigating academia as an adjunct, I have found myself relying on my old networks and support systems from gradu­ate school, but my mentors from gradu­ate school ­were l­ imited, and of course, none are ­people of color, much less ­women of color. As I worked as an adjunct, I found myself without any colleagues to lean on. At each campus I teach at, I am ­there only one to two days a week. Most of the faculty in the departments I teach in are wonderful but not exactly available for mentorship for an adjunct, especially not for a queer w ­ oman of color adjunct. We are colleagues and yet not at all colleagues. Having similar experiences, my colleague and friend Anida was complaining that ­there was no place to get feedback and support about ­things that happened to her as ­woman of color faculty member, particularly in a contingent position. She asked publicly on Facebook ­whether ­there was a group on Facebook that existed where one could get this kind of support. I responded that such a place d­ idn’t exist, but, b­ ecause we need it, we should just create it. Over the years, I have become accustomed to both dreaming and building. If ­there is something I need and it ­doesn’t yet exist, I find as ­women of color we are often left in the position of ­going without it or creating it ourselves. I set up a secret group on Facebook with the following description: This is a group to encourage, mentor and support each other as W ­ omen of Color in Academia. This group is for faculty (adjunct, visiting, any ladder rank) This group is secret and not public so that we can speak freely.

We started adding a few p­ eople we knew and it started to grow. Only members can invite other members. Within a few minutes we had 100 members. Within twenty-­four hours we had 400 members. Within three weeks we ­were

374  •  Genevieve Erin O’Brien

up to 6,000 members and had to invite a few additional members to help us administer the group.8 The initial posts w ­ ere mostly p­ eople introducing themselves and what kind of work they do and where they are. I was so amazed to see the breadth of fields and disciplines represented. What struck me about each of the introductions was that they almost followed a formula. I d­ on’t know how or why it started, but the introductions generally go something like this: Thank you for this space. Hi, I’m ______. I teach in _________ at _________ university. I do research on______. I have to thank __________ for inviting me to this group. Thank you all for the work you are ­doing and for being a light for me. What an amazing group of ­women. I’m humbled to be h ­ ere.

­Every single ­woman who introduces herself thanks the person that invited them and often thanks a group of strangers for just being pre­sent, albeit virtually. I think this acknowl­edgment is a testament to the recognition of lineage and legacy among w ­ omen of color academics. Initially, it seemed most w ­ ere in the humanities, from ethnic studies, gender and w ­ omen’s studies, cultural studies, media studies, art, history, anthropology, and philosophy. ­A fter the first two weeks, the fields represented ­really expanded and faculty started getting added in droves from all kinds of fields, including criminology, psy­chol­ogy, education, religious studies, public policy, ethnomusicology, public health, biostatistics, epidemiology, law, science, technology, engineering, and math, business, and some fields that I—in my arts and humanities ­bubble—­didn’t even realize existed, such as biogeochemistry. The popularity of the “Starfleet” is a clear indicator that w ­ omen (and nonbinary ­people) of color needed this space. Fellow “Stars” often introduce each post with gratitude for the space. I asked a few “Stars” to share their anonymous thoughts directly with me about the impact of the “Starfleet.” One “Star” shared: Often, ­women of color and queers of color are the only ones in their department and/or school, and they need to hear that they are not being overly sensitive to racism and sexism, or to have peace of mind that when they speak about issues they are remarking on something systemic, not interpersonal (for example microaggressions from students, colleagues and institutions). If they ­aren’t the only faculty of color, ­people have remarked that the hardest slights have come from other faculty of color at the same institution; thus having other ­women and queers of color that have their virtual backs may be helpful. (Personal communication, July 12, 2016)9

Another “Star S­ ister” explained how “just reading about other s­ isters in the acad­emy and sharing is very supportive. It provides an impor­tant grounding

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space for folks to share accomplishments and frustrations—­which promotes sanity in the midst of this massive asylum. It also reveals just how closely the asylum resembles the sickness in our society ­toward w ­ omen of color on so many levels”10 (Personal communication, July 28, 2016). Th ­ ese individual responses, which echo hundreds of posts made on “Starfleet,” illustrate that the feeling of being isolated and struggling is widespread in academia, especially for w ­ omen of color academics. The need for community for so many ­women of color is vital. Vari­ous forms of that community—­including “Starfleet,” as well as friendship networks and membership in professional associations like the Association of Asian American Studies—­play an integral role in our survival in academia. It also is a power­f ul reminder of how challenging and difficult academia is for ­women of color and how precariously we are positioned. Having the support of a community of ­women of color is part of a strategy for survival. For me, ­whether I was an undergraduate, a community artist, a community or­ga­nizer, in gradu­ate school, or adjunct faculty, I have always found that a community of w ­ omen of color, no m ­ atter how small or large, has offered me a l­ ittle light and sanity. I have desperately needed this kind of support and community to lean on as a w ­ oman of color, so I i­ magined other w ­ omen of color needed the support, too, and this is what motivated me to start the group. Around this time, I had to leave for Việt Nam for a month to take on a proj­ ect for which I received a grant from the U.S. State Department. It was the hardest decision for me to turn down two classes in order to take this prestigious grant, knowing that I would unlikely be offered ­these classes again even though I had been teaching at this college for four years as an adjunct. I think about my friends who graduated at the same time I did and secured tenure-­track positions. ­Those in tenure-­track positions—­teaching for the same amount of time I had been teaching, with a far lighter teaching load, having less of a commute and having benefits and job security—by this point in their teaching ­careers had also been granted sabbaticals. If I was on sabbatical, this grant I was offered would have been timely. Instead, I had to decline what ­little secure income and f­ uture income I might have in order to do my work. As an artist, my research is my art practice, and showing my work is no dif­f er­ent than scholars giving papers at conferences and getting published. The day ­after I arrived in Việt Nam, I gave an artist talk. As I finished my talk, a ­woman came up to me and thanked me for my pre­sen­ta­tion. She then proceeded to thank me privately, not just for the talk but also for creating the secret Facebook group. Wait, what? I was floored. I was meeting my first group member in person, someone I ­didn’t know—­and in Hanoi of all places! She is an Asian American scholar at a university in the Midwest, and she told me that “Starfleet” was a lifeline for her at her predominantly white institution. She felt so isolated with so few gradu­ate students and faculty of color. She mentioned

376  •  Genevieve Erin O’Brien

she had to pull committee members from other institutions ­because no faculty at her campus was in a position to support or critique her research. She confessed she ­hadn’t introduced herself in the group yet, but for her, seeing the supportive comments and reading what other “Starfleet” members ­were dealing with on their own campuses had already helped her tremendously. The range of posts started to diversify a­ fter the initial posts of self-­introduction; ­people started posting calls for papers, job postings and announcements, resource articles, and videos relevant to navigating race and gender in the United States. Fellow “Starfleeters” started posting questions asking for advice about every­thing from taxes to name changes, appropriate sartorial choices to single-­parent strategies, negotiating salaries to dealing with deans. It was every­thing from the day to day to the larger big picture of how to navigate the ­career path as a ­woman of color in academia. ­Women w ­ ere sharing strategies for teaching, recommendations for readings for syllabi, dealing with course evaluations, and microaggressions in the workplace from students and colleagues. “Stars” w ­ ere using the space as a place to vent, to offer feedback and encouragement. The encouragement was truly resounding. “Stars” started sharing their success stories, such as “I’ve just . . . ​signed a contract for my second book, got tenure, landed a tenure track job, got promoted, published an article, ­etc.” Hundreds of ­women of color and nonbinary ­people of color have been chiming in with “hooray!” and “hell, yeah!” and “you did good!” Imagine a post to a group of strangers celebrating your own accomplishments getting over 300 Facebook likes and hundreds of positive comments. This experience is quite supportive and ­really bolsters your confidence. The encouragement has produced some of the most phenomenal GIFs I have seen on the Internet. ­These “Stars” have been forming constellations with posts that encouraged networking and in-­person meetups. Using callouts such as “Hey ‘Stars,’ who is at the [insert discipline] Conference? We are meeting in the lobby for dinner together.” Pictures of in-­person “Star” meetings at academic conferences started rolling in a­ fter just a few weeks. Soon, graduation season (May and June) hit and the images of ­women of color getting hooded flooded the timeline. We saw images of ­women of color faculty at graduation with their w ­ omen of color mentees and doctoral and master’s students. The responses to “Starfleet” have been overwhelming and entirely positive. One “Star” shared with me directly that as someone who had a strong cohort of ­women and queer of color friends and colleagues throughout gradu­ate school with whom I worked alongside and could bitch, celebrate and encourage on—­I have missed having companions. I used to have friends that I sat across the t­ able of a coffee shop working and chatting [with] ­every once in a while. [Now] I am relatively companion-­less ­because I have

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been contingent [faculty] and have moved four times since graduation. [“Starfleet”] provides a format where I can have [a community] remotely.

Every­thing that came along with it and has grown out of it has been a bonus. Fellow “Stars” generally start their posts with “I’m so grateful for this space.” It’s so helpful and motivating to have this community.” “Thank you for this forum.” “ ‘Star’ s­ isters, you shine so bright, thank you.” One of the posts hit me like a punch to the gut: a­ fter nine and half years, one of the “Stars” posted that they had fi­nally made it to associate professor. ­There w ­ ere over a thousand likes and the supportive comments and stickers ­were overflowing. I was reminded that I am working in a two-­tier system. In my case, I was on the lower tier, with very l­ittle chance for a spot on the top tier. I had already been adjuncting for four years; was this what it would take to fi­nally be tenure-­track faculty? Toil as an adjunct for nearly a de­cade and “put in the time,” all the while hoping to somehow—in this market—­get one of the few tenure-­track jobs out ­there? I remember meeting with one of the organizers for my ­labor ­union. I had years of experience working in the ­labor ­union movement and also as a community or­ga­nizer. I wanted to offer to help in any organ­izing they w ­ ere ­doing around adjuncts. I knew I d­ idn’t have much time to offer, but even if I had a ­little time, my experience would hopefully make that time more valuable to the ­union. I talked to my ­union representative about what it would take to obtain “continuing appointment” status as an adjunct in the University of California system (UCNet, 2016). This is the closest to job security offered on the adjunct tier; though not a tenure-­track job, it is an annual contract with benefits and an annual salary. In order to get this, I would have to work for eigh­teen quarters for one department. Working for the same department at two dif­fer­ent universities in the same system would not count. That would mean working for the equivalent of six years at full time. But ­because my department offered me only two or three classes at a time, it would take me at least nine years to get a “continuing appointment.” I could do just about any job and get paid more than I was getting paid as an adjunct. My dog walker gets paid more by the hour than I did. The fact that I had to babysit and cook for tenured faculty to make ends meet was not only ironic but cemented my position on the lower of the two tiers in academia. Why was I spending twenty hours a week to drive across Southern California to teach? If I ­were working at one campus, it might be manageable, but I could not get full-­time work at one campus. Instead, I was juggling a full-­time course load at multiple campuses and ­running myself ragged. It is impor­tant to me to be in the classroom for students to see a gender-­nonconforming, queer, mixed-­ race w ­ oman of color at the front of the classroom. This is part of my pedagogy, that we center the stories and experiences of marginalized ­people in the arts, in the classroom, and hopefully in academia. Yet I found myself having more

378  •  Genevieve Erin O’Brien

in common with the low-­wage immigrant workers I was teaching about than I did with the tenured faculty who w ­ ere my colleagues in the field. I found myself making almost as much money riding scooters and playing in the park with the toddlers of tenured faculty as I did trying to engage a class of thirty undergraduates in critical race theory. All the while, my art practice was taking a back seat. I was having to turn down shows, not attend openings for my own work, and schedule residencies and production during winter and summer break around my academic schedule. I was having to say no to my art in order to say yes to teaching. I had to remind myself that I was teaching ­because I am an artist and not the other way around. “Starfleet” has been an amazing capstone to my academic ­career, one that has, ironically, allowed me to fi­nally decide to leave academia. I started “Starfleet” to build community, to get advice, to support other ­women of color, and ­really as a strategy to survive academia. For me personally, as an adjunct faculty member, I was intentional about setting up this virtual space as a place for mentorship. That was one of my goals. And “Starfleet” has provided all of that, but it had an unintended consequence as well. Hearing all the stories of ­women of color in academia reinforced my doubts about academia. Why was I fighting so hard to break into a system that was never built for me? I had been struggling with ­whether to keep adjuncting, and I was applying to jobs even though the possibilities of a tenure-­track position ­were looking slimmer and slimmer. I ­couldn’t reconcile my values with my position as an adjunct. The subjects that I teach are about empowering w ­ omen, p­ eople of color, LGBTQ ­people, and in par­tic­u­lar Asian Americans. Yet, in academia, while I was asked to teach courses about social justice, I was confronting the injustice of my own position as an adjunct. In Asian American studies, I am told that the field values artists, cultural workers, and community organizers—­all of whom made it pos­si­ble for a field like Asian American studies to exist. In real­ity, not falling within the traditional scope of a scholar in academia made it impossible for me to find a tenure-­track position in the field. Conversely, in art departments, which are often largely white, my teaching in Asian American studies did not carry much weight. All the ­things I fought for over the years working as an or­ga­nizer and my work in social justice movements w ­ ere just irreconcilable with what I was able to see through the “Starfleet” posts. I de­cided I needed to change something. I needed to change my personal situation.

Food for Thought I am so grateful that “Starfleet” is an empowering tool for other ­women of color in academia. This year, partially inspired by what I have learned through what they have all shared, I made the decision to leave academia and focus on the ­things that bring me joy: food, art, and politics. I’m all about making po­liti­cal,

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food-­based art. I’m all about using food as a way to think about race, culture, and ethnicity. I spent a de­cade organ­izing low-­income, immigrant community members, youths, and workers around environmental justice, social justice, and workers’ rights. ­These values reflect in my art practice and connect food not just as a marker of place or cultural identity but in a larger context of power relations, globalization, and capitalism. I am curious how memory, nostalgia, and self become mediated and negotiated through a relationship to food and culture. I play with alternative forms of narrative storytelling. I use food, humor, narrative, and conceptual structures to develop work that is invested in collective engagement, to further social justice and cultural understanding. The idea that starting a food business and being a working artist might be more sustainable than being an adjunct professor is an indicator of the sad state of higher education ­today. At the very least, making the decision to focus on my art and passion for food has offered me more joy. In and of itself, “Starfleet” may not be revolutionary, but it is empowering. In all my years as a community or­ga­nizer, my position as an adjunct left me feeling powerless without a way to or­ga­nize. The structure of academia makes it difficult for contingent ­labor to or­ga­nize. Workers are at-­will employees, dispensable and disposable. For ­every adjunct, ­there are more ­people graduating and fewer and fewer tenure-­track jobs available in academia. I can only hope that as I leave academia, “Starfleet” offers a safe space for w ­ omen of color, one that is empowering and fosters a transformation of academia.

Notes 1 Editors’ note: ­These are freeways in the Los Angeles area. 2 Editors’ note: Many colleges and universities deliberately hire adjuncts for only one or two classes at a time in order to not have to give them health insurance or other benefits (Anderson, 2014; Flaherty, 2012). 3 Josh Bodlt created a crowdsourced Google document to track adjunct salaries nationwide. The data are now available in a searchable format at https://­data​ .­chronicle​.­com/ 4 According to McKenna (2015), “Per-­class earnings offer one way to analyze pay. Adjunct professors earned a median of $2,700 per semester-­long class during the 2012–13 academic year, according to an [American Association of University Professors] survey of thousands of part-­time faculty members. While varying classloads make it difficult to calculate the typical adjunct’s annual earnings, NPR reported in 2013 that the average yearly pay for adjuncts was between $20,000 and $25,000, and a March 2015 survey conducted by Pacific Standard among nearly 500 adjuncts found that a majority earn less than $20,000 a year from teaching.” 5 As an interdisciplinary artist scholar, I should be a member of the College Art Association, the Association of Asian American Studies, the National ­Women’s Studies Association, and the Association of Theater in Higher Education, for which the annual dues are $125, $125, $150, and $150, respectively.

380  •  Genevieve Erin O’Brien

6 “Yellowface” denotes the racist use of theatrical makeup by white performers to appear East Asian, particularly to play highly ste­reo­t ypical roles, and often to avoid casting an ­actual Asian American actor to play an Asian character, particularly if that character has to be in a romantic scene with a white character. The term shares roots with the similar practice of “blackface.” 7 The term “articulate” is often used as a microaggression; although it is particularly associated with African Americans, it is also used to put other ­people of color in place. 8 At the time of publication, over two years ­a fter its founding in March 2016, the group is up to 10,000 members. 9 Interview with active Facebook group participant conducted by e-­mail. 10 Shared in Facebook group in response to my post about what ­sisters would want to share anonymously about the group.

References Anderson, N. (2014, February 11). New federal health-­care rules define workload of part-­time college instructors. Washington Post. Retrieved from https://­w ww​ .­washingtonpost​.­com​/­local​/­education​/­new​-­federal​-­health​-­care​-­rules​-­define​-­workload​ -­of​-­part​-­time​-­college​-­instructors​/­2014​/­02​/­11​/­6b1b29c4​-­9345​-­11e3​-­b46a​-­5a3d0d2130da​ _­story​.h ­ tml​?­noredirect​=­on&utm​_­term​=­​.­9f9dac1bbbe4 Beaky, L. A., Besosa, M., Berry, J., et al. (2013, January). The inclusion in governance of faculty members holding contingent appointments. Academe, 99(4), 77–89. Boldt, J. (2014, April 15). Summer survival strategies for adjuncts. Chronicle Vitae. Retrieved from https://­chroniclevitae​.­com​/­news​/­444​-­summer​-­survival​-­strategies​-­for​ -­adjuncts Clemetson, L. (2007, February 4). The racial politics of speaking well. New York Times. http://­w ww​.n ­ ytimes​.­com​/­2007​/­02​/­04​/­weekinreview​/­04clemetson​.­html​?­​_­r​=­0 Cottom, T. M. (2013, December 13). The discomfort zone. Slate Magazine. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­slate​.­com​/­articles​/­life​/­counter​_­narrative​/­2013​/­12​/­minneapolis​_ ­professor​ _­shannon​_ ­g ibney​_­reprimanded​_­for​_t­ alking​_ ­about​_­racism​.­html Edmond, D. (2015, May 28). More than half of college faculty are adjuncts: Should you care? Forbes. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­forbes​.­com​/­sites​/­noodleeducation​/­2015​/­05​/­28​ /­more​-t­ han​-h ­ alf​-­of​-c­ ollege​-f­ aculty​-­are​-­adjuncts​-s­ hould​-­you​-­care​/­#6d539cb41d9b Flaherty, C. (2012, November 20). College cuts adjuncts’ hours to avoid Affordable Care Act costs. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­insidehighered​.­com​/­news​ /­2012​/­11​/­20​/­college​-­cuts​-­adjuncts​-­hours​-­avoid​-­a ffordable​-­care​-­act​-­costs Frederickson, C. (2015, September 15). Th ­ ere is no excuse for how universities treat adjuncts. Atlantic. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­theatlantic​.­com​/­business​/­archive​/­2015​ /­09​/­higher​-­education​-­college​-­adjunct​-­professor​-­salary​/­404461/ Lobosco, K. (2015, December 1). Why Amer­i­ca’s most expensive college is a bargain. CNN Money. Retrieved from http://­money​.c­ nn​.­com​/2­ 015​/1­ 2​/­01​/­pf​/­college​/­harvey​-­mudd​ -­college​-­tuition/ McKenna, L. (2015, September 24). The college president-­to-­adjunct pay ratio. Atlantic. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­theatlantic​.­com​/­education​/­archive​/­2015​/­09​/­income​ -­inequality​-­in​-­higher​-e­ ducation​-­the​-­college​-p­ resident​-­to​-­adjunct​-­pay​-­ratio​/4 ­ 07029/ Merritt, D. J. (2008). Bias, the brain, and student evaluations of teaching. Saint John’s Law Review, 82(1), 235–288. doi:10.2139/ssrn.963196

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Powell, K. (2015, October 14). “You talk white”: Being black and articulate. Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.h ­ uffingtonpost​.c­ om​/­keith​-­powell​/­you​-­talk​-­white​ -­being​-­blac​_­b​_­8284582​.­html Scripps. (n.d.). Tuition and fees. Retrieved December 10, 2017, from http://­w ww​ .­scrippscollege​.­edu​/­offices​/­treasurer​/­student​-­accounts​/­tuition​-­fees Street, S., Maisto, M., Merves, E., & Rhoades, G. (2012). Who is professor “staff” and how can this person teach so many classes? Center for the ­Future of Higher Education Policy Report, (2). UCNet. (2016, July 13). Memorandum of understanding: Non-­Senate instructional unit: Introduction. Retrieved from http://­ucnet​.­universityofcalifornia​.­edu​/­labor​/­bargaining​ -­units​/­i x​/m ­ ou​/­introduction​.­html Unemployed Adjunct. (2012, May 31). The Unemployment Question [Msg 1]. Message archived to https://­web​.­archive​.­org​/­web​/­20151205222619​/­http://­adjunct​.­chronicle​.­com​ /­the​-­unemployment​-­question/ Westervelt, E. (2015, December 17). Low pay, long commutes: The plight of the adjunct professor. NPR. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.n ­ pr​.­org​/s­ ections​/­ed​/­2015​/­12​/­17​ /­459707022​/­low​-­pay​-l­ ong​-­commutes​-­the​-­plight​-­of​-t­ he​-­adjunct​-p­ rofessor

14

Academic Symbiosis A Manifesto on Tenure and Promotion in Asian American Studies WEI MING DARIOTIS

Abstract This chapter posits that once the ­battles for justice are won, academia should ultimately be about resisting pain, domination, and shaming as the norms of academia, while creating a system of supportive rather than oppressive power as academic symbiosis. Recognizing that the current state of academia is far from a place where this can occur, the tenure and promotion manifesto that culminates this chapter suggests one possibility of how to move ­toward this ideal. This chapter ultimately challenges us to imagine a more just university system with equitable and joyful practices as the new academic norm.

The Force of Friendship1 in Academia In Star Wars: Rogue One, a blind Asian monk wields the Force, avoiding being hit as ­enemy fire rains around him. It is a suicide mission to push a button: just one small part of the rogue force’s mission to deliver information about the Empirical Death Star’s fateful flaw to the Rebel Alliance (Kennedy, Emanuel, 382

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et al., 2016). Throughout his death scene, this blind monk, Chirrut Îmwe, chants, “I am one with the Force; the Force is one with me.” This mantra seems to be wielded as a shield doomed to fail; we know Chirrut Îmwe is ­going to die. But what interests me about this movie scene is not his self-­sacrifice nor his belief in the Force; rather, it is the friendship between Îmwe and his companion, Baze Malbus. This friendship between two Asian Alien men is unique in Hollywood films, which rarely showcase one Asian man, much less two Asian men as friends who are action heroes. This friendship deserves attention ­because it reflects the promise of higher education: valuing symbiotic relationships that endure g­ reat change and conflict. It also represents the kind of small actions that can lead to ­great change. Rogue One demonstrates the maturation of the Star Wars ideology: it is not Luke Skywalker making a one-­in-­a-­million shot to be the hero of the galaxy; rather, Malbus and Îmwe are a group of many who are not seen as heroes or superstars. Working together, they each take small actions that add beyond the sum of their parts. The Force they represent is about working collectively, just as we can work collectively to reinvent academia based on a commitment to our academic community rather than on the neoliberal individualist model of academic success. The Last Jedi (Kennedy, Bergman, et al., 2017) brings home this point even more directly with the character Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), one of the few young Asian w ­ omen characters in all of Hollywood film history who is not a villain or sex object. In an action that could be baffling too many, Rose crashes into Finn (John Boyega) to prevent him from completing his individual act of heroic self-­sacrifice. When he asks her why she ­stopped him, she says, “That’s how ­we’re gonna win. Not fighting what we hate. Saving what we love.” Her action and her words exemplify a new kind of heroism for ­these films and for our culture in general: a collective focus on healing, not hating. This is the standard that should already exist in the acad­ emy in general, and especially in ethnic studies, where we particularly espouse the concepts of liberation pedagogy and the ser­vice of social justice. However, ­these princi­ples are far from being enacted in the current structure of academic tenure and promotion, even in t­ hose academic spaces particularly dedicated to critiquing forces of oppression and enacting liberation.

Falling down the Tenure and (Self-)Promotion Hole Tenure and promotion are posited as the reward for de­cades of individualized academic preparation and ­labor, with academic freedom attached to the idea of tenure symbolizing the height of intellectual capital. In the neoliberal model, academics are all the young Luke Skywalker, an individual hero on a hero’s journey. Sidekicks and love interests may provide companionship, but ultimately it is all about the one shot to destroy the Death Star. This focus on achieving certain benchmarks (dissertation, tenure-­track job, tenure, publications) also

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explains the tendency t­ oward the so-­called post-­tenure slump, b­ ecause the achievement of any of ­these goals simply sets up the next step in the tenure and promotion ladder, with what often feels like diminishing rewards. Within the individualist framework of academic achievement, tenure and promotion thus function as the ideal mechanism of control: an academic panopticon by which we academics limit ourselves out of fear of failure. The academic (Death) Star system in which only one “Star” is allowed per field (thereby encouraging the proliferation of micro-­fractionalized subspecializations) may seem to be about rewarding excellence but is actually a mechanism of control. Faculty in the “Star” position often use the power to bully rather than support, ­because they fear the loss of that status. Healing this fear in order to encourage the positive use of power is critical for the development of a socially just academia. Even when tenure is achieved, we rarely are capable of breaking de­cades of training in self-­immolation (Hayes & Wynyard, 2002; Weissman, 2013). We have become not only habituated to what Valverde and colleagues (in chapter 3) describe as the “killing machine” structure of academia; we have often gained power within that structure, and then that power becomes our master and we rarely ­will take chances to risk it. Yet, what is the alternative? To fail to gain tenure is, too often, the end of an academic life (even now, as tenure is being degraded2). So, we put our all t­ oward this goal and in so d­ oing often damage our personal relationships and physical and ­mental health (see chapters 3 and 9). But still, the draws of academic freedom—­economic stability and (maybe) a pension—­g uide the actions of thousands of panicked “probationary faculty” for the five to eight years it typically takes to get tenured and promoted to associate professor. In the spring of 2008, I awaited my tenure and promotion decision ner­vously but with confidence given that my department committee, department chair, and dean had unanimously supported me for tenure and promotion. As in the so many stories we have heard and read about in the pro­cess of putting together this volume, I had met all my departmental requirements in teaching and publications, had performed an inordinate amount of ser­vice, and had no reason to suspect that I would not be granted both tenure and promotion. My department chair even favorably compared my work to that of other colleagues who had been recently granted tenure and promotion and said I should have no prob­lem. However, when I got a letter from my provost asking for a meeting, I became a l­ ittle ner­vous. I knew the provost better than most assistant professors b­ ecause I was the chair of the Academic Senate’s Academic Policies Committee, of which the provost was an ex officio member. I saw him on a weekly basis and thought we had a collegial relationship. But, still, I consulted with my colleagues: “Would he call me for a meeting if he was ­going to deny tenure or promotion?” “No,” my colleagues reassured me. “He would just send a denial letter.”

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The letters had arrived out of sequence, so I did not know what to anticipate. I briefly fantasized that he might even be recognizing me for the hard work I had put into chairing the Academic Policies Committee, a demanding position. When I went into his office, the provost quickly disabused this notion, saying he would be recommending tenure but not promotion to associate professor, b­ ecause he felt I did not represent what he considered to be associate professor material. I countered that I had achieved or exceeded all of the benchmarks set by my department and had been reassured repeatedly by my department chair and other se­nior faculty, as well as my dean, that I would not have any prob­lems with ­either tenure or promotion. It now seemed I was being asked to meet requirements beyond t­ hose set in my department criteria. “What would I have to do? Publish three books?” I asked. The provost scoffed at this suggestion, saying that someone could publish three books, but if no one read them, what would be the significance? He then elaborated, stating that someone could publish a non-­peer-­reviewed article online that every­one was talking about, and that would meet his standard for “significance.” Although the provost’s personal feeling about what was “significant” was nowhere listed as a determining ­factor in tenure and promotion decisions, it had somehow become an unspoken standard that had to be met. Ironically, I had published a significant non-­peer-­reviewed article online—­right ­after turning in my tenure and promotion file.3 At the time of my conversation with the provost, the ­counter on the article registered over 1,500, a fact I shared with him. “Sure,” he dismissed me casually, “but how many of ­those are just you?”4 Faced with this kind of moving-­target logic, I debated filing a grievance, but having seen so many justifiable grievances fail on our campus, I chose not to put myself through what I knew would be an emotionally and possibly physically damaging pro­cess; I waited a few years and reapplied for promotion and received it a­ fter that provost retired. Rather than being primarily about meritorious achievement, tenure and promotion can be understood as being about carefully maintaining a low profile to campus administrators, while appearing to be “excellent” in research, according to standards recognized and valued by such administrators, and not being too controversial. As many contributors to this volume can attest, ­there is no formula to ensure a just evaluation of merit, which has relatively ­little to do with differentiating who should and who should not be granted tenure and promotion once the doctorate and the hiring have already been achieved (and even ­these benchmarks may have less to do with merit than with meeting the needs of ­those granting the doctorate or conducting the hiring). Thus, achieving tenure and promotion can feel like a pyrrhic victory, and even when t­ hese strug­gles are won, the larger war wages on. Th ­ ere exists the myth that ­after tenure, one is safe from reprisal and no longer need fear losing one’s job. But the real­ity is that the ­battle for equality and fair treatment can span one’s

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entire academic ­career.5 It is precisely due to ­these depressing realities that the system as it stands has to change. But while the Fight the Tower movement and ­others work to rebuild a broken system, it is impor­tant to support t­ hose most vulnerable in the current structure: t­hose who are not yet tenured, adjuncts, gradu­ate and undergraduate students, and the staff that make the work of the university pos­si­ble and meaningful, and even low and midlevel administrators. For this rebuilding to happen, we need not only a vision of what this new academia would look like but also a theory that comprehends the prob­lems in academia as structural rather than interpersonal—­that is, it is not about difficult individuals bullying ­others ­because they are “divas,” but rather it is a system structured around (1) self-­protection of the system, which thus ­favors a lack of transparency at all levels and a lack of willingness to embrace change (couched in preserving tradition); and (2) keeping faculty focused on individual success through the (Death) Star system, thus disinclining them to collective action. The current system of academic hierarchy can be restructured ­under a thoughtful implementation of academic symbiosis.

What Is Academic Symbiosis6? Academic symbiosis is the antithesis of academic competition, hierarchy, and parasitism. It stems from the concept that if we want to teach our students through liberation pedagogy designed around the community rather than the individual—if we see the classroom as a place in which ­mistakes can and should be made so that students can learn to innovate—­then we should practice ­these princi­ples with one another as colleagues: faculty, staff, and administration. Academic symbiosis means building a thoughtfully supportive academic community in which we each bring what we can share to the potluck rather than fighting over scarce resources. Academic symbiosis means shifting away from the lack-­based culture that dominates current academic interactions; in social work and community ser­ vice learning, rather than conducting the more typical “needs assessment,” which focuses on what communities “lack,”7 t­ here is a growing movement to assess community “assets” while developing a picture of how greater justice can be achieved (Mezirow & Taylor, 2011; Moxley, Najor-­Durack, & Dumbrigue, 2013). Similarly, in composition instruction, t­ here is a movement away from labeling students’ sentences as “awkward” and instead asking specific questions to help them develop clearer sentences (Rysdam & Johnson-­Shull, 2016). Asao ­Inoue has demonstrated that even something as apparently innocuous as a writing assessment rubric can be oppressive; in his revolutionary text Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Just ­Future, he argues for restructuring the entire pro­cess to facilitate student

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learning (rather than faculty gatekeeping). ­Inoue (2015) writes, “If we are to enact helpful, educative, and fair writing assessments with our students, given the history of whiteness and all dominant academic discourses promoted in schools and disciplines, we must understand our writing assessments as antiracist proj­ects, which means they are ecological proj­ects, ones about sustainability and fairness, about antiracist practices and effects” (pp.  3–4). In other words, the acad­emy does not exist in a vacuum; it is very much a part of the history of dominance and oppression. To fight this oppression requires reevaluating ­every system within it—­particularly ­those that appear to be objective and neutral—­from the perspective of anti-­racism and anti-­oppression and ­toward liberation and justice. Thinking of assets rather than needs is not mere wordplay: it is a fundamental shift in thinking away from a “lack”-­based scarcity model in which only an elite few are deemed worthy to pass through the gates t­ oward a model that endeavors to determine how our uniqueness and diversity can be brought together to create a society in which we all have a significant role. Thus, academic symbiosis means seeing ourselves as part of a collective learning and teaching community rather than as individual academics competing against one another for ­limited resources and rare recognition. As teachers, we know that each student brings something unique to the liberation classroom (Rendón, 2012). So, too, in academic departments, we could focus on faculty and staff members’ assets and value them for their dif­fer­ent skills and talents, rather than mea­sur­ing every­one against the same ideal by which they w ­ ill always seem to be lacking. When someone falters, a system of academic symbiosis finds ways to support and facilitate rather than cull. Academic symbiosis means fighting against impositions of hierarchy to recognize that we need each other in order to do this never-­ending task of empowering individuals, communities, and our society t­ oward liberation and equity. It means recognizing that academia is the primary locus through which the next generation is acculturated, and if we do this through fear and oppression, we ­will have a society rooted in fear and oppression. It means recognizing that we academics cannot master any field; nor should we try to do so, ­because mastery might mean the accumulation of knowledge, but it can also mean the death of wisdom. Academic symbiosis means, most of all, letting go of our own fear of failure, fear of not being good enough, and fear of shame. Academic symbiosis can guide the most challenging decision pro­cesses in academia, particularly ­those that have traditionally led to the deep infighting for which academia is known (and mocked).8 For example, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidelines already prohibit discrimination in hiring.9 Tenure-­track hires must adhere to EEOC guidelines but often, in practice, do so in only a minimal way.10 Hiring done outside the tenure track, including spousal hires and adjunct hires, often pay l­ ittle or no attention to

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EEOC or affirmative action guidelines, resulting in extreme disbalances between tenure-­track demographics and ­those of adjunct faculty.11 The unwritten criteria involved in hiring are fundamentally unfair; decisions are too often made based on how well the candidate meets the expectations of the most power­ful person on the hiring committee (or the department chair, when t­ hose are not the same person), who is often the most se­nior and thus soonest to retire. This can leave a department struggling with a difficult fit for several de­cades, while the person who exercised oppressive power in the pro­cess has long since retired. ­These unwritten criteria can also result in failed searches, scarring the candidates and creating deeply held enmities that can disrupt relationships within departments for years afterward (Perlmutter, 2016).12 All too common practices allow this kind of manipulation, including determining the evaluative criteria in order to skew t­ oward or away from par­tic­u­lar candidates, rather than setting ­these in relationship to the advertised job description; committees (or chairs) refusing to take the larger department’s feedback into consideration; and, fi­nally, administrators simply demanding that search committees submit to their choice, since the committee is only “advisory” anyway. Currently, t­ hese practices are more the norm than the exception, resulting in tenure-­track hiring being one of the most volatile and stressful situations for any academic department. Structuring hiring as well as retention, tenure, and promotion systems by princi­ples of academic symbiosis can help departments avoid ­these damaging conflicts and also even build re­spect and trust between ­people who agree to a pro­cess beforehand and maintain that agreement even when the decisions become challenging.

Trees and Rhizomes13: Horizontal and Vertical Alliances For academic symbiosis to work, we academics must each acknowledge our own power, rather than viewing ourselves only as victims of this oppressive system. We must also acknowledge our role in maintaining that system. In order to achieve academic symbiosis, we must rebuild alliances that have been broken down through centuries of deliberate divide-­and-­conquer strategies. We need to ask, “what is academia, how does it work, what can it be, and what should it be?”14 We can also consider as a model the truth and reconciliation pro­cess that ended apartheid in South Africa (Nkoane & Lavia, 2012). A transformation of academia as both a workplace and a place of learning must be based on pro­ cesses of truth, reparations, and reconciliation ­toward greater social justice and symbiosis. Critical l­ egal scholar Mari Matsuda (1987) suggests that a “horizontal connection” exists between members of groups that survive injustice, even when other f­ actors (such as being a college professor) might seem to mitigate one’s experience of oppression. In academia, vari­ous f­ actors, including disciplinary

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isolation and indoctrination in the presumption of a merit-­based system, often serve to divide t­ hose who would other­wise have such a “horizontal connection.” The other barrier to building alliances is the privileges that adhere to dominant groups: “Members of the dominant class continue to benefit from the wrongs of the past and the presumptions of inferiority imposed upon victims. They may decry this legacy, and harbor no racist thoughts of their own, but they cannot avoid their privileged status” (Matsuda, 1987, p. 379). All faculty are members of the perpetrator group, ­whether or not we are ourselves bullies as individuals: we are in positions of power. Therefore, even ­those members of the dominant class within academia who wish to be allies must still negotiate with their privileged status,15 and every­one in academia has some kind of privilege and power, even if it feels as though we are all oppressed. Ju­nior faculty on the tenure track may feel they have less freedom even than lecturers to voice their opinions ­because failing to get tenure can leave a permanent, sometimes fatal mark on a c­ areer, while moving from one institution to another is normal for adjunct faculty. A w ­ oman of color department chair who has felt oppressed in her ­career may not recognize the power she has over the ­careers of the men, ­women, and nonbinary p­ eople in her department. Ultimately, the feeling of being oppressed and powerless ourselves can be one of the biggest barriers we face in enacting academic symbiosis ­because it makes us focus only on our experience rather than on extending empathy to our colleagues and students. Failing to acknowledge and redress the guilt we may feel from exercising power in this way can also block us from working with ­others more productively. Our failure to recognize and take responsibility for our own power may cause us to perpetuate systemic injustice in academia. Given the structural barriers to building alliances in order to right t­ hese wrongs, we must create structural solutions: shared governance, affirmative action in hiring faculty, and a symbiotic rather than parasitic tenure and promotion system, as described below. Re­sis­tance movements can flourish only when t­ hose of us on both the inside and the outside of power structures choose to connect, work together, and trust each other.

Academic Symbiosis and the Tenure Pro­cess Academic symbiosis, as a “minority discourse,”16 is a conversation about sharing and supporting. However, too often academic symbiosis must strug­g le against the entrenched culture of academia, which sees sharing as weakness and which is structured around the twinned ideas of mastery and lack. Academia has seen itself as a system of competition that inspires so-­called excellence.17 However, in a true form of such a system, every­one would have their basic needs met and the competitors would be supported by teamwork designed to enhance their maximum potential. In contrast, academia actually functions as a system

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of academic hierarchy that has been constructed as a system of parasitism based on a logic of scarcity: in order for one to win, another must lose (Keith & Babchuk, 1998). Further, too often what is “won” is incommensurate with the effort involved in the achievement, which is why, as mentioned e­ arlier, faculty often face post-­tenure depression.18 In this context, what I propose is radical: academic symbiosis is a system of social justice for communal transformation and liberation, rather than individual success. Rather than presuming individual winners and losers, academic symbiosis instead considers individuals’ strengths as combining for the better functioning of the ­whole community. This is an explicit rejection of the “superstar” system in which only a few faculty are given re­spect and status as token superstars, while the majority (particularly the adjunct/lecturer majority) are subjected to oppressive l­abor conditions (Shea, 2014). The argument against this is the presumption of scarcity, but this is a false tautology ­because it fails to consider what we can create when we choose to reject hierarchy and instead work to support each other and our shared goals. In other words, the intersectionality that is often invoked to discuss the ways oppressions multiply on w ­ omen of color can also be seen as the strength of a university system built to value diversity. Similar to Allyson Tintiangco-­ Cubales’s recognition of the collective “mothering” central to her notion of an Alagaan pedagogy (see chapter 12), this might be thought of as a matriarchal academic system rather than the patriarchal system that now rules. In a matriarchal-­symbiotic academia, what might have once been considered weakness is instead evaluated through an anti-­oppressive lens; for example, instead of seeing an Asian American w ­ oman as being unfit for a deanship b­ ecause she is not aggressive, her leadership style might be seen as leading by supporting rather than by dominating. In this matriarchal academic symbiosis model, students, faculty, and programs demonstrating “need” would get the support required to succeed, while “successful” faculty and programs would also be supported. For example, gradu­ate programs would not admit large cohorts with the intention of “weeding out” but would rather commit to support all they admit; and similar princi­ples would adhere to faculty hires (Larson, Ghaffarzadegan, & Xue, 2014).19 Further, definitions of “need” and “success” and their metrics would also be created by faculty and students, rather than imposed by administrators or politicians.20 Overall, systems of evaluation and assessment would be communal, self-­determined, and based on individual relevancy, rather than generalized and imposed externally.

Academic Symbiosis and Survivance While holding the image of “friendship in adversity” in mind, like the “horizontal connection” of Chirrut Îmwe and Baze Malbus, and the “vertical connection” of unlikely alliances, I propose a praxis of academic symbiosis. Academic

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symbiosis is the antithesis of academic competition, hierarchy, and parasitism. Academic symbiosis is about having the “power to support” rather than to dominate or be dominated (Lorde, 1981). It is about proactive “survivance,” rather than simply recognizing shared victimhood. As Gerald Vizenor describes it in relation to Native American narratives, “Survivance is an active sense of presence, the continuance of native stories, not a mere reaction, or a survivable name. Native survivance stories are renunciations of dominance, tragedy and victimry” (Vizenor, 1999, p. vii). Academic symbiosis requires us to be actively pre­sent, to face shame and be shameless, to talk about how the institution has failed us,21 how it has in fact betrayed us—as faculty and staff workers, as students, and as a society—­through systemic “Inequity, Discrimination, Bullying, and Retaliation.”22 Academic symbiosis enacts the transformational promise of building on the wisdom of t­ hese marginalized and oppressed communities.23 It is not about celebrating difference; it is about building critical, strategic alliances across all lines and deconstructing oppressive structures, starting with ­those in the university itself. Many faculty have already begun to embrace liberation pedagogy; academic symbiosis is the academic l­ abor equivalent of liberation pedagogy. Re-­creating faculty l­ abor practices as “liberation academic l­ abor” would entail manifesting transparency, equity, and communality at ­every level of the faculty life pro­cess: hiring, training, mentoring, retaining, tenuring, and promoting. It would mean monitoring our own power and asking ourselves, “am I using my power to support or to oppress?” Liberatory academic l­abor practices in alignment with liberation pedagogy would allow faculty to practice with one another what they teach (Glass, 2001; hooks, 1991).

Academic Symbiosis and Shared Governance Systems of faculty grievance, anti-­bullying policies, and h ­ uman resources too often fail to support individual faculty and overall fail to change fundamental systems of inequity. Retaliation and remediation often exist side by side; even when individual cases are proven, oppressors often remain in positions of power, and larger systemic issues are unaddressed (Block Joy, 2010). Faculty brave enough to fight often find the pro­cess daunting and unsatisfying, as the cases are often difficult to prove and treacherous to navigate. Th ­ ese cases signal not the failures of individual faculty but the failure of the acad­emy as a ­labor system. We must reinvent systems of shared governance to increase equality and fair treatment, both from the bottom and, when pos­si­ble, from the top down. Some Asian American ­women, despite the many barriers in place against them, have begun to occupy leadership positions in academia; in t­ hese positions of relative power, are they able to remake the “killing machine” into a more just

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acad­emy? Eileen Fung, associate dean for arts and humanities at the University of San Francisco, a premier Jesuit university, says, “With my background of race theory and cultural diversity, I see ­things in a dif­fer­ent light ­those qualities that ­others might overlook or see as negative. For example, faculty who speak with an accent might be seen as negative by o­ thers, but I can see how they bring a dif­fer­ent way of thinking with their multiple language abilities.” Fung immigrated from Taiwan as a child and is herself multilingual; her path through academia has included many challenges shared by ­others in this volume, including language discrimination. Her dif­fer­ent way of looking at candidates often translates into seeing assets where ­others might see lack: For example, I was able to advocate for a w ­ oman who was up for a leadership position that o­ thers thought was too soft-­spoken for the role. I argued for a dif­fer­ent way of being a leader that is not framed in a Western male framework: I get myself heard, and I get ­things done without being aggressive. To me, leading does not require force. We can embrace a form of leadership by which a quiet person can lead.24

Fung recognizes that policies are not enough. Just as affirmative action policies in hiring are not enough to c­ ounter entrenched racism and sexism, particularly when it is unconscious, she argues, “­There is no system that is effective without that piece—­the lived experience of diverse p­ eople in positions of power.” Thus, while it is impor­tant to have policies like affirmative action and systemic structures like ­human resources, an ombudsperson, or a ­union, in order to “create opportunities for dialogue,” t­ hese systems cannot by themselves solve the prob­lem. Fung says, “I’m advocating that t­ here be a system, but that we use our lived experience [as ­people from oppressed groups in positions of power] to shift and change that system or community. I recognize the value of it while also seeing its flaws and the need to try to make it work for every­one justly.” Fung views her role as one of finding the ­middle ground between representing “the administration and the needs of the university” and understanding “the needs of the faculty.” Fung’s leadership style may indeed be described as “matriarchal”25 in approach in that it seeks justice and inclusion. It can be difficult for t­ hose who practice this form of leadership, as opposed to that which is more overtly aggressive and oppressive, to advance within the patriarchal hierarchy of typical academia. Th ­ ose who do so may find that they have to change the culture around them for their way of working to be recognized as an effective form of leadership. That is to say, they must have already enacted academic symbiosis in order to have advanced. Rowena Tomaneng, a first-­generation Filipina raised in Southern California, was promoted to the position of president of Berkeley City College in 2016,

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a­ fter having served for nearly two de­cades in increasingly significant leadership positions at De Anza College, a prominent community college near Silicon Valley, California. For many years at De Anza, Tomaneng served as the associate vice president (AVP) of instruction, a role through which she was directly involved with the hiring, retention, tenure, and promotion pro­cesses across campus.26 Tomaneng describes the situation she experienced at De Anza as requiring a ­great deal of work to shift entrenched biases; before she could even gain tenure, she had to seek strategic alliances and work to change the culture of the campus around her. Making t­ hese changes on an individual, case-­by-­case basis may improve the lives of a few faculty, but making systemic change requires shifting the culture of an entire institution. Tomaneng says, “Over time, the Academic Senate became more involved in screening the diversity of tenure review committees.” However, this shift came about not only b­ ecause of changes in the larger culture but b­ ecause she came into positions of increasing power. First as a tenured faculty member, then as a dean, Tomaneng worked to “ensure diverse search pools.” This allowed Tomaneng and her allies to create “a critical mass to support the policy shifts t­ owards increased diversity.” She describes this work as that of “The faculty of color who are already tenured and the administrators [who] want to ensure that t­ here is a fair pro­cess for new faculty brought in to the institution, esp[ecially] for faculty of color dealing with intersectionalities of oppression.” This is a pro­cess of institutionalizing diversity. And despite her many successes in changing the culture of the campus, “[Although] some of the white faculty feel strongly about the value of diversity, ­there remains a large group of white faculty (including newly hired faculty) who think it ­doesn’t ­matter—­despite workshops on studies showing the impact of faculty reflecting the diversity of students.” If over twenty years of work on a small campus by a group of well-­placed faculty and administrators cannot completely change the institutional valuing of diversity and equity, how much harder must the fight be on campuses where leadership does not include diverse and equity-­minded ­people? Since diversity work was not initially institutionalized at De Anza, t­ hose who shared Tomaneng’s concerns “volunteered to serve on additional committees beyond t­ hose required by our positions.” One role Tomaneng described that could be replicated by ­others seeking to institutionalize social justice and liberatory academic ­labor is that of “the Hiring Man­ag­er [who] supervises hiring and ensures the tenure track pro­cess is adhered to correctly, including maintaining an Affirmative Action checklist.” As she gained greater power, Tomaneng personally institutionalized greater attendance to diversity: This change came about when I became the first permanent AVP of Instruction, and I worked very closely with Academic Senate presidents and officers, and directors of Staff Development and Equity. I instituted this collaboration b­ ecause

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I wanted to deepen the work we w ­ ere d­ oing and the shifts we ­were making in campus culture so we could have a better pro­cess and be more supportive of newly hired faculty undergoing tenure review. And when I hired the director of the office of equity, I hired her specifically b­ ecause of her background in cultural humility and orga­nizational change. She could take us to the next level.

Having to work above and beyond is exhausting and can also have negative consequences, as is well documented in this volume, but the rewards can also be significant. As Tomaneng says, “When I first started, I never would have believed the Academic Senate would have an Equity Subcommittee—­I ­didn’t even think I would get tenure. But then I started to see the changes we could make through our work.” The changes for De Anza have been significant, but dedicating herself to working ­toward diversity and equity have also benefited Tomaneng, who has transitioned to her new role as president of Berkeley City College. In this new leadership role, Tomaneng says, “my perspective on diversity and supporting Asian American ­women faculty is not much changed. I bring to this role every­thing I was committed to and which I learned how to implement in my previous institution.” Although she has been in the role for only a ­little over a year, she has already identified key issues related to diversity and justice: “I am committed to diversifying our faculty h ­ ere—we have ­great, committed faculty, but it is not a very diverse group. This is a small college27—­with only about 65 TTK [tenured/tenure track] faculty and 130 adjuncts; that is less than the 200 I oversaw as the Dean of Language Arts at De Anza.” Given that Berkeley City College is an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander–­serving institution, with a 22.7  ­percent Asian American student population, the dearth of Asian American w ­ omen faculty can have a serious impact on students. As Tomaneng further notes, “The three Asian American w ­ omen faculty who immediately come to mind are all counselors.” That t­ hose Asian American w ­ omen who are faculty are counselors puts them in the role of caregivers, which further reinforces the structuralized limitation on the role of Asian American ­women in academia (see chapter 10). Tomaneng recognizes that systematizing affirmative action is not easy; as she says, “Affirmative Action at both campuses [De Anza and Berkeley City College] is run on a trust system, so implementation depends on the leadership. As campus president, it is now on me to remind my management team that to the best extent pos­si­ble we want qualified applicants that ­will increase our diversity.” One way she suggests systematizing affirmative action is to make the pro­cess of hiring of adjunct faculty mirror that of hiring tenure-­track faculty. In most colleges and universities, adjunct or lecturer faculty are hired by department chairs with no oversight from ­human resources.28 Tenure-­track faculty hires must conform to EEOC guidelines; adjunct hires at most institutions do not. With adjuncts

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making up well over half the academic workforce, this failure can have a significant impact on the diversity of faculty. Tomaneng suggests remedying this by starting with what academics know how to do best: researching. She suggests a study, throughout the Peralta Community College District, of “the demographic data for tenure-­track and adjunct faculty in relationship to the student numbers and in the context of research on how students are impacted by having faculty of color being their professors.” Further, she hopes to make institutional, structural changes in the pro­cesses of hiring, retention, tenure, and promotion to ensure greater faculty diversity with the goal of increasing student success. Both Eileen Fung and Rowena Tomaneng function as aspirational matriarchal academic role models, creating pathways simply by occupying leadership positions. As Fung says, “­Because they can see me in this role, they can imagine themselves h ­ ere.” However, simply being an Asian American ­woman in a leadership position is not enough to c­ ounter structural, institutionalized intersectional racism and sexism. We must, like Tomaneng and Fung, actively “create a pathway and professional development system for faculty of color to grow into administrative roles” (Fung, personal interview). It is through ­these systemic changes that we ­will see the growth of academic symbiosis, which according to Fung “underlines the importance of relationships or relational dynamics among us and the academe.” However, functioning in this kind of leadership position can be dangerous b­ ecause the system w ­ ill attempt to coerce you to protect itself at the cost of social justice, as too many whistle­blowers have discovered (Block Joy, 2010; Mesmer-­Magnus & Viswesvaran, 2005). Ultimately, Fung reminds us, “Being part of the system does not mean being the system. If you become the system, you become ineffective—­neutralized.” Fung suggests that we must “stay versatile and adaptable” in order to stay effective ­because “in­effec­ tive­ness happens when one d­ oesn’t recognize and act on that elasticity to push for positive changes that ­will benefit both the individuals and the university/ system.”29 This is why t­ hose of us who serve in leadership positions must constantly strive to remain “woke” while also committing to the princi­ples of academic symbiosis.

Rethinking Shared Governance Some might argue that academia already has a structure of symbiotic relationships: shared governance. However, the “shared governance” model, by which faculty share the responsibilities of institutional administration with campus administrators, is often inaccessible; for example, at some institutions, adjunct faculty have no seat at the ­table, while, at ­others, they are allowed but not given release time to participate (Clausen & Swidler, 2013). Even for ­those faculty who do have access to shared governance, it can be challenging to fully have one’s

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voice heard. This is especially the case in this time when administrators increasingly adopt corporate models of governance into the acad­emy. Thus, rather than faculty making decisions about faculty hiring and other academic ­matters, increasing numbers of ­middle man­ag­ers and administrators are assigned to make ­those decisions, or they are being made system-­wide by administrators far removed from the campuses that their decisions affect. Institutional resources increasingly go to the significantly higher salaries of t­ hese m ­ iddle man­ag­ers and administrators, at the cost of abolishing tenure-­track positions and hiring more adjunct non-­tenure-­track faculty (Currie & Hill, 2013; Rogers, 2013). Universities are becoming more top-­heavy with increasing numbers of administrators, while faculty members are becoming more disenfranchised from the governance pro­cess (Kezar, 2015; Pijuan, 2012). This is especially true as faculty are being positioned ever increasingly as temporary l­abor both through the erosion of tenure and the increase in adjunct faculty, who are treated by both other faculty and administrators as highly disposable l­abor (American Association of University Professors, n.d.). Given t­ hese interrelated deliberate deconstructions of academic freedom, sovereignty, dignity, and justice, how are we to enact academic symbiosis? We must work to reverse this movement actively, at e­ very level to which we do have access and then by positioning to gain access to ­those other levels—­and, once ­there, by remaining “woke.” This strug­g le may seem overwhelming, particularly insofar as it is clearly not just a “trend” t­ oward corporatization but in fact an overt action embedded in the very language of academic administration (see chapter 1). ­Because the destruction of even the myth of academia as a site of liberation is so deliberate, so too must the re­sis­tance and rebellion be deliberate. But we cannot merely push back to a mythical past of idyllic academic freedom. To win the larger war, we must encompass academic freedom, which has been ­limited to a few select faculty, within a deliberately inclusive system of academic symbiosis. If faculty at all levels do not have equal participation (not just access) to shared governance, then shared governance is neither just nor equitable.30 Even when adjunct faculty are included in shared governance by policy, in ­actual practice their participation is often ­limited; for example, on some campuses, any shared governance work done by adjunct faculty is completely voluntary, while ser­vice by tenure-­track faculty is included in their salary. Furthermore, ­these underpaid adjunct professors are often denigrated more than they are respected for their ser­vice, and when they do serve, their employment vulnerability positions them to be less likely to oppose administrative dictates (Kezar & Gehrke, 2014). Similarly, very ju­nior faculty may be asked by administrators to join leadership positions too early in their ­careers. It is pos­ si­ble that this practice takes place ­because it is to easier for administrators to regulate and guide young faculty: faculty that lack institutional memory and collegial networks (Clauset, Arbesman, & Larremore, 2015; Osei-­Kofi, 2012).

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This is an alluring proposition for ­those aspiring professionals, to be sure. However, ju­nior faculty who are not tenured are vulnerable in ways similar to that of adjunct faculty, and therefore systems of shared governance must be structured to protect them if their voices are truly to be heard. Such faculty are often warned by se­nior faculty not to take on such work ­until they are post-­tenure, for fear that it w ­ ill “paint a target” on their backs—­particularly if they win an argument against the wrong administrator on what they see as contested turf (Cramer, 2017; Jafar, Feldman, & Chrisler, 2017). But t­ hese warnings, even when well intentioned, can have a chilling effect on ju­nior faculty participation in shared governance. Too often, even when all voices are heard, decisions made in the shared governance pro­cess can be overturned by default in administrative practice. Bud­ get restraints and practicalities are often cited as the (con­ve­nient) culprits.31 Ultimately, since administrators too often see systems of shared governance as an imposition of ­unions, or some other collective bargaining body, rather than as a true partnership, they resent the faculty that they see in t­ hese governance roles (Davenport, 2015; Mortimer & Sathre, 2010; Stensaker & Vabø, 2013). Shared governance is “the right ­thing to do,” but it has to be done with recognition of the power differentials that can warp the pro­cess. Given the real­ity that current structural power hierarchies and gender and race biases distort the shared governance pro­cess, how might we envision a dif­f er­ent way to share the governance of our academic institutions? Let us not forget the many places in academia where shared governance does not exist at all or is being deeply eroded. This includes the University of Southern Maine (USM), at which administrators “unilaterally eliminated five academic degree programs, stranding students in the pro­cess, and also terminated or forced into early retirement 60 of USM’s 250 full-­time faculty members” (Flannery, 2015, n.p.); Felician College undertook similar actions in 2014, and in 2017, the College of New Rochelle, Mills College, and Sweet Briar College joined the ranks of institutions who have laid off tenured faculty (AAUPa, 2019; AAUPb, 2019).32 Shared governance, academic freedom, and tenure are deeply interrelated, which is clearly understood by the forces seeking to control and manipulate academia in order to control the roles it plays in our society—­thus, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and the Wisconsin state legislature’s move to create what faculty have dubbed a “fake tenure” system that places financial considerations above educational concerns (Kingkade, 2016). This essentially allows institutions to justify shutting down or limiting controversial programs for purely financial concerns. Given this dire context, what hope have we of fighting for academic symbiosis? We have as much hope as Arthur O. Lovejoy and John Dewey when they founded the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) in response to the firing of economist Edward Ross from Stanford University b­ ecause Mrs. Leland Stanford objected

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to his public comments critiquing railroad monopolies, as well as to his pro-­ white ­labor critique of Asian immigrants. In other words, even the founding of the association created to protect academic freedom demonstrates complex power dynamics that we need to untangle in order to re-­create academia. By centering the protection of academic freedom as its core mission, the AAUP promotes “due pro­cess” in academic ­labor practices. Although the AAUP arguably has ­little practical power, it does function in a l­imited way as a ­labor ­union at colleges and universities at which ­there is none; it also studies academic freedom and censures academic administrations that actively erode it (AAUP Censure, n.d.). It also awards t­ hose who are exemplary at promoting academic freedom and shared governance (AAUP Academic Freedom, n.d.). The dubious origins of academic freedom do not negate the need for this concept and its transparent and just practice, including the transparency of its origins in protecting racism combined with anti-­monopolyism. Although academic freedom remains a useful tool in developing liberatory education, it focuses on the individual academic; academic symbiosis takes into consideration the community of academia. This is the evolution in our thinking and action that is necessary for academia to not only survive but to thrive in the next c­ entury.

Creating a Manifesto on Tenure and Promotion in Asian American Studies While developing my theory of academic symbiosis, which comes in part from my lived experience in the acad­emy and in part from my own journey as a scholar, a manifesto grew. This “Manifesto on Tenure and Promotion in Asian American Studies” is a love letter to my department, which is both the first and the largest department of Asian American studies (founded in 1969 and counting sole-­appointment tenure-­track faculty) in the nation, and which is a true community of faculty colleagues who have raised one another in the midst of our shared strug­gles t­ oward education that liberates and empowers not only students but also teachers. Although the inspiration for this manifesto is my own department, the experiences that led to its creation include the two years I spent as president of the San Francisco State University (SFSU) chapter of the California Faculty Association (CFA) during which I frequently witnessed the then provost and the dean of faculty affairs attempt to convince departments across campus to adopt more “uniform” tenure and promotion policies, ostensibly to make the evaluation pro­cess “fairer” by making it simpler (for them) to compare faculty across disciplines. The lynchpin of this effort was their insistence on the inclusion of “external letters” of review, which would be written by higher-­ranked faculty from equivalent or higher-­ranked institutions with whom the candidate did not have a close working relationship, which they coded as a

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“conflict of interest” (San Francisco State University, 2013). On the surface, ­these “external letters” might seem objective and unbiased, but in fact the stipulation that ­these faculty come from equivalent or higher-­ranked institutions means that they w ­ ere inherently biased. The authors would be unlikely to be familiar with the workload or working conditions of the faculty being evaluated. In other words, their evaluations of publications, research, and creative productions would necessarily be based on their own workload and working conditions, both of which vary greatly even within an institution. Does your campus pay book subvention fees to help you get published? Does it provide research assistants, or do you have to write grants to get ­those? Are t­ here grants available in your field, and what kind of institutional support do you receive to seek them? Do you get 100 ­percent pay for a year or two years when you go on sabbatical or only 50 ­percent pay if you take a full year? Do you have to share an office with another tenure-­track faculty or several adjunct faculty? Do you have to pay out of pocket to make photocopies or buy your own printer? All of ­these f­ actors can have a huge impact on productivity, yet t­ hose who have access to the full range of support w ­ ill not easily recognize the l­ ittle with which other faculty must work.33 In my role as CFA president, I fought hard to get the dean of faculty affairs to change the language to what is currently on the office’s Web site, which is now “General recommendations for conducting outside reviews as part of the Working Personnel Action File (WPAF)” and includes a line instructing potential reviewers: “We are not looking for a specific recommendation about granting tenure or promotion, but appreciate your review of the strength of Dr. _____’s accomplishments in the area of scholarship” (Dean of Faculty Affairs Office, n.d., n.p.). Unfortunately, despite repeated communications via the Academic Senate, my CFA communications tools, and in-­person attendance at tenure and promotion workshops or­ga­nized by the provost and dean of faculty, I was not able to get them to completely remove this push for external letters, and, in fact, the most recent (2016) revision of the Senate Retention, Tenure, and Promotion Policy now includes a passage explic­itly authorizing departments to include external reviews, whereas previous policies (Retention, Tenure, and Promotion Policy, F11-241, 2011) had mentioned “external letters” only in the context of extraordinary circumstances, such as disagreements between vari­ous levels of review. In other words, “external letters” ­were to be requested only when internal reviewers w ­ ere unable to come to agreement, rather than being used as some kind of external validation of the normal evaluation pro­cess. But this manifesto is not only a response against administrative machinations; it is a response to seeing what can come of a commitment to one another as members of a shared learning and teaching community. Over a de­cade and a half, my department had been subjected to a generational leadership tyranny

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that created deep stress and disaffection (Pelaud & Dariotis, 2013), particularly around the dangerous junctures of hiring, tenure, and promotion. Although the actions of ­these leaders could have been challenged through formal grievance procedures, we collectively elected to pursue a more radical approach: we hired a mediator. ­A fter an intensive and painful daylong retreat during which we committed to a pro­cess of truth and reconciliation, we emerged with new policies and practices structured around transparency and justice. We abolished structures and practices that had been particularly divisive, and we eventually elected a new chair who agreed to function more collaboratively: Grace J. Yoo. In addition to consulting with all members of the faculty, Dr. Yoo adhered to the open dissemination of department meeting minutes and demo­cratized areas that had previously been ­under the chair’s sole purview, including the hiring and retention of lecturers (now run through the hiring committee and following princi­ples of transparency and diversity) and the se­lection of the masters of arts and undergraduate coordinator position (now elected instead of appointed by the chair). She committed to abolishing the practice of public shaming, while also making a practice of encouraging and supporting collaboration among colleagues and with our students, praising faculty for inspiring new majors and minors to join the program, appreciating faculty publicly for their unique skills and contributions, and encouraging us to collectively support t­ hose who are struggling. She has led t­ hese transformations in the culture of our department with the support of a majority of the colleagues in our department, including the adjunct faculty (of which Dr. Yoo34 and myself ­were both once members), many of whom have been with the department for over a de­cade or are our own master of arts gradu­ates returned. ­These many tributaries joined together one night to flood my dreams with the following manifesto ­until I had to wake up and write it.

A Manifesto on Tenure and Promotion in Asian American Studies35 Tenure is the foundation of academic freedom; tenure and promotion is the system by which faculty ­labor is recognized and rewarded. Within an academic department, the pro­cess of tenure and promotion can serve to cause deep and treacherous divisions, as colleagues are called upon to serve as judges of one another, or it can be a challenging path leading t­ oward greater trust and re­spect among colleagues who both support and evaluate one another constructively rather than destructively. Insofar as Asian American studies is engaged in a form of liberation pedagogy, so too should our systems of tenure and promotion be based in liberation rather than the system of punishment that dominates academic tenure and promotion discourse and practice.

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While the professoriate in general is undergoing a crisis of structural reformation as tenure is diminished and increasing percentages of faculty are treated as part-­time piece workers, Asian American faculty face issues par­tic­u ­lar to them as laborers in the acad­emy. Many f­ actors contribute to this, including racism, misogyny, Orientalism, the model minority myth, accent discrimination, cultural hegemony, the bamboo ceiling, high ratios of Asian American students compared with relatively small numbers of Asian American faculty, and the use of Asians as “ethnic cover” for diversity repre­sen­ta­tion, as well as the situation of Asian American faculty—­especially Asian American ­women—as the privileged oppressed of academia (see introduction to this volume). Th ­ ese are well documented in multiple sources, including Sumi Kae Cho’s The Strug­gle for Asian American Civil Rights: Race, Gender, and the Construction of Power in Academia (1992); TuSmith & Reddy’s Race in the College Classroom: Pedagogy and Politics (2002); Vargas’s ­Women Faculty of Color in the White Classroom (2002), Li and Beckett’s Strangers of the Acad­emy: Asian W ­ omen Scholars in Higher Education (2006), and the more recent, highly acclaimed Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for ­Women in Academia (Gutiérrez y Muhs, Niemann, et al., 2012). Recent high-­profile cases demonstrate that the issues outlined ­earlier can translate directly into tenure and promotion denials for Asian American faculty, such as Emily P. Lawsin and Scott Kurashige at the University of Michigan (Hiyama, 2017); Kieu Linh Valverde at the University of California, Davis (Valverde, 2013; Qabazard, 2012); Mai’a Davis-­Cross at the University of Southern California (USC) (Modleski, 2013; Serhan, 2013); Stephen Sohn at Stanford (Zivkovic, 2014); Jane Iwamura at USC (Serhan, 2013); Aimee Bahng at Dartmouth (Flaherty, 2016); and Namita Goswami and o­ thers at DePaul (Isaacs, 2011); and so on. A study of 106 faculty at USC from 1998 to 2012 showed a rate of tenure success of 92 ­percent for white men and 55 ­percent for white w ­ omen and ­people of color. This statistic dropped to 40 ­percent when Asian American ­women ­were isolated in the study (see chapter 2). Across the country, tenure and promotion is significantly more difficult for Asian American faculty than for white male faculty b­ ecause the system of evaluation and judgment is inherently racist and is also prejudiced against ethnic studies and w ­ omen and gender studies, both as departments and as research areas within traditional disciplines. Faculty members in Asian American studies, as in other ethnic studies disciplines, are stigmatized by the university’s structural emphases, through which Asian American studies departments in general, and faculty conducting research in Asian American studies, are seriously underresourced (California State University Task Force on the Advancement of Ethnic Studies, 2016). Asian American studies, like other ethnic studies disciplines, also bears the burden of being a “discovery” major due to the lack of ethnic studies taught in

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most kindergarten through twelfth grade systems. Focus on time to degree discourages students from switching to discovery majors or from declaring second majors. Further, quantifiable assessment approaches punish programs like Asian American studies that emphasize difficult-­to-­quantify, holistic student learning outcomes, such as becoming self-­defined and more community oriented; or thinking of being “Asian American” not only as a racial designation of pan-­ethnicity but as a commitment to active ser­vice to better the world through Asian American pathways. Th ­ ese restrictions hamper our departments as we seek retention, tenure, and promotion. Asian American faculty situated within Asian American studies departments face multiple barriers to tenure and promotion that are inherently dif­fer­ent from t­ hose experienced by our white male colleagues in traditional academic disciplines. Th ­ ese differences are not accounted for, recognized, or balanced against in the tenure and promotion pro­cess. As prac­ti­tion­ers of Asian American studies, we need to ­free ourselves from the shackles of oppressive knowledge regimes. We need to trust our own systems of knowledge, wisdom, and valuation. We need to judge ourselves as we have learned to judge our students, not for how well they and we adhere to traditional Eu­ro­pean American academic systems, but for how well they and we shape and communicate wisdom despite the oppressions of academic and other institutions. We must practice with our colleagues the community-­based, indigenous epistemologies and values that we teach; thus this manifesto proposes a liberatory, collaborative approach to tenure and promotion. In this system, faculty strengths are recognized and supported, ­because of their individual distinction and the strength they add to our collective work. Areas to be developed are recognized and given support and resources, rather than being marked for punishment or censure. Collaboration and communality is valued, as is individual success. Diversity and differences in approaches, methodologies, community connections, pedagogies, ser­vice, areas of research, and knowledge and wisdom production are valued rather than feared or scorned. Th ­ ese vari­ous ways of knowing, ­doing, and being are respected and valued for how they contribute to our collective strength and wisdom as a department.

Our Goal Is Joy in Teaching, Ser­vice, and Creating Wisdom Teaching. Our teaching is based in compassion and wisdom. Understanding that the educational system can be deeply wounding for t­ hose marginalized by the dominant society, we practice pedagogies of caregiving, mothering, mentoring, direct practice, and community building. Th ­ ese kinds of critical community responsive pedagogies and transformational education are based in de-­colonized knowledge valuations and epistemologies. Student evaluations of teaching effectiveness, as currently structured by SFSU, provide only a ­limited qualitative review and instead rely heavi­ly on

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quantification, which fails to correctly reflect the holistic forms of our teaching (Flaherty, 2016). Student evaluations of this type have also been critiqued for providing lower scores to faculty perceived as w ­ omen (MacNell, Driscoll, & Hunt, 2014). Student evaluations often focus on or are influenced by clothing and accent, and as Stark & Freishtat (2014, p. 13) argue,

• Student evaluation scores can be predicted from the students’ reaction to 30 seconds of s­ ilent video of the instructor; physical attractiveness ­matters (Ambady and Rosenthal, 1993). • Gender, ethnicity, and the instructor’s age m ­ atter (Weinberg et al., 2007; Worthington, 2002; Cramer and Alexitch, 2000; Wachtel, 1998; Anderson and Miller, 1997; Basow, 1995; Marsh and Dunkin, 1992).

Ultimately, Stark and Freishtat conclude, “students cannot rate effectiveness” (p.14) and instead of relying upon them to do so, faculty need to perform inclusive and equitable assessment: “We can watch each other teach and talk to each other about teaching. We can look at student comments. We can look at materials created to design, redesign, and teach courses, such as syllabi, lecture notes, websites, textbooks, software, videos, assignments, and exams. We can look at faculty teaching statements. We can look at samples of student work. We can survey former students, advisees, and gradu­ate instructors. We can look at the job placement success of former gradu­ate students. Etc.” (Stark & Freishtat, 2014, p.14). Rather than focusing on evaluating teaching effectiveness, a system of academic symbiosis supports dialogue between faculty about pedagogy through the following approaches: 1.

2.

3.

Conducting thoughtful and frequent peer evaluations of all faculty (including of lesson plans, tests, and assignments as well as classroom teaching). In combination with annual discussions about pedagogy, this would allow us to both evaluate teaching effectiveness and increase sharing and learning among department colleagues. Creating a space for meaningful self-­reflection, which not only serves the purpose of evaluation but also of improvement. Setting annual goals in teaching and reflecting on t­ hese in relation to each course taught is a power­ful way to reshape our relationship with the teaching evaluation pro­cess, and it also follows the lesson of self-­reflection that so helps our students absorb and know. Increasing the frequency of student evaluations during the course so that feedback can be implemented to help improve pedagogy for ­those students. For example, weekly one-­to five-­minute evaluations would allow students to provide meaningful constructive analyses of par­tic­u­ lar assignments, lectures, online sources, and classroom activities.

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Assuming the student evaluation pro­cess is restructured as suggested by current and ­f uture research, the minimum threshold for tenure and promotion from assistant to associate professor in the area of teaching is positive peer and student evaluations commensurate with ­those of colleagues in the department; a consistent rec­ord of improvement and self-­reflection; and innovation and excellence in the creation or reinvention of syllabi, assignments, examinations, lesson plans, and other pedagogical tools. The minimum threshold for promotion from associate to full professor is continued participation in the pedagogy dialogue through the peer evaluation pro­cess as both evaluators and t­ hose evaluated and continued positive student and peer evaluations. Additional recognition is given for t­ hose who teach their colleagues pedagogical innovations, teach collaboratively, and other­wise aid the development of Asian American studies pedagogy. Ser­vice. Despite being given equal weight in many, if not all, retention, tenure, and promotion policies, in common academic practice, ser­vice is often the least valued area on which faculty are evaluated. Administrators, while calling for faculty participation in shared governance, may denigrate faculty ser­vice as merely filling a committee slot, rather than recognizing the real ­labor and leadership we undertake. However, in our Asian American studies department, ser­vice is highly valued b­ ecause to truly be Asian American is to commit to supporting, uplifting, and strengthening Asian American communities. Thus, to truly do Asian American studies is to commit to supporting, uplifting, and strengthening our Asian American communities as part of our campus community. We do this through ser­vice, as well as through knowledge and cultural production and teaching. We perform significant ser­vice on campus, as we, as Asian American faculty, are often called up to represent diversity in campus-­wide situations. As the privileged oppressed of academia, Asian Americans, especially Asian American ­women, are expected to be pre­sent but to act as the model minority or, in other words, perform ethnic cover. Thus, our ser­vice in the university can be problematic. Additionally, the significant percentage of Asian American students on campus, relative to the number of Asian American faculty on campus, translates into disproportionate percentages of student-­centered ser­vice, including advising student organ­izations, mentoring students, and other­wise supporting them. Academic organ­izations relating to our field remain few; beyond the Association of Asian American Studies, ­these organ­izations are just beginning to be established. Thus, we have fewer opportunities to serve in academic organ­izations relevant to our fields than do faculty in traditional disciplines.

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In Asian American studies, ser­vice is not ­limited to the academic institution nor to academic organ­izations; ser­vice includes the larger community with which the institution engages, particularly local Asian American communities. It is clear that the many kinds of ser­vice we provide may or may not be recognized by titles, formal recognition, or even formal structures. Therefore, evaluations of ser­vice, though it may include such forms, may also include testimonies from community members who may not have academic degrees. While the university may prefer us to perform ser­vice that brings the university prestige, our goal is to serve the community and bring the resources of the university into ser­vice of the community and to model this ser­vice for our students, while also providing them with community-­based service-­learning opportunities. Professional Achievement and Growth. In traditional academic disciplines, professional growth and achievement is seen as the responsibility of individual faculty members. In Asian American studies, we recognize that all accomplishments are dependent upon both personal and professional systems of support. Just as all fields outside the sciences garner sparse funding, institutional support t­ oward ethnic studies fields is generally difficult to find on federal, state, and local levels. The traditional academic disciplines from which many of our faculty receive academic training and mentorship often cannot or w ­ ill not support the work of Asian American studies. Funding and ave­nues of publication, production, and distribution of our work are difficult to come by, or we may even have to create t­ hese ourselves. In our evaluations of professional achievement, we consider ourselves collectively responsible to support our colleagues through this challenging pro­cess of producing knowledge and wisdom. We also recognize the inherent difficulty, in an interdisciplinary department, of differential valuations of publications and other productions appropriate to disciplinary specializations; for example, in sociology, many co-­authored journal articles may be more normative, while in the humanities, single-­authored publications are more typical. We strive to recognize ­these disciplinary differences and not to impose one value system over another. We evaluate intellectual rigor by standards relevant to our discipline, such as recognition in the field of Asian American studies, ethnic studies, critical race studies, and critical mixed-­race studies; a contribution to the deconstruction of Orientalism, racism, sexism, heteronormativity, or classism; or some other sign of excellence we collectively recognize. Traditional disciplines conceive of a fractional evaluation of collaborative work. Fractionalization is criticized in ethnic studies as it partitions identities and manufactures hierarchy and competition rather than cooperation. Therefore, we reject fractionalization and recognize and value collaborative and

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collective work through a holistic lens. This means, for example, that a co-­ authored essay w ­ ill not be counted according to a fraction of 100 ­percent but ­will instead be recognized according to the value of work documented by the author and co-­author(s). Grant applications, policy work, and publications of books, journal articles, and community-­relevant and community-­accessible productions are all valued, with special attention paid to how they impact Asian American studies and related fields and Asian American communities. Creative work opens wisdom in impor­tant ways and is valued regardless of the faculty member’s job description. Creative works such as films, videos, visual art, performing arts, literary arts, and curating exhibits or per­for­mances are valued by how they are made accessible to the public, as well as how they are valued as resources in the community, as teaching tools, and by their artistic discipline.

Connection and Integration The tripartite structure of the traditional tenure and promotion pro­cess emphasizes the separability of teaching from ser­vice and from professional achievement and can be punitive when work does not neatly silo into only one category. Academic symbiosis rejects ­these false demarcations, and instead recognizes that looking at teaching, ser­vice, and professional growth and achievement as separate, distinct, and even disparate is a failure of the structure of the imperial university. Academic symbiosis recognizes the value that is added when ­these areas are not only connected but inseparable. Ultimately, we, as academics, must value that which brings us together and forges ­human connections across bound­aries, over borders, and beyond hierarchies.

Notes 1 This chapter is dedicated to the many friends with whom I have shared my journey into intellectual inquiry and academia: Malik Edwards, Julian Levinson, Joel Zain Rivers, Mary Ellen Petrich, Katya Ledin, Alvilda Jablonko, Brian Komei Dempster, Emily P. Lawsin, Jenny Kwak, Len Villasenor, April Elkjer, Pamela Rousseau, Joemy Ito-­Gates, Julie Villegas, Noelle Brada-­Williams, Alma Rosa Alvarez, Darryl Dickson-­Carr, Jeff Nishimura, Kerry Kaneshiro, Patrick Sharp, Michael Austin, and Julia Garrett; and to the current and past members of the department of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University (SFSU), the SFSU College of Ethnic Studies, and the larger fields of ethnic studies, Asian American studies, and critical mixed-­race studies, especially Laura Kina, Allyson Tintiangco-­Cubales, Nancy Mirabal, Dawn-­Elissa Fischer, Wesley Ueunten, Anantha Sudhakar, Isabelle Pelaud, Mai Nhung Le, Dawn Mabalon, Lorraine Dong, Yumi Wilson, Susan Chen, Brigitte Davila, Kira Donnell, Nicole Leopardo, Katynka Martinez, Jaimy Mann, Laureen Chew, Justin Woodard, Eliza Noh, and Jennifer Ho. This chapter owes a par­tic­u­lar debt to Karen Chow,

Academic Symbiosis • 407

2

3

4

5

6 7

8

Grace J. Yoo, Eileen Fung, and Rowena Tomaneng, for their careful review and feedback. Most of all, this chapter is dedicated to Kieu Linh Valverde, who helped me shape it out of three disparate pieces of writing into something w ­ hole. Starting in the late 1990s, articles about the end of tenure began to become more common. Notably, the Harvard Business Review featured “It’s Time for Tenure to Lose Tenure” (Wetherbe, 2013). And as the 2017 case at Mills College demonstrates, even tenure cannot protect faculty from retaliation (Reichman, 2017), nor is it a guarantee of job security. Faculty of color and especially w ­ omen faculty of color are often the most at risk. I was invited to write “Hapa: The Word of Power,” which I had withheld from my file ­because I knew it would be controversial. This article critiques the usage of the word “Hapa” by non-­Native Hawaiian p­ eople of mixed Asian and Pacific Islander heritage. It outlines how the word came to be used or, as some argue, misused, away from its original meaning of a person of mixed Native Hawaiian heritage; and calls on both community organizers and academics to cease misusing it. This argument undercut the basis of my own academic c­ areer, which ­until that point had been focused on the development of “Hapa studies” (Dariotis, 2007). The article was so popu­lar that it was reprinted as “Hapa: An Episodic Memoir,” in Interracial Relationships in the 21st ­Century (Smith & Hattery, 2009, 2013), and is frequently referenced even a de­cade a­ fter its original publication (Johnson, 2016; Porzucki, 2015) and has been linked as a key reference in the Wikipedia definition of the word “hapa” since its original publication (https://­en​.­wikipedia​.­org​/­wiki​ /­Hapa). The article has become a touchstone in the discussion not only over the word “hapa” but also in Native Hawaiian sovereignty discussions (Rabin, 2012). When asked to comment on the state of Asian American studies, scholar Candace Fujikane said, “The word hapa has also recently been used more in Asian American Studies. Wei Ming Dariotis of San Francisco State recently wrote that when she discovered that using the term is a settler appropriation of a Hawaiian word, she s­ topped using it. She is encouraging hapa clubs in California to rename themselves” (Seeto, 2009, n.p.). This article also helped inspire a chapter about me and my scholarly work, “Bi Bi Girl,” (Murphy-­Shigematsu, 2012). As Jennifer Lisa Vest shows, posttraumatic stress even a­ fter the achievement of tenure and promotion can sour the relationship between faculty members and the institution (Vest, 2013). This may provide some explanation for the so-­called post-­tenure slump: w ­ omen faculty of color may feel guilty for having “made it” when they know so many ­women who did not; and they may also be experiencing a kind of posttraumatic stress a­ fter having been in extreme “fight” mode for so long. I would like to thank Karen Chow for naming this theory based on her reading of “A Manifesto on Tenure and Promotion in Asian American Studies.” Personal communication, May the Fourth, 2017, San Francisco. “Lack” is meant h ­ ere not only in the Lacanian sense but as the theory by which cultural domination has been justified by imperialists and colonizers. For example, “lack” is the theory that justified manifest destiny, as Eu­ro­pean Americans viewed American Indians, Native Hawaiians, Chamorro, Filipinos, and o­ thers as “lacking” the ability to exploit the natu­ral resources around them (Nader, 2004). More information is available at U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (n.d.) and Government Publishing Office (n.d.).

408  •  Wei Ming Dariotis

9 According to the EEOC (n.d.): “The Commission defines national origin discrimination broadly as including, but not ­limited to, the denial of equal employment opportunity ­because of an individual’s, or his or her ancestor’s, place of origin; or ­because an individual has the physical, cultural or linguistic characteristics of a national origin group.” 10 The California Faculty Association’s Assembly Committee on Higher Education (2016) (draws from the California State University [CSU] system’s own data to show shifts over a ten-­year period, from 2005 to 2015. In 2005, Asian faculty ­were listed as comprising 13 ­percent of the total, but no distinction was made between international Asian or Asian American. Hawaiian Native was listed as 0 ­percent. In 2015, Asian faculty w ­ ere calculated at 18 ­percent, a 5 ­percent increase from ten years prior. Hawaiian Native faculty members still w ­ ere listed as 0 ­percent. Interestingly, ­there is a separate percentage for faculty of unknown ethnicity: in 2005 that came to 2 ­percent of total faculty; in 2015 it r­ ose to 5 ­percent. ­There is also a segment in the data for two or more races—in 2005 this was 0 ­percent of total faculty, and in 2015 this number was 1 ­percent of CSU faculty. (I dispute ­these numbers based on repeated conversations with CSU administrators regarding systems by which faculty demographic data are enumerated.) White faculty members in 2005 ­were calculated to 72 ­percent and in 2015 had decreased to 63 ­percent. Corresponding CSU student attendance data provided for 2015 are an intriguing mix: Asian American students show as 13 ­percent of the total student population. Non-­resident alien is listed as 2 ­percent, unknown as 5 ­percent, and two or more Races as 5 ­percent of the total CSU student population. Filipino students are a separate category and make up 4 ­percent of the CSU student population. The categories listed for student and faculty populations are inconsistent with each other and leave room for error. On top of this imbalance, ­there are similar results with the faculty to student ratio by ethnicity showing in par­tic­u­lar a significant imbalance between Asian American and Latina/o faculty and student numbers. 11 For example, according to the CFA’s Assembly Committee on Higher Education (2016), for University of California (UC) faculty in fall of 2005, International Asian and Asian/Native Hawaiian w ­ ere calculated at 6 ­percent and 7 ­percent, respectively, of total faculty. In 2015, ­those numbers became 7 ­percent and 9 ­percent; however, no distinction is made between first-­generation Asian immigrants and Asian Americans. Whereas white and international white took up a total 78 ­percent of the total UC faculty in 2005, in 2015 t­ hose numbers decreased marginally to 72 ­percent. The corresponding student data are as follows (no 2005 numbers provided): In 2015, UC student attendance did not distinguish originating country in its international students segment; Asian students w ­ ere calculated at 31 ­percent. In stark contrast to UC faculty numbers, white UC students w ­ ere calculated to be 27 ­percent of the total student population. ­There is a clear necessity to increase the number of Asian American and international Asian faculty, according to the same document’s correlation between minority faculty presence and minority student per­for­mance in the UC system. 12 See the A Re-­Examination of Faculty Hiring Pro­cesses and Procedures manual (Academic Senate for California Community Colleges, 2000). 13 Grass roots grow rhizomatically; Deleuze and Guattari contrast “arborescent” hierarchical, binary structures with rhizomatic mutualist, multiple, and nonhierarchical structures (Massumi, 1992).

Academic Symbiosis • 409

14 Similarly, critical ­legal studies scholar Mari Matsuda queries, “what is law, how does it work, what can it be, what should it be?” In answering t­ hese questions, academia must critique itself with a constant eye t­ oward social justice, or what Matsuda calls “looking to the bottom” (1987). 15 A stark example of this is the observation of transgender p­ eople who find that their professional abilities are ­either brought into question or elevated upon their change in gender status (that is, female-­to-­male transgender ­people experience an elevation in the assumption of their professional capability). Female-­to-­male transgender ­people also experience e­ ither no change or a slight increase in their earnings, while ­those who transition from male to female often experience “a substantial and statistically significant decrease in earnings” (Schilt, 2006, pp. 18–19). 16 Abdul JanMohamed and David Lloyd describe a minority discourse: “theoretical articulation of the po­liti­cal and cultural structures that connect dif­fer­ent minority cultures in their subjugation and opposition to the dominant culture” (1987, p. ix). 17 “Excellence” is another socially engineered term that was created with the dubious intention to delineate acceptable scholars from unworthy ones in a meritocracy. This term comes up in language around tenure and promotion regularly. However, the standards of “excellence” are rarely clearly stated; rather, the term is used, too, as a weapon to brush away the unwanted, who are far too often w ­ omen and ­people of color (Leathwood & Read, 2008). 18 All too often post-­tenure depression—­the feeling of gloominess and uneasiness directly ­a fter gaining tenure—­comes from r­ unning the rough and tumultuous tenure track. Post-­tenure depression is, to an extent, even expected in faculty, ­because of a Western society that believes that happiness and working hard are not easily mutually inclusive (Perlmutter, 2015). The “post-­tenure slump” has been the subject of multiple studies (Blanchard, 2012). For ­women of color, post-­tenure depression can even be exacerbated by imposter syndrome, which has already set them up to believe that they have not truly “earned” their tenure position (Hutchins, 2015; Parkman, 2016; Ramirez, 2014). I argue that the post-­tenure slump is not symptomatic of weakness among faculty but rather a sign of the sickness of the tenure and promotion system, in which bullying and oppression are not only normalized but in fact inherent. 19 The overproduction of doctorates is commonly known, yet few doctoral programs have reduced their enrollment in response (Larson et al., 2014). 20 For example, the CSU chancellor’s push on graduation rates has had the effect of more campuses declaring impaction, which means higher scores are required for entrance (Campaign for College Opportunity, 2015). This allows ­those campuses to cherry-­pick students who are more likely to gradu­ate in four years and allows them to get around the mandate of the CSU in the California Master Plan for Higher Education (1960), requiring the CSU to “select from among the top one-­third (33.3%) of the high school graduating class.” 21 Recent scholarship on education has turned around the language of failing students to recognize that academic institutions have failed to support students rather than the other way around (Thomas, 2002). In order to enact “academic symbiosis,” we must also recognize the way academic institutions fail faculty; however, as part of the institution, faculty also have the opportunity—as well as the right and responsibility—to turn that failure around.

410  •  Wei Ming Dariotis

22 This was the title of a 2017 Pacific So­cio­log­i­cal Association Conference at which Kieu Linh Valverde, Wei Ming Dariotis, and Leslie Đỗ presented a panel on “Fight the Tower.” 23 This was also the promise of Asian American and other ethnic studies, which, a­ fter all, was never meant to merely “add on” accretions of facts to the always already Eurocentric imperialist structure of academia. That promise, like the promise of ­women and gender studies, sexuality studies, and disability studies, is to transform the acad­emy into a liberation rather than a domination enterprise and to bring its resources into direct ser­vice to the p­ eople (Collier & Gonzalez, 2009). 24 Eileen Chia-­Ching Fung, associate dean of arts and humanities, College of Arts and Sciences, University of San Francisco, personal interview, March 9, 2017, San Francisco. 25 Matriarchal in the sense described as “Alagaan”—or mothering—by Tintiangco-­ Cubales in chapter 12. 26 The tenure system at De Anza consists of three phases. Tomaneng describes this as a system that includes a significant amount of mentorship, especially in the first phase, by a “Tenure Review Coordinator—­a tenured faculty member who is the liaison between our faculty ­union, the administration and the faculty ­going through tenure review. This person gets reassigned time and works with all tenure review committees, the [vice president] of Instruction, and reports to the AVP of Instruction and the ­union. Works closely with the Office of Staff and Faculty Development, which supports faculty with workshops on the tenure pro­cess” (Rowena Tomaneng, president, Berkeley City College, personal interview, March 16, 2017, Berkeley, CA). This kind of advocate and mentor—­who is given time off from teaching to perform this work—is critical for the successful development of new faculty, but this is too rarely done. And even when it is done, success still depends on the extent to which t­ hese mentors are aware of their own biases and are willing to work on them. 27 “In Fall 2017, approximately 7,000 students enrolled at Berkeley City College. They ­were 25% Caucasian; 15% African American; 22.7% Asian-­Pacific Islander; 25% Latino; 7% Multiple Race/Ethnicity; 4% declined to state; and less than 1% American Indian/Alaska Native” (About Berkeley City College). 28 According to Kezar and Gehrke (2014), “non-­tenure-­track faculty appointments are not tracked as tenure-­track appointments are, larger strategic plans related to faculty hiring have been abandoned, and intentional and reflective hiring practices often are missing” (n.p.). A study by two former administrators who initially intended to debunk the idea of increasing proportions of lecturers being hired “found that campuses had decentralized hiring pro­cesses; that few ­people w ­ ere involved in the hiring of non-­tenure-­track faculty members; that no one was tracking faculty hiring; that no staffing plans existed, non-­tenure-­track faculty ­were not included in staffing plans, or staffing plans ­were not followed; that data ­were not routinely collected, and, when they w ­ ere, the data ­were largely inaccurate; and that hiring was largely random and followed poor management princi­ples” (Kezar & Gehrke, 2014, n.p.). 29 Eileen Fung, personal correspondence with the author, January 15, 2018. 3 0 Report by the American Association of University Professors found that “adjuncts now constitute 76.4 ­percent of U.S. faculty across all institutional types” (Segran, 2014, n.p.). Having tenure-­track faculty instead of adjunct faculty means having a

Academic Symbiosis • 411

31 32 3 3

34 35

much stronger relationship with students, it means being able to serve the community better, and it means more meaningful participation in the pro­cess of shared governance. The pinch is most often found in class sizes, which administrators find ways to maximize, rarely to reduce. The AAUP ­will typically censure universities for laying off tenured faculty. It should be noted that unlike wealthier institutions, most state universities do not have the funds to compensate external reviewers, who might other­wise expect to receive $500 for performing this ser­vice. The only coin with which faculty at state universities can pay is our l­ abor in returning the ­favor, which further disadvantages faculty from poorer institutions, who happen to be more female and more diverse than their colleagues at more wealthy institutions. Dr. Yoo has since been selected to direct the new First Year Experience program at SFSU. Our department continues to work to support one another in the same way we support our students (see chapters 10 and 12). I was inspired to write this in response to discussions with my SFSU Asian American Studies department colleagues (Fall 2016).

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Modleski, T. (2013, January 11). The death of shared governance at the University of Southern California. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from https://­w ww​ .­chronicle​.­com​/­blogs​/­conversation​/­2013​/­01​/­11​/­the​-­death​-­of​-­shared​-­governance​-­at​-­u​-­of​ -­southern​-­california/ Mortimer, K. P., & Sathre, C.O.B. (2010). The art and politics of academic governance: Relations among boards, presidents, and faculty. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Moxley, D., Najor-­Durack, A., & Dumbrigue, C. (2013). Keeping students in higher education: Successful practices and strategies for retention. Abingdon, United Kingdom: Routledge. Murphy-­Shigematsu, S. (2012). When half is w ­ hole: Multiethnic Asian American identities. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Nader, L. (2004). Law and the theory of lack. Hastings International and Comparative Law Review, 28, 191–204. Nkoane, M. M., & Lavia, J. (2012). Rethinking education in South Africa: Amplifying liberation pedagogy. In J. Lavia and S. Mahlomaholo (Eds.). Culture, education, and community (pp. 49–67). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Osei-­Kofi, N. (2012). Ju­nior faculty of color in the corporate university: Implications of neoliberalism and neoconservatism on research, teaching and ser­vice. Critical Studies in Education, 53, 229–244. Parkman, A. (2016). The imposter phenomenon in higher education: Incidence and impact. Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice, 16(1), 51–60. Pelaud, I., & Dariotis, W.M.A. (2013, Fall). Peace both delicious and strange: EurAsian ­women teaching Asian American studies. Asian American Literary Review, Special Issue on Mixed Race in a Box. Perlmutter, D. (2015, February 2). Avoiding PTDS: Post-­tenure depression syndrome. Why are the years ­a fter academics have “made it” so gloomy for so many? Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.c­ hronicle​.­com​/­article​/­Avoiding​-­PTDS​-­Post​ -­Tenure​/­151553 Perlmutter, D. (2016, June 7). Why faculty searches fail. ChronicleVitae. Retrieved from https://­chroniclevitae​.­com​/n ­ ews​/­1430​-­why​-f­ aculty​-s­ earches​-­fail Pijuan, A. M. (2012). Participation of full-­time, non-­tenure-­track faculty in school-­level governance and decision making. Los Angeles: University of Southern California. Porzucki, N. (2015, September 15). How the Hawaiian word “hapa” came to be used by ­people of mixed heritage. PRI. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­pri​.­org​/s­ tories​/­2015​-­09​-1­ 5​ /­how​-­hawaiian​-­word​-­hapa​-­came​-­be​-­used​-p­ eople​-­mixed​-­heritage Qabazard, N. (2012, November 1). Asian American Studies professor denied tenure. The Aggie. Retrieved from https://­theaggie​.­org​/2­ 012​/1­ 1​/­01​/­asian​-­american​-­studies​ -­professor​-­denied​-­tenure/ Rabin, N. M. (2012). Excursus on “Hapa”; or the Fate of Identity. Asian American Lit­er­a­ture: Discourses & Pedagogies, 3, 119–129. Retrieved from https://­scholarworks​ .­sjsu​.­edu​/a­ aldp​/­vol3​/­iss1​/­12​/­. Ramirez, E. (2014). “¿Qué estoy haciendo aquí? (What am I ­doing ­here?)”: Chicanos/ Latinos(as) navigating challenges and inequalities during their first year of gradu­ate school. Equity & Excellence in Education, 47, 167–186. doi:10.1080/10665684.2014.900394 Reichman, H. (2017, July 4). Mills College lays off five tenured professors. Academe Blog. Retrieved from https://­academeblog​.o­ rg​/2­ 017​/­07​/­04​/­mills​-­college​-­lays​-­off​-­five​-­tenured​ -­profesors​/­. Rendón, L. I. (2012). Sentipensante (sensing/thinking) pedagogy: Educating for w ­ holeness, social justice and liberation. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.

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Rogers, J. (2013, January 7). How many administrators are too many? Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­chronicle​.­com​/­interactives​/­administrative​ _­bloat Rysdam, S., & Johnson-­Shull, L. (2016). Introducing feedforward: Renaming and reframing our repertoire for written response. Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning, 21(1), article 9. San Francisco State University. (2013). General recommendations for conducting outside reviews as part of the WPAF. Faculty Affairs and Professional Development. Retrieved from https://­facaffairs​.­sfsu​.­edu​/­sites​/­default​/­fi les​/­outsidereview5​-­2013​.­pdf Schilt, K. (2006). Just one of the guys? How transmen make gender vis­i­ble at work. Gender & Society, 20, 465–490. Seeto, M. (2009, April 22.). Critical transformations: Q and A with Candace Fujikane. Honolulu Weekly. Honolulu, HI. Segran, E. (2014, April 28). The adjacent revolt: How poor professor are fighting back. Atlantic. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­theatlantic​.­com​/­business​/­archive​/­2014​/­04​/­the​ -­adjunct​-p­ rofessor​-­crisis​/­361336/ Serhan, Y. (2013, May 02). Special Feature: Prof loses tenure bid ­a fter appeal. Daily Trojan. Retrieved from https://­dailytrojan​.c­ om​/­2013​/0 ­ 5​/­02​/­prof​-­loses​-­tenure​-­bid​-­a fter​ -­appeal/ Shea, C. (2014, April 14). Academic in­equality and the star system. Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­chronicle​.­com​/­article​/­Academic​-­Inequalitythe​ /­145843 Smith, E., & Hattery, A. J. (2009). Hapa: An episodic memoir. In W. Dariotis, Interracial Relationships in the 21st ­Century (1st ed., pp. 27–43). Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. Smith, E., & Hattery, A. J. (Eds.). (2013). Hapa: An episodic memoir. In W. Dariotis, Interracial Relationships in the 21st ­Century (2nd ed., pp. 27–43). Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. Stark, P. B., & Freishtat, R. (2014, September 29). An evaluation of course evaluations. ScienceOpen. doi:10.14293/S2199-1006.1.SOR-­EDU.AOFRQA.v1 Stensaker, B., & Vabø, A. (2013). Re-­inventing shared governance: Implications for orga­nizational culture and institutional leadership. Higher Education Quarterly, 67, 256–274. Thomas, L. (2002). Student retention in higher education: The role of institutional habitus. Journal of Education Policy, 17, 423–442. TuSmith, B., & Reddy, M. T. (Eds.). (2002). Race in the college classroom: Pedagogy and politics. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (n.d.). EEOC regulations. Retrieved October 26, 2017, from https://­w ww​.­eeoc​.­gov​/­laws​/­regulations​/­index​.­cfm Valverde, K.-­L . C. (2013). Fight the tower: A call to action for ­women of color in academia. Seattle Journal for Social Justice, 12, 367–420. Vargas, L., (Ed.). (2002). ­Women faculty of color in the white classroom. New York: Peter Lang. Vest, J. L. (2013). What d­ oesn’t kill you: Existential luck, postracial racism, and the subtle and not so subtle ways the acad­emy keeps w ­ omen of color out. Seattle Journal for Social Justice, 12(2), 471–518. Vizenor, G. R. (1999). Manifest manners: Narratives on postindian survivance. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Wetherbe, J. C. (2013, March 13). It’s time for tenure to lose tenure. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://­hbr​.­org​/2­ 013​/­03​/­its​-­time​-­for​-­tenure​-­to​-l­ ose​-­te

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Part V

The Academic Awakens “We Are One with the Force and the Force Is One with Us” In many ways, Asian American studies has functioned as a kind of Rebel Alliance1 within the Empire of the acad­emy. But just as the Alliance sometimes plays it safe, Asian American studies has to function within the acad­emy, which means it cannot always afford to take the actions needed for crucial change. That is when we need a rogue force. Hence, this anthology is meant to provide the blueprint to destroy the Death Star—­other­wise known as an academic culture that breeds corruption, retaliation, sexism, racism, and other forms of oppression. We hope this work inspires f­ uture scholarship to investigate the ways in which the educational system has failed t­ hose not in the upper echelon of society. Our purpose is not to re­create another system of hierarchy but to empower administrators, faculty, staff, students, and the community to re-­ make and re-­envision education as liberation not only for individuals but also for groups and our society as a w ­ hole. Therefore, when we collaborate with individuals from dif­fer­ent identities and re-­envision our education, we are subsequently liberating all groups from systemic vio­lence within universities.

Notes Chapter title: This is a paraphrase of the Chirrut Îmwe quote, “I am one with the Force; the Force is with me.” Kennedy, K., Emanuel, S., & Shearmur, A. (Producers),

417

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& Edwards, G. (Director). (2016). Rogue one: A star wars story [Motion picture]. United States: Lucasfilm. 1 The Rebel Alliance was formed from re­sis­tance movements in which its purpose was to overthrow the emperor and restore democracy to the galaxy. See http://­ www​.­starwars​.­com​/­databank​/­rebel​-­a lliance

My Kintsuki March 3, 2014, Minneapolis, His Holiness Held My Hand to His Heart BY W. P. I’ve tried to calm a storm with a storm I’ve tried to soothe anger with anger I’ve combatted hatred with hatred, evil with bleeding eyes I’ve tried to pay tooth for tooth, hand for hand, ash for ash I’ve pleaded for a kind gesture to ease our daily grind I’ve made banquets, each morsel prepared with prayers for peace My fin­gers reaching for the sky like charred Joshua trees radioactive across the red desert You took my hand to your chest A shattered soul between your palms “Never give up,” you said, “develop the heart” And I s­ topped thrashing against the glass wall “Never give up, no ­matter what is happening,” And I s­ topped crying for mercy when stoned by lies, insults, silence

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420  •  W. P.

This is my promise, Your Holiness To myself and this good earth: I ­will not give up No m ­ atter how impossible it is I ­will not give up No m ­ atter what’s happening around me I’m a mole burrowing a tunnel of love u­ nder the alabaster tower I’m a pariah playing magic flute from the bottom of the snake pit I’m a mosquito buzzing kindness into the veins of vio­lence I ­will not give up ­Until rivers run f­ ree, and mountains no longer slide ­Until swamps hum with birds and fish among cypress knees ­Until my heart becomes a ­temple Each breath a lotus from the muck Holding this world with veins of gold

Narrative It was indeed the darkest and most painful period, more so than the trial days, when I knew who ­were hurting me. Now the knives and bullets came from everywhere and nowhere, and I was ­dying from pain. And His Holiness came to town. He was g­ oing to meet me in his h ­ otel, to bless my sons and my Kinship of Rivers proj­ect. I wanted to bring my teammates along—­Oliver, Ruthanne, Lisa, Heather—­but His Holiness allowed me to bring only my ­family. I woke up my sons at 3:30 a.m.. We needed to arrive at Marquette ­Hotel in Minneapolis at 4:30. Our meeting was at 5:00. ­A fter that, His Holiness would depart for a 7:00 a.m. flight. We carried 2,000 flags in two boxes, prayers for rivers in poetry and art, made by p­ eople along the Mississippi, Yangtze, Amazon, and other rivers. They ­were my prayers for peace and harmony since I started the proj­ect in 2011. It was the coldest day of the year in Minnesota, negative 21 °F. The roads ­were slippery with black ice. We skidded around and reached the ­hotel. I told my sons to get into the lobby while I was parking. It was so cold my hands froze stiff and c­ ouldn’t feed the coins to the meters. I gave up. If I got the parking ticket, it’d be worth it. We entered. His Holiness stood in the m ­ iddle of the room, his eyes lighting up when he saw me. He grabbed my frozen hand and placed it to his chest. I had a trainload of questions to ask him but c­ ouldn’t make a sound. All I could feel was the melting ice in my hand, my heart, eyes, nose, ears, mouth.

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Blood thawed and flowed again, first a trickle, then a stream, then a mighty river, rushing t­ oward his ocean of love and compassion. He raised his head and laughed t­ oward the heaven. I joined in. So did my sons. I knew I would live from now on, fearless, triumphant. So I wrote “My Kintsuki,” printed it large size, together with the photo of my ­family and His Holiness holding my poetry book Ten Thousand Waves, and posted it on my office door. The talisman cleared the clouds and brought in light. The broken bowl was put back together by veins of gold, more beautiful than ever.

Note Title: Kintsuki is the Japa­nese term that means “to repair with gold.” Shattered pots are carefully repaired with dusted gold, silver, or platinum—­g iving the piece a new life and uniqueness. Rather than hiding the break, the repair is highlighted, thus showcasing the beauty that has emerged through this pro­cess of breakage and repair.

Conclusion Academics Awaken: Power, Re­sis­tance, and Being Woke Abstract Power that seeks to support itself over justice inevitably leads to oppression. Becoming “woke” to the injustice structured into the fundamental fabric of systems of power, like the acad­emy, often comes ­after a long, difficult journey that sometimes involves years of internalizing false narratives and operating uncritically in highly problematic and corrupt institutions. Fight the Tower contributors have dramatically, cogently, and fiercely unveiled impor­tant truths while offering actionable re­sis­tance. This conclusion focuses on turning research into action and the creation of movements for change through which academia may become a place of truth seeking and equitable teaching and learning.

“I Choose to Live for My P ­ eople”1: On Surviving, Resisting, and Thriving in Academia and Beyond When the young Galactic Republic senator Riyo Chuchi speaks the above words to Thi-­Sen to broker peace between their ­peoples, she actually says, “To die for one’s p­ eople is a ­great sacrifice. To live for one’s p­ eople, an even greater sacrifice. I choose to live for my p­ eople.” The chapters of this book represent the resiliency and survival of many Asian American w ­ omen faculty, gradu­ate students, and undergraduate students in the hostile environment of the acad­emy (Cho, 1992; Chen & Hune, 2011; Hune 2011). This is not just about b­ attles 423

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against the institution, nor is it about race, class, gender, sexuality, or anything ­else that divides us, but rather it is about how we choose, now that we have awoken to the real­ity of ­these structures, to live in alliance with “our ­people.” Our ­people are Asian American ­women, fellow academics of all genders and races, the larger community of academia, and of course the communities that we serve. Ultimately, “our ­people” is the society of which higher education is an integral institution. To “live for our ­people” is the same as fortifying ourselves to fight for our p­ eople. And our collective strength represents our commitment to their well-­being. Based on de­cades of involuntary, socially engineered indoctrination into hierarchies of difference and the false image of academic meritocracy, contributors to this book, including its co-­editors, may have very well have initially accepted the premise of normalized injustice within the acad­emy. When we accept t­ hese injustices as normal, we w ­ ill blame ourselves for our failures (and ­those of ­others) to achieve success in the acad­emy. However, through multiple confrontations with pay and resource inequities, direct and indirect racism and sexism, and disjunctive internalized oppression inflicted by the very scholars that critique it, the my­thol­ogy of meritocracy is revealed as entirely false and contradictory to our real lived experiences as Asian American ­women teacher scholars. We came to recognize that even the seemingly positive ste­reo­types of Asians as model minorities, by which we supposedly have ­free access to achievement and success, is a lie deliberately built over hundreds of years to construct a wedge between potential allies—­not only between differently racialized groups of color but also between Asian American ­women ourselves (Lowe, 2015). What follows this realization is the fight for justice for ourselves and ­others. We do this by rejecting false labels, like “unproductive” or “not leadership material,” that serve to dismiss our place in the acad­emy and deny our very existence. We resist the onslaught of hostility and denial by speaking our truth to ­others; providing investigative research to prove our inklings are real; gathering empirical data to forward our cases; formulating alternative and liberatory pedagogies, policies, and practices; and taking our grievances through ­every institutional channel and ultimately into the open ­legal system. We also create community and art, ­because joy, support, and creativity are our tools, too. Much of ­these efforts are documented and demonstrated by contributors of this volume. Their bravery inspires us, and we know it ­will inspire ­others. We fight ­because the current system is antithetical to what we believe academia can be and what it claims for itself. We fight for ourselves, our colleagues, students, and families. We fight in hope that ­others ­will know they are not alone and they, too, can learn how to fight the system so we can stop fighting ourselves and each other. We fight to save the f­uture not only of

Conclusion • 425

academia but society itself. Our victories and losses have meaning beyond the immediate sphere of academia. As challenging as the last point may sound, dismantling corrupt systems within academia w ­ ill lead to a more just society, just as failing to do so w ­ ill increase injustice in society. We know we are not alone in this fight. ­There is a movement t­ oward a new kind of acad­ emy, even as t­ here are forces aligning to entrench the capitalist-­patriarchal academic system. Not e­ very revolution must involve one person being supported by disposable rebel pi­lots to destroy a Death Star. We are not asking to be saved or claiming to be saviors but are acting to save ourselves and each other a ­little bit at a time. No one needs to be a hero—or, more likely, a martyr. Rather, we envision a revolution in which our defiance and strength w ­ ill mirror the warriors that came before us and inspire all t­ hose that ­will follow to establish tangible change. This is a rhizomatic/grassroots revolution not about replacing white men with w ­ omen of color at the head of the same failing structure but about decentralizing and demo­cratizing power while redefining what “power” means. Hence, the first acts of re­sis­tance against the powers of oppression involve extending kindness, justice, and empathy to ­those in need. Contributors to this volume who choose to remain in the acad­emy are constructing an acad­emy in which they can be happy and thrive. ­Those who choose to leave also continue to be dedicated to the fight. Ultimately, institutions or leaders dedicated to social justice must also be prepared to allow for their own end; to do other­wise is to allow self-­preservation to pervert power.2 Allowing for one’s own power to come to an end or experience radical change is the hallmark of true justice, as social justice transformations such as the end of slavery or apartheid revealed. What the change looks like ­will vary based on specific institutional histories, local community variations, and other ­factors; therefore, rather than dictate one model for liberation of academia, we offer instead a variety of pro­cesses and princi­ples that might help us collectively continually create multiple academias informed by local concerns and assets. To make this change, first we have to confront the real­ity of the academic system as it is: not, as described in chapter 9, the way it has been misleadingly labeled, a “rational world” of reward based on merit but as an abusive hierarchy. Starting in gradu­ate school and extending through tenure, many academics face a gauntlet of hazing. This may manifest in fighting against one another for time to speak, for the f­ avor of “star” professors or administrators, and for coveted positions; hazing methods including social ostracization, humiliation, and other forms of bullying.3 And this oppression is often exacerbated ­because of the culture wars dictating that ­those who research marginalized discourses or communities face the devaluation of their work against the hard center of

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academic hegemonies: being w ­ omen, p­ eople of color, and queer or studying ­these subject areas positions ­these scholars more precariously (Aryan & Guzman, 2010; Trotman & Greene, 2013). As Huynh and O’Brien reported (see chapters 6 and 13), the power dynamics between grad students and their professors are reproduced in the relationships between ju­nior (untenured) and se­nior (tenured) faculty, while too often adjunct faculty are simply ignored and neither mentored nor consulted, ­unless for the benefit of a power play (Charlier & Williams, 2011; Wallin, 2004). All of this is done u­ nder the guise of preparing students and ju­nior faculty for “the harsh real­ity” of academia. But what is left out of this narrative is the ­simple fact that we are academia. It is not outside us; we—­academics—­are inside it, even when we are marginalized within it, just as Galen Erso, the scientist in Rogue One, is si­mul­ta­neously marginalized and inside the Empire. We therefore have the power to shift academia’s institutionalized culture, even if our power to do so is precarious, and even if, like Galen Erso, we may need our ­daughters to build on the work we have started. We all gain that power by critiquing the models and methods we have been given, by asking about the differences between policies and practices; by questioning why some ways of teaching, researching, and serving are valued above ­others; and by re-­creating assessment rubrics with our colleagues that give us all real opportunities for success. ­These steps require building trust instead of suspicion and fear among colleagues. It is impor­tant we approach one another with a commitment to truth and reconciliation over the many ways that we academics hurt each other; giving lip ser­vice to “collegiality” is not enough. By modeling for our students and communities the kind of re­spect and empathy upon which social justice is built, we make a commitment to take collective action to change this dysfunctional, destructive system. This power comes hand in hand with this responsibility, even as it comes with the recognition that having this power makes us even more vulnerable to complicity with academic systems of oppression. It is b­ ecause of this vulnerability to complicity that even when we have just the slightest amount of academic power, we have the responsibility to use it to support and not to oppress. We must use it to rebel against the social engineering that constructs us and ­others as always on the verge of lack, always barely acceptable, always positioned by fear and shame. We must use it to rebel not only against the bullies but against the systematized culture of bullying in academia (Hollis, 2015, 2017; Keashly & Neuman, 2013; Simpson & Cohen, 2004; Twale & De Luca, 2008). We must use it to rebel against our own training to seek weakness in order to exploit it, rather than to heal and support. We must use it to rebel against the bullies within ourselves. And when we rebel, we must also be prepared to rebuild, not just to reverse the hierarchy but in fact to throw out “the master’s tools”4 and instead to create a new kind of acad­emy built not by hands raised as fists to beat down but by hands clasped together in “fierce alliances.”5

Conclusion • 427

“Wretched Hive”6: The Myths of Academic Civility and Rationality Our work irrevocably removed a devious mirage: the myth that academia as a place of civil and rational be­hav­ior, in which the merit of scholarly excellence is rewarded (see chapters 3 and 9). The de­cided lack of civility in the acad­emy is often personalized in the form of hazing or bullying: an issue that many campuses are attempting to address through anti-­bullying policies (see California State University Statewide Academic Senate, 2016). This is an impor­tant step, but creating policies to limit uncivil be­hav­ior by individuals ­w ill never end inappropriate be­hav­ior, and it is certainly not enough to cure what is a systemic prob­lem within the patriarchal phallogocentric7 structure of academic hierarchy. In addition to creating policies, we also need to change our practices. We need, specifically, to adopt practices of truth speaking rooted in a belief in our inherent worth and a refusal to be silenced with shame. If an Asian American ­woman academic is facing a tenure or promotion ­battle, she is made to feel that her case is about her failure as an individual. She is shamed into silence. She is made to feel insecure about the quality of her teaching and her research, while ser­vice, the most insignificant leg of the tripod of academic success, is rarely made into an issue, except where her ser­vice has exposed her. ­Others to whom she might reach out are also given the shame message: t­ here is shame on her, and if you get near her, ­there w ­ ill be shame on you (Kim, 2012). We are shamed into silos of silence, and once this cone of silence has descended upon us, we are isolated, and we may even come to believe that we are pariahs. Shame is the perfect tool in the institutional panopticon of academia ­because academic success is so dependent upon the elusive and illusory notion of “reputation” (Foucault, 2008). B ­ ecause success in academia is mea­sured by academic reputation in one’s narrow field, loss of reputation is deeply feared (Kish-­Gephart, Detert, et al., 2009). Thus, shame functions as a highly controlling mechanism among academics, making ­those of us who face tenure and promotion ­battles unlikely to share our experiences of being oppressed and thus reveal the systemic mechanisms by which the administration oppresses us as a group. Asian American w ­ omen in academia who speak up are shamed for being ­women who speak too loudly and may find themselves especially u­ nder attack for having defended a colleague, a student, a program, or even an ideal, knowingly and even unknowingly marking themselves as failing to behave submissively in accordance with societal expectations of them as Asian Americans and as w ­ omen (Berdahl, Min, & Zárate, 2012; Rosette, Koval, et al., 2016). This shame is used to silence us and thus to isolate us. As Audre Lorde writes, “On the cause of silence, each one of us draws her own fear—­fear of contempt, of censure, or some judgment, or recognition, of challenge, of annihilation. But

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most of all, I think, we fear the visibility without which we also cannot truly live” (in Daly, Lorde, et al., 1978, p. 13). As Asian American ­women, we have been taught in our families and communities to value the community above the individual. Although this communalism is often criticized from the perspective of American individualism as patriarchal oppression, for Asian American w ­ omen this emphasis on community can be the way we can make ourselves vis­i­ble and thus to follow Audre Lorde’s call to transform “silence into language and action” (Daly, Lorde, et al., 1978, pp. 11–15). D ­ oing so, Lorde (Daly, Lorde, et al., 1978) warns, “is an act of self-­revelation and that always seems fraught with danger” (p.13). Unlike the current scholarship that focuses on the culture of bullying that is allowed to proliferate in the ser­vice of silencing not only dissent but also the appearance of failure, Brett Esaki (in chapter 9) argues that brutality is inherently structured within the myth of academic rationality. Not speaking out and not working together in community to support each other allows shame to rule us, to silence us, and eventually to kill us ­either psychologically or physically. We have seen it happen; we are seeing it happen. And, as Lorde also reminds us, “the machine ­will try to grind us into dust anyway, w ­ hether or not we speak,” so we might as well speak and act (Daly, Lorde, et al., 1978, p. 13). Striving for inclusion, we must dig through layers of silencing through shame before we can demand to be valued for our intellectual abilities and our ability to articulate our unique ideas. However, even if we go along with the status quo, many of us find ways to resist, maybe through the leadership positions we take on, the stances we take, the nonconformity of our research and our creative output, and the way we speak to ­those who expect nothing but our compliance. Our re­sis­tance is both fierce and multivalent, despite the many costs.

“I Made a Choice”:8 Expanding the Meaning of Being Woke Star Wars turned an impor­tant corner when its story revealed that even cloned stormtroopers are unique and can have self-­determination. One of the most popu­lar of t­ hese troopers was Captain Rex, of the Clone Wars series, who memorably says, “I used to believe that being a good soldier meant ­doing every­ thing they told you. That’s how they engineered us. But ­we’re not droids. ­We’re not programmed. You have to learn to make your own decisions” (Michnovetz & Dunlevy, 2011). The concept that even t­ hose operating within an all-­powerful organ­ization can resist is a power­ful message throughout the Star Wars universe: even cloned h ­ umans with a lifetime of training to conform and take ­orders blindly potentially can see one day. This is particularly poignant in the moment when a stormtrooper, Finn, realizes that the imperial army to which he belongs is massacring innocent villa­gers (Hollande, 2016). This mirrors the awakening of soldiers during the Việt Nam War who refused the order to “kill

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anything that moves” by commanding officers (Cortright, 1975). Though indoctrinated to dehumanize the ­enemy, soldiers, especially soldiers of color, reflected on the oppression their communities faced in the United States and identified with the so-­called e­ nemy (Turse, 2013). This story is perhaps the most power­ful iteration of the Star Wars theme not only of awakening to your true nature, which is the standard hero’s journey of Western culture, but even more radically of awakening to the crisis of morality inside yourself and in your society. The audience, for example, learns that Finn’s backstory is essentially that of a kidnapped child soldier, like boys who are kidnapped and forced to kill in conflicts in Congo, Sierra Leone, and Sudan (Buggenhagen, 2008). Even with ­these complex histories of vio­lence, some never have this epiphanic moment—or wokeness—­because it is too painful to admit that the work to which one has dedicated one’s life is in the ser­ vice of oppression, particularly if you have been trained to believe the exact opposite. We define being woke as a series of flexible pro­cesses of information gathering and learned experiences that lead to the shocking realization that even the systems of education that we believe ­will liberate us are actually designed to oppress us. It is this realization and subsequent moments that reinforce the idea that the world and structures within it are not what you have been taught and led to believe up to that point in your life. For example, academia leads us to believe we, as Asian American ­women scholars, are the exceptional ones—­the brilliant, the intellectual, the intelligent­sia, or the erudite super soldiers. We have been so successful that we have gotten master’s degrees and doctorates despite the odds against us. And then we got academic teaching positions ­whether as adjuncts or as tenure-­track faculty, further despite ­those odds (McKenna, 2016). We have won in this system, so why would we ever want to challenge it? The epiphany is that Asian American w ­ omen are being failed in vast numbers by academia (see prologue and chapter 2) and that even ­those academics who are seen by ­others as the most successful in their fields—­the superstars—­are actually shackled by the system. The chains serve to shame and silence within the hierarchical institutions that are focused not on rewarding our merit but on protecting their own structures and ­those of capital and patriarchy. When we awaken to the truth of structural and institutional oppression, we start to see our own prison for what it is and may even realize our own contributions to fostering its ideals. It is then that we may decide to reject our old ways of thinking about academia and can begin to see how to take it apart.9 Throughout the pro­cess preceding and working on Fight the Tower, we, Dariotis and Valverde, as co-­editors and co-­authors, found ourselves experiencing a series of woke moments between each other and with contributors to this volume. When we realized through making personal connections and reading seminal works like Presumed Incompetent that we w ­ ere not alone, we then asked

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each other questions like, “Why is ­there a dearth of documentation and research on the subject of the fundamental, structural illness of academia?” We then moved to fill in that missing scholarship through our research and writing. And now we demand dramatic change for t­ hose like us and t­ hose that ­will shortly find themselves in oppressive and compromising situations. Although we knew mounting critiques of the institution to be true ­because of our own experiences and ­those of our students, as well as the knowing nods of so many of our colleagues, as academics we are trained to be cautious of proposing a way of envisioning an academia that directly contradicts its own master narrative. Although t­ here have been critiques of academic culture as petty, as vindictive, and even of harboring bullying (Twale & De Luca, 2008), and ­there are studies of the corrosive influence of capital on academia (Newfield, 2011), or likening academia to an imperial force (Chatterjee & Maira, 2014), it is no surprise that t­ here is relatively l­ ittle research that pulls t­ hese areas together to argue that academia is deliberately structured to oppress the academic in order to ultimately shape society into compliance. This makes sense: why would an institution hire anyone whose research critiques the fundamental structure of that institution? In this context, the woke moments w ­ ere followed by the admonition to “stay woke.” It started as an imperative to trust ourselves, our own eyes, and our own senses—to never be duped by any engineered forms of oppression and division again. It then became a command to critique our own work with an awareness that our dissenting voices would be doubted and the research would be picked apart. We became deeply obsessive about documentation and argument—­ examining points of fact from multiple directions and asking each other and our contributors to provide more references and research to answer any pos­si­ ble critique. “Staying woke” in this sense became a type of martial posture that we ­adopted; it meant staying alert, picking up ­every connection, challenging assumptions made from the outside and even ones we make about each other within the acad­emy. “Staying woke” became a partner dance of collaboration in a heightened state of consciousness. Eventually, “staying woke” evolved into what we define as being woke, which is the way that we have come to understand our world as it is ­shaped by academia and infer the meaning of academic structures in relationship to our experiences as ­women of color, specifically as mixed-­race Asian American w ­ omen, in the acad­emy. The concept of being woke allows academia the intellectual room to embrace its critics in order to grow more equitable and just and ultimately more meritorious. As ­every statistic on retention, tenure, and promotion rates demonstrates, the current system of academia is not based in merit or accomplishment but in racist and sexist hierarchies. Being woke is required so that, as academic leadership becomes more diverse, it can remain aware of the difference between power that suppresses and divides versus power that supports.10 Although we

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see the concept of “wokeness” g­ oing beyond older ideas of third world anti-­ colonialism, we recognize the importance of this heritage. This is especially relevant in the American context of African Americans and ­others rejecting the imposition of Eurocentric, cap­i­tal­ist, imperialist culture.11 Charles Pulliam-­ Moore (2016) explains how the term “woke” developed, spread through popu­ lar culture, and then has been dismissed and even denigrated and in ­doing so demonstrates exactly why academia needs to take back the concept of being woke. Though not describing the earliest use of the term, Pulliam-­Moore describes how, “Among black ­people talking about Ferguson, ‘stay woke’ might mean something like: ‘stay conscious of the apparatus of white supremacy, ­don’t automatically accept the official explanations for police vio­lence, keep safe’ ” (paragraph 3, n.p.).12 For academics, to “stay woke” might mean to be alert to the fact that the acad­emy is not designed to protect us but is designed to protect itself and w ­ ill thus act in ways that might seem deeply illogical and indeed self-­damaging (since we see ourselves as part of the acad­emy but it sees faculty, increasingly, as expendable). But even as the discussion looks to blame one group, white men, for much of the prob­lems Blacks face, it essentially reinscribes ideas of difference. The more one group fights with another group, the more difficult it is for us to all come together to understand that power elites have socially engineered institutions to reinscribe power hierarchies. This also keeps us from forming solidarity movements to effectively challenge oppressive systems. We challenge all groups, including whites but also ­people of color, to examine the origins of their own mind-­set, or colonized mind (Fanon, 1961/1963; Freire, 1968/1970). How one views the “other” or even ­those within one’s own group as inferior can lead to a mind-­set of superiority that keeps individuals and groups from being woke. The “stay woke” mantra also asks us to be vigilant of ­those that would attempt to take away our knowledge. At the time of writing this book, “woke,” a phrase that was meant to encourage critical thinking about social issues and injustices, has slowly morphed into something that occasionally comes across as a derogatory jab at the very idea of staying “woke.”13 “Stay woke” has been devoured w ­ hole, co-­opted as juvenile slang, and reduced to a humorous tag­line. Although it remains a meme that can si­mul­ta­neously be both playful and power­ful, “stay woke” has been overused and abused, so why would we want to reclaim it as the name of a power­ful academic theory about academia itself? We chose to use this concept b­ ecause we want to resist yet another attempt to undermine and bury a power­ful idea that exposes the truth ­behind the manipulation of our society. “#StayWoke” is worth re-­appropriating for many reasons, including b­ ecause its nonstandard grammar and overexposure means that it is an accessible term and concept. Unlike deconstructionism or subalternity, which are related antecedents, being woke is relatable to a larger community. It is accessible and, while allowing for a power­ful critique, can also still be

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playful in a way to avoid being directly targeted for dismissal or eradication. How many serious theories can be widely disseminated by combining a ­couple of photos and a few words? The concept of wokeness has real value and therefore already resonates with and is being used by ­women of color scholars to find strength and solidarity. Aeriel A. Ashlee, Bianca Zamora, and Shamika N. Karikari (2017), three self-­ identified “womxn” of color gradu­ate students, define wokeness as “critical consciousness to intersecting systems of oppression. Specifically, to be a woke person is to hold an unretractable embodied consciousness and po­liti­cal identity acknowledging the oppression that exists in individual and collective experiences” (p. 90). The writers pay par­tic­u­lar attention to the embodiedness of wokeness and acknowledge a long history of feminist scholarship on “intersecting systems of oppression” (Ashlee et  al., 2017, p.  90). What they describe might be what Ralina Joseph calls an attention to “race-­womanhood (or ‘wokeness’),” that is a consciousness born of experiencing and resisting intersectional oppressions (Joseph, 2016). This, and Ashlee and colleagues’ (2017) choice to write a “Collaborative Critical Autoethnography,” enacts the recognition of the strength of our collective interdependence, which functions in direct contradiction to the myth of the in­de­pen­dent “leading scholar” whose solitary achievements are valued ­because all other competitors have been defeated. Based on t­ hese understandings of the origins and development of the term “stay woke,” being woke is rooted in w ­ omen of color communal matriarchal activism and is a state of empowerment that understands power as liberatory, supportive, intersectional, communal, and joyous (Anzaldúa, 1987; Davis, 1983; Smith, 2000; Tintiangco-­Cubales & Sacramento, 2009). We want this work to help ­others become “woke,” be woke, and #StayWoke, ­because none of us can be what Erykah Badu terms “Master Teachers” without maintaining a consciously critical awareness of social injustice (Pulliam-­Moore, 2016). As teachers, being woke means committing to remaining students and, especially, to learning from our students. Further, committing to engaging critically in the dismantling of the oppression of academia is how we remain woke. Being woke means refusing to accept the definition of power as corrupt domination and instead redefining power as liberation. For example, even though Rogue One’s Chirrut Îmwe’s best friend, Blaze Malbus, does not believe in the Force, he chooses to fight alongside Îmwe ­because through this friendship he has hope. The Galactic Empire, or, in our pre­sent real­ity, global cap­i­tal­ist domination, believes in the totality of its own power to dominate. However, the biggest threat to globalists is the collective empowerment of the p­ eople collectively being woke. This entails rejecting academic social engineering and the sense of hopelessness that persuades one to succumb to domination. The concept of wokeness is open for every­one, including ­those that have been socially engineered to occupy the top echelon of power and privilege. It is

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understandable and even accepted for ­these ­people to ignore the injustices all around them since they are taught to feel it does not affect them directly. The truth of the m ­ atter is, as Martin Luther King Jr. poignantly observed, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” (King, 1963). This then can be extended to say, “injustice against one is injustice against all.” And, just as King (1963) recognized the mutuality inherent in injustice, describing it as “a single garment of destiny,” so too do we argue that even t­ hose who feel they are empowered—­those at the very top of academic hierarchies—­are also inexorably imprisoned by academic injustices. It makes logical sense for a recognition of this “vertical connection” ­because it is through ­these connections between ­people at dif­fer­ent levels of power that power can be redefined away from domination t­oward support. We cannot pretend that we do not have power; not only is this disingenuous, it ­will also cause us to fail to attend to the harm we can do even when we think we are helping. It is in attending to our relative positions of power that we form power­ful vertical alliances. It was this kind of alliance that defined the civil rights movements of the 1960s. ­People from diverse backgrounds and levels of power came together to fight for basic ­human rights. They did not want their fellow ­human beings to be treated like second-­class citizens or, worse, as animals. We repeat that we reject notions of hierarchies at all, as they serve only to weaken the masses while empowering the top power holders for their own gain. We offer instead positive action for real change.14 Our work acknowledges that, historically, whenever diverse groups have come together to fight off oppressive power holders, ­these co­ali­tions have been met with social engineering designed to divide us. ­Those that have been offered privilege simply ­because of their gender, race, and sexuality and accepted must learn to recognize the damage they do to themselves by submitting to a system in which they can by definition never win. We need to collectively recognize the continuing damage done by past and current structural inequities. As academics, we must reconcile the myth of meritocracy with our ­actual l­ abor practices in academia. This requires a continual pro­cess of what we now call being woke, which is an iteration of the pro­cess of uncovering the truth.

“A City in the Clouds”15: Academic Life Is No Ivory Tower Nevertheless, the fantasy of academic life remains, placing faculty in an even more dubious position as they may assume themselves to be above or beyond ­labor abuse. Even when faculty members do recognize the unjust structure of the academic system, they may be shamed into believing that their strug­gle or case is unique and caused primarily by their own failure, rather than the failure of the academic system. This volume, while contributing to current debates around the changes in the United States’ higher education, also offers a

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framework by which to understand academia’s structural injustices, and thus how to change ­these structures. The educational industrial complex operates autonomously, mostly outside of established l­ egal systems. It is racist, sexist, and follows rigidly defined hierarchies of unequal power relations and opaque procedures of merit/promotion and sanctions—­much like the military (Giroux, 2015). As in the military, speaking against the system is perceived as treachery and is met with the most severe forms of punishment. Many p­ eople we talked with about contributing to this volume w ­ ere unable to share their stories at this time, but our communications with them informed us and inspired us deeply. Some found themselves re-­ experiencing deeply felt traumas that they could not write through at this time. ­Others still have hopes that they do not wish to jeopardize—­hopes for tenure, hopes to return, hopes to survive. We hope that what we have gathered ­here supports all ­those who aspire to academic lives. What the works in this volume acknowledge is that the prob­lems with academia are deep within institutional structures. Ultimately, we are not ­really questioning if tenure or long-­term dedication to adjunct work is ­really worth this ­battle for individual faculty. Though, certainly, a discussion of post-­tenure depression, and other associated effects of adjunct faculty retention, tenure, and the promotion pro­cess would be a useful proj­ect, that is not the aim of this work. Instead, what this volume seeks to contribute is a wake-up call not only to Asian American w ­ omen in academia but to the academic community itself. Wake up, “stay woke,” and recognize that protecting the system means destroying not only yourself but also the very ideals the system claims to support: social justice and meritocracy.

“I Felt Something . . . ​It Awakened, but Now I Need to Know How to Wield It”16: Taking on the Tower It is one ­thing to want to fight, but how to do so is just as impor­tant. Chapters in this volume offer the numerous ways Asian American w ­ omen academics have fought. Our weapons and actions include investigative research, creating alliances, theorizing, writing manifestos, suing the university, creating poetry, and staying alive. Though many of us began this pro­cess alone, most gathered networks and allies along the way. The pro­cess was monumental, and win, lose, or draw, it took its toll on us in terms of our livelihoods, c­ areers, families, and health. But many lessons ­were learned, and we hope as readers you learned a few, too. We learned collectively that taking no action certainly w ­ ill result in no change. We learned that even our individual acts can have rippling effects. The numbers of the discontented, abused, and oppressed are already t­ here; we just

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need to work, find our allies, build our co­ali­tions, and direct our grievances collectively. We know that together we are strong(er), and we are capable of turning the tides of flawed systems. How we do this depends on our inner strength, imagination, hope, and fire. The possibilities are limitless.

Last Words: “We Are the Spark That ­Will Light the Fire That’ll Burn the First Order Down.”17 As this volume pre­sents, we are not the last academics (or Jedis!);18 something has awoken in us and we want to be that fire that ignites change. We do not wish to suggest with this volume that ­there should be no attrition from the ranks of academics. Not every­one is suited to ­battle the system that requires we fight against it or against our own selves; nor is e­ very time the right time to be an academic, and attacking institutions is not the right fight for all. However, academic life need not be as violent as it too often is, nor need it be as racist, sexist, homophobic, and classist. Rather, we argue, given the merit-­ rewarding tenets purportedly imbued within academia generally, and the social justice focus of ethnic studies and ­women and gender studies, that academia should listen to our arguments and address our suggestions for radical change. We recognize ­these changes ­w ill not happen overnight. Even our awareness of injustice took some time to manifest as a fluid and nonlinear pro­cess of studying, unstudying, and discovering truths. Recognizing t­ here exists the miseducation of populations is an impor­tant woke moment (see chapter 5). Miseducation is when we are fed false histories and false narratives, in our chosen communities, institutions, c­ areer or work paths; and false rationales and justifications of our very existence in the world (see chapter 9). Many of us have accepted ­these lies and have based our self-­worth on t­ hese normalized “truths.” In the second phase, we saw our wretched condition and assumed for the most part we are enduring this alone or as part of a differentiated, segregated group destined for suffering. In the next phase, we dared to question this condition and search for the truth of its origins and complex histories. We asked: who are the individuals and groups that have the power to come up with such machinations? The crucial stage of wokeness came during the pro­cess of our investigations when the truth was revealed—­a realization that we have been fed lies most of our lives, even through institutions of higher education, which we had thought w ­ ere the mechanism of our liberation. At this point, we can choose to ignore our findings, return to the lives we had before we began questioning, and replug into a normalized existence. Or we can find more evidence of injustice to bring o­ thers into a state of wokeness. This building of solidarity turns into a demand for equity, justice, and radical change. We build our truth on the backs of the scholars like Rosalie Tung, whose fight for her individual rights

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ultimately resulted in giving rights to the many. We build our truth upon so many brave individuals that stood up, joined community, and spoke out, like ­those anthologized in Presumed Incompetent. Wokeness as a pro­cess should lead to action, and we commit to taking action to manifest the liberatory acad­emy we envision. We hope this volume ­will inspire o­ thers to speak up, reveal more truths, and fight for their rights on individual, departmental, and college-­wide levels and even to demand policy change within and beyond the university. We anticipate our modest contribution to the cause for justice in the acad­emy ­will inspire ­those in varying stages of wokeness who share the belief that we are p­ eople that deserve better. The tides have changed in our larger society since we began our proj­ect. ­People of all ages, backgrounds, and orientations, including the most disenfranchised groups with support from allies with valuable resources, are speaking up against injustice in many of the most power­ful institutions in our society. The corruption and oppression that structures institutions of media, government, health, education, and more are coming to light, and w ­ hole movements are emerging to demand real substantial change that affects many ­people. ­These movements represent the purest form of the saying “Speak truth to power.” So, from the bravery and action of a few, justice may fi­nally be served.19 This anthology represents the voices of many scholars to whom we are deeply grateful for sharing their research and their experiences even though ­doing so may put them at peril. We also feel deeply the absence of ­those voices that ­were not able to contribute for fear that d­ oing so would compromise their safety. We dedicate this work to all of our colleagues, past, pre­sent, and ­future, who do good work that often goes unvalued. We hear your stories, we see your work; and we believe in it and in you.

Notes 1 This scene is from the Star Wars animated Clone Wars series (Melching & O’Connell, 2009). 2 This is the reason Luke Skywalker and Yoda both come to believe the Jedi Order must end and that Yoda destroys the tree in which the Jedi texts are kept (Abrams & Johnson, 2017). This is also why Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine, and Snoke are depicted as villains who unnaturally extend their lives beyond their natu­ral end, while Yoda and Obi Wan Kenobi allow themselves to die and consequently become transformed into power­f ul “Force ghosts.” 3 According to Patricia Hill Collins (1995), “methods used to validate knowledge claims must be acceptable to the group controlling the knowledge-­validation pro­cess” (p. 343). Thus, as white middle-­class men have been in control of the knowledge-­validation pro­cess in universities, so their po­liti­cal interests have determined which methods and epistemologies have been accepted as valid (Collins, 1995).

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4 “The master’s tools” is a term coined by Audre Lorde (1979). 5 This was the theme of the 2018 Association for Asian American Studies Conference: “Solidarity and Re­sis­tance: ­Toward Asian American Commitment to Fierce Alliances.” 6 Obi-­Wan Kenobi thus describes the Mos Eisley spaceport to Luke Skywalker (Kurtz & Lucas, 1977). 7 Jacques Derrida defines “phallogocentrism” as “the system of metaphysical oppositions” (1978, p. 20), meaning the binary oppositional logic that structures and limits Western culture. 8 Finn to Rey, in his moment of self-­revelation, confesses, “I’m not Re­sis­tance. I’m not a hero. I’m a stormtrooper. Like all of them, I was taken from a f­ amily I’ll never know. And raised to do one t­ hing. But my first ­battle, I made a choice. I ­wasn’t gonna kill for them. So I ran. Right into you. And you looked at me like no one ever had. I was ashamed of what I was. But I’m done with the First Order. I’m never g­ oing back” (Abrams, 2015). 9 The concept of “wokeness” is tied to the #BlackLivesMatter movement, which we invoke in solidarity and acknowl­edgment (Leach and Allen, 2017). 10 See Audre Lorde’s redefinition of power in “The Uses of Anger” (1981). 11 For example, Malcolm X rejected the imposition of slave o­ wners’ names on African Americans and the accompanying presumption of white supremacy (Miller, 2004). 12 Ferguson refers to Ferguson, Missouri, the city where an unarmed teenage black boy was killed by police. His wrongful death was the catalyst of the #BlackLivesMatter movement that calls for the protection of Blacks in Amer­i­ca, who are in constant danger by ignorant or racist law enforcement officers. Race, sexuality, and gender oppression as interrelated structures of patriarchal capitalism are recognized in the development of the use of term “stay woke,” as Pulliam-­Moore describes singer Erykah Badu’s solidarity with the queer feminist rock group Pussy Riot jailed for their protest ­music in Rus­sia (Pulliam-­Moore, 2016). 13 It is much harder to similarly mock Black Lives M ­ atter, both ­because of the standard grammar of this phrase over that of “stay woke” and b­ ecause attempts to devalue and denigrate Black Lives ­Matter have only managed to consist of wan imitations: #AllLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter, which, in their attempt to co-­opt #BlackLivesMatter, have only served to further the Black Lives ­Matter argument (Hanna, 2017). 14 Jeff Chang writes, “peace and justice are inseparable from each other” b­ ecause peace without justice dooms us to the “vio­lence of in­equality” while justice without peace can lead to an unending cycle of vio­lence and oppression (2016, p. 25). Bringing peace and justice through pro­cesses of reconciliation and truth requires not only that we “wake up” but that we “stay woke” through a commitment to pro­cesses and practices of liberation. Similarly, black public theologian Christena Cleveland practices envisioning the humanity in ­those who challenge and attack her. According to her, training herself to cultivate love for her enemies makes it more effective for her to communicate and speak her truth into their hearts. She is as concerned about her well-­being as she is about transforming antagonistic ­people in her life into “liberated oppressors.” Black elder activist Ruby Sales firmly tells her oppressors, with unyielding love in her voice: “You ­can’t make me hate you” (Lee, 2017, paragraph 13, n.p.).

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15 This is from a dialogue between Luke and Yoda: Luke: I saw a city in the clouds. They w ­ ere in pain. Yoda: It is the ­f uture you see. Luke: ­Will they die? Yoda: Difficult to see. Always in motion is f­ uture.” (Kurtz & Kershner, 1980) 16 Rey says this to Luke in Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Abrams & Johnson, 2017). 17 This quote comes from Poe Dameron, speaking in defiance of Kylo Ren’s assertion that the Re­sis­tance against the Empire was dead (Abrams & Johnson, 2017). 18 Despite Yoda’s determination that the scrolls of the Jedi must be burned in The ­ ill not end with the burning of scrolls, ­because what it means Last Jedi, the Jedi w to be a Jedi is about the wisdom embodied within the relationships between Jedi, not within books (Johnson & Kennedy, 2018). 19 Some of the power­f ul and societal changing movements we are referring to include the following: 1. Black Lives ­Matter, started in 2013 by three black w ­ omen—­A licia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi—in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman (a “white” vigilante) for the murder of Trayvon Martin (an innocent Black youth) (Black Lives M ­ atter, 2016). Their movement to stop the brutal attacks against Black communities and bodies by law enforcement and vigilantes has grown to dozens of chapters. 2. Never Again, started in 2018 by student survivors of the Stoneman Douglas High mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, that killed seventeen. The youths’ campaign calls for gun control to safeguard against f­ uture school mass shootings. Their tactics include pressuring politicians with votes and public shaming, corporate divestment, and individual boycott (Burch, Mazzei, & Healy, 2018). 3. #MeToo, started in 2007 by Tarana Burke, a Black activist from Harlem, to aid underprivileged w ­ omen of color affected by sexual abuse (Parker, 2017). The sentiment was revived ten years l­ ater by a tweet from actress Alyssa Milano and ultimately swelled to give national and international attention and voice to the rampant and longtime epidemic of sexual harassment against ­women (and men) in the entertainment industry and elsewhere 4. The Time’s Up campaign, which followed the #MeToo movement and was started in 2017 by 300 prominent actresses and female agents, writers, directors, producers. and entertainment executives. They aim to fight systemic sexual harassment in Hollywood and in workplaces nationwide. They have raised millions for a l­ egal fund and plan to influence legislation for companies to protect the rights of their female employees (Buckley, 2018).

References Abrams, J. (Producer & director). (2015). Star wars: The force awakens [Motion Picture]. United States: Lucasfilm. Abrams, J. (Producer), & Johnson, R. (Director). (2017). Star wars: The last jedi [Motion Picture]. United States: Lucasfilm. Anzaldúa, G. E. (1987). Borderlands/la frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco: Aunte Lute Books. Aronson, A. L., & Swanson D. L. (1991). Gradu­ate ­women on the brink: Writing as “outsiders within.” ­Women’s Studies Quarterly, 19, 156–173.

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Aryan, B., & Guzman, F. (2010). ­Women of color and the PhD: Experiences in formal gradu­ate support programs. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 1(4), 69–77. Ashlee, A. A., Zamora, B., & Karikari, S. N. (2017). We are woke: A collaborative critical autoethnography of three “womxn” of color gradu­ate students in higher education. International Journal of Multicultural Education, 19(1), 89–101. Berdahl, J., Min, J., & Zárate, M. A. (2012). Prescriptive ste­reo­t ypes and workplace consequences for East Asians in North Amer­i­ca. Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psy­chol­ogy, 18, 141–152. Black Lives ­Matter. (2016, February 23). Herstory. Retrieved from https://­blacklivesmatter​ .­com​/­about​/­herstory/ Buckley, C. (2018, January 1). Power­f ul Hollywood w ­ omen unveil anti-­harassment action plan. New York Times Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2018​/­01​/­01​/­movies​ /­times​-­up​-­hollywood​-­women​-­sexual​-­harassment​.­html Buggenhagen, B. A. (2008). Child soldiers in Africa (review). Anthropological Quarterly, 81, 959–961. Burch, A.D.S., Mazzei, P., & Healy, J. (2018, February 17). A “mass shooting generation” cries out for change. New York Times. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2018​ /­02​/­16​/­us​/­columbine​-­mass​-­shootings​.­html California State University Statewide Academic Senate. (2016). Preventing workplace bullying within the CSU community: AS-3246-16. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.c­ alstate​ .­edu​/­acadsen​/­Records​/­Resolutions​/­2015​-­2016​/­documents​/­3246​.­shtml Chang, J. (2016). We gon’ be alright: Notes on race and resegregation (1st ed.). New York: Picador. Charlier, H. D., & Williams, M. R. (2011). The reliance on and demand for adjunct faculty members in Amer­i­ca’s rural, suburban, and urban community colleges. Community College Review, 39, 160–180. Chatterjee, P., & Maira, S. (Eds.). (2014). The imperial university: Academic repression and scholarly dissent. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press. Chen, E., & Hune, S. (2011). Asian American Pacific Islander ­women from PhD to campus president: Gains and leaks in the pipeline. In G. Jean-­Marie & B. Lloyd-­Jones, B. (Eds.) ­Women of color in higher education: Changing directions and new perspectives (pp. 163– 190). Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing. Cho, S. K. (1992). The strug­gle for Asian American civil rights: Race, gender, and the construction of power in academia (Doctoral dissertation). University of California, Berkeley. Collins, P. H. (1989). The social construction of black feminist thought. Signs: Journal of ­Women in Culture and Society, 14, 745–773. Cortright, D. (1975). Soldiers in revolt: GI re­sis­tance during the Vietnam War. Chicago: Haymarket Books. Daly, M., Lorde, A., McDaniel, J., & Rich, A. (1978). The transformation of silence into language and action. Sinister Wisdom, 1(6), 4–25. Davis, A. Y. (1983). ­Women, race, & class. New York: Vintage Books. Derrida, J. (1978). Writing and difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth (F. Farrington, Trans.). New York: Grove Press. (Original work published 1961.) Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed (M. Ramos, Trans.). New York: Herder and Herder. (Original work published 1968.) Foucault, M. (2008). “Panopticism” from Discipline & punish: The birth of the prison. Race/ Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts 2(1), 1–12.

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Giroux, H. A. (2015). University in chains: Confronting the military-­industrial-­academic complex. New York: Routledge. Hanna, A. (2017). Black Lives ­Matter versus Blue Lives ­Matter. Odyssey Online. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.­theodysseyonline​.­com​/­black​-­lives​-­matter​-­versus​-­blue​-­lives​-­matter. Hollande, J. J. (2016). Star wars: Finn’s story (Star Wars: The force awakens). Glendale, CA: Disney Lucasfilm Press. Hollis, L. P. (2015). Bully university? The cost of workplace bullying and employee disengagement in American higher education. Sage Open, 5(2), 1–11. Hollis, L. P. (2017). Evasive actions: The gendered cycle of stress and coping for t­ hose enduring workplace bullying in American higher education. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 4(7), 59–68. Hune, S. (2011). Asian American w ­ omen faculty and the contested space of the classroom: Navigating student re­sis­tance and (re)claiming authority and their rightful place. In G. Jean-­Marie & B. Lloyd-­Jones (Eds.), ­Women of color in higher education: Turbulent past, promising ­future (pp. 307–335). Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing. Joseph, R. (2016). Strategically ambiguous Shonda Rhimes: Respectability politics of a black w ­ oman showrunner. Souls, 18, 302–320. doi:10.1080/10999949.2016.1230825 Keashly, L., & Neuman, J.H. (2013). Bullying in academia: What does current theorizing and research tell us? In J. Lester (ed). Workplace bullying in higher education (pp. 1–22). Abingdon-­on-­Thames, UK: Routledge. Kim, J. (2012). Asian American racial identity development theory. In C. L. Wijeyesinghe & B. W. Jackson (Eds.), New perspectives on racial identity development: Integrating emerging frameworks (2nd ed., pp. 138–160). New York: New York University Press. King, M. L. (1963, April 16). Letter from Birmingham jail. Retrieved from https://­w ww​ .­africa ​.­upenn​.­edu​/­A rticles ​_­Gen​/­Letter​_ ­Birmingham​.­html Kish-­Gephart, J. J., Detert, J. R., Treviño, L. K., & Edmondson, A. C. (2009). Silenced by fear: The nature, sources, and consequences of fear at work. Research in Orga­nizational Be­hav­ior, 29, 163–193. Kurtz, G. (Producer), & Lucas, G. (Director). (1977). Star Wars: Episode IV—­A new hope [Motion picture]. United States: Lucasfilm. Kurtz, G. (Producer), & Kershner, I. (Director). (1980). The empire strikes back [Motion picture]. United States: Lucasfilm. Leach, C., & Allen, A. (2017). The social psy­chol­ogy of the Black Lives ­Matter meme and movement. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26(6), 543–547. Lee, F. (2017, October 13). Why I’ve started to fear my fellow social justice activists. Yes! Magazine. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.­yesmagazine​.­org​/­people​-­power​/­why​-­ive​-­started​ -­to​-­fear​-m ­ y​-­fellow​-­social​-­justice​-­activists​-2­ 0171013 Lorde, A. (1979/2007, October). The master’s tools w ­ ill never dismantle the master’s ­house. ­Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press, 110–114. Lorde, A. (1981). The uses of anger. ­Women’s Studies Quarterly, 9(3), 7–10. Lowe, L. (2015). The intimacies of four continents. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. McKenna, L. (2016, April 21). The ever-­tightening job market for PhDs: Why do so many ­people continue to pursue doctorates? Atlantic. Retrieved from https://­w ww​ .­theatlantic​.­com​/­education​/­archive​/­2016​/0 ­ 4​/b­ ad​-­job​-­market​-­phds​/­479205/ Melching, S. (Writer), & O’Connell, B. (Director). (2009). Trespass [Tele­vi­sion series episode]. In G. Lucas (Executive producer), Star wars: The clone wars. Atlanta: Cartoon Network. Michnovetz, M. (Writer), & Dunlevy, K. (Director). (2011). Carnage of Krell [Tele­vi­sion series episode]. In G. Lucas (Executive producer), Star wars: The clone wars. Atlanta: Cartoon Network.

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Miller, K. (2004). Plymouth Rock landed on us: Malcolm X’s whiteness theory as a basis for alternative literacy. College Composition and Communication, 56, 199–222. doi:10.2307/4140647 Newfield, C. (2011). Unmaking the public university: The forty-­year assault on the ­middle class. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Parker, N. (2017, December 6). Who is Tarana Burke? Meet the w ­ oman who started the Me Too movement a de­cade ago. Atlanta Journal-­Constitution. Retrieved from https://­w ww​.a­ jc​.­com​/­news​/­world​/­who​-­tarana​-b­ urke​-­meet​-­the​-­woman​-­who​-­started​ -­the​-­too​-­movement​-­decade​-­ago​/­i8NEiuFHKaIvBh9ucukidK/ Pulliam-­Moore, C. (2016, January 8). How “woke” went from black activist watchword to teen Internet slang. Splinter News. Retrieved from https://­splinternews​.­com​/­how​-­woke​ -­went​-f­ rom​-b­ lack​-a­ ctivist​-­watchword​-­to​-­teen​-­int​-­1793853989 Rosette, A. S., Koval, C. Z., Ma, A., & Livingston, R. (2016). Race ­matters for w ­ omen leaders: Intersectional effects on agentic deficiencies and penalties. Leadership Quarterly, 27, 429–445. Simpson, R., and Cohen, C. (2004). Dangerous work: The gendered nature of bullying in the context of higher education. Gender, Work & Organ­ization, 11, 163–186. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0432.2004.00227.x Smith, B. (2000). Home girls: A black feminist anthology. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Tintiangco-­Cubales, A., & Sacramento, J. (2009). Practicing Pinayist pedagogy. Amerasia Journal, 35(1), 179–187. Trotman, F., & Greene, B. (2013). ­Women of color in academia. In L. Comas-­Díaz & B. Greene (Eds.), Psychological health of w ­ omen of color: Intersections, challenges, and opportunities (pp. 287–303). Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. Turse, N. (2013). Kill anything that moves: The real American war in Vietnam. New York: Henry Holt. Twale, D. J., & De Luca, B. M. (2008). Faculty incivility: The rise of the academic bully culture and what to do about it. San Francisco: Jossey-­Bass. Wallin, D. L. (2004). Valuing professional colleagues: Adjunct faculty in community and technical colleges. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 28, 373–391.

Epilogue Upward and Onward: Asian American W ­ omen’s ­Legal Re­sis­tance ROBYN MAG ALIT RODRIGUE Z

Abstract Reviewing po­liti­cally engaged scholarship by Sunera Thobani, an Asian Canadian scholar who critiqued U.S. imperialism during the nationalist fervor post–­September 11, Professor Rodriguez situates Fight the Tower within larger movements of academic activism against oppression. This epilogue argues for ethnic studies and Asian American studies to return to and to renew the commitment to both community and activism made in the founding of ­these disciplines in the Third World Liberation Front Strike. Moving forward, the author argues for multi-­sited activism: within the community of Asian American ­women academics, within the larger field of Asian American studies, at the university level, and through legislative activism. The fight for Asian American ­women in the acad­emy must be conducted as a fight for a larger cause of social liberation.

Introduction I place my work within the tradition of radical, po­liti­cally engaged scholarship. I have always rejected the politics of academic elitism, which insist that academics 443

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should remain above the fray of po­liti­cal activism and use only disembodied, objectified language and a “properly” dispassionate professorial demeanor to establish our intellectual credentials. My work is grounded in the politics, practices and languages of the vari­ous communities I come from, and the social justice movements to which I am committed —­Sunera Thobani

Sunera Thobani, a scholar and activist based in the University of British Columbia (UBC)—­issued the above statement in the fall of 2001. In October of that year, Thobani joined over 1,500 activists, academics, attorneys, policy makers, and more in Ottawa at a conference entitled “­Women’s Critical Re­sis­tance: From Victimization to Criminalization.” They came together to discuss how the Canadian criminal justice system treats the survivors of gender-­based vio­ lence and to discuss strategies for change. In Thobani’s speech, she challenged the mainstream assumption that undergirds many individuals’ and organ­ izations’ responses to w ­ omen’s victimization: that punishment and retaliation are the more meaningful responses to harm. Indeed, Thobani argued that retributive justice in the form of policing and prisons was ideologically continuous with the then newly launched “global war on terror” by U.S. president George W. Bush in the wake of the September 11, 2001 (9/11), attacks on the World Trade Center, which had just taken place a month prior to the conference. Moreover, she detailed U.S. military interventions worldwide over the course of the twentieth ­century, arguing that the vio­lence and death caused by ­these interventions ­were ultimately the cause of the 9/11 attacks. Thobani called on conference attendees, many of whom w ­ ere fellow Canadian feminists and anti-­imperialists, to oppose not only the U.S.-­led global war on terror but the Canadian government’s support of and participation in it. Thobani was subsequently attacked in the media. She was characterized as a vicious hate monger, as anti-­American, and ultimately as unscholarly (Nadeau, 2002). Moreover, she even faced the prospect of losing her position at UBC as the university was pressured to fire her as a consequence of a complaint made to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (Krotoszynski, 2009). Thankfully, her detractors failed, and she continues to teach at UBC.

Citational Politics My use of Thobani’s work to begin this essay gestures t­ oward the kind of practice that must also form part of our agenda to “Fight the Tower”: a citational politics that privileges knowledge production by scholar activists, particularly ­women of color scholars. What I find especially productive about Thobani’s work and this quote in par­tic­u­lar is that it is a touchstone through which to

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think about the kind of work we must do to truly challenge an American (or more broadly North American) academia. Thobani situates her “radically po­liti­ cally engaged scholarship” in anti-­imperialist and feminist politics, particularly as it engaged and resisted U.S. imperial formations including the jingoist nationalist, Western civilizationist discourses that circulated in North Amer­ i­ca in the wake of the 9/11 attacks—­coincidentally not unlike ­those that buoyed Donald Trump to power as U.S. head of state. I would argue, moreover, that ethnic studies, including Asian American studies especially in its original formations, when it was founded fifty years ago, can and should inform the urgent work of transforming academia. As Thobani suggests, we cannot remain “above the fray” of activism w ­ hether it is on our campuses or in the streets. “Wokeness” requires per­sis­tently and creatively organ­izing and mobilizing for radical change, and at this anthology’s conclusion, it should be clear that ­there is no other option.

Turning Points Fight the Tower comes at a time when many, certainly in the state of California, are actively reflecting on institutions of higher education and issues of racial marginalization. In 2018, we marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) strike at San Francisco State University, which led to the establishment of ethnic studies t­ here and ultimately on many campuses around the country. The strug­gle for ethnic studies marks a significant turning point in American academia. It is a strug­gle that was able to successfully scale the ivory tower and force open its gates to provide space—­however small and always contested—to individuals from historically marginalized groups who are also committed to studying and teaching, understanding and exposing, structures of in­equality or, as the editors of this anthology formulate it, the structures that “socially engineer” modes of difference production and hierarchy in American society. Arguably, the strug­gle for ethnic studies made space not only for scholars of color in that field but also for scholars of color across academic fields in the social sciences and humanities as well as in science, technology, engineering, and math. The strug­gle for ethnic studies, rooted in broader strug­gles for racial justice and liberation, offered a radical re-­envisioning of the very functioning and purpose of the university that I believe is vital to reflect upon and revive in the current po­liti­cal moment. For TWLF activists, the purpose of education should be for liberation (Chung & Chang, 1998; Okihiro, 2016; Umemoto, 1989). They took an epistemological standpoint and, relatedly, a methodological approach that privileges the embodied subjectivities of marginalized groups as a form of knowledge and a par­tic­u­lar kind of engagement in their lives as crucial to knowledge

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production (Lye, 2010). Indeed, they insisted that only ­people from marginalized groups could adequately understand and represent their needs and desires. Moreover, to ensure that research and teaching be tooled t­ oward liberatory ends, it was necessary to transform the governance of the university— TWLF challenged the notion of decision-­making pro­cesses within the university (Dong, 2009). What I offer in this epilogue are but a few examples of how I have tried to apply my interpretation of the ethnic studies strug­gle in my work in dif­fer­ent forms and multiple arenas. Th ­ ese efforts are modest but are concrete examples of how transformation can happen. Moreover, I believe Asian Americans, as the “privileged oppressed,” have a particularly impor­tant role to play in transformative educational politics. Inasmuch as we continued to be marginalized, we cannot deny that compared with other racialized groups, we have managed to make inroads in the university. Part of our task, however, is to or­ga­nize t­ hose among our colleagues with Asian roots (I would not call them “Asian American” ­because, for me, to claim “Asian Americanness” is to claim a po­liti­cal identity and proj­ect1) whose success in academia rests on accepting and not questioning the racist, sexist, classist, heteronormative tenets of academia ­toward a more critical stance. For true transformation of the acad­emy, ­there are multiple intersecting commitments in which Asian American ­women must engage: community-­building work among Asian American ­women academics, reclaiming “community engagement” at the university level, re­orienting the profession, and legislative change.

Community-­Building Work One remedy that is often put forward to address the lack of equity in higher education is mentorship, and it is true. We need more Yodas and Obi Wan Kenobis to train a new generation of w ­ omen of color scholars. Yet I also think the mentorship model has its limits. A mentor–­mentee relationship is dyadic, one-­way, and hierarchical. Mentor–­mentee relationships rest on the assumption that the “mentor” is more experienced and is the individual responsible for helping to guide the “mentee.” Support flows, in this formation, in one direction. Meanwhile, ­because the relationship is, by virtue of the unevenness in experience between the two, hierarchical, it can undermine the very purpose of mentorship. I f­ avor instead the building of communities of mutual support and care among w ­ omen of color scholars across status divides, like the model of “academic symbiosis” proposed in this volume (see chapters 12 and 14). One example is through the work I did initially at Rutgers University and ­later at the University of California (UC), Davis, in establishing a W ­ omen of Color Scholars Inclusion (WOCSI) proj­ect. Given the challenges faced by

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­ omen of color scholars d­ oing critical race, ethnic studies, and community-­ w engaged social justice research at UC Davis, we wanted to create a space that builds a nurturing academic community for w ­ omen of color scholars in the fields of critical race and ethnic studies and community-­engaged research; increases the visibility of their scholarly work; collects data on w ­ omen of color scholars’ experiences in ­these fields; and works ­toward institutional reforms needed to ensure that critical race and ethnic studies and community-­engaged research is given equitable support at UC Davis. Our activities included a networking activity where we gathered together ­women of color scholars, gradu­ ate students, and faculty to break bread with one another over a meal. We believed that building a community of support and care required that we encounter one another as ­people and not necessarily as academics of dif­fer­ent and unequal status. We explic­itly sought out non–­UC Davis ­women of color scholar activists from dif­fer­ent institutional settings (from community colleges, the California State University system, and other UC campuses) to give talks at UC Davis ­because we believe that it is the work of ­those who courageously embrace the identity of “scholar activist” that is truly transforming the acad­emy. We wanted to affirm that kind of work and share tactics and strategies for change. We created space for members of our WOCSI community to pre­sent and share their research with each other to improve the visibility of the research conducted by ­women of color scholars at UC Davis and provide an opportunity to foster intellectual collaboration across the campus. Fi­nally, we conducted a survey to identify which areas of support are working well and which areas the university can target to improve institutional climate for ­women of color, and we plan to distribute the report from our survey to key units.

Reclaiming “Community Engagement” at the University Level In par­tic­u­lar, what is especially worrisome to me, is the ways the university has increasingly co-­opted the language of community engagement (often coupled with new initiatives for diversity and equity2) that nevertheless continues to invisibilize and marginalize w ­ omen of color scholars, particularly ­those committed to interrogating race, class, gender, sexuality, and other forms of what the editors h ­ ere call “socially engineered” forms of social difference. Part of our aim in WOCSI was precisely to center the forms of “community engagement” that have always been at the core of ethnic studies yet grossly underappreciated and devalued on our campuses (Kohl & Rodriguez, 2018). I believe an impor­ tant agenda item highlighted in Fight the Tower requires that we carefully scrutinize the ways “community engagement” is being touted by university officials and find ways to reclaim the idea in order to garner more visibility and support for the work we do (see chapter 4).

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Re­orienting the Profession Transformation of the ivory tower requires a cultural shift within our professional organ­izations. Asian American studies, perhaps more than the other ethnic studies fields, has drifted far from its moorings in social justice activism and engagement with the broader community. Perhaps as a survival strategy, we have often internalized the metrics of the university over fighting for the values that gave rise to our field. One way I have tried to get us back to our roots has been to use the recent orga­nizational change in the Association for Asian American Studies, which gives members a chance to create affinity groups (“sections”), to create the “Scholar Activism” section. Th ­ ere, we are cultivating new orientations ­toward scholarship. Legislative Change In her prologue, Shirley Hune provides a wonderful profile of brave Asian American scholars who have litigated to challenge discrimination, and another ave­nue for change that we ­ought to explore is legislative change. Although ­there are many academic m ­ atters over which state legislatures have no power, and despite the current trend t­ oward de-­funding public higher education, the fact is that public universities still require some degree of support from state governments. We can and should try to leverage the power of our legislatures to put pressure on our local campus administrations. At UC Davis, we have attempted to do this by collaborating with the Senate Select Committee on Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs to hold a hearing on the status of Asian American studies in higher education in the fall of 2017 (California Digital Democracy, n.d.). At the hearing, we ­were able to let legislators know how Asian American studies scholarship is not taken seriously and our campus administration fails to consider our research when constructing campus policies. We highlighted how Asian American studies researchers who have disaggregated data on Asian and Pacific Islanders in higher education, for example, have found that among Asian Americans, the Viet­nam­ese, Cambodian, Hmong, and Laotian Americans are less likely to hold a college degree than the average Californian; and yet, while ­these data could be used to improve access to higher education for t­ hese groups, they have not. Importantly, we also raised the issue of how Asian American studies scholars, like other ethnic studies scholars, are “presumed incompetent” and face tough tenure ­battles. Although it is not yet clear ­whether the legislators who ­were addressed w ­ ill move on ­these issues, the fact is that the testimony presented at the hearing is now in the public rec­ord and can be used by any and all of us in our local ­battles. The “Ivory Tower” is truly an ivory tower—­that is, it continues to be an institution that intentionally privileges and falsely narrates white, middle-­class, heterosexual men as producers of knowledge and the Truth about the social

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world with the aim of reproducing structures of unequal power. This is clearly and painfully elaborated and articulated in the chapters of this book. Despite many successive strug­gles to transform the university, we are still quite far from radically transforming it. However, t­ here are many examples of the ways faculty of color—­with Asian (North) American faculty like Thobani, myself, and the rest of the contributors of this volume taking the lead—­cultivate the “undercommons” (Moten & Harney, 2004) of the university.

Notes 1 See Liu, Geron, and Lai (2008); Maeda (2012); Shyong (2017); and Wei (2010). 2 See chapter 1.

References California Digital Democracy. (n.d.). Senate Select Committee on Asian Pacific Islanders Hearing of 10-24-2017 [Video file]. Retrieved from https://­ca​.­digitaldemocracy​.­org​ /­hearing​/­252201​?­startTime​=­0&vid​= Chung, A., & Chang, E. (1998). From third world liberation to multiple oppression politics: A con­temporary approach to interethnic co­a li­tions. Social Justice, 25(3), 80–100. Dong, H. (2009). Third world liberation comes to San Francisco State and UC Berkeley. Chinese Amer­i­ca: History and Perspectives, 157, 95–106. Kohl, R., & Rodriguez, R. (2018). Public scholarship, place and proximity. Public: A Journal of Imagining Amer­i­ca, 5(1). Retrieved from http://­public​.­imaginingamerica​.­org​ /­welcome/ Krotoszynski, R. J. (2009). The First Amendment in cross-­cultural perspective: A comparative ­legal analy­sis of the freedom of speech. New York: New York University Press. Liu, M., Geron, K., & Lai, T. A. (2008). The snake dance of Asian American activism: Community, vision, and power. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Lye, C. (2010). U.S. ethnic studies and third worldism, 40 years l­ ater. Inter-­Asia Cultural Studies, 11, 188–193. Maeda, D. (2012). Rethinking the Asian American movement (American social and po­liti­cal movements of the twentieth ­century). New York: Routledge. Moten, F., & Harney, S. (2004). The university and the undercommons: Seven ­theses. Social Text, 22, 101–115. Nadeau, M. J. (2002). Who is Canadian now? Feminism and the politics of nation a­ fter September 11. Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice, 27(1), 14–24. Okihiro, G. Y. (2016). Third world studies. In C. Thelwell (Ed.), Theater and cultural politics for a new world (pp. 59–71). New York: Routledge. Shyong, F. (2017, January 26). Before Asian Americans could be “woke,” they had to shed the “Oriental” label. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://­w ww​.l­ atimes​.­com​/­local​ /­lanow​/­la​-­me​-­ln​-­asian​-­activism​-g­ enerations​-2­ 0170126​-­story​.h ­ tml Umemoto, K. (1989). “On strike!” San Francisco State College strike, 1968–69: The role of Asian American students. Amerasia Journal, 15(1), 3–41. Wei, W. (2010). The Asian American movement. Philadelphia: T ­ emple University Press.

Acknowl­edgments So many events and individuals have helped shape this volume, and we owe so much to ­those experiences and the ­people involved. Our first acknowl­edgment goes to Shirley Hune, who has been an amazing inspiration, mentor, and contributor to this work. During our highs and lows, Shirley was always pre­sent to provide invaluable advice and consistently kept us on track. We also owe a ­great debt to Darrell Hamamoto for insights that led us to break old molds in our theorizing. We appreciate that he continues to challenge broken systems at all cost. We want to recognize the life of the legendary Don Nakanishi (1949–2016), who assisted with our book proj­ect since its inception and was to be a contributor but unexpectedly passed during its writing. His historic ­battle for tenure at the University of California, Los Angeles, and subsequent founding of the first center for Asian American studies as a direct result, continues to inspire us. This victory was built on a monumental campaign that included student protests, community support, po­liti­cal backing, and l­egal assistance from acclaimed civil rights l­ awyer Dale Minami. They fought the tower/power and won! Following his triumph, Don Nakanishi assisted countless scholars in need, including some of t­ hose in this volume. We are the living legacy of his work, and he remains a power­ful model for our ongoing strug­gles. Thank you, Don. We also want to remember Dawn Bohulano Mabalon (1972–2018), associate professor of history at San Francisco State University (SFSU), an activist scholar and beloved teacher who passed too soon. She was the author of L ­ ittle Manila Is in the Heart: The Making of the Filipina/o American Community in Stockton, California (2013); the co-­founder of the L ­ ittle Manila Historic District; and the co-­author of a forthcoming book, Journey for Justice: The Life of Larry Itliong about the cofounder of the United Farm Workers. Dawn Mabalon embodied the princi­ples of academic symbiosis; she was one of contributor 451

452  •  Acknowl­edgments

Melissa-­A nn Nievera-­Lozano’s interviewees and was contributor Allyson Tintiangco-­Cubales’s s­ ister of the heart. #DawnMabalonisintheHeart. We thank our editor, Lisa Banning, and the entire team at Rutgers University Press, for their enthusiastic support of this proj­ect, which made the publishing pro­cess a joy. We appreciate how they recognized alternative ways to think of our pre­sent state of higher education and the importance of intervention through academic writing for its f­ uture. We also are grateful to Carmen Gonzalez, Angela P. Harris, Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, and Yolanda Flores Niemann, the co-­editors of the seminal work Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for ­Women in Academia (2012), for paving the way for ­women scholars of color to speak their truth. Par­tic­u­lar thanks go to Carmen Gonzalez for her continuous mentoring of academic warriors on the ground in order to fight on. The writing pro­cess was daunting, but we w ­ ere fortunate enough to have a stellar support team of dedicated, passionate research assistants—­R iley Frederking, Simeon Alojipan, Melody Yee, Pahnia Vang, Nancy Bui, Ralph Imatong, Miggy Cruz, Leslie L. Đỗ, Charlene Chan (陈秀雯), Jasmine Vu, Jing Mai, Alesha Byrne, Tohid Moradi, Vy Nguyen, Philip Nguyen, David Michael Chu, Kim Dang, Diane Le, Anna Le, Yufei Liu, Karen Vang, and Van Nguyen. Research assistants Melody Yee and Jing Mai showed such promise in their research that they ended up co-­editing a chapter in the volume as undergraduates. As individual editors, we also have additional acknowl­edgments. I, Kieu Linh Caroline Valverde, want to first and foremost thank the universe for my life, which I almost lost due to the stresses of fighting for tenure. This new life has revealed to me, more than before, the importance of ­family and how at the end of the day and all days, they are the only ­thing that ­matters to me and are the light of my existence. Thank you, Toussaint Trac and Emmanuelle Kieu Trang, my ­children, for your pure love that sustained me during the most difficult moments in academia and beyond. My love for you two showed me how to be fierce from inside out—so that I can effectively train you to also be scholar warriors. This book is for you both. I also want to send love to my newborn niece, Charlotte, and her parents, Melchior and Melody, along with the new Bà Ngoại, my ­mother Eveline. Much love also goes to my cousin Truong and nieces Tina and Kaitlynn. And I thank my Bà Cố, Bà Nội and Ông Nội, Ba and Mợ, and Ren for watching over our f­ amily and continuing to be a source of comfort and guidance for us from the spirit realm. I want to thank Wei Ming Dariotis for being a wondrous writing and conceptual partner. She greatly impresses me, from her intellect to gifted writing skills. Most of all, I am in awe of her generosity, sensitive soul, and dedication to the ideals of sisterhood. She has also taught me a ­great deal about patience and diplomacy in the pro­cess of creating this book. She belongs in my list of

Acknowl­edgments • 453

friends who have become ­family. O ­ thers include Han Park, Soulwing Banh, Edward Tran, George Scheer, Michael Chang, Katherine Heater, Elizabeth Barry, Trinh Nguyen, Winnie Huynh, John Reed, Xuan Nguyen, Mai Dam, Azizah Ahmed, and Jennifer Lisa Vest. Beyond my immediate f­ amily and friends, I am indebted to the many that supported my work, strug­gles, and humanity. They include the colleagues, staff, and students that risked their own c­ areers and positions to help me and o­ thers fight for our place in the acad­emy. They have taught me that I must be stronger, since the strug­gle is real and continues daily for too many of us. I am inspired by t­ hose that choose to fight and am honored that they also seek me out for assistance. This volume is in large part h ­ ere b­ ecause of their perseverance. They have inspired me to do my part to equip all of us with as many tools as needed to achieve justice. I am also humbled to work with and know the ­women who co-­founded the Fight the Tower movement. They have modeled their lives in ways that serve as testament to the strength of ­women everywhere. I also want to thank ­those that are outside of academia who have been invaluable allies and continue to see where the ­battles must be fought. As the other editor, I, Wei Ming Dariotis, have learned sisterhood from many, especially Mary Ellen Petrich, Katya Ledin, and Alvilda Jablonko. I thank my many students, both gradu­ate and undergraduate, who have collaborated with me in creating so many learning communities; and all my colleague friends at SFSU, who are too numerous to mention ­here. My ongoing and enduring friendships and collaborations with my University of California, Santa Barbara, En­g lish PhD sisterhood sustain me: Noelle Brada-­Williams, Karen Chow, Eileen Fung, Rowena Tomaneng, and Alma Rosa Alvarez. And I thank ­these inspirational role models and mentors: Allison Jablonko, Mickey Williamson, Teresa Williams-­L eón, Cynthia Nakashima, Stephen Murphy-­ Shigematsu, Paul Spickard, Becky King O’Riain, Betty Kano, Harvey and Bea Dong, Laureen Chew, Johnetta Richards, Wendy Ng, Lorraine Dong, Christopher Newfield, Eliot Butler-­Evans, Shirley Hune, and my mentor, Shawn Hsu Wong. In my current collaboration on the Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) Pedagogy Proj­ect with Nicole Leopardo, Anna Storti, and Britney Prince and on the SFSU critical mixed race studies minor with Nicole Leopardo and Kira Donnell, it has been particularly sweet to have ­those who I once mentored become true colleagues and friends. I owe so much to my previous positive collaborations with my dear ­sister friend Laura Kina on War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art and with her and Camilla Fojas on the definition of critical mixed race studies and on the CMRS Inaugural Conference, all of which led to my collaboration with Kieu Linh Valverde on this proj­ect. Though we knew (of) each other for de­cades before embarking on this work together, it is through the power­ful pro­cess of shaping this book that Kieu Linh

454  •  Acknowl­edgments

and I have become true s­ isters, deeply connected through f­ amily and friendship as well as shared intellectual, aquar­ium, and fashion passions, for which I ­will ever be grateful. Kieu Linh is a fighter, and her passion for rigor and invention exhilarated and inspired me during this pro­cess. I am so grateful that she is alive; working with her has made me feel like I have fulfilled my secret dream of being in a band! I thank the Chan and Lee clans, in our diasporas, especially my ­mother, Sally Shun Fan (Chan) Gin; she strug­gled and shone as an immigrant single mom, taking me at five years old to her classes at San Francisco State, where I have become a tenured professor. “You manifest your own real­ity,” she taught me. I thank my stepfather, Corydon Chinn Gin, for choosing to parent me, and my ­brother, Alexander Gin, for teaching me to share, and my ­sister in law, Mary Anne Chantravutikon Gin, for many ­things, but especially our nephews Conrad and Nolan, and our niece Sydney. I thank the Rising and Dariotis families, especially my grand­mother, Jean Leghorn (née Dorothy-­Jean Rising), my Yiyia; my glamourous Papou, Chris Dariotis Sr.; my loving step-­grandmother, Antoinette “Dedee” Dariotis; my lovingly strong aunts Cyndy and Margy; my ­uncles Dean and Christopher and my f­ ather, Tom, who taught me about sibling relationships. I am grateful to my husband’s f­ amily, the Abdulhaqq and Robinson clans, for welcoming me warmly—­especially my mother-­in-­law, Aaminah, and my sister-­in-­law, Saidah, and their ­children and families. Most of all, I thank my husband, Hussain Yusuf Abdulhaqq, who nurtures me e­ very day with delicious homemade vegetarian food; encourages me to make time for art, the ocean, gardening, and life; and tells me: “You are the knight, and I am your squire. I am ­here to make sure you have every­thing you need for ­battle.” Hussain helps me understand matriarchy, and symbiosis is what our relationship has been about since the first day of our ­whole life together.

Notes on Contributors Co-­editors is an associate professor of Asian American studies and founding director of the New Viet Nam Studies Initiative at the University of California (UC), Davis. A gradu­ate of UC Berkeley’s PhD ethnic studies program, she researches and teaches in the areas of w ­ omen of color in higher education, mixed-­race issues, fashionology, spirit realm studies, Viet­ nam­ese diasporas, sustainable economic development, and transnationalism. She authored Transnationalizing Viet Nam: Community, Culture, and Politics in the Diaspora (­Temple University Press, 2012). Professor Valverde was a Luce Southeast Asian Studies Fellow (2004), Rocke­fel­ler Fellow for Proj­ect Diaspora (2001–2002), and a Fulbright Fellow (1999). She founded the virtual community Viet Nam W ­ omen’s Forum (vnwomenforum​.­com) for Viet­nam­ese ­women globally (1996) and the social justice movement Fight the Tower (fighttower​.­com) for w ­ omen of color in the acad­emy (2013). Professor Valverde was involved in a very public tenure ­battle, which she chronicled in “Fight the Tower: A Call to Action for ­Women of Color in Academia” (Seattle Journal for Social Justice, 1, 2013). More about Professor Valverde can be found at www​ .­kieulinh​.­com. KIEU LINH CAROLINE VALVERDE

is professor of Asian American studies and affiliate faculty with the educational leadership doctoral program, and is the Faculty Director for the Center for Equity and Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CEETL), at San Francisco State University (SFSU). She holds a PhD in En­glish lit­er­a­ ture from UC Santa Barbara, and her research interests include race, gender, and science fiction; Asian American lit­er­a­ture and poetry; critical mixed-­race cultural and literary studies; pedagogy studies; and educational leadership. She WEI MING DARIOTIS

455

456  •  Notes on Contributors

co-­edited and co-­curated, with Laura Kina, War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art, two art exhibits and a book of the same name (University of Washington Press, 2013). With Laura Kina and Camilla Fojas, she co-­ coordinated the Inaugural Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference, at DePaul University, 2010, and co-­authored the definition of critical mixed-­race studies. She serves on the editorial board of Asian American Lit­er­a­tures: Discourses and Pedagogies, for which she is co-­editing a special issue on the 45th anniversary of the publication of Aiiieeeee!. Dr. Dariotis also served as a leader among faculty in both the academic senate and the California Faculty Association at SFSU.

Contributors is the Edward W. Brooke professor, associate professor of po­liti­cal science and international affairs, and director of gradu­ate studies in po­liti­cal science at Northeastern University. She is an expert on Eu­ro­pean politics, especially foreign and security policy, epistemic communities, crises, diplomacy, and public diplomacy. She is the author of three books: The Politics of Crisis in Eu­rope (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Security Integration in Eu­rope: How Knowledge-­Based Networks Are Transforming the Eu­ro­pean Union (University of Michigan Press, 2011), and The Eu­ro­pean Diplomatic Corps: Diplomats and International Cooperation from Westphalia to Maastricht (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Her second book is the 2012 winner of the Best Book Prize from the University Association of Con­temporary Eu­ro­pean Studies. She is also co-­editor (with Jan Melissen) of Eu­ro­pean Public Diplomacy: Soft Power at Work (Palgrave Mamcillan, 2013) and (with Pawel Karolewski) of Eu­rope’s Hybrid Foreign Policy: The Ukraine-­Russia Crisis (Journal of Common Market Studies, 2017). Dr. Cross serves on several editorial and advisory boards and is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She holds a PhD in politics from Prince­ton University and a bachelor’s degree in government from Harvard University. MAI’A K. DAVIS CROSS

was a first-­generation undergraduate student at San Francisco State University, majoring in Asian American studies with a double minor in education and race & re­sis­tance studies at the time she wrote her chapter. A member of the League of Filipino Students and Kappa Psi Epsilon, she helped develop Mula Sa Ugat, the first Filipino American student organ­ization co­ali­ tion. She worked with Associated Students Proj­ect Connect and was teaching ethnic studies at Phillip & Sala Burton Academic High School with Pin@y Educational Partnerships. In the spring of 2016, she served as the Associated Students College of Ethnic Studies representative, leading the campaign to “Defend and Advance Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University,” sparking a nationwide movement to support ethnic studies. She was the Associated SHANNON DELOSO

Notes on Contributors • 457

Students’ president and chief executive officer at SFSU for the 2016–2017 school year. She is currently a master’s of education gradu­ate student at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), pursuing her c­ areer as an ethnic studies educator in the Los Angeles Unified School District. BRE T T  J. ESAKI is an ethnographer and historian of Asian American religions with a focus on artistic and cultural exchanges between Asian Americans and African Americans, including their role in developing spirituality and sustainability. He is the author of Enfolding Silence: The Transformation of Japa­nese American Religion and Art ­under Oppression (Oxford University Press, 2016), which details the development of nonbinary, multiplicitous silences of religion, art, communal history, and social oppression as a method of survival and cultural preservation. He is a visiting assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Arizona, and he holds a PhD in North American religions from UC Santa Barbara and an MA in African American religions from the University of South Carolina.

is professor emerita of urban planning, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and professor emerita of educational leadership & policy studies, University of Washington. She also served as an associate dean of the UCLA Gradu­ate Division (1992–2007) and associate provost at Hunter College, City University of New York (1990–1992). She holds a PhD in American studies, and her publications focus on Asian American historiography; Asian American ­women’s history; critical race and gender studies; w ­ omen and minorities in higher education; and global issues of development and migration. She is a co-­author of ­Women’s Realities, ­Women’s Choices: An Introduction to ­Women’s and Gender Studies, 4th ed. (Oxford University Press, 2015) and co-­editor (with Gail M. Nomura) of Our Voices, Our Lives: New Dimensions of Asian American and Pacific Islander ­Women’s History (New York University Press, 2019). She served as a president of the Association for Asian American Studies in its founding years and received the Association’s Engaged Scholarship Award in 2011. SHIRLE Y HUNE

was a PhD candidate in education, culture, and society at the University of Utah at the time of writing her chapter for this volume. She has since received her PhD and is currently an assistant professor of ethnic studies at San Jose City College. Her dissertation research explores how Asian American ­women educators navigate and transform educational landscapes through hip-­hop pedagogy. Prior to earning her doctorate, Cindy received her master of arts in Asian American studies from San Francisco State University and her bachelor of arts in Asian American studies with a minor in social and ethnic relations from the University of California, Davis. In addition to her CINDY NHI HUYNH

458  •  Notes on Contributors

commitment as a lifelong learner and scholar, Cindy is a dedicated educator. In 2014, her passion for teaching was awarded honorable mention for the University of Utah Thomas  G. Stockham Medal for Conspicuously Effective Teaching. is professor of po­liti­cal Science at the University of Southern California. She received her BA with honors in po­liti­cal science from the University of Michigan. She holds an MA and a PhD in po­liti­cal science from the University of Chicago. She is an expert on U.S. politics with emphasis on the politics of immigration, voting, public opinion, and the politics of race and ethnicity. She is the author of five books on po­liti­cal participation and public opinion in the United States. Her most recent book, The Politics of Belonging: Race, Immigration, and Public Opinion (with Natalie Masuoka), was published in 2013 by the University of Chicago Press. Her research articles on po­liti­cal be­hav­ior, public opinion, racial and ethnic politics, the politics of immigration, gender and politics, and po­liti­cal identity have appeared in journals including Perspectives on Politics, the DuBois Review, Politics & Gender, American Politics Research, and the American Behavioral Scientist. Professor Junn was the vice president of the American Po­liti­cal Science Association and a Fulbright Se­nior Scholar. JANE JUNN

CARA MAFFINI PHAM is an assistant professor in the Department of Child & Adolescent Development at San José State University. She received her BAS in psychobiology and dance from UC Davis, her MA in psy­chol­ogy from Sacramento State University, and her PhD in counseling psy­chol­ogy with a minor in Asian American development from Indiana University, Bloomington. Her research examines intersections of race, culture, and ­mental health. Her main interests are the psychosocial, cultural, and developmental experiences of Asian Americans and bicultural individuals. She also focuses on protective and risk ­factors related to negative experiences such as vio­lence, victimization, and other forms of interpersonal aggression. She uses her research to inform campus-­and community-­based intervention and prevention programs.

is currently a medical student at the UC Davis School of Medicine. She previously worked as a medical case man­ag­er in Oakland for frequent emergency room utilizers and was a volunteer co-­director at Paul Hom Asian Clinic, which provides culturally competent primary care to lower-­income East and Southeast Asians. Jing has a BA/BS in economics and neurobiology, physiology, and be­hav­ior from UC Davis. JING MAI

is the first Hmong American PhD candidate in the School of Education at the University of California, Davis. Her area of emphasis is in language, literacy, and culture, with a designated emphasis in feminist

K AOZONG N. MOUAVANGSOU

Notes on Contributors • 459

theory and research. She also received her MA in education and her BA in En­glish with a double minor in education and Asian American studies—­both from the UC Davis. Her research examines race, culture, and education. She primarily focuses on Hmong students’ educational experiences to better inform educational policies. was a professor of ethnic American and postcolonial lit­er­a­ture at institutions such as Harvard, Yale, and Johns Hopkins University. Her work has appeared in Salon, the New York Times Book Review, Hobart, the Ner­vous Breakdown, Entropy Magazine, and Redivider. Additionally, she was long-­listed for Cosmonauts Ave­nue’s 2017 Fiction Prize and awarded a 2017 Archie D. and Bertha H. Walker Scholarship at the Fine Arts Works Center in Provincetown, MA. She is a gradu­ate of the Memoir Incubator at Grub Street in Boston and is working on a transnational memoir about fractured identity and her relationship with her mentally ill Bengali immigrant m ­ other. RANI NEUTILL

MELISSA-­A NN NIE VERA-­L OZ ANO is a San Diego-­born-­and-­bred, second-­generation,

queer-­identified Pinay who believes in storytelling as healing. Her scholar-­ activist research builds from women-­of-­color theories to understand how experiences of racism, classism, and heteropatriarchy affect our lives across generations and families. With a BA in sociology (UC San Diego), an MA in Asian American studies (SFSU), and a PhD in education (UC Santa Cruz), she currently teaches ethnic studies and gender studies courses in the Bay Area. Melissa resides in San Jose, California, with her two ­little boys, Mateo and Dante, and loving partner, Dennis. is professor and chair of Asian American studies at California State University, Fullerton (CSUF). She earned her doctoral degree in ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and her bachelor’s degree in ­women’s studies at Columbia University. She is the first faculty member to be promoted to the rank of full professor within the Department of Asian American Studies at CSUF. Noh’s research focuses on race, ethnicity, gender, psy­ chol­ogy, transnationalism, coloniality, and ethnic and Asian American studies in higher education. Her recent work is published in ­Women and Therapy (Taylor and Francis, 2018) and “White” Washing American Education: The New Culture Wars in Ethnic Studies (Praeger, 2016). ELIZ A NOH

GENEVIEVE ERIN O’BRIEN is a Viet­nam­ese/Irish/American artist, culinary adven-

turer, community or­ga­nizer, popu­lar educator, incidental academic, and occasional nanny to artists, activists, and academics alike. O’Brien holds an MFA in studio art/per­for­mance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. O’Brien conducted research in Vietnam for a new body of artwork as a

460  •  Notes on Contributors

Fulbright Fellow in 2009 and 2010. O’Brien uses per­for­mance, video, and installation to explore notions of “home” and “homeland.” As a community activist and popu­lar educator, O’Brien has developed programs for Sisterfire, Southern Californians for Youth, the UCLA ­Labor Center’s Summer Internship Program, and the Asian Pacific American ­Labor Alliance. She was a founding member of Arts in Action, a po­liti­cal and cultural arts collective space in the heart of Los Angeles. is professor and director of Asian American studies at the University of California, Davis. D ­ aughter of Filipino immigrants, she attended UC Santa Barbara, where she majored in sociology and took classes in Asian American studies. Professor Rodriguez then went on to earn her PhD in sociology at UC Berkeley. Professor Rodriguez’s research is broadly concerned with understanding how pro­cesses of globalization, particularly international migration, impact the socie­ties that mi­grants leave and the socie­ties to which they move. Her book, Mi­g rants for Export: How the Philippines Brokers L ­ abor to the World (University of Minnesota Press, 2010), won an honorable mention for Best Book in Social Science by the Association for Asian American Studies. Professor Rodriguez’s co-­authored book with Pawan Dhingra, Asian Amer­i­ca: So­cio­log­i­cal and Interdisciplinary Approaches, published by Polity Press in 2014. Her book, In Lady Liberty’s Shadow: The Politics of Race and Immigration in New Jersey, was published by Rutgers University Press in 2017. Rodriguez’s background in Asian American studies informs her actions as an activist. Asian American studies emerged out of student movements that raised questions about access to institutions of higher learning and the politics of knowledge production. She uses the skills she has developed as a researcher to contribute to communities and is currently working closely on dif­fer­ent proj­ects with the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns. ROBYN MAGALIT RODRIGUEZ

is associate professor of ­women, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Kansas. She is a Japa­nese anthropologist trained in U.S. academia. Her research and teaching interests lie in gender, sexuality, class, and subjectivity. Her first book, Staged Seduction: Selling Dreams in a Tokyo Host Club (Stanford University Press, 2016), theorizes the commercialization of feelings, emotions, and intimate relationships among socially marginalized population in con­temporary Japan’s service-­centered economy. Her second book proj­ect, Affect Economy: Gender, L ­ abor, and Justice in Japan’s Adult Video Industry, explores contract-­based sexual l­ abor in the context of an increasingly precarious l­ abor market and still pervasive gender in­equality. AKIKO TAKE YAMA

ALLYSON TINTIANGCO-­C UBALES is a professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University. She received her BA in ethnic studies from the

Notes on Contributors • 461

University of California, Berkeley, and she holds a PhD in education (Division of Social Science and Comparative Education) from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research work includes Pinayism, culturally responsive teaching and evaluation, motherscholarship, ethnic studies and Filipina/o American studies curriculum development, and Asian American ­women studies. In 2014, the American Educational Research Association awarded the Critical Educators for Social Justice Community Advocacy Award to Professor Tintiangco-­Cubales. In 2015, she received the Association of Asian American Studies Engaged Scholar award. She is the founder and director of Pin@y Educational Partnerships. She is also the co-­founder of Teaching Excellence Network and Community Responsive Education. She was also the ethnic studies curriculum con­sul­tant for the San Francisco Unified School District and continues to work with schools and districts across the nation to implement ethnic studies and also become more community responsive. She dedicates her essay to her d­ aughter Mahalaya, her partner Val, and her longtime best friend, Dr. Dawn Bohulano Mabalon, who unconditionally supported her in ­every aspect of her life, especially as a community-­ engaged motherscholar. is professor of En­glish at Macalester College. She was born in China and came to the United States in 1986; she received her BA in En­g lish lit­er­a­ture from Beijing University. She holds an MA in En­g lish lit­er­a­ture from Long Island University as well as MA and PhD degrees in comparative lit­er­a­ture from New York University. She is the author of thirteen books of poetry, fiction, and translations, including Life of Miracles along the Yangtze and Mississippi (creative nonfiction, 2018), Ten Thousand Waves (poetry, 2014), Flash Cards: Poems by Yu Jian (translation 2012), American Visa (short stories, 1994), Foreign Dev­ il (novel, 1996), Of Flesh and Spirit (poetry, 1998), and The Last Communist Virgin (stories, 2007). The Last Communist Virgin won the 2008 Minnesota Book Award and Asian American Studies Award. She had had many photography and multimedia exhibitions: “­Behind the Gate: A ­ fter the Flooding of the Three Gorges” at Janet Fine Art Gallery, Macalester College, 2007; “All Roads to Lhasa” at Banfill-­Lock Cultural Center, 2008; “We Are W ­ ater” at G ­ reat River Museum, Soap Factory, Bakken Museum, Northland College, and other locations. She was a grant recipient from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council of the Arts, and the Minnesota State Arts Board, and was awarded fellows from the Bush Artist Fellowship; the Lannan Foundation Fellowship; the Vermont Studio Center Fellowship; and the McKnight Artist Fellowship. W. P.

is a member the Sacramento chapter of the Demo­cratic Socialists of Amer­i­ca. She was formerly the president of the Davis branch of the Young MELODY YEE

462  •  Notes on Contributors

Demo­cratic Socialists and served a year on the Young Demo­cratic Socialists Coordinating Committee. She graduated in neurobiology, physiology, and be­hav­ior from the University of California, Davis, where she was a student activist who or­ga­nized around l­abor on campus and served as an on-­campus student or­ga­nizer for American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees local chapter 3299. She intends to enter medical school. is professor and the former chair of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University. She is a community-­based scholar, researcher, and teacher devoted to teaching and understanding historical and con­ temporary issues impacting Asian Americans. She is the co-­author (with Barbara Kim) of Caring across Generations: The Linked Lives of Koreans Americans (New York University Press, 2016), which received the American So­cio­log­i­cal Association Asian American/Asian Studies Best Book Award. She is the co-­ editor (with Edith Chen) of The Encyclopedia of Asian American Issues T ­ oday (ABC-­Clio, 2010). She is also co-­editor (with Mai Nhung Le and Alan Oda) of the Handbook of Asian American Health (Springer, 2016) and editor of the textbook Koreans in Amer­i­ca: History, Identity and Community (Cognella, 2012). As a student, professor, and administrator, she has been committed for the past thirty years to the development and growth of Asian American studies on several dif­fer­ent college campuses. In 2018, she was awarded the Association of Asian American Studies Excellence in Mentorship Award. GRACE  J. YOO

Index academic culture: and oppression of minority scholars, 33–35; and purpose of education in cap­i­tal­ist United States, 38, 62n34. See also bullying; microaggressions; racism academic freedom: American Association of University Professors and, 398; as a basis for challenging tenure and promotion denial, 106–107; and corporatization of academe, 397; deconstructions of, 396; erosion of, 34–35, 47, 90, 125; focus of on individual accomplishment, 398; mentioned, 235, 240; myth of, 396; origins of, 65n59; praxis of, 403–405; and real­ity of university life, 270, 383; reliance on adjuncts as erosion of, 265n9; use of as cover for secrecy during tenure review, 51, 250n10; and workloads of candidates for tenure and promotion, 384. See also Manifesto on Tenure and Promotion in Asian American Studies academic imperialism: anger as re­sis­tance to, 52, 325, 336–338; Asian American studies as re­sis­tance to, 410n23, 417, 426; Asian American w ­ omen scholars resist, 85–93; defined, 92n3; disenchantment with, 328–329, 345; and institutional racism, 86; and institutional vio­lence, 89; legacies of, 329–331; Pinayist praxis as re­sis­tance to, 341–345; re­sis­tance as a response to, 338–341, 345; and responses

to student activism, 183; silence as a response to, 325, 331–333; shaming and, 333–334; Sunera Thobani speaks out against, 56, 443–445; wokeness as re­sis­tance to, 432 Academic Master Plan (AMP), 83–85, 91. See also corporatization of acad­eme academic pipelines: Asian American students and, 340, 345, 351, 358; data on, 10; defined, 9, 52; and low numbers of Asian American w ­ omen in positions of academic power, 19; mentioned, 52; nonexistence of for Asian American ­women scholars, x, 12–13, 114; PEP and, 360; tenure denial and, 10, 13 academic symbiosis: adjunct faculty and, 396; care work and, 403, 446; Dawn Bohulano Mabalon and, 451–452; defined, 271, 386–387, 389–391, 409n21; and improved policies for tenure and promotion at San Francisco State University, 398–400; opposition of to hierarchy, 389–391; and reinvention of shared governance, 391–392; ser­vice work and, 404–405; as a tool for helping departments avoid hiring conflicts, 388; shared governance and, 395–398; and taking responsibility for personal power, 389. See also Manifesto on Tenure and Promotion in Asian American Studies 463

464  •  Index

accent bias: Asian immigrant ­women and, 316; and discrimination, 250n19, 392; international scholars and, 234–235; and intersectional hierarchies, 10, 401; penalization for, 22n8; student evaluations and, 403; and presumptions of incompetence, ix, 81, 244; Soek-­Fang Kim and, 77–78, 80 adjunct faculty: and corporatization of academe, 63n47; form support networks on social media, 270; increasing proportion of, 47; and Health of ­Women in Academia Survey, 114–115; as percentage of U.S. faculty, 368 adjunct faculty: geographic dislocation of, 43 adjunct teaching: and academic elitism, 141, 264, 270, 396; Asian American ­women and, 63n48, 134, 330; average pay for, 265n7; and commuting, 43, 274, 366–367; and corporatization of academe, 63n47; daily life described, 365–368; and decrease in faculty jobs, 369; financial burdens of, 123, 365–369, 371, 379n5; and frequent relocation, 43; inadequate advocacy and, 138; and lack of health insurance, 379n2; and leaving academe, 264, 370; and loss of academic freedom, 265n9; and low income, 379n3, 379n4; mentioned, 52; and over­production of PhDs, 134, 240; pay scale of, 265n7, 329–331; and threats to health and well-­being, 124, 134 administrative bloat, 92, 93n7, 396 administrative imperialism, 85 affirmative action: adjuncts and spousal hires excluded from, 134, 387–388; Asian American parents oppose, 46; in 1960s and 1970s, 7; inadequacy of without other structures, 392; need for, 389, 393–394; and racism of whites, 132, 135, 285 Alagaan pedagogy, 352, 354–355, 357, 361–361, 362n3, 390, 410n25 Amerasia Journal, 23n9, 76n1, 305, 320n11 American Association of University Professors (AAUP), 51, 66n59, 137, 397–398, 411n32 American Dream, 6, 195 anger: Lordian theory and, 53–54, 329; politics of, 53; uses of, 53

Angry L ­ ittle Asian Girl, 53 Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Writing for a Socially Just ­Future, 386 anxiety: about fighting discrimination, 166; brought about by demands of academic life, 117, 121–122, 124, 227, 229; brought about by hostile work environment, 123, 131; brought about by policing of be­hav­ior, 131; brought about by racism, 260; brought about by stress, 113, 331; brought about by tenure review, 241, 247, 333; mentioned, 159, 231n6; spirituality and, 294; and writing, 238; yoga and, 290 Anzaldúa, Gloria, 160, 219–222, 225, 230–231n5 Asian American Studies Center at University of California Los Angeles, 19, 23n14 Asian American Studies departments: at San Francisco State University, 186n3, 304–305, 320n10, 404; at University of California, Davis, 210–211 Asian American w ­ omen academics: as percentage of U.S. faculty, 37; percentage experiencing health prob­lems, 37; rate of achieving tenure of, 37 Asian medicine, 292 Associated Students at San Francisco State University, 165–186, 456 Association of Asian American Studies, 305, 369, 375, 379n5, 404, 461–462 Ate Leny (Leny Strobel), 326–238, 337, 339, 343, 346n1, 346n2 Bahng, Aimee, 320n18, 401 bamboo ceiling, 12, 19, 23n10, 112, 401. See also glass ceiling Berger, Peter, 278–282, 293, 296n1, 296n2 Black Lives ­Matter movement, 58n2, 63n45, 437n13, 438n19 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 3–4, 209 Buddhism, 289–291, 325 bullying: academic institutions define as interpersonal issues, 144; of activist students by administrators, 178; community organizers fight in public schools, 4; culture of in academe, 144,

Index • 465

317, 386, 391, 409n18, 425–426, 428, 430; EEOC actions against, 138; policies fail to stop, 391, 427; pushes Asian American ­women to leave academe, 59n7; and silencing of Asian American ­women academics, 48, 124, 127, 135, 138; star academics and, 384, 425; ­a fter winning tenure ­battle, 274 California Faculty Association, 50, 319n3, 398–399, 408n10, 456 California State University, Fullerton (CSUF), 84–90 Cambodian Americans, 21n1, 448 Campaign to Defend and Advance Ethnic Studies, 170, 178–186, 456 care work: academic symbiosis and, 402; advocacy for colleagues of color as, 315; Alagaan pedagogy and, 357–358; as a core value of Asian culture, 286; as a core value of ethnic studies, 305–307; definitions of, 303–304; devaluation of, 236, 270, 277, 309–310, 316; expected of Asian American w ­ omen academics, 300, 311, 319n5; impact of on professional development, 313, 317–319; impact of on well-­being, 316–317, 319; and inadequate staffing of professional counselors, 319n3; lack of compensation for, 300, 304; model minority myth and, 311; need for among ethnic studies students, 236–237, 302, 312; and networks of colleagues at ju­nior ranks, 313–314; as source of regeneration, 302; student evaluations and, 301; tenure and, 243, 353. See also culturally responsive teaching; motherscholars; noncognitive support Car­ne­g ie ­family, 39 Car­ne­g ie Foundation, 61n72 Car­ne­g ie Mellon, 42 Center for Babaylan Studies, 339, 346n2 Chang, Iris, 57, 147n17 changing standards during tenure review, 105–106, 108n3 Chew, Laureen, 170–171, 173–174, 181, 186n3, 453 chilly climate, 10, 16 Chinese Americans, 3–4, 7, 16, 170

Christian, Barbara, 57 Chris­tian­ity: and creationism, 287; Fumitaka Matsuoka and, 286; and imperialism, 38, 282–283; and white male privilege, 343; and white supremacy, 282–283 civil rights, 2–3. See also Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) civil rights activists, 18, 21n2 civil rights movement, 7, 44, 46, 106, 279, 433 College of Ethnic Studies (at San Francisco State University), 165–166, 168–169, 173–184, 186n4, 304, 456 community: and divisions among Hmongs, 194, 197–200, 207, 211; and divisions between academics of color and their communities, 285; in non-­academic settings, 259; among ­women of color academics, 50, 230, 284–285, 292, 375. See also networks of support community engagement: Asian American students and, 166–186; Asian American ­women academics and, 223, 225, 227, 248, 269, 293, 310, 315, 320n10, 326, 335, 339–340, 343–344, 350–355, 358–361; Buddhism and, 291; childrearing and 355–356; as a core value of Asian American studies, 18, 48, 58, 59n5, 286, 292, 304–305, 308, 386–387, 390, 392, 402, 404–406, 417, 424, 428, 436, 443; Frisco 5 and, 180, 187n9; and inner conflict within w ­ omen of color academics, 148, 161; in public K–12 schools, 223, 225, 227; reclaiming within academe, 446–448; strug­g le to find ways of, 229; survival in academe and, 375; tenure and, 23n13, 284, 358, 411n30; traditional education devalues, 5, 283–284, 293–294, 358; wokeness and, 431, 434; w ­ omen of color and, 50, 284–285, 292, 375. See also academic symbiosis; FOCUS (Filipino Community Support); motherscholars; Manifesto on Tenure and Promotion in Asian American Studies; networks of support; PEP (Pin@y Educational Partnership); radical love; social media

466  •  Index

corporatization of academe: and abuse of historically marginalized ­people, 46; Asian American w ­ omen scholars’ responses to, 45, 90–92; and backlash against diversification, 48–49, 55; and competition for jobs, 262; and concept of marketplace of ideas, 89; and cooptation of diversity, 92; and cuts to ethnic studies, 83, 85–87, 166; described, 46; and desire for passive students, 167; and funding, 8, 113, 265n11; and governance, 8, 125, 396; history of, 46; impact on health of, 127; and increasing numbers of administrators, 126, 396; and individualist model of success, 383; and language of social engineering, 76, 83–90; and meritocracy, 47; need to fight, 90–92, 347n13; and pressure to publish, 305; and pressure to work harder, 125; and privatization of education, 89; and racism, 111; and sexism, 111; and shunning of grievance bringers, 47; and student debt, 88; students as customers, 257; and technology, 88, 261. See also Academic Master Plan (AMP); Lumina Foundation counterculture movement, 278–281 Creef, Elena Tajima, 65n67 critical mixed-­race studies, 405, 453 cultural humility, 308, 320n14 culturally responsive teaching, 307–308 curriculum: civil rights movement and, 7; critics of diversification of, 58n3, 140; Eurocentrism and, 4, 306, 320n13; Hmong education and, 189–213, 241n9, 215n16; Lau v. Nichols and, 4; LGBTQ educators and, 370; Pinayist pedagogy and, 342, 346, 461; work to diversify, 19, 140, 222, 248, 251n26, 317, 351 Danico, Mary Yu, 66n67 Dariotis, Wei Ming, 21n2, 64n57, 66n67, 319n2, 407n4 decolonization: as an analytical lens, 211; childrearing and, 356; education and, 62n37, 222; and feminist thought, 325; Pinayism theory and, 270, 328–329, 341–342, 344; white scholars devalue, 337 Deloso, Shannon, 66n67

depression: a­ fter tenure, 390, 409n18, 434; Asian American w ­ omen’s ways of coping with, 148n19; demands of academic life cause, 113, 116, 121, 123–124, 134, 136, 146n4, 162; hostile work environments cause, 123, 131; as obstacle to academic success, 225–226; rates of among Asian American ­women academics, 117, 121; retaliation for fighting discrimination ­causes, 274 devaluation of Asian American w ­ omen’s scholarship: academic care work and, 309, 316; bullying and, 274; collaboration and, 340–341; and community engagement, 447; ethnic studies and, 105, 130, 133, 316–317, 425–426; in gradu­ate school, 223; and model minority ste­reo­t ype, 112, 143; as obstacle to tenure, 136, 163; prevalence of, 131; racism and, 125; “rational” thought as source of, 278; as structural vio­lence, 244; and writing for publication, 238 disrespect for Asian American w ­ omen academics: by administrators, 274; by colleagues, 132, 374, 376; silencing as a form of, 130; by students, 125, 128, 130, 132–133, 148n20, 236, 257, 283, 314, 370, 374, 376, 403 diversity: Asian Americans push for, 1, 6; Audre Lorde’s theory of relationship to power, 54; and care work of Asian American ­women academics, 315; in the classroom, 306–308; and concept of overrepre­sen­ta­tion, 60n15; and corporatization of academe, 88–90, 447; and diversity and equality offices, 246, 251n26; and diversity work of faculty of color, 11, 124–125, 135, 137; and expendable hires, 10, 20; and funding for research, 246; and hiring of faculty, 105, 139, 246, 400; history of on US campuses, 5–7, 17–19, 61n21; and impact of overproduction of PhDs, 134; and importance of Asian American ­women in positions of power, 393–395; and model minority myth, 35–36, 64n50, 112; and need for financial support for ethnic studies, 10, 247; and racial hierarchy, 59–60n5, 315–316; re­spect for in Asian American studies,

Index • 467

305, 320n10; slow pro­gress of, 8, 13; student demand for, 20; and survival tools for academics of color, 249n7; universities co-­opt diversity officers in response to grievances, 107; and use of Asian Americans as “ethnic cover,” 129, 231n1, 401, 404; and values of Asian American ­women academics, 56, 59–60n5, 78, 81, 247–248, 387, 390, 392; ways to use to fight corporatization, 92 Dixson, Adrienne, 57 Ðỗ, Leslie, 66n67 domination: academia and, 222, 271, 382, 432; Asian Americans resist, 286; colonialists and, 41, 43, 421n7; and definitions of power, 433; ethnic studies as re­sis­tance to, 91, 410n23; manifest destiny and, 421n7; religion and, 283, 286 double work, 344 Education Trust, 91 elitism of academics, 185, 222, 256, 259–260, 443 empathy: and care work, 303; as a core value of Asian American culture, 286–287; and emotional intellectualism, 55; mentorship and, 277; obstacles to, 80; and oppression, 343, 389; and social justice work, 281, 425–426, 175; and stress, 317 En­g lish as a second language, 4–5, 21n3, 196, 241n3, 214n8, 235–238, 244–246, 306, 316 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC): absence of in Soek-­Fang Sim’s tenure ­battle, 79; definition of national origin discrimination of, 408n9; departments comply with guidelines of only minimally, 387–388; failure of to investigate claims adequately, 138; and Rosalie Tung’s tenure ­battle, 16, 51, 60n9; universities delay responses to, 107; universities not required to follow guidelines of when hiring adjuncts, 394; and W. P.’s tenure ­battle, 163 Erpelo, Liza, 326–327, 330, 332, 337, 340, 342, 343n3 Esaki, Brett, 66n67 ethnic studies: and absence of lit­er­a­ture on Hmong, 213; benefits of for high school

students, 187; crusade against in Arizona, 215n15; and denial of tenure, 179–180; and difficulty finding jobs, 261; and distancing from f­ amily, 173; focus of on social justice, 172–173, 304, 404; history of, 84, 212, 304; for, 212; holistic learning goals of, 87, 307; and joint appointments, 249n6, 314, 357; professionalization of, 304–305; relationship of to academic success, 304–305, 320n9; and social justice pedagogy, 90, 167, 184–185, 383; as a source of empowerment, 175; student evaluations and, 370; and teaching privileged white students, 370; and transformation of the acad­emy, 410n23; underfunding of, 85–86, 176–177, 179, 182–183, 338, 369, 405; universities do not accept metrics of, 305, 338, 401; and years to graduation, 86–87. See also academic symbiosis; Alagaan pedagogy; Campaign to Defend and Advance Ethnic Studies; care work; Pinayism; Pin@y Educational Partnership (PEP); Third World Liberation Front faculty warriors, 1, 13–21, 82, 162, 425, 452 feminism: Alagaan pedagogy and, 354; anti-­imperialism and, 444–445; archaeology and, 65n66; Asian w ­ omen laborers and, 62n30; and Black Lives ­Matter movement, 63n46; decolonization and, 325; insufficient for preventing bullying of Asian American ­women academics, 140, 231n4, 335–336, 352; and intersectionality, 432; and links between “rationality” and patriarchy, 283; Pinayism theory and, 361n1; and politicization of the personal, 248; postsecondary education and, 7; queerness and, 92n6, 437n12; and religion, 337; ­women of color and, 326, 353 Fight the Tower Movement: citational politics of, 444; and conference panels, 65–66n67; founding of, 48, 455; goals of, 49–50, 386; and need for action, 57; and need to reclaim community engagement, 447; and other academic movements against oppression, 443; website of, xi, 49–50. See also ­Women of Color in Academia Manifesto

468  •  Index

Figueroa, Tanya, 57 Filipino Americans: absence of in textbooks, 342; and bilingual education, 351; colonialism and, 57, 331–332, 341, 343, 407n7; and culture of re­spect for elders, 172; interracial marriages of, 337; lack of institutional support for at universities, 359; military ser­vice of, 330; “The Miseducation of the Filipino,” 192, 200; and motherhood as a site of power, 355; nursing and, 172, 330, 345; as percentage of student bodies, 362n6, 408n10; and support for social justice activism, 181; and Third World Liberation Front, 186n6. See also Ate Leny; Center for Babaylan Studies; Erpelo, Liza; FOCUS (Filipino Community Support); ­Little Manila Foundation; Mabalon, Dawn Bohulano; Pin@y Educational Partnership; Pinay scholarship; Pinayism; Pinayism theory; Rodriguez, Robyn; See, Sarita; Tomaneng, Rowena financial stress: adjunct teaching and, 365, 367, 371; Asian American students and, 310, 312, 371; impact on health, 123–124, 228 first-­generation college students: difficulties achieving academic success, 6, 257; dropout rates of, 6; McNair Scholar Program and, 251n27; mentioned, 456; need of for care work, 283, 303; pressure from administrators to gradu­ate “on time,” 86; Shannon Deloso as, 166, 173–174, 456 FOCUS (Filipino Community Support), 339 Frisco 5, 180, 187n9 Fung, Eileen, 392, 395

González, Carmen, 57, 452 graduation: and admissions offices’ cherry-­picking of students likely to succeed, 409; first-­generation college students and, 303, 319; and foundations’ funding for universities, 86, 92n2; and importance of ethnic studies for high school students, 303; mentioned, 162; minority students and, 87–88, 91–92; rates of among Hmong students, 194; and use of ­women of color in university publicity, 375 graduation rates: care work and, 303, 309; and cherry-­picking of students likely to succeed, 409n20; and corporatization of academe, 88, 91; as definition of student success, 86, 305; ethnic studies and, 303–304; among Hmong students, 194, 198; push to improve, 87 grassroots organ­izing, 167, 184–185, 339, 425 grievance procedures: Asian American ­women’s use of, 48, 424, 435; failure of, 17–18, 385, 391, 400, 148n27; in­effec­tive­ ness of ­unions during, 138; Lordian theory and, 53; need to learn, 140; secrecy and, 15; and tenure denial, 97; university strategies for undermining, 44, 107–108 guilt: and balancing multiple roles, 350–351, 354; depression and, 121; external sources of, 352–353; internalization of, 351, 353; Lordian theory about, 53–54; microaggressors’ freedom from, 250n21; motherhood and, 123, 350–351, 354, 361; over not reaching students, 317; and posttraumatic stress, 407n5; power and, 389; and shaming of Asian American ­women scholars into compliance, 333; white students experience, 370

Gates Foundation, 91, 92n2 gender bias, 10–11, 17, 131, 159, 235. See also sexism glass ceiling, 12, 19, 23n10, 112, 219. See also bamboo ceiling global capitalism: and corporatization of education, 8; and imperialism, 36, 41; and reverse social engineering, 432 globalism, 39–40, 78, 246, 379 Gong Lum v. Rice, 4

Hamamoto, Darrell, 66n67, 451 Harding, Sandra, 282–282, 285 Hayakawa, S. I., 44 healing: Asian medicine and, 292, 345; Gloria Anzaldùa’s theory of, 219; hilot and, 345; Hmong methods of, 205; impact of stress on, 113, 116; Jungian theory and, 320n7; of mindbodyspirit, 219–231; power and, 384; radical love and, 269; spirituality and, 52. 275, 278, 289,

Index • 469

291, 293–295; secular methods of, 288–289; through care work, 361; through collective re­sis­tance, 35, 347n13, 383; through oral history, 52; through writing, 351. See also Alagaan pedagogy; motherscholars; sutured portraiture health: illness during tenure review, 81, 111; impact of academic life on, 81, 333, 335; impact of higher standards for Asian American ­women academics on, 129–129; inadequate time for recovery from illness or injury, 81, 119; stress-­ induced illness, 113, 115–117, 120, 225–227. See also ­mental health Health of ­Women in Academia Survey, 114–145 hegemony, 36, 305–307, 340, 344, 354, 356, 401, 426 hilot pedagogy, 345, 347n14. See also mentoring of Asian American students Hmong Americans: absence of in US history texts and memorials, 201–202, 210; in academe, 115, 159, 458–459; and aspirations of females, 200; and beliefs about education, 194–195, 211; education of divides community, 196–197, 200; gender differences in education of, 190; graduation rates of by gender, 194, 198, 448; literacy and, 206–208, 215n13, 306; and male attitudes t­ oward education, 191, 197; mentioned, 52; miseducation of, 52, 189, 191, 196, 206–207, 201–212; misunderstandings of meaning of name “Hmong,” 202–203; resources for education of, 212–213, 214n9, 215n16; ste­reo­types of, 198–199, 203–205, 207–208 Hochschild, Arlie, 249n4, 304 holistic learning outcomes, 402 homophobia, 263, 302 honorary whites, 2, 38, 45, 63n44 hostile work environment for Asian American ­women scholars: administrators as source of, 358; colleagues as source of, 14–15, 138, 239; endemic nature of, 3, 42, 110–111, 112, 117, 124, 127, 141, 222; impact of on m ­ ental health, 123; impact of on physical health, 76, 111, 113; Jean Jew and, 14–15; leaving academe as a result of, 22n6, 140; Marcy Wang and, 17; mentors

as source of, 223; strategies for coping with, 142–143; students as source of, 129, 223, 257, 314. See also devaluation of Asian American w ­ omen’s scholarship; institutional racism; microaggressions; toxic work environment Hune, Shirley, 50, 57, 66n67, 451 hunger strike at San Francisco State University, 165, 171, 180–183, 187n9 Hurtado, Sylvia, 57 Immigration Act of 1965, 46, 279 imperialism: academic hierarchy and, 35–36, 43; academic symbiosis and, 406; Buddhism and, 289; Chris­tian­ity and, 283; colonialism and, 41, 43; and concept of rationality, 282, 286. 295; and concepts of lack, 407n7; on a global scale, 40; Pinayist praxis and, 342–343; sex work and, 61n28; and social engineering, 33; Star Wars as an allegory of, 58; Sunera Thobani speaks out against, 56, 443–445; Third World Liberation Front as response to, 185; and Viet Nam War, 203; and white male privilege, 343 imperial university, 83, 86, 89–91, 92n3, 406 imposter syndrome, 112, 174, 186n5, 310–312, 335, 352, 409n18 inadequate support for minority scholars, 245–247 incompetence. See Presumed Incompetent; presumptions of incompetence. institutional racism: academic freedom and, 398; affirmative action insufficient to combat, 392; anger as a response to, 53, 56, 336–337; and assessment of faculty per­for­mance, 21n11, 50, 65n67, 401, 424, 430, 434; Black Lives ­Matter movement and, 58n2; and childrearing, 335–336; and the term “Caucasian,” 62n35; and corporatization of the acad­emy, 86, 92n3, 111; and education of Asian Americans, 5; and education of ­people of color, 6; faculty of color experience, 65n67, 250n18, 260, 263, 314, 317, 335, 374; grievance procedures and, 140; impact of on health, 128–129, 144, 146n5; internalization of, 82; and international

470  •  Index

institutional racism (cont.) scholars, 234; lack of research on, 251n28; and microaggressions, 2, 12–13, 112–113, 127, 277, 302, 424; and model minority ste­reo­t ype, 2, 62n36; re­sis­tance to, 386–387; and sexism, 1, 15, 56, 64n50, 127–129, 172, 260, 395, 401, 417, 424, 434–435; social construction of, 40; students of color experience, 302, 311; and tenure, 135; white students contribute to, 370; white w ­ omen and, 54; work to dismantle, 3, 7, 21n1, 35, 63n40, 65n67, 405, 435, 446. See also imperial university; racism; toxic work environment internalization: of beliefs about Hmong literacy, 207; of colonial and imperial history, 43, 332; of doubt, 78; of false narratives, 423; of feelings of incompetence, 81–82; of guilt, 351, 353; of ideas of inferiority, 43; of idea of Amer­i­ca as a melting pot, 210; of model minority myth, 44, 124; of practice of silence, 332; of racism, 82, 356; of systems of oppression, 40, 116, 145, 174, 424; of tenure strug­g les as personal issues, 235; of transformative learning, 68n42; of university norms of excellence, 51, 448 international faculty: accent bias and, 244; ­battles for tenure of, 234–235; and care work with international students, 236–237; consequences of not getting tenure for, 265n10; employment issues of, 52; and fulfillment of diversity requirements, 246; inadequate support for, 160, 240, 245–247; and numbers of on U.S. campuses, 249n1, 408n10, 408n11; pressure from university to hit academic milestones, 125; as an underclass, 235. See also Soek-­Fang Sim international students, 21n1, 56, 236–237, 249n1, 249n2, 373, 408n11 isolation of Asian American w ­ omen academics, 47, 49, 140, 145, 196, 226, 230, 314, 335, 356, 389. See also self-­isolation Iwamura, Jane, 65n67, 291, 401 Jew, Jean, 14–15, 17, 19, 23n9, 59n7, 65n67 Jing Mai, 66n67

job contracts: breaches of during tenure review, 102, 105–107; compared to debt peonage, 240; difficulty of obtaining for adjuncts, 377; temporary, 367 joint appointments, 98, 235, 240, 243, 245, 249n5, 314 Jordan, June, 57 Journal of Asian American Studies, 305, 320n11 Joy, Amy Block, 47, 64n51, 395 ju­nior faculty: administrative work and, 396–397; American Association of University Professors and, 51; buyers’ market and, 240; inadequate mentoring of, 238; and lack of academic freedom, 389; lack of alliances with se­nior faculty of, 426; networking of, 314; students disrespect, 236; study of c­ areer trajectory of, 98; and tenure at University of Southern California, 97, 99–101, 104, 106; as percentage of academics of color at University of Southern California, 97–98; as percentage of white academics as a University of Southern California, 98–99 Junn, Jane, 66n67 K–12 education, 3–5, 8, 21n3, 195, 201–210 Kurashige, Scott, 47, 401 lack of institutional support for Asian American ­women in academe: absence of child care facilities and, 123; in gradu­ate school, 223–224, 229; and inadequate mentoring, 136; increased work demands and, 125; international scholars and, 234, 237–238, 240–241, 249n1, 359; leadership positions and, 141; and ­limited access to collegial and institutional support networks, 124; mentioned, 160; and relationship to health, 117, 123; and retaliation for speaking up, 223–224 Lau v. Nichols, 4 Lawsin, Emily P., 47, 410 leaving academe: ­because of stress, 129, 276; Genevieve Erin O’Brien and, 378–379; Marcy Wang and, 17; mentioned, 57, 122, 141, 143, 425; microaggressions and, 76n1; Rani Neutill and, 160, 255–264;

Index • 471

rate of for Asian American ­women, 59n7; reasons Asian American leave, 59n7; tenure denial and, 135, 240, 265n10, 389; w ­ omen faculty and, 22n6; ­women of color and, 76n1 LGBTQ Asian Americans: as adjunct teachers, 131, 369–370, 373, 377–378; Catholic Church rejects, 52, 337; devaluation of work of or about, 426; and education for empowerment, 131, 133; intersectional oppression of 37; and microaggressions, 372; need for information about experiences in academe of, 140–141, 374; need for networks of, 376; and resistant socialities, 89, 338; students experience harassment, 317; and tenure denial, 334 liberation pedagogy, 383, 386, 391, 400 ­Little Manila Foundation, 340, 346n2 Lorde, Audre, and dismantling systems of oppression, 90, 343; and need to speak and act, 54, 427–428; and power to support, 38, 54, 391; and self-­care; 226, 336–337, 342; and steady income from university work, 65n63; and uses of anger, 53, 329 Lumina Foundation, 85–86, 89, 91, 92n2 Mabalon, Dawn Bohulano, 343n3, 346n2, 359, 361n1, 362n8, 451–452, 461 male privilege in academe: absence of racism during tenure and promotion review, 401; and access to adequate mentoring, 112; and expectations of begin hired even when underqualified, 129; freedom from responsibility for emotional care work, 236; higher rates of tenure, 37, 401; leadership of academic institutions, 315; mentoring from se­nior faculty, 313 Manifesto on Tenure and Promotion in Asian American Studies, 398–406 Matsuda, Mari, 51, 53, 63n43, 167, 388–389, 409n14 McNair Scholar Program, 247, 251n27 mea­sur­able outcomes, 83, 87–88, 90–91 meditation, 142, 231n7, 277, 289–291 ­mental health: cultural isolation and, 6; inadequacy of Western approaches to for

Asian American w ­ omen, 148n19, 288–289; and institutional racism, 123, 146n5; mentioned, 56, 301, 319n1; and reluctance of w ­ omen of color to seek help, 124, 147n17, 288; and stress of academic life, 35, 114, 116–117, 120–121, 123, 144, 384; self-­care and, 143. See also anxiety; depression; health; self-­care; suicide mentoring of Asian American students. See also hilot pedagogy; Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP) mentoring of Asian American students: and academic per­for­mance of Hmong students, 206; adjunct faculty and, 368; as a core value of ethnic studies, 59n2, 184, 277, 311, 327, 341; cost of to Asian American ­women academics’ ­careers, 114, 276, 312–313, 358; disproportionate amount of for Asian American ­women academics, 148n21, 237, 248, 296n3, 351, 404; impact of on Asian American ­women academics’ ­careers, 120, 124, 135; scope of, 310; Soek-­Fang Sim and, 79; students’ expectations of, 128 mentoring of Asian American ­women faculty: absence of for adjuncts, 372, 426; 296, 446; and bad advice, 141, 159, 336; and bias of mentors, 410n26; and coping with stress, 143; Don Nakanishi and, 23n11, 451; inadequacy of, 59n7, 112–113, 135–136, 148n25, 238–239, 313, 373, 405; and tenure review, 224, 237–239; through flesh-­blood research, 327; through peer networks, 230, 277, 293, 313, 339, 373, 378 mentors denied tenure, 276, 296, 359 meritocracy, myth of: academic freedom and 106; as a barrier to alliances, 389, 425; capitalism and, 33, 35, 429; and devaluation of Asian American w ­ omen’s work, 133; and devaluation of students deemed “unworthy,” 302; and the concept of “excellence,” 409n17, 427; falsity of, 47, 101; and health of Asian American ­women academics, 144, 222; imperialism and, 33, 35; and inaccurate official data, 101; individualist ideology and, 243; lack of transparency and, 434;

472  •  Index

meritocracy, myth of (cont.) miseducation and, 208; and need for restructuring of academe, 54, 59n5; and normalization of injustice, 424–425; patriarchy and, 429–430; and presumptions of incompetence, 13; re­sis­tance to, 435; sexism and, 430; tenure and promotion and, 385; toxic workplaces and, 270; wokeness and, 433. See also Manifesto on Tenure and Promotion in Asian American Studies; ­Women of Color in Academia Manifesto #MeToo movement, 15, 58n2, 59n8, 438n3 microaggressions: Asian American students’ responses to, 302; Asian American ­women academics’ responses to, 277, 313, 317, 376; defined, 250n20, 362n4; examples of, 352–353, 380n7; as a form of white supremacy, 250n21; homophobia and, 372; impact on health of, 10, 76n1, 372; in letters of recommendation, 260; mentioned, 12, 219, 374; model minority ste­reo­type and, 2; subtlety of, 10, 244–245; as a systemic prob­lem, 235, 241, 244; and use of word “articulate,” 380n7; ­women’s vulnerability to, 112–113 mindbodyspirit, 160, 219–221, 225–228 mindfulness, 142–143, 228, 289–290–291, 293 miseducation, 189, 191–192, 196, 200, 202, 204, 206–207, 211, 212–213, 435 model minority ste­reo­t ype: Asian American students and, 2, 312; Asian American ­women academics reject, 138; and assimilation, 146n2, 245; and bamboo ceiling, 12; and bullying of Asian American w ­ omen academics, 36, 45, 143; and deflection of attention away from systematic bias, 96; and devaluation of Asian American ­women’s accomplishments and identity, 59n6, 112; history of, 41, 43, 46, 53, 62n36; impact on health, 110–111; impact on tenure review, 44, 127–128, 131; impact on workload, 137, 310–311, 404; internalization of, 124; K–12 Asian American teachers oppose, 5; and lack of support for Asian American ­women academics, 118; as a means of dividing ethnic groups,

424; mentioned, 5, 19–20, 38, 55, 115, 401; and racism, 2, 11, 286; and silencing, 36, 59n2, 59n3, 96, 247–248, 320n16; tokenism and, 129. See also ste­reo­t ypes about Asian w ­ omen motherhood: and academic rank, 122; Alagaan pedagogy and, 360; balancing with academic c­ areer, 133, 358–359; definition of in Black community, 355; patriarchal definition of, 354–355; and presumptions of academic incompetence, ix; reciprocal care and, 360; as a site of re­sis­tance, 355–356; as a source of stress, 135; threats to traditional definitions of, 353 motherscholars, 360–361, 362n2; 461 Nakanishi, Don, 14, 17–19, 23n9, 23n11, 23n14, 65n67, 451 neoliberalism in academe. See corporatization of academe. networks of support: as a coping mechanism, 142–143, 293; danger of becoming another form of care work, 243, 339; devalued in academe, 283; importance of while fighting back, 139–140, 434, 447; importance of institutional backing for, 243; improve minority student graduation rates, 91; ju­nior ­women of color create, 287, 313–315, 338–340; obstacles to forming, 112; relationship of to job scarcity, 262; relationship of to mentoring, 148n25; via social media, 270, 372–378; w ­ omen of color academics and, 393, 398–399. See also Manifesto on Tenure and Promotion in Asian American Studies noncognitive support, 270, 301–304, 318. See also care work nursing, 172, 308, 311, 330, 345 overproduction of PhDs: chronology of, 265n3, 265n4, 266n14; and decrease in number of tenure-­track jobs, 266n15; and gradu­ate programs’ need for funding, 265n13; impact on competition for tenure-­track jobs, 134, 240, 255, 258; and need for alternative c­ areer paths, 262 path of conocimiento, 160, 220–221, 230 performance-­based funding, 83, 85

Index • 473

Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP), 180, 187n10, 357–361, 362n7 Pinay scholarship: and care work, 351, 360–361; defined, 328; ­family history and, 329–330, 343–345; and institution building, 339–340, 346n2; and uses of anger, 336, 338–339, 342, 345–346; white scholars devalue, 337. See also Alagaan pedagogy; Ate Leny (Leny Strobel); Center for Babaylan Studies; Erpelo, Liza; ­Little Manila Foundation; Mabalon, Dawn Bohulano; motherscholars; Rodriguez, Robyn; See, Sarita; ­Women’s Allies; FOCUS (Filipino Community Support) Pinayism, 341–342, 361n1; theory, 270 Ping Wang, 48, 65n67 Plessy v. Ferguson, 4 po­liti­cally engaged scholarship, 281, 327, 329, 332, 337, 340, 350, 409n16, 443–445. See also wokeness postdoctorates: academic clock and, 229; Asian American w ­ omen scholars win, 237; creation of for Asian American PhDs, 23n14; glut of in United States, 265n4; health of, 119; mentioned, 114–115; numbers of, 249n7; revolving door and, 255–256, 261–262, 264; single parenthood and, 123 pressure to publish, 278, 284, 357; and critiques of Web of Science, 108n2; and devaluation of alternative types of academic contributions, 54; and devaluation of Asian American w ­ omen’s published work, 80–82, 163, 385; and emotional trauma, 229; and loss of sleep, 261n23; and need of support for writing, 237–238, 399; and retaliation for speaking up, 161 Presumed Incompetent, 49–50, 63n40, 64n56, 82, 137, 140, 220, 241, 281, 283, 401, 429, 436, 481 presumptions of incompetence: and accent bias, 244; Asian American ­women academics internalize, 235; Asian American ­women academics respond to, 273, 336; bias as the source of, 1, 81; and health of Asian American w ­ omen academics, 123; regarding Asian

American scholars, ix, 78, 133, 274; regarding Asian American students, 182; student evaluations and, 283; tenure and, 13, 79, 135, 244, 448 privileged oppressed, 20, 30, 33, 36, 38, 41, 43, 54, 401, 404, 446 privileged oppressed: woke moments of, 36 promotion denial: African American scholars and, 180; Asian American ­women and, 277–278, 280, 293–295; and devaluation of care work, 277, 353, 357; and inability to find other academic jobs, 240; Jean Jew and, 14–15; as a mechanism of control, 333, 384; Pinay scholars and, 333; and weaponization of “rational” thought, 283–288; Wei Ming Dariotis and, 384–385; w ­ omen of color and, 283, 285, 315; W. P. and, 163. See also Manifesto on Tenure and Promotion in Asian American Studies promotion: changing requirements for, 305, 385; timeline for a­ fter tenure, 243–244. See also Manifesto on Tenure and Promotion in Asian American Studies racial doll test, 356, 362n5 racism: anger as a response, 53, 56, 336; and care work of Asian American academics, 317; and falsity of myth of meritocracy, 424; and founding of American Association of University Professors, 398; and health of Asian American ­women academics, 51, 124, 127–129, 260; history of in United States, 40; and importance of college education for ­people of color, 6; and importance of having p­ eople of color in positions of power, 392, 395; and importance of support networks, 374; institutional, 1, 3, 86, 92n3, 111, 250n18, 417; internalization of, 82, 356; international scholars and, 234; and intersectional oppressions, 3, 35, 56, 63n40, 64n50, 172, 263, 302, 317, 401, 405; microaggressions and, 2, 12, 112–113; and othering, 124, 203, 308; and small number of Asian American college students before World War II, 5; student evaluations and, 370; and tenure review,

474  •  Index

racism (cont.) 64n67; transformation of oppressive systems as a response, 337, 387; white ­women’s lack of awareness of, 29, 54 radical love, 269–271 rationality: Asian values and, 284, 286; Chris­tian­ity and, 281–283; coded as “Asian,” 53; critiques of, 278–281, 293, 295, 270; and devaluation of alternative epistemologies, 285; and devaluation of caretaking, 284–285; and devaluation of community building, 283–284; impact on ­mental health of, 281; impact on tenure and promotion of ­women of color, 283; and psychic vio­lence, 285; weaponization of during tenure and promotion review, 283–288; and white male values, 282 refugees: education about, 202; Hmong as, 203, 204; immigration laws and, 6; involuntary sterilization of, 62n34; mentioned, 5, 21n1, 56, 192–193; Vietnam War and, 6, 202–203, 222 resistant socialities, 325, 328, 338, 340, 342, 345 retaliation: endemic nature of in academe, 48, 417; failure of tenure to protect from, 407n2; importance of sharing information about, 66n67; for seeking funding, 47; for seeking promotion, 32, 47, 161–163; for speaking out, 47, 59n7, 126, 135; for student activism, 47; for whistle-­blowing, 47, 64n51 reverse social engineering, 35 revolving door, 10, 20 Rich, Adrienne, 354–355 Rocke­fel­ler Foundation, 38–39, 42 Rodriguez, Robyn, 56, 326–327, 334, 334, 339, 342, 343n3 San Francisco H ­ uman Rights Commission (SFHRC), 178–179 San Francisco State University (SFSU): 398–399; administration cuts funding for ethnic studies at, 168; administration disrespects members of Campaign to Defend and Advance Ethnic Studies, 166, 169, 175–178; Allyson Tintiangco-­ Cubales and, 357–359; Asian Studies at,

168–169, 173, 305, 307, 320n10, 341; California Faculty Association chapter of, 50; Campaign to Defend and Advance Ethnic Studies at, 456; counseling ser­vices of, 312; Dawn Bohulano Mabalon and, 346n2, 451; Filipino students at, 362n6; Grace J. Yoo at, 400, 411n34; hunger strike at, 179–183; student evaluations at, 420–404; Third World Liberation Front strike at, 44, 56, 170–171, 184, 186n6, 445; Wei Ming Dariotis and, 398. See also College of Ethnic Studies; Manifesto on Tenure and Promotion in Asian American Studies; Third World Liberation Front Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathe­matics (STEM), 46, 145n1 See, Sarita, 326–327, 337, 340, 343, 346n2 self-­care: lack of time for, 118; as a revolutionary act, 142, 230, 269; and survival, 227–230. See also spirituality self-­determination, 270, 304–305, 320n10, 344, 428 self-­doubt, 77–78, 161, 175, 351, 354 self-­isolation: 246. See also isolation of Asian American w ­ omen academics sexism t­ oward Asian American ­women: care work and, 311, 314, 317; endemic nature of, 124, 144, 260, 263, 317, 417, 434; impact of on physical health, 111, 128–129–130, 135; impact of on self-­ esteem, 335; inadequacy of affirmative action for eliminating, 392; inadequate research on impact of, 251n28; international scholars and, 234; Lordian anger theory and, 53–54; microaggressions and, 112–113, 127, 129; and myth of meritocracy, 424, 430, 434; and need for more Asian American ­women in administration, 395; and need for networks, 374; and presumptions of incompetence, 244; retaliation for speaking up about, 130; and standards for assessing ethnic studies work, 405; students experience, 302, 311; tenure and, 50, 65n67; re­sis­tance to, 56, 58n2, 342, 356, 435–436, 446 shared governance: AAUP and, 398; adjuncts excluded from, 368, 395; administrators

Index • 475

coopt, 395–397; administrators devalue participation in, 404; as an attempt to control students, 167–168, 176–179, 182, 184–185; and corporatization of academe, 85, 90; mentioned, 50, 411n30; re­sis­tance and, 389, 391; Third World Liberation Front demands, 304 silencing: accent bias and, 244; of Asian American ­women academics, 60n18, 63n41, 82, 174, 223, 333; bullying and, 428; death and, 47; of grievants, 47, 79; illness and, 47; of Japa­nese Americans, 44–45; lack of information about strug­g les of Asian American ­women academics and, 247–248; model minority ste­reo­t ype and, 53, 59n6; by punishing t­ hose who speak up, 130; of scholar-­activists, 284; shaming and, 47, 76, 294, 333, 427–428; of student activists, 159, 165–167, 184. See also speaking up single parents, 123, 376 sleep, lack of, 118–119, 120–121, 166, 244, 251n23 sleep disorders, 113, 116–117, 119–124, 131, 161, 225, 274 social construction, 34–36, 38–41, 43, 46, 62n29, 144, 279, 356, 401 social engineering, 19, 30, 33–44, 76, 426, 432–433 social justice: acad­emy devalues research on, 133, 221–222; communal values and, 390; as a core value of ethnic studies, 6, 21n1, 34, 48, 57, 81, 87, 170, 185, 248, 290, 320n10, 341, 344, 357, 383, 435, 448; Don Nakanishi and, 18; empathy and, 426; mentioned, 378; and need for transformation of academe, 388; and relinquishing power, 425; and triangulation of ­people of color, 2; universities betray commitment to, 47–48, 88–90, 270, 305; whistleblowing and, 47–48; wokeness and, 211, 434; work to institutionalize, 56, 59n5, 393, 396, 409n14, 447. See also academic symbiosis; Fight the Tower Movement; hunger strike at San Francisco State University; Third World Liberation Front Strike; Thobani, Sunera social justice warriors, 90, 274

social media: Community of Asian American Scholars site, 309; Fight the Tower website, xi, 49–50; networks and, 270, 372–378; Viet Nam ­Women’s Forum, 445 Soek-­Fang Sim, 75–82 speaking up: community support and, 181; “The Cost of Speaking,” 159, 161–163; culture of bullying discourages, 48; eviction of Asian American ­women from acad­emy for, 45; as a means of reclaiming academe, 20, 186; #MeToo movement and, 15; necessity of, 142, 436; Presumed Incompetent, 49; retaliation for, 59n7, 130–131, 135, 159. See also Chew, Laureen; Fight the Tower movement; hunger strike at San Francisco State University; Manifesto on Tenure and Promotion in Asian American Studies; Third World Liberation Front; ­Women of Color in Academia Manifesto spirituality: Buddhism, 289–291, 325; meditation, 142, 231n7, 277, 289–291; mindfulness, 142–143, 228, 289–290–291, 293; as a response to psychic damage, 277; yoga, 142, 290–291, 293 ste­reo­t ypes about Asian w ­ omen: China doll, 127; demure, 10, 53, 128; docile, 2, 20, 37, 131, 137, 143, 171, 320n16, 338; dragon lady, 10, 62n31, 65n62, 127; exotic, 10, 256, 286, 295, 305–306, 320n16; geisha, 127; passive, 10, 37, 44, 51, 112, 138, 143, 166, 171, 176; perpetual foreigners, 11; prostitutes, 62n31. See also model minority ste­reo­t ype “Strangers” of the Acad­emy: Asian W ­ omen Scholars in Higher Education, 55 Strobel, Leny. See Ate Leny. student activists, 34, 166–169, 174–186, 353, 462. See also Campaign to Defend and Advance Ethnic Studies; hunger strike at San Francisco State University; Third World Liberation Front student evaluations: from Asian American students, 78; department dismisses evidence that gender and race affect, 131; homophobia and, 370; importance of in tenure review, 11; and inadequate mentoring of female faculty, 112;

476  •  Index

student evaluations (cont.) jeopardize ­f uture job prospects, 370; and perception that white males are “real” teachers, 1, 12; and sexism, 132, 402–403; as a source of stress, 135–136; students blame poor grades on faculty of color, 22n8; suggestions for improving, 403; unreliability of, 11–12; w ­ omen share strategies for coping with, 376 suicide, Asian American ­women and, 84, 124, 147n14, 147n17, 148n19, 250n14 survival strategies: engaging community, 292–293; lack of time to implement, 294; secular, 288; spiritual, 288–289, 294; turning to ­family, 226–229, 292. See also Asian medicine; Buddhism; meditation; mindfulness; networks of support; yoga sutured portraiture, 326–346 systematic bias: 10, 96. See also academic imperialism; hostile work environment for Asian American ­women scholars; institutional racism; racism; sexism ­toward Asian American ­women Tape v. Hurley, 3 teaching loads, 81, 121, 124, 235, 357, 359, 377 temporary jobs, 261, 367. See also adjunct work tenure ­battles: impact on health of, 127, 145, 241–242, 33; importance of support networks during, 242–243; and inadequacy of grievance procedures, 137, 241; universities require faculty member to collect data for, 241 tenure denial: and absence of appeals pro­cess, 137; African American scholars and, 180, 240, 276; Aimee Bhang and, 320–321, 401; Asian scholars and, 240, 247; and changing rules during review, 108n3; and departmental failure to adhere to rules during tenure review pro­cess, 239; Don Nakanishi and, 17–19; impact on care work of, 296; Jane Iwamura and, 401; Jennifer Lisa Vest and, 48; Kai Linh Valverde and, 48, 401; Khan Ho and, 82; Mai’a Davis-­Cross and, 401; Marcy Wang and, 16–17; lack of information about experiences of ­others, 140; mentioned, 162; of mentors,

276, 296, 359; Namita Goswami and, 401; overproduction of PhDs and, 240; Ping Wang and, 48; Rosalie Tung and, 15–16, 50–51; secrecy and, 140, 320n18; Stephen Sohn and, 401; at University of Southern California, 37, 76, 96–108; Wei Ming Dariotis and, 64n57; W. P. and, 79–82, 163 tenure review pro­cess: and breaching of hiring contracts, 102, 105–106; and dif­fer­ent approaches to male and female candidates, 244; and divorce, 122; increasing requirements for, 305; lack of transparency of, 97, 101–102, 136, 140, 334; and motherhood and, 358–359; solicitation of information from outside the candidate’s university, 103–104, 398–399; and violation of university/ department policies, 102–104. See also care work; devaluation of Asian American ­women’s scholarship; rationality tenure success rate: for Asian American ­women, 97, 100; for minority faculty, 99, 101; for white faculty, 99–101 Third World Liberation Front: and alliances with community members, 184; and changes to university governance, 44, 446; inspires 2016 student hunger strike at San Francisco State University, 185; Laureen Chew and, 170, 186n3; leads to formation of College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University, 184, 186n6, 304; led by men, 171, 173, 175; and origins of Asian Studies in the United States, 304, 306, 443, 445; as a risky protest, 56 Third World Liberation Front Strike, 44, 56, 170–171, 173–174, 181, 184, 186n3, 186n6, 304, 443, 445 Thobani, Sunera, 56, 443–445, 449 Tintiangco-­Cubales, Allyson, 187n10, 270, 319n6, 341, 344, 390, 410n25, 452, 461 Tomaneng, Rowena, 335, 346n2, 392–395, 407n1, 410n26, 453 Toro, Zulma, 57 toxic work environment, 114, 124–134, 260, 274, 281, 340. See also hostile work environment for Asian American

Index • 477

­ omen scholars; institutional racism; w microaggressions; sexism transferring academic skills to new jobs, 261–262 Tucker, Sherie, 248–249, 251n29 Tung, Rosalie, 14–19, 23n9, 50–51, 60n9, 65n67, 250n10, 435 ­unions: absence of on some campuses, 241; American Association of University Professors as a quasi-­substitute for, 51, 398; Asian American academics support, 8; Asian American leadership of, 315; inability to help adjunct faculty, 377; inadequacy of without transformation of the acad­emy, 392; in­effec­tive­ness of, 138; relationship to health of oppressed groups, 145; and tenure system at De Anza College, 410n26 University of Pennsylvania v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 16, 51 University of Southern California, 37, 76, 96–108, 401 unwritten criteria for hiring, 388 Valverde, Kieu Linh Caroline, 48–50, 64n57, 65–66n67, 231n4, 251n28 Vest, Jennifer Lisa, 48, 76n1, 407n5, 453 Vietnam War: Hmong ­people and, 201–204; mentioned, 209, 222; neglected in U.S. history texts, 200–201; Star Wars as allegory of, 58; used in a microaggression, 372; and U.S. imperialism, 41; U.S. soldiers refuse ­orders to kill during, 428–429; and Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 194 Viet­nam­ese Americans, 44, 52, 58, 76n1, 115, 222, 448, 459 Vo, Linda Trinh, 66n67

Walton Foundation, 91 Wang, Marcy, 14, 16–17, 19, 65n67 Web of Science, 105, 108n2 West, Martha, 57 white privilege in academe: absence of bias based on race or ethnicity, 250n22; described, 60n17; lower standards for whites for tenure and promotion than for w ­ omen of color, 36, 344; mentorship and, 313; and microaggressions, 250n21; and students’ perceptions of “real” teachers, 1, 12; weaponization of “rationality” and, 282 white supremacy: and U.S. colonialism, 40–41 wokeness: action as a component of, 29, 56, 436, 445; Asian American ­women and, 33, 167; Black Lives ­Matter movement and, 63n45, 437n9; definition of, 29, 30n2, 429–432; and fighting for justice, 20; intersectional oppression and, 59n5; leadership positions and, 395–396; peace and, 437n14; and re­sis­tance, 423–437; and solidarity among w ­ omen of color, 432; woke moments, 20, 36, 429, 435 ­Women of Color in Academia Manifesto, ix–xi ­Women’s Allies, 339 writing: difficulties of in second language, 237–238; difficulties with in response to psychological trauma, 224–225; working with an editor, 245–246. See also pressure to publish Wu, Cynthia, 321n18 xenophobia, 1, 3, 6, 63n40 Yellow Peril, 2, 43, 46 yoga, 142, 290–291, 293