The Academic Job Market in a Time of Coronavirus: How Diversity Still Matters
Graduate students on the academic job market were already facing an uncertain future, but given the developing fallout from COVID-19, that precariousness has now shot up to the levels previously felt with the 2008 recession. So, an essay on diversity in higher education may seem out of place; believe me, I understand. I am one of those graduate students waiting in the limbo of post-campus visit, not knowing if an offer will ever come, not just to me, but to any of us that made it to that stage.
When my mind is not spiraling through all the COVID-19 concerns related to my teaching and researching and parenting, I do what many do in times like these; I replay all the things I did and did not do on my campus visit, wondering if they were enough.
One of those replay moments kept coming back to me. During my campus visit exit interview, the committee asked me the expected “Do you think about diversity in your teaching?” question. Despite the chuckle we all shared after they asked — they knew from my materials and the past two-day visit that I indeed think about diversity and my teaching — I had to answer the question with something different than I had said before.
I decided to take a risk and be more open about my thoughts around diversity in the classroom than I often allow myself to be. You see, I am a Black, female graduate student who is also a #ScholarMom — I am constantly thinking through the potential outcomes of my words and actions. When I finished, one of the members told me I should write up my answer and publish it. Reflecting on that reaction to my answer reassured me that at least if none of us who made it to the campus visit stage will actually receive an offer, it is not because we were not valued or esteemed by the committee.
I share below a reconstruction of what I said to that committee, not just as a reminder that diversity and teaching still matter, but also as a lit candle in honor of all the hard work my fellow graduate students put into this year’s job market, a lit candle to us all.
* * *
To start my answer to the increasingly standard diversity question, I seized the opportunity to #CiteABlackWoman: Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop and her seminal essay, “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors” (1990). As I shared with the committee, her basic premise is that the texts we use in the classroom should act as mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. Mirror texts allow students to see themselves reflected in a text, not just as a side character or footnote, but as a valuable character or important contribution. For many of us, the concept that #RepresentationMatters is hardly new, but it bears repeating.
One person’s mirror text is another person’s window into the perspectives and issues of other people. The physical and digital diversity of many 21st century workplaces make it imperative that students learn, with humility, about lives and interests and concerns that are at times radically different than their own. Further, students need to learn how to be life-long window-seekers, because the process should not stop after leaving college.
Students and teachers alike can walk through sliding glass doors when they look in mirrors and windows, engage in self-reflection and personal growth, and then work together to imagine better research, better classroom community, and a better world.
Mirrors and windows can be applied to a wide range of higher education disciplines. The materials selected for an upper level applied mathematics or physics course might, for example, include articles written by women and people of color, highlighting the active and historic contributions they make to the field. Academic and creative writing courses, like the ones I teach, have a spoil of riches from which to choose, in terms of articles and creative works from and about women, people of color, people with (dis)abilities, and LGTBQ+people.
These window experiences help grow empathy, which we need now more than ever. We need it in academia (faculty and administration), but we also need it in the arts, in medicine, in the law, and in politics. These are the very places our students will go when they leave higher education. Indeed, Forbes (Bower 2019; Deobald 2019) and the Harvard Business Review (Bell 2009) have been insisting over the past decade that empathy is a vital part of leadership and work in the 21st century.
However, diversifying the curriculum in higher education — bringing in mirrors and windows — is not enough, but it is where many educators stop. Instead, instructors need to walk through sliding glass doors and do the hard work of imagining something better and putting it into action. This is where my answer to the committee’s question veered off the rails of my usual, safe diversity statement, packed with concrete examples from my teaching, research, and service. It was at this point that I stepped into the philosophical, that I began to express the things I think and feel need to be enacted across academia.
We need to create classroom environments that welcome students from all backgrounds, including and especially those with whom we as the instructor are unfamiliar or with whom we disagree. We need to equip students with models and tools for how to discuss divergent, difficult, and sometimes divisive ideas in a manner that still honors the people with whom we are having these discussions. We need to move beyond call-out culture and learn how to call each other in — having private conversations that diffuse defensiveness and work to seek understanding and build relationships. Yet, we also need to hold people accountable for their actions and teach them that both words and actions have consequences. We need to make sure we, as instructors, are held accountable, too.
In the workshops and talks I give around diversifying the curriculum, one of the greatest fears instructors share is a fear of making mistakes that hurt students and potentially harm their career. I understand that. I live with academic uncertainty everyday. Here’s the thing, though — we are always going to make mistakes in interpersonal interactions and that is especially true in the classroom. For example, I sometimes stumble over people’s pronouns and, not for lack of trying, still cannot pronounce the ‘x’ in Ixchel or Xochitl correctly.
But as a #ScholarMom, I am not ashamed to learn from my 5-year-old’s preschool television programming. In particular, I have learned a lot from the Daniel Tiger episode in which the titular character learns that when you make a mistake, hurt someone’s feelings, or otherwise cause harm to a relationship, there are three steps you should take. As said in the jingle of the episode, “saying I’m sorry is the first step, then how can I help?” There is also an unsung but clearly demonstrated third step in which Daniel Tiger has to actually do the thing that helps restore the relationship.
As instructors, we need to model for our students what it looks like to own that we did something wrong or hurtful and that we are sincerely sorry that we did so. We need to model ways of asking how we can help. And we need to model actually acting in accordance with our students’ suggestions, like practicing referring to that person by their pronoun of choice or listening to a student-made recording of their name so I can get as close as possible to saying it correctly. As the instructors, we also need to consider wisdom and advice from the people we read and listen to outside of our classes to further grow in these areas. We are the leaders of the classroom and cannot put the full burden of our growth on our students.
Do we want to create classroom environments in which mistakes are made and forgiven and from which students and instructors alike can grow? If so, we need to abandon cancel-culture and start embracing grace. When people apologize and ask how they can help, we should offer forgiveness. Yes, even when we doubt the motives behind an apology, even if we think full understanding has not been reached, even if we feel they do not deserve it.
That is the point of grace — it is a gift freely given to those who do not deserve it, who have not earned it. Grace allows us to heal relationships, because healing takes time. Apologizing is not ever going to be enough to make the hurt person feel like the relationship is fixed. Extending grace and forgiveness gives people the space and opportunity to work toward restoration.
These are the classrooms in which sliding glass doors are created. I envision students and instructors doing the work of imagining these environments and try to make it real in practice. It will be difficult labor, because the structures of academia and the broader society are fraught. But, if I am going to do diversity work in higher education, and I must, then this is the world I must help build. I hope you will join me.
* * *
I still haven’t heard back from the committee about the job; COVID-19 contingency plans hit campuses across the country the week after my campus visit. I’m in the weeds with everyone else, teaching a course online with very little lead time, wondering what the future of academia looks like, what my own future in academia looks like. But whatever the outcome, I cannot bring myself to regret my honesty during my campus visit.
