Sydney: Around 10 years ago when I was a graduate student, I attended a panel discussion that included the current and former presidents of the disciplinary association facilitating the conversation. All of the panelists were faculty of color. I clearly remember them describing strategies to navigate the tenure and promotion process. I particularly recall them saying how promotion processes were not fair to faculty of color and that they had experienced race-based challenges 20 and 30 years prior, as they went up the ranks. This confused me because they were the leaders of the field who I thought could have significantly influenced standards and expectations of the field, given their prominence and stature within the academy. I wondered to myself, why were they telling us how to navigate these often bias and unfair promotion and tenure (P & T) practices, rather than fighting to transform them. Fast-forward to now, I am a tenured faculty member and understand the complexities of being a Black scholar in the academy.
Donna: As a doctoral student in the early 1990s, I do not recall any formal meetings about the trials and tribulations of being Black and the promotion and tenure process. However, I learned indirectly from being married to the first Black Dean of the College of Education at Cleveland State University and seeing him agonize over two cases where a Black female (Janice Hale) and Black male were denied tenure. Both appealed and were given promotion and tenure after long, drawn out legal battles. Dr. Hale’s case made national news. I am privy to dozens of cases where other Black faculty have had to seek legal counsel to challenge their university’s decision; in all of the cases, they ‘won’, but it was a pyrrhic victory. Should they now stay and feel continued awkwardness among their colleagues, or try to leave, knowing that the prospective institution would be aware of their lawsuit? Unfortunately, fighting for promotion and tenure can limit future options, even after winning what is deserved. Racial battle fatigue is undeniable.
Recently, the tenure denials of faculty such as Sibrina Collins at the College of Wooster, Lorgia García-Peña at Harvard University, Paul Harris and Tolu Odumosu at the University of Virginia, and Ashley Woodson at the University of Missouri at Columbia, have reignited a conversation about the role of bias in tenure and promotion processes. But also, the role of tenured senior faculty of color in not only mentoring their junior colleagues, but also working to disrupt and revise these processes. Reimagining these processes in a way that is grounded in equity and justice, we offer a few recommendations.
Serve on P & T Committees. It is important that senior faculty of color serve on and chair promotion and tenure committees at every level of the university. In this capacity, we are able to provide additional context to our colleagues about the value and impact of work that addresses our communities, along with the barriers and challenges. Dr. Brittany Cooper of Rutgers University put it this way:
“I have a seat at the table because I have a PhD. And I am angrier every time I leave the table, I fought my whole life to have a seat at before I was there. Because I have a front row seat to see people invested in White Supremacy do levels of structural violence to our communities that we won’t get out of for generations because we don’t have the power to solve it. So, I am not invested in the myth of being at the table… It doesn’t mean anything if I don’t have the power to structurally transform the institutional conditions that people who are not at the table face”.
In addition to serving on P & T committees, it is important that we be members of and engaged on school, college, and university-wide faculty affairs committees and faculty senate. This is often where P & T policies and procedures are established. Read in depth the policies and procedures; they are a bible of sorts. When discussing revising these policies and procedures, committee members should be asked to familiarize themselves with resources such as Patricia A. Matthew’s book, Written/Unwritten: Diversity and the Hidden Truths of Tenure, Crystal Chambers and Sydney Freeman Jr’s article, To Be Young, Gifted, and Black: The Relationship between Age and Race in earning Full Professorships, and Yolanda Flores Niemann, Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, and Carmen G. González’s book, Presumed Incompetent II: Race, Class, Power, and Resistance of Women in Academia.
Serve as external reviewers. Minoritized faculty frequently experience questions by their institutional peers and external reviewers about the quality and rigor of their teaching, service, and scholarship if it centers on minoritized communities. In particular, there are questions around choice of academic outlets if they exclusively publish scholarship that uplifts marginalized people and communities and if they publish in non-mainstream journals, which are often deemed less well-known/established and prestigious to White decision makers. It is important that senior scholars of color serve as external reviewers to clearly communicate the importance of such journals and push back on the deficit views of our research focus and scholarship. We must be advocates who speak up and stand up.
