Thoughts on Concerned44
EDIT: This is a re-posted entry from my previous blog.
Last night, I attended a student-organized town hall on our campus that was led by the #Concerned44 movement on Seton Hall’s campus. This group of Seton Hall students has come together to protest “the way students of color have been treated and represented and are holding the administration accountable” (quoted from their flyer). I attended as a concerned citizen of this community but was also very aware of my own role as a faculty member.
To be very clear, all I write below is not meant to detract or distract from the students’ own work, but I do feel that it’s important for me to try and articulate, perhaps mostly to myself, how I am feeling. As a faculty member at Seton Hall, a person of color, a queer man, a former student who involved himself in anti-racism organizing, a faculty member in an education policy department who teaches many higher education students, a researcher who has published multiple works on anti-racist student movements, and someone who has been involved with recent diversity work here at Seton Hall, I’m feeling a lot right now. Inspiration, fear, hope, exhaustion…I’m bouncing between these emotions at any given point when I think about what is happening.
Several things that are often commonly understood about academia/any organization that are often hand-waved as sad, immutable, background realities, but are currently very real parts of my own experience of this situation:
Taking a critical look at the institution within which you work carries risk, and as such, I very much recognize that much of my own hesitation to be more plain is related to that. I’m not particularly worried about my untenured status, but there is the fact that I truly don’t know how everyone I work with feels, and there’s a danger when you speak out of making all of the rest of your work much more complicated.
I have been doing this kind of work for many years now, and to be frank, I’m tired, and I’m not keen on the idea of involving myself more than I already am.
The structure of academia contains many inefficiencies, some intentional and some not, that make things move much slower than any of us would like.
There’s something very bizarre and downright uncomfortable about realizing you were once a student fighting dominant power structures at an institution, and then transitioning to being a part of that same power structure.
What is happening here at Seton Hall feels very similar to the kinds of things I saw happening with Hidden Dores on Vanderbilt’s campus or the stories of undergraduate (and sometimes graduate) student organizing against oppression at countless other colleges and universities across the United States (and around the world). Combined with what feels like a national political situation that is laying many of the same conflicts bare in every section of life, it’s hard not to feel a little bit jaded.
For these reasons, I was at first hesitant about the idea of going to the town hall. I’m glad I attended, though, because I’ve come to better understand both the work the students have been doing and understand my own perspective at the same time.
First and foremost, I think it’s important for me to say that I support the students’ goals. While my research and practical background leaves me with some questions, my questions are mostly focused on implementation and strategy details. Overall, the goals of the movement in terms of addressing a climate that has been inhospitable to students just like me (and students from other historically marginalized populations) are good goals. We have a lot of evidence (shameless plug: including evidence highlighted in some forthcoming work from Dominique Baker and myself) of these climates, and I stand on the side of those who would like to see colleges and universities, and the world moreover, be better. I also, for what it’s worth, think the students have done a lot of work with the little time they have as students.
Second, the group has articulated, like many other student groups, a set of demands. I think the demands are fairly reasonable in many ways. I’ll also urge other faculty, staff, and administrators to think about the demands from a broader view. Yes, from our positions, it’s likely that one or two of the points made might not align with what you know or feel. However, just from a pure point of averages, if you can honestly say that the vast majority of the points do align with what you’d want, maybe the misalignment is an okay thing to accept for now. My discomfort with one or two details should not drive me to avoid engaging. Democracy is a process, and that’s okay.