This is a call to my dear faculty friends and colleagues in higher education institutions.
In the first months of the new presidential administration, and indeed since the election, many have been searching for answers. I have been in more meetings, gatherings and brain dump sessions than I can count, all focused on the same existential question: What does this all mean?
I have heard a number of higher education faculty, in particular those who are committed to diversity, equity and inclusion work, who are wondering what this means in terms of their research and teaching. I do not want to minimize these fears, but I would also like to reframe these discussions.
The fears are real, and the threats that people face vary greatly from state to state. That is, the potential repercussions for someone in South Dakota or Idaho are substantially greater than for someone in California, for example. I also fully understand that pretenure or non-tenure-track faculty members risk more than those like me with the protections of tenure. I also am aware that issues around federal research funding for DEI-related topics remain highly unsettled as grant cancellations continue.
I am not calling for us to be lacking in strategy or unaware of our contexts. However, I am extremely concerned that a number of my fellow academics are engaging in pre-emptive self-censorship.
That is, my dear friends and colleagues continually make statements like these behind closed doors:
- “Only sign on/speak up on issue X if you are comfortable.”
- “We need to be sensitive to the potential harm that can befall our members.”
I do not disagree with these sentiments on their face, but I worry about this on two fronts.
First, there is one key issue I have not seen engaged in these discussions: While tenured faculty are currently under attack across the country, we also have privileges enjoyed by no one else on college campuses, such as academic freedom and tenure.
While this does not absolutely insulate us from potential harms stemming from regressive laws or executive actions, it does mean that relative to professors of practice, adjuncts and staff, we enjoy a number of privileges they do not. For example, in my home state of Arizona, staff are considered at-will employees and can be quickly dismissed for speaking out.
I do not deny that we are living in perilous times, but what good are academic freedom and tenure if we do not use them? Some think, I believe mistakenly, that speaking out will only embolden the attacks on higher education institutions and faculty. I, instead, am more compelled by Frederick Douglass’s proclamation,
Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted …”
Generation after generation, people have been convinced that being quiet will quell attacks, and generation after generation, this approach has only invited more of them. It also seems fairly clear that the attacks on higher education are not going to stop any time soon.
I am reminded of the first time I saw Noam Chomsky speak, when he offered, “We are so concerned with the cost of our actions that we forget to ask, what is the cost of inaction?” We are frequently so concerned with the potential consequences of speaking out, we forget what our silence will invite.
This leads to my second point: What good are academic freedom and tenure if we do not use them? We as academics so often talk about the rights afforded us through academic freedom. Much less frequently do we ask what the social responsibilities of said freedom are. Returning to Chomsky, the responsibility of intellectuals is to “speak the truth and expose lies.” There can be no greater calling for academics in a “post-truth” society than to do both publicly and boldly.
Finally, and I cannot stress this enough, we are not going to feel comfortable before speaking out. I am reminded of Archie Gates (George Clooney’s character in Three Kings), who said, “The way this works is, you do the thing you’re scared shitless of and you get the courage after you do it, not before you do it.” This is why I am frustrated by the continual asking if my dear faculty friends and colleagues feel comfortable about speaking up, being identified in actions and putting ourselves in harm’s way. We will not a priori feel comfortable, so this should not be a prerequisite for action.
So let us take comfort in the prophetic words of Audre Lorde in her poem “A Litany for Survival”:
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraidSo it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.”
Make no mistake—this is an all-out attack on higher education. When the current president refers to the “enemies from within,” this in part means us. For some reason, higher education leaders currently think that they can simply put their heads down, not make waves and ride out this storm. For every leader like President Danielle Holley of Mount Holyoke College, who openly challenges Trump’s attacks on DEI, there are many more who are removing DEI language from websites while considering shutting down these programs.
This is extremely misguided, because being quiet will not save us.
Bending the knee and precomplying will not stave off these attacks.
Acquiescing to censorship will not stop the threats.
Only engaging in collective, bold, public, strategic struggle and disruption has the potential to do so.
We did not pick this fight, but this is the fight that we are in.
