This Week In Academe

I was thinking that someone should have some sort of podcast that is called "This week in academe" and all it is is a recap of all the garbage takes from academics on Twitter that are ableist or elitist. It's very upsetting and scary how much folk do not realize how monolithically homogenous their community is. Because they are surrounded by folk who have similar lived experiences it is much more difficult for them to change their framing about their pedagogical strategies, curriculum, or resource needs to include and take into account folk whose lives and lived histories are different than theirs. This week so far I have seen (this is just a few examples of many other things floating around this week):

• Hey we should have self nomination of awards (not taking into account how that will still not create equity because the folk who should be nominated or could self nominate are poorly resourced when it comes to the needs for the award nomination)
• Hey PowerPoint is evil, teaching with no slides is the ultimate indication of a truly good educator (which of course led to and lets get rid of computers and phones too in the kind of ableist slide that always happens, instead of say well maybe lets have a conversation about how to make slides and pedagogy more accessible)
• Filling out a survey that is part of a research study so riddled with confirmation bias I have no idea how this thing got through a research ethics board (REB) and of course then the many things one can say about what does a REB actually do
• Bias training that was so filled with homophobic and ableist framing that the ringing in my ears was not only from my tinnitus, but from the anger that in 2022 folk in universities still think it is super okay to use "sexual preference" and that instructional designers fail to catch bias in the imagery used. 

Ultimately none of these garbage takes, and inequitable framing will change because of sameness. It is a factor of who is being asked to review these things, and what the areas in institutions are saying or supporting to make it so this framing is seen as acceptable. It's the sameness that causes the sameness. The same people who are creating these surveys, these trainings, these hot takes, are the surrounded by the same people who see absolutely nothing wrong with using words that are homophobic and ableist. Honestly one can learn so much from the lyrics of Malvina Reynolds' Little Boxes. 

I wish I knew what the answer was. I mean the answer is of course more representation in these spaces, but of course the systems are set up exactly to make sure there is not more representation in these spaces. The trainings do exactly what the trainings are supposed to do, discourage folk, make them realize this is not a space for them so they leave. I try to imagine an alternative space where these things are instead discussed, changed, and meaningful processes for that to happen that are relational are put in place. Community work is like this, but academe will never be a space for community work because it is built on histories and procedures that are antithetical to community. 

I keep finding my biggest "wins" in terms of awareness raising come from spaces that are outside my immediate academic space. When I can be in conversation with bigger groups and communities. It is disquieting though, that one needs to go outside of where you are to make the case for things that should happen where you are. My lack of grounding where I am grows. And I know I am not alone. A bunch of us unrooted trees meet on Twitter or in DMs or texts or Zooms and talk about the work we do outside because of the impossibility of the work we can do inside. But what I do want for us is an ability to find a rooting space, a nourishing space for us to grow that is part of our everyday, that does not have to only exist in silent nods, in knowing glances, in emojis, in singular words. It is nice to know that we are not alone, when there are weeks like these in academe, but it would be even better if this week in academe was about accessibility gains instead of the constant barrage of hatred from our "peers."