Who Do We Listen To, Who Do We Value?

I received many nice messages about my new podcast in the last week or so and thank you very much for the kind words and support. It really means a lot to me to know that this is something that y'all are interested in and see as important in the work that you do. 

One thing that was echoed a lot in these messages was something along the lines of (this is my paraphrasing a few messages into one sentiment): "Thank you for this podcast; it is so needed because then I can send folk in my institution to your work because they don't listen to me." And well, gosh does that resonate, and it has me thinking a lot about why we do this in academe. Why do we ignore or not value the expertise and knowledge that is in our own spaces and institutions, and would rather have folk from other places be the "expert" when it comes to certain topics? It had me thinking about how this happens a lot when it comes to topics around inclusion and equity, and how this continual denial of the voices that are inside the spaces as having value, in turn creates moral injury and burnout. 

When students decide to enroll in a particular institution, they do so because somewhere someone has said, this is the place if you want to study X, because this place has the best faculty who do a lot of research and know a lot about X. In fact whole marketing campaigns done by institutions and individual departments in institutions are premised on that exact claim to "expertise." I put it in quotation marks because the cult of the expert is also a thing we need to discuss in relation to this. When faculty and staff are hired they are usually hired based on their background, knowledge, and expertise in X. Sometimes they will even look at how connected a person is to a particular community that discusses X and that would be through academic associations or even real community building (though the last one is rare because real community building doesn't have value in many higher education spaces). Within classroom environments there is never any doubt that the person who is there as the instructor is there because of the credential or knowledge that they have. 

When it comes to topics related to inclusion or equity, sometimes, there really isn't a person in the institution who can speak to a specific aspect. Maybe you are looking for someone to talk about neurodivergent learners (because this seems to be the topic now) and you don't have someone on staff who has research or background on this in particular to how it relates to teaching and learning. It makes sense to go out and find someone who has the background, knowledge, and most importantly the lived experience to speak on this topic and the connections. When it comes to accessibility, for example, you may have someone on staff who is fabulous at creating accessible websites, but does not know anything about accessible social media, or all the different things to consider with accessible pedagogy. Again, here it makes sense to find someone with the background and knowledge to support these specific asks (like me, lol). However, if you do have someone on staff who knows about these things (like really knows and not just read some things they stole from someone on the Internet and says they know or uses words that sound about right, which is what I mean by "expertise" in quotation marks), then why are you devaluing their contextual knowledge? 

I genuinely ask this question because it is really one about intent and impact. Sometimes they will say, oh we got so and so to talk about this because I think the other person just couldn't fit it in their workload. Okay cool, did you ask them or did you assume that? The intent of having someone else is different than the impact which devaluing the person who already works there. Or the other reason this happens sometimes is, well so and so is from THE University, and well THE University is so great and well it would be so awesome to have someone from THE University here. And okay sure, but also is THE University in the US and you are not? Because I guarantee you are probably going to miss that context in that talk or workshop especially if it is about student demographics and support. This particularly happens when folk are asked to come in to talk about diversity and inclusion and they are from the US and they will focus on Latine students for example, when the amount of Latine folk in all of Canada is about 8 times less than the amount of Latine students in higher ed in the US (rough math done from Stats Can data and US census data). The point I am trying to make is context matters and think about the impact of that ask as opposed to intent. 

When we make institutional and departmental choices to not value the knowledge and lived experience that exists in our own spaces, we are making a choice to underpin what comms and marketing says you stand for. There is a lot of harm that is happening right now when folk who don't have experience or contextual knowledge in a thing are asked to come in and be the "expert." It is equal to the harm of not asking the person who does have that experience in your space to be part of the conversations about the thing they know, the thing they basically support for others outside of your space, because you devalue the work they do inside your space. So this week I guess I am asking us to all reflect on who we listen to and who we value, especially when it comes to things like inclusive pedagogy, accessible practices, and community building, and look around your spaces because I bet there is someone who knows a thing, like really knows a thing, and would like to support so that more people would know a thing as well.