University administrators be like: never trust your own experts.

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Three Goblin Art
taylor price
Misplaced Lens Cap
Show & Tell
One Nice Bug Per Day
I'd rather be in outer space đ¸
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blake kathryn
hello vonnie
Claire Keane

Love Begins
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wallacepolsom
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Aqua Utopiaď˝ćľˇăŽĺşă§č¨ćśăç´Ąă

romaâ
ojovivo
trying on a metaphor
Monterey Bay Aquarium
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@themigrantprofessor
University administrators be like: never trust your own experts.
PhDo undergrads really think they can intimidate me into getting a better grade?
Student:
Me:
Me: wait a minute, I didnât make this? Spot on!
PhDonât Do this To Me
Iâm not on a tenure track line. I have a multiyear appointment but a year to year contract. The contract for my first year came after several weeks into the semester. While I am off contract this summer I am taking a group of students abroad. They refused to give me a contract for this period and I learned this is a normative practice by the university.Â
20 states now take away the drivers licenses of people who fall behind in their student loan paymentsâa measure no doubt designed to ease the transition from debtor to fugitive. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich
âSmashing the Patriarchy Is Self Careâ Artist: N.O. Bonzo
Examples of Racial Microaggressions
A letter to my students as they enter my classroom each semester. From a sociologist.
College (or university) is not a means to an end. It is an opportunity to grow intellectually such that you have the intellectual, personal, and social skills to succeed in a professional environment upon graduation. What this means is that college is not a means to an end nor does college serve the purpose of job training. Job training is the purpose of vocational schools. University education serves students in a different capacity. It serves to elevate intellectual capacities, to allow time to reflect on various fields of inquiry, engage with different approaches to knowledge, and to develop as a person through exposure to diversity of thought. The education one receives in a college or university is very much a space of social exclusion based on race, class, and gender (among other axes of inequality and privilege). The costs of attendance at university are prohibitive for the majority of this countryâs people and even more so for people of other countries. The United States has one of the highest costs of university education in the world. It is a privilege to attend university and you should take every opportunity available to you.
Being a student is your job. It is a form of work you signed up for. You should view yourself as an employee in the classroom. Treat the classroom like a workplace. Most students are taking on incredible amounts of debtâa form of negative income that you will work for a wage for years, if not a lifetime, to pay off. You are not a customer of the university. Customers can do whatever they want with the products they buy. As a student and employee of the classroom, you are gaining a skill set denied to most of the worlds people and in not embracing the opportunity you diminish the quality of the institution you attend and the institution of higher education. Wage-paying employers do not want uneducated customers turned employees, they want professionalized individuals with the skills to help their business succeed.
Developing the intellectual skills required in the waged workplace requires you go through a period of learning where you earn a negative wage (debt) that is intended to prepare you for an income-based job. Bridging your time as student in the required public education system (or privately acquired public education as the case may be) is the college experience. You have much more freedom in college. You are free to choose to go to class, to use electronics, to go to the bathroom. These freedoms are important but as the axiom goes: with freedom comes responsibility. Show respect for yourself, peers, and the professor by not using electronics in the classroom, except when asked. Remove headphones, avoid consuming food, and spend time thinking about the subject prior to arriving in the classroom. You are responsible for your education. Your final grade in this course will be interpreted through the education-is-a-job frame of thought wherein you are evaluated based upon your ability to adhere to professional standards associated with classroom conduct. This breaks down into social and intellectual components. It means coming to class on time, prepared to discuss course readings, having done independent research as necessary, having identified difficult concepts and ideas, prepared with a discussion question, able to identify important points, and with a personal reflection on the subject matter under investigation. Â
My classroom is a communist space. You have power over your learning, individually and as a group. I seek to create a learning community, where diverse voices have the opportunity to express themselves. Even so, if you are advocating oppressionâtacit or explicitâand someone calls you out, accept the critique with poise and grace. Avoid defensive behaviors or assigning blame. Your voice matters. If you think something is worth spending time in discussion, be prepared to explain what that point is and how you understand it. Bring a question to get students thinking about that point. I am a guide, a facilitator of your learning. This is how I teach. I do not have dominance over knowledge; I am an authority in my field of expertise. I can help you understand that material and the data behind a sociological analysis but I cannot dictate how you understand or interpret sociological data. If you want to change the trajectory of the course by delving deeper into a certain subject, bring it up to the class so that as a community we can determine whether that is the best course of action for your learning. As facilitator of your learning, I am open to altering the course structure in ways that better serve student interest and ability.
Intellectual honesty is a virtue. It must be buttressed by expertise over the subject matter, an understanding of diverse perspectives, and effective communication. Â Knowing your audience in the immediate but also respective of the diversity that exists in society broadly is important to effective communication. Being precise in your use of terms demonstrates clarity of thought and helps others understand you. Make use of theoretical concepts as appropriate. Some concepts are intended to frame how we think about the subject matter, other concepts are intended to be used in the course of conversation. Professionalism in the classroom means acknowledging your colleagues, addressing your colleagues, and not exclusively relying on affirmations from the professor. You are bright people! If you are misguided and colleagues do not correct a misinterpretation I will interject. Do not assume you are wrong. Do not engage in self-deprecations. Study to the extent that you are confident in your abilities. Discuss ideas in class to deepen your understanding of concepts and ideas that you are less confident with.
As a student in a sociology course, you are expected to practice the discipline of sociology through your ability to communicate the subject matter in the professional context of the classroom. Sociology is not a course rooted in the memorization of facts. Many sciences rely on the memorization of facts and inserting data into formulas for several years before they introduce the rigors of analytical thinking necessary for data interpretation. Sociology utilizes facts for analytical thinking from the start. Data is important, facts are important. The foci of sociological analysis are meanings, practices, characteristics, qualities, and behaviors. These can be researched using qualitative or quantitative methods. The profession of sociology thus utilizes empirical data collected with the intention of demonstrating the existence of phenomena (the more quantitative side of sociology) and explaining why it exists in the way it does (the qualitative side of sociology). As with all academic scientists, sociologists are subject to peer-review which maintains the professional standards of the discipline. In the classroom, peer-review manifests as collective engagement with course materials as we work through the information and develop a critical understanding of the social world.
and now, a series of quotes from my sociology professor this past term...
âpull out your phones and tell me your most recent emoji, lets make this into a social experimentâÂ
âgotta love old dead white dudes who think they know everything about how the world works, right?â
âmaybe iâm just really into cocaine, who knowsâÂ
âthe estate system is like Westeros. anyone in here who doesnât get that, watch Game of Thrones, I highly reccommend, but I must warn you thereâs a lot of boobs. all tits all the time. gratuitous titties.âÂ
âi know what âextraâ means to you guys, iâm old but iâm not dead yetâÂ
âso long story short, get into rich peopleâs social circles so you can go play polo on their yacht and be pretentious about wine to get ahead in lifeâÂ
âand by âweâ i mean white people; in the past czechoslovakians werenât considered white, although lauren, you are clearly quite aryanâÂ
âI just want to buy a fucking birthday card, why is everything so overly gendered?âÂ
âcan i see your penis? wait no, not like that, that was not a propositionâÂ
(in reference to the types of gendered toys found in happy meals) âwhat are boy toys? aw, fuck, wait, noâŚâ
âi dunno, is âcuntâ really a gender neutral word?â
âwow, you guys really know your white peopleâÂ
âIâm not giving you a fuckinâ word bank, what is this, high school?âÂ
âanyone have any questions? about the test? or anything? please?âÂ
âiâm not gonna grade your tests iâm just going to throw them down the stairs and whoever lands closest to the top gets an AâÂ
âitâs not spelled âkahootâ with a k, what is this, thatâs the kardashian way of spelling shit?â
âis this enjoyable to you? watching me fumble around like an idiot?â
âare me and my partner considered a family? we donât have kids, we have a dog. weâve been together 13 years but if we didnât have a dog we wouldnât be a family by your standards?âÂ
(âi would assume that a 35 year old would know what they want in a relationship more than a 22 year oldâ) âyeah, you would fucking hope so!âÂ
âletâs watch Oprah, shall we?âÂ
âKarl Marx is my jamâ
âapparently I am a murdererâÂ
âdo you even hashtag, bro?âÂ
Weâre not alone sociology professors.
Things that should have been taught in highschool: -How to properly and safley drive -What the fuck taxes are and how to do them -Time management -Drugs you should never think about touching -How to design a hirable resume -Why you should and how to vote, including how to read the ballot -Basic psychology/sociology on how to read emotions and talk to people -The gist of credit, debit, bank accounts, etc. and how to manage money
Add:Â
-sexual technique
-finding joyÂ
-self exploration
-leading a fulfilling life
-making the most of college
Who is responsible for addressing racism? A Message, mostly for White People.
In short, we all are. However, power is uneven. The affluent white man holds the most power in society. Affluent white men, and white men in general, are privileged with the power of Knowing the Truth. I capitalize Knowing and Truth because the way power operates among knowers of truth is as an absolute. They go unquestioned. They are assumed to be right whereas I as a peasant woman am assumed to not know despite my doctorate in sociology. If a white man challenges me and what I know outside the context of the classroom, I am assumed to be incorrect and I question myself. But responsibility for this phenomenon does not lie with me. It lies with the white man that questioned my ability to know. White men have authority over every other social group in society. In questioning me, he asserts dominance and power over me rather than respecting my knowledge.
Whether in print or in person, I have seen white people eschew responsibility for their participation in the perpetuation of racism. One assumption they and those that participate in the social-political system of white-supremacy is that because they are not consciously and explicitly racist, they therefore have no responsibility for it or for undoing the damage is causes. A practice they use to defer responsibility is to assign blame to the victim. After a racist incident on campus while studying for my doctorate at Binghamton University, senior administrators from the president to the so-called diversity and inclusion office sent a letter around announcing that those that felt targeted by such actions would have access to counselors. No actions were taken to address find the perpetrator(s) or address the cause of such an incident. Assigning blame to the victim is a classic strategy society engages in that upholds the dominating authority of white men. When young black (Latinx or indigenous) people are harassed and murdered by the police it becomes a game of how can I find fault with these disrespectful savages rather than questioning the antagonistic officer. This is especially true in all white spaces, where white people all too frequently make the claim that if there is no diversity in the social groups and geographies they inhabit then racism is somehow irrelevant. This could not be further from the truth.
As a structure of systemic power, white-supremacy is enforced not only through individual language and action. Even in the lily white hinterland of New England I everyday experience racismâas someone perceived to be a white womanâthat offends me every bit as much as it detrimentally impacts the lives of those not privileged by perceptions of whiteness. Race is a product of the social imagination that has real effects on peopleâs lives, individually and collectively. Race does not exist as a biological reality, it exists as a social construction. Just because there are no people of color present does not preclude the possibility of racism and does not mean you can not take action to undo the racism ever present in your life. Privilege and entitlement means not having to think about how racism is present even in excessively white spaces.
Another practice people engage in to deflect responsibility for taking action are language games. Racism becomes a game of words and knowing. The word racism implies individual responsibility and while individuals are responsible for perpetuating racism the real problem lies with the social structures that maintain domination over. I am referencing white-supremacy. What I mean by white-supremacy is not the Klu Klux Klan, the fascists, or the white power groups that explicitly advocate for various forms of white-supremacy in social and political life. We cannot hide behind the extremes. We need to address white-supremacy as it manifests in our everyday lives. Thus, we must recognize that white-supremacy is a social structure, a structural institution we are born into that invisibly informs everything we think, act, do, and say. We are taught and we learn white-supremacy. We must learn to recognize the unrecognizable, to undo the damage we inflict upon society. As a society, power is wielded individually over Others and it exists in our organizations of government, law, education, churchâŚany and everywhere. As a social-political structure of power, white-supremacy is a practice that everyone, regardless of race, class, gender, age, sex, ability, etc. actively participates in. It is a model of domination that sees whiteness as superior, as a reference for gauging that which is good/bad, and as a way of thought that shapes interactions with the world around us.
White supremacy is a system, it permeates every aspect of our interactions and it does not matter whether there is someone of a different race present. It is systematically enforced in our language and practices. It is systematically enforced in our schools, churches, healthcare, sports, media, retail, etc. It is ever present in our everyday lives, invisibly manifesting in ways we fail to recognize. When a white man asks the muscular black man if he plays football, he is asserting domination over and assuming he knows something about that black man. The same analogy could be made for a tall black man and basketball. Physique matters, but this confluence of factors is a question of intersectionality and the complexity of social life. There are no hard and fast boundaries, everything exists in a gray area. The point here is that white people have so little interaction with non-white peoples that their interactions carry assumptions that heavily weigh on the ethno-racialized other. From a white perspective, assumptions may seem harmless, but then again white people have never been at the receiving end of historical, systematic, and structural oppression.
Because white people control the institutions of power, they determine who has access to their world. If non-white people call them out and white people are offended, people of color (POC) are excluded from those white spaces. The exclusionary spaces of white power and privielge translate into a universal homogenization of the other where white spaces are legitimized through the paternalistic gifting of access to polite, well-behaved others that must subject themselves to the demeaning behaviors of white people in order to remain in white spaces. This is just one way white-supremacy is perpetuated. It matters not whether this is in the context of a social event, in a job, or in any other context.
White people fail to recognize their spaces as white, as spaces of privilege for people like them. If we are to move beyond blaming victims for their oppression, then white people will need to look for ways that advance equality, equity, inclusion, diversity, or whatever label they prefer (note: these referents are analogous to âcorrectional institutionâ as a popularly accepted referent for prisons). Below are a few actions white folk can take to decolonize themselves.
I do not get to choose what is best for people. Too often white people want to paternalistically determine what is best for communities of color. They promote things like education when it is POC in their own country or development when it is POC in other countries. Another popular solution they offer is policy. Policy is an after thought to real efforts at achieving equality which must begin from the individual in their everyday interactions.
I must be willing to give up privileges. Far too frequently the argument goes that enhancing the social position of others is not going to infringe on the privileges and entitlements of white people. This argument is wrong. White people need to let go of their unearned privileges and entitlements. They need to accept the same type of competition they impose on everyone else. They must reject nepotism in order to advance equality.
I must be willing to challenge the dominator model. It is the responsibility of white people to challenge the dominator model. The dominator model, according to the ever so brilliant bell hooks, references an organization of social life âin which the authority figure is deemed ruler over those without power and given the right to maintain that rule through practices of subjugation, subordination, and submissionâ (hooks 2004: 24). This model is essential to organizing social life whether in private or public life. Accepting the organization of social life as is will no longer suffice. We must accept that to create a better world, domination cannot be accepted. Respect for life, respect for well-being must be extended to everyone because everyone is damaged by white-supremacy. This is not to discount the damage done to POC by the violence of white-supremacy. The damage they experience runs much deeper than the accumulated privileges that eat away at the white personâs soul. The detrimental impacts of white-supremacy on POC have much deeper and historical roots, brought into the present through white-supremacy. White people on the other hand are treated anew each generation with weak links to their past. The dominator model depends on this.
Know history and accept responsibility. The history of global society is a history of not only white-supremacy but patriarchy and capitalism as well. White-supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism are the dominant structures of systemic power by which global society is organized. It is a trinity of oppression. As experienced in everyday life we might call them race, gender, and class respectively. Understanding sociology is critical to knowing history because sociology is a field that studies relations of power. History is a power-laden process. It does not matter that history is written by the victors. Even so, we must know and objectively seek an understanding of inequality in society in order to create a better world for ourselves and the future. Undoing structural systems of power is not easy, it takes a great deal of time. Things will not change overnight. They will change but only with a concerted effort to address the problems as they exist now and not let oppressive behaviors transpire unchallenged. We all come from different backgrounds and in engaging issues as they arise we can change the world.
Sounds about right
Congressional Demographics
Hanging out with a friend not in academia, the grad student feels like someone who just crawled out of a bomb shelter.
and is rejoicing at the possibility of awkward non-academic conversation. the application of thorough quantities of alcohol will remedy the awkward but may lead to undesirable behavior.
telling women to âstay in STEM!!!(/academia in general)â is completely useless if the men in academia still arenât taught not to disrespect women in academia, harrass them, devalue them, abuse them.
like this may come as a surprise butâŚso many women who enter academia leave it not because women as a whole lack motivation, but because it is an actively hostile environment for them lmao
Shamelesssss plug: Iâm starting a study on this soon (sexism in educational experiences and career choice)⌠definitely going to come by here for participant recruitment!!
Patriarchy applies to all fields of study but is especially difficult for those in STEM because too often the STEM faculty think they are superior to the other research conducted at universities. Dear STEM faculty, youâre wrong! You need us, we have so much to offer you and your students, we can make you better, be our friends!
After a day full of emails
A memorable scene from Breaking Bad - Season 4: Episode 4, 'Cornered' BreakingBadPremium
Me: [analyzes primary document]
Mother: Do you believe everything you read?
Me: I am the danger! I am the one who knocks! [ Mom, its a primary document. I am analyzing its content. It doesnât say that. I did.]
When the department drama gets out of control
When isnât the department drama out of control?
Me, reading my studentsâ writing:Â
My advisor, reading my writing:Â