Post: “When human beings lose their capacity to imagine better futures, Torpey writes, ‘the past rushes to fill the vacuum'” (Harris, 8).

I found this week’s readings a bit depressing. Along with a discussion of the historic use of slavery (should I even say it’s historic?) of slavery in the formation of America’s most prestigious universities, Bousquet’s piece is dedicated to the modern-day function of the university– which he parallels to health care, and I’m extending to medicine in general. Modern-day medicine isn’t what it used to be. My parents are both Pediatricians, and my grandfather was one too, and every component of medicine is different than in their day (the “days of the giants” to which it’s referred). The reason people go into medicine is different. The way to get into medical school is different. Medical school, residency, fellowships themselves, all different. The motivation used to be slightly more altruistic and less external– I realized I can’t make that general a statement. Being a doctor was always seen as a noble profession. Medicine has become tied up with immigration, especially for jews. To be a Doctor was to be economically and morally successful. But the motivation now is now purely financial and a type of prestige-hunger that I frankly associate with startup/and tech bros. Being a doctor ensures a stable 9-6, a lot of money, and caché. This pains my parents, who were trained under 48-hour shifts as residents, whose profession extended beyond the workday, and who say medicine as an art (Socrates defines medicine as such). Today, we have a deficit of primary care physicians, because it makes the least amount of money and a deficit of well-trained physicians in rural areas. I have an acquaintance from Kenyon who applied to a specialty program at Columbia in conjunction with a health-care facility in Cooperstown, NY (home of the Baseball Hall of Fame). She wants to be a surgeon, but to increase her chances of going to an ivy league medical school, she applied to the more niche program. She completed research in health care in rural areas before– she gamed the system to her advantage and will end up making the program look bad when she goes off to do neurosurgery so she can fulfill her Grey’s Anatomy dreams and make a 7-figure salary. Medicine has become about profit over people. Efficiency over empathy. Corporations over compassion.

Where this comparison ends though is that doctors still attain the same prestige in quality of life. They used to make a lot of money, and now they make more. Academics on the other hand have been forced to take jobs incommensurable with their educations. Someone who has completed a doctorate shouldn’t be sleeping in their car or working three jobs. This makes it sound like I’m saying poverty is justified for the lesser-educated. No one should be sleeping in their cars (if they’re fortunate enough to even have a car), and working more than one full-time job to make ends meet. But, if you go to school to study something intensely, should that not translate into a profession? Isn’t that what medical school and law school are for? The difference with academia is the subjects may be merely theoretical (Modernist Literature, Analytical Philosophy), but to know a subject to the extent you can teach it at an undergraduate or graduate-level means you’re highly skilled. One of the ironies of the academy is the inability of younger academics to excel, or get a job at all, is due to the older generation holding on to their posts for dear life. The older academics in reputable institutions exist as if it’s still “the age of the giants.” As if medicine were still about people or teaching were still about teaching (in part this “publish or perish” mentality doesn’t affect them– they’re already tenured). Nothing is about what it used to be about. Medicine is no longer about medicine. Teaching is no longer about the subject at hand. Everything is political and nothing is pure. It seems to be one of the biggest risks you can take right now is trying to become a professor. We don’t value education in America, but we especially don’t value post-secondary education– we pretend to via US News World and Reports, but then we have Stanford-educated professors living on the streets? Actually, I shouldn’t have clarified that they’re Stanford-educated. The point is that they’re people with a skill, but they happen to be employed in a world where the profitization and commodification of their skill directly hurt them.

Survey:

1. What barriers exist for you in our class right now?:
   1. Currently, getting my post in the day before class. While I always strive to do this, I work full-time in addition to going to CUNY (not that I’m the only one!!), and sometimes time eludes me. I am trying to scope out a time on Sundays to write my reflections. 
2. What *all* do you envision us being capable of, together, in this class going forward in the semester?:
   1. Defining some of the terms we use– like meritocracy and the descriptors in the course title– equity and elitism. We toy with a lot of ideas, it would be nice to come to some formulated opinion and or conclusion about one of them– i.e.: what is the purpose of higher ed.? What is a degree for besides job preparation? 
3. What course content questions do you have so far (i.e., questions about the readings)?:
   1. Nothing positively pressing right now– I’m curious to hear more about multicultural White supremacy that Sam mentioned in her response last week (class no. 4).
4. What course process questions do you have so far?: I’m interested in how we’ll be graded at the end of the term. 

The whole idea that institutions would need committees to create diversity to me shows that there is a will to control rather than to “open-up” and be more accepting. It also makes the institution less genuine about wanting to be diverse in the first place. That is how I see the brick wall that Ahmed speaks of. Ahmed states that “the wall might become all the more apparent, all the more a sign of immobility, the more the institution presents itself as being opened up.” Therefore “doing diversity work” would be hard because there is a lack of interest to really change. Automatically placing the people or color on the “diversity committee” makes diversity something that only people of color want leaving the rest of the institution free to accept of refuse any plans to change. Why should the people that has been left out be the ones to work to get in? Addressing the lack of diversity can only be meaningful if it is with the full involvement of all races. Unless there is a unified desire to change, the resistance of the brick wall will forever be present in “doing diversity work.”   

Ahmed conducted interviews with 21 diversity professionals at universities in Australia and the United Kingdom to understand what diversity actually means and how diversity is framed. In addition, Ahmed supplements interview data with her own recollections of racialized and gendered experiences while performing diversity work.

Ahmed’s works and experiences reminded me of experiences I had in the US. Particularly, since I’m an “Asian”, though I don’t like to be considered just as an Asian when there are many different ethnic groups, Ahmed’s words made me think about many Asian American friends of mine and their racially discriminatory experiences and concerns. Just as Ahmed was stopped by two policemen in a car and was asked, “Are you Aboriginal?”, I noticed that there have been some hostile situations against people of color and immigrants in the US. Don’t I look like one of the Asians? Is there then any way that I can escape from American’s prejudice or biases for Asian Americans? I think this is why we should keep speaking up for inclusivity and belongingness in the US.

I dare think that one of the US’s racial problems is politicians who compromise the racial conflicts in order to obtain their political powers. And I think racial problems should be dealt in the perspective of human rights. If a particular race is being discriminated against in the society, not only the race being discriminated, but also every race in the society must involve in the problematic situation and resolve the problem altogether. That is, the white people who are the majority group in the US must participate in the racial reconciliation movement so that every constituent of the society can agree upon the word “diversity”. Removing the irrational concept of white supremacy away from the US society, when every race is respected and treated fairly, this country can be, according to Ahmed said, “home” to anyone.

Ahmed also challenges us to the way how we can see institutions. She explains that how the practitioners aim to embed diversity such that it becomes an institutional given. I like Ahmed’s point, “To be in this world is to be involved with things in such a way that they recede from consciousness.” I think this is why we should always be wary of things given by institutions and the world. Things that existed now are not just for granted. Therefore, as people living in this society, we should keep watching out what information we are learning from our society and what education we are receiving from various educational institutions.  

“What recedes when diversity becomes a view? If diversity is a way of viewing or even picturing an institution, then it might allow only some things to come into view.” Sara Ahmed draws on the experience of diversity workers and brings focus to what diversity obscures. The process of embedding diversity into their institutions becomes conflicting, as it prevents the habitualization of diversity. More specifically the action oriented approach, making it an explicit goal ends up disguising the issues, while making people feel better about difference. Diversity work seems to be often led by white people/institutions to alleviate their own conscience. The word itself, diversity, is softer and puts some distance with terms like institutional racism or injustice. While organizational values are attached to diversity, there is an indifference towards the steps that are executed to accomplish it. Documenting diversity is not transformational and to be truly effective there must be change.

Ahmed used qualitative empirical research methods, such as structured interviews and textual analysis of institutional artifacts (i.e. policies) to better understand diversity practices.  Her overall ethnographic research design employed a black feminist theory towards analyzing systems of power, prestige, and privilege impacting higher education diversity efforts at research and institutional levels.  Ahmed’s positionality to higher education and diversity efforts required that she re-adjust herself  to  look “at” university diversity efforts instead of “from” points of view.

There’s a direct pathway towards applying similar methods in order to better understand CUNY’s military-veteran related institutional practices.  As a staff member looking at CUNY’s policies, I would use my insider knowledge to speak to faculty and staff that directly or indirectly interact with military-veteran specific policies.  This would assist in the triangulation of overall efforts pertaining to the support of its 3,000 veterans and military connected student population.  Inductive reasoning leads one to believe that following paper around campus would span across both academic and non-academic related departments. Thus leading to interviews specifically with University Director of Veterans’ Affairs and campus program directors.  A snowball sampling method would assist in the identification of additional interviews due the lack of organizational uniformity across the CUNY campuses. Applying a critical ethnographic approach would address the status quo and hegemony of student veteran research practices.

Majority creates a metric of normalcy that, in turn, produces a level of invisibility cloaked by uniformity and custom. Diversity, in several regards but, more specifically, racially, has not fully penetrated the majority on many college campuses as, in many instances, the entire population of non-whites does not exceed 50%. Likely, it never will. How can it? Save for a small subset of higher education institutions that serve students of color primarily (generally a result of location or intentional design), having a majority of white students on college campuses, particularly elite ones, is expected –  as the racial demographics of our country still indicate whites as a majority by a large margin. As a result, it becomes easy for society, at large, to overlook the issues that plague minority demographics. Therein lies the privilege that Blacks are not afforded.

Referring to recent recognition of historical wrongs related to slavery, Harris et al. state, “It also reflects the convergence of the important, if little remarked, changes in Western political and intellectual life:…the emergence of what Charles Taylor has called ‘the politics of recognition,’ a politics keyed not to individual rights but to the collective rights of groups to have the identities and histories they value acknowledged in the public sphere.” With respect to colleges finally reckoning with their troubled relationships with slavery, it begs the question: Is recognition and acknowledgment enough? As Sara Ahmed mentions, regarding university multicultural documents, “To read the document for what it is saying would be to miss this point by making it the point.” Ultimately, any document purporting to address inequality means nothing if it does not affect change. Ahmed follows this up remarking, “As I explore in more detail throughout this book, it is as if having a policy becomes a substitute for action.”

I wanted to highlight a specific line from Harris’ article: 

“Americans learning today of the relationship between universities and slavery respond in differentt ways, but the most common response is simple surprise. This response bespeaks many things, not least the nation’s continuing failure to come to grips with slavery’s scope, scale, and historical significance.”

This line encapsulates so much about how racism is DEEPLY baked into our society and consequentially our educational systems. Harris emphasizes the reach of slavery while also referring to the historical amnesia of Americans who use the notion that slavery was “in the past” as a way to forget (both consciously and subconsciously) its lasting damage. I’m thinking Gone with the Wind. 

It’s clear that non-Black Americans typical resolve slavery as an issue of history that we’ve overcome, not seeing its connection to our capitalist organization. This becomes clear when people argue against things like reparations or affirmative action, showing that they see education as an equal playing field rather than acknowledging how slavery’s oppression of Black communities has multiple descendants that disadvantage Black communities in education, healthcare, social mobility, and more. 

It is clear that the United States has this amnesia, but with reading about universities’ public acknowledgements/apologies of their complacency, it makes me question whether insincere/empty apologies are any better all, or perhaps even more harmful. It’s frustrating that some of the most elite schools are at the forefront of this conversation. 

1. What barriers exist for you in our class right now? None, fortunately.
2. What *all* do you envision us being capable of, together, in this class going forward in the semester? Productive discourse and enlightenment on complex issues.
3. What course content questions do you have so far (i.e., questions about the readings)? None.
4. What course process questions do you have so far? None.

1. What barriers exist for you in our class right now?

None pertaining to this specific course come to mind at the moment.  General pandemic related barriers, such as work stress and time-management are a constant for me now across all courses.

2. What *all* do you envision us being capable of, together, in this class going forward in the semester?

Applying critical pedagogy to identify privileged knowledge and values across campuses.

3. What course content questions do you have so far (i.e., questions about the readings)?

The role of city and state governments within public higher education?

4. What course process questions do you have so far?

When should we be revisiting final project ideas?