I agree any field needs flexibility & resilience, to teach outside a narrow sense of the area/method. The point should always be that what we do ISN'T esoteric. But the issue is that early career faculty are ALREADY the most flexible/resilient among us, and it doesn't save them. https://twitter.com/AASAsianStudies/status/1297972076146495488

The real "onus of responsibility" should be to work on generating dedicated collaboration among organizations like AAS, admin, and faculty at all stages of their careers to break down the structural inequities that are destroying the university system and academia itself.

These are the hierarchies that shape our world as educators and scholars, and prevent us from doing the good work that it is suggested here that we do in meaningful and sustainable ways.

It's not unique to Asian Studies, I know. But it's precisely BECAUSE we have organizations like @AASAsianStudies that can rally to these causes alongside us & help us organize as a coherent community that we can try to enact change in local ways that can have a broader impact.

To "critically examine our own embedded structures that include ideas, approaches, examples, and frameworks" we can't stop at the syllabus, and we can't stop at just re-imagining career options. That doesn't address the rot at the core of the system that's driving inequity.

You can't just revamp syllabi and "Perhaps administrators will take notice." Administrators know. They know because they're exploiting the most diverse & creative generation of educators yet, because the system allows them to. They helped build it, while many stood by watching.

The new Plan A has already been executed- the flexibility & resilience we seek is etched deeply on the faces of early career faculty struggling as they wait on the market for years for a TT to open up. As they watch the tenured positions of their mentors disappear behind them.

In sadness, and often with some great relief, many of them took or will take (a perfectly valid) Plan B in academic adjacent positions.

Plan A seems to be watch the house burn down.
Plan B to salvage the wreckage & move to another home.

So why do we hesitate to make a Plan C?

Oh, and I should add to this thread that I wrote about straightforward ways to assess our privilege and use it to enact change in the field in my closing remarks for the "Rebirth" of Japanese Studies roundtable, which can be found here: http://prcurtis.com/events/AAS2020/PC/