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1/ @uOttawa @uottawaArts @APUOtt @uOttawaHRREC What’s Academic Freedom Go to Do with It?
A former student asked me for my stance on the use of the n-word in uOttawa classes.
A former student asked me for my stance on the use of the n-word in uOttawa classes.
2/ Here are my (abbreviated) thoughts (thread):
In sixteen years of teaching African and African diaspora history, I have never felt the need to say the n-word in its entirety, nor do I find that doing so would enhance the subject matter I’m teaching.
In sixteen years of teaching African and African diaspora history, I have never felt the need to say the n-word in its entirety, nor do I find that doing so would enhance the subject matter I’m teaching.
3/ Further, when teaching, I am aware of my own positionality as a White person and how that frames my communication with students.
4/ Academic freedom, as I understand it, does not offer me carte blanche to say any word from any subject area under the sun, including those of which I am ignorant.
5/ Does the case of the parttime prof who said the n-word in a @uottawaArts class at @uOttawa and then claimed not to have known that was a problem have anything to do with academic freedom?
6/ She continues to be paid and employed at the University of Ottawa where she is also the beneficiary of a scholarship to her PhD program. To my knowledge, she has not faced any disciplinary action from the employer.
7/ So it seems that the Letter to the Jrnl of Montreal signed by some 30 profs (Libertés surveillées, 16 Oct 2020) amounts to nothing more than an effort to curtail students’ academic freedom to denounce, in the manner they so choose, the use of the n-word on university campuses.
8/ I don’t know the professor personally, but it appears that her knowledge and expertise for the course in question pertain to Art and Gender, but not to race or Black history and culture.
9/ If she did have expertise in Black history and culture, not only would she have known not to use the n-word, but also, she would have recognized that the analogy she presented to illustrate semantic subversion was false.
10/ The LGBTQ+ community reappropriated the word queer in the manner the professor apparently described. The transformation of what had been a negative word into a positive one was, over time, successful.
11/ Now the term queer appears in mainstream society as an acceptable categorization of people who are not heterosexual. On the other hand, the n-word has been positively reappropriated only at the fringes of the Black community itself.
12/ Legal scholar Randall Kennedy wrote and published a whole book about the term (Randall Kennedy, N***er: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, 2003) for those seeking to learn about its history.
13/ It is and long has been unequivocally clear that, even as some Black Americans use it positively in certain settings, it is not to be used by non-blacks to refer to Black people. Black seems the better equivalent to queer in the sense of the professor’s analogy.
14/ Once pejorative, Black was gradually repurposed by Black communities and is now acceptably used in the mainstream to refer to Africa-descended people.
15/ In observing our university community’s reactions to this incident, I can’t help but wish that more students & anti-racist colleagues would bring as much mobilizing urgency to addressing anti-black structures that exclude Blacks, not just in the student body, but also...
16/ from the ranks of full-time tenured faculty, from holding research chairs in Francophonie, and from the support staff. The Faculty @uottawaArts, for instance, has over 200 full-time, tenured professors. To my knowledge, only two of them are Black (men).
17/ In my opinion, this is the reality that merits our and the greater public’s attention. What are the hiring policies that seem to benefit Whiteness on our campus at all levels from staff to the central administration?
18/ How would policies designed to promote greater inclusion of Black staff, researchers and administrators in the ranks of university leadership change @uOttawa& #39;s relationship with students and the Ottawa community, both within the university and beyond?
19/ So far, we can only imagine...
Solidaire avec les collègues noir.e.s, autochtones, et racisé.e.s dans la lutte contre le racisme / I support Black, Indigenous and racialised colleagues in the fight against racism.
Solidaire avec les collègues noir.e.s, autochtones, et racisé.e.s dans la lutte contre le racisme / I support Black, Indigenous and racialised colleagues in the fight against racism.
20/ Je soutiens les initiatives que prennent les étudiant.e.s noir.e.s, autochtones, et racisé.e.s pour rendre notre communauté universitaire inclusive. / I support the initiatives of Black, Indigenous and racialised students to make our university community an inclusive one.