Read on Twitter
I respect and admire Jamie's decision to not participate in this morning's panel. But this is *exactly* what we need to be talking about: what is mentoring? What do we expect from early career scholars? And how do we change and challenge bad behavior? 1/ https://twitter.com/Jamiejhagen/status/1380488223407931393
As I've become more active on Twitter, I've watched grad students (of color and/or female) stand up and call out bad behavior that so many of us who are tenured do not. I've DMed so many of them to thank them for their bravery, but what does that say about me? 2/
These students don't think twice or place it as cost-benefit analysis in terms of their career. And yet, I do. I've been burned in the past by speaking and living life out loud, and my mentoring as a student and then as a jr person reinforced sitting down & shutting up. 3/
But, as Roberta Guirrina put in the chat during this panel, we need to be the role model we wished we had when we were starting out. So, this is me publicly saying that we (meaning, us white, tenured, "feminist" women) need to challenge what mentoring is & what role it fills. 4/
If you know me, I've been involved in ISA mentoring through the Committee on the Status of Women, PIF, and the Women's Caucus for close to a decade now. *We all know* that we need to publish to get promoted. We know the basic formula for success in academia. But... 5/
For underrepresented groups (women, scholars of color, LGBTQ+ scholars, Global South scholars), this is *never* enough. We get told that our questions are niche or marginal. Why are we publishing in "non-mainstream" journals? What are we adding to the mainstream literature? 6/
But, what we need to recognize is that if we want diversity among our colleagues, we need to recognize diversity among research questions/agendas. Shouldn't our field change as the makeup of our field does as well? Why do we keep reinforcing what questions are "worthwhile"? 7/
As a mentor, I'm not interested in replicating "what works". I'm not replicating what we've been told is what we need to do to be "successful" in academia. This creates a cycle of shame, isolation & a lack of a sense of belonging to those who are not white men. 8/
Instead, I am interested in cultivating everyone's authentic self, what they can bring to the discipline, and making the discipline more diverse with more voices. And, as a part of this, it also means standing up to academic bullies and publicly calling them out. 9/
It also means reconceptualizing how I mentor. We need to ask our students what *they* need from *us*. We shouldn't just assume that they should take our "advice" and they are set. Different people need different things and, as a mentor, we need to recognize that. 10/
To quote Sara Motta's work w Anna Bennett, I'm not interested in upholding cultures of hierarchy, competition, & individualism. I want to cultivate cultures of solidarity, care, and collectivity. This is what I need as a scholar, and this is what I want for the future. 11/
I'm sure plenty will scoff and say that is not how academia works, that this will lead students down the path of failure rather than success, but look at those students right now. Solidarity, care, and collectivity is what they are living right now. It is quite political. 12/
When we talk about burnout/imposter syndrome, those are symptoms of greater problems in our discipline & existing institutions. We can't continue to scratch our chins as to why so many scholars are leaving academia when the problems are incredibly clear to see. 13/
This approach is political, radical, feminist, and authentic. That is the scholar I want to be and it is what I want to offer others through my mentorship. I want to be the role model I wish I had. /end
