11/18/2020

The

Davidsonian November 18, 2020

CRITIQUINGTHE CURRICULUM

Who’sdrivingaccountability, inclusivity, anddiversityinacademics? inside

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Kate Muntzner ‘24 explores the origins, goals, and criticisms of JEC

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Charlotte Spears ’24 analyzes Davidson’s faculty hiring process

Q&As

SIAD, 3 FIRST, 6 AAI, 7 Dr. Rose Stremlau, 8

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Editorial note: methodology Within the long history of discussions surrounding diversity in academics at Davidson, what is the role of a publication like The Davidsonian at this moment? How can we both acknowledge the work that has been done and expand on existing conversations to further motivate future change? or our November print issue of The Davidsonian, we have decided to initiate a long-term, journalistic investigation into the state of diversity and inclusion within the academic departments at Davidson.

With the publishing of statements in recent months by a collection of faculty members, campus organizations, and the Commission on Race and Slavery, we began to consider how we, as student-journalists, might review and assess the extent to which these statements have been met with tangible action.

As a predominantly white organization, we reflected upon our own positionality in this conversation and our goals of continuing the internal interrogations we initiated during the summer through this project.

Nonetheless, we grew increasingly aware of our staff’s limitations upon launching this process, beginning, maybe naively, with one question in mind: How might we devise a measure by which to rank the academic departments around their commitments to diversity, inclusion, and justice? In posing that question, we aimed to stir controversy, stoke accountability, and create another touchstone by which to assess our college’s character year after year. After a few conversations with relevant professors, administrators, and students, however, it became clear that we had taken on far more than we could handle in this semester alone.

Through these conversations, we realized that the project (as we imagined it) would require in-depth qualitative and quantitative data collection, storytelling to contextualize the numbers we planned to present, appropriate trainings for staff members to approach these questions effectively, and ultimately more conversations, more research, more writing, and more time than could fit into a month. So we shifted course.

Under the assumption that we’d be able to access the college’s demographic data and report on the stories behind other metrics, we tightened the scope of the project only to soon run into another barrier. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) prevents the college from releasing demographic information without consent because readers could reasonably identify individuals through the data. While those numbers exist, we were not qualified to access them. So again, the nature of the project changed, and we arrived at a new goal: to reinforce all of the work already taking place in support of academic diversity and to provide a grounding framework

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for our own contributions to come.

What follows are a couple of articles and a series of Q&As aimed at elevating, unabated, the voices of those working toward greater justice at Davidson. Kate Muntzner ‘24 opens with a return to the 2017 Justice, Equality, and Community (JEC) Initiative to gauge student, staff, and faculty opinions on its effectiveness over a threeyear timeline. Andrea Liu ‘23 follows her with a Q&A with the Student Initiative for Academic Diversity (SIAD) about student involvement in the hiring process of tenure-track professors. Charlotte Spears ‘24 owns the feature spread, reporting on inclusivity in Davidson’s hiring processes at large. In our final collection of Q&As, Julia Knoerr ‘21 looks at Fostering Inclusivity and Respect in Science Together (FIRST)’s work to promote inclusive pedagogy and accessibility in STEM, and Sohan Gade ‘23 sits down with the Asian American Initiative (AAI) to discuss ongoing advocacy work and current courses in Asian American Studies. Hope Anderson ‘22 and Kaizad Irani ‘22 conclude with Dr. Rose Stremalu’s perspective as a member of the Commission on Race and Slavery and a faculty member at Davidson.

What you see in the eight pages before you is, essentially, our statement of intent and the first step toward something bigger. We reined in our initial ambitions for this issue at a loss for time and resources, but the data we seek does exist, the conversations are waiting to be had, and our commitment to pushing this forward is unwavering. With the right training, research, surveys, and support from staff, we hope to eventually present a comprehensive online platform where individuals can assess information about the criteria they personally value in an academic department and interact with a historical timeline.

As a widely distributed journalistic publication at Davidson, we believe we can move our community towards greater inclusivity by providing fuller transparency of academic departments. We hope to fill informational gaps that students face when determining courses for WebTree or selecting a major. We aim to spark discourse among readers outside of our campus’s physical bounds. And finally, we seek to reframe our role in the conversation around academic diversity as an active driver of accountability to ensure action follows claims.

With that, we invite you to engage in this initiative, beginning with the following eight pages, and continuing into the spring and the years to come.

Sebi Sola-Sole ‘21 and Julia Knoerr ‘21 Editors-in-Chief

Justice, Equality, andCommunity: buildinganethical frameworkfor Davidsonstudentsbeyondgraduation

by Kate Muntzner ‘24 | she/her

In an effort to further conversations surrounding the college’s history of racial injustice and address gaps in curricula, Davidson started the Justice, Equality, and Community (JEC) Initiative in 2017. s stated on the E.H. Little Library website, “The Justice, Equality, Community (JEC) grant was a three-year, campus-wide initiative to support increased transdisciplinary engagement with issues of race, gender, religion, and social justice across the humanities at Davidson College between 2017 and 2020.” Although the grant was intended to end in 2020, the college provided a one-year extension to tie up loose ends and finish events that were cancelled due to the pandemic.

A core component of the grant’s initiatives is curricular development. JEC Archivist Jessica Cottle explained that this aspect of the initiative is designed to help faculty access training and redesign their courses, as well as to recognize courses embodying justice, equality, and community that already exist.

This is perhaps the most visible aspect of the JEC initiative because students are required to take a JEC course before they graduate.

According to Davidson’s website, “Courses meeting [the JEC] requirement will address justice and equality as they appear in various communities in local, regional, national, and/ or global dimensions, and focuses on methods [...] that have been used to foster awareness of or to remedy inequalities and injustice.”

While there are no official requirements for the curricula in a JEC course, professors must submit a proposal to designate a course as fulfilling the JEC requirement. That justification then goes through a review process by the Education Policy Committee, which oversees course proposals and reviews schedules for athletic and other college-sponsored extracurricular activities.

Although the JEC grant is geared towards the Humanities, several STEM courses fulfill the requirement. Cottle said, “[A subject like] statistics certainly plays a part in the way things are reported and recorded. There are politics involved in that process, “ Cottle said.

Although there may be differences between JEC in the Humanities and STEM courses, the initiative has one overarching goal: inclusive pedagogy. Cottle stated, “I think where JEC and

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inclusive pedagogy intersect is understanding that how you teach has just as much value as what you teach, so [there are] courses that might not be designated as JEC or whose topics may not appear to address issues of justice, equality, and community.”

Cottle elaborated on teaching a course to include an inclusive curriculum. “Part of that process is understanding who you are teaching to. It’s not just about content, but [asking,] ‘how do I need to teach that content to folks with different lived experiences?’ Or ‘how do I need to change the way I give this lecture or design this project so that a multiplicity of voices can be heard and there can be a direct engagement?’”

Because there is not a strict set of requirements for the curricula, the values of justice, equality, and community look different to every professor. James K. Batten Professor of Public Policy Isaac Bailey ‘95 is teaching two JEC courses this semester: COM 207: Media, Empathy, Justice and COM 311: Trump, Race, US Media. “I have focused on the racial justice aspect and trying to honor and respect differences. Other classes might take a different angle on all those issues,” Bailey said.

Environmental Studies Professor Dr. Jessica Worl, who is teaching Environmental Studies JEC classes ENV 242: Political Ecology and ENV 345: Politics of Waste this semester, explained the relevance of the JEC Initiative in 2020.

“In this particular moment when there are and have been so many social issues that are coming to the floor -- I think COVID-19 has revealed for many many structural inequalities -- I think that JEC is poised in some ways to provide a forum for students’ understanding where a lot of these inequalities are and how even our accepted notions of justice have their limits,” Dr. Worl said.

She expanded on the importance of incorporating marginalized voices into her classes, stating, “My class is all about thinking about whose voices have been left out, how do we bring them in, what might that look like, and how might that come to matter.” In the long-term, the goal for her class is to explore the question: “How do we create social and global orders that allow us to value certain kinds of objects, people, places,

and meanings over others?”

Both Dr. Worl and Prof. Bailey emphasized the impact that learning about ethics has for Davidson students specifically.

Prof. Bailey said, “I think that it is always scary to have really smart people who have a lot of influence but don’t actually have a grounding in ethics. For me, that is why this is so vital to Davidson, and it is going to make sure that everyone who comes to these classes will have this ethical framework.”

While JEC classes have only been a graduation requirement for the past three years, starting with the class of 2021, the initiative has received its fair share of criticism.

SGA President Brandon Harris ‘22 said, “I know the issue now is that many classes are certified with the JEC requirement or with the JEC stamp, but they’re not meeting the expectations that people have for that requirement.” In order to improve it, he said, “[SGA Vice President Oğuzhan Çölkesen ‘22 and I] would like to see the JEC requirement be more focused towards actually teaching material that specifically focuses on justice and equality.”

Cottle added, “I think in some ways the grant could’ve been better about centralizing projects and making folks aware, updating people about the work it’s doing on campus. I think there could’ve been more promotion.” She further noted, “I think more student-led projects would’ve also made the grant stronger because students are at the core of a lot of these conversations.”

As to how the JEC requirement can be expanded upon, Prof.

Bailey added, “I think that it is actually at a fairly good place, but I think it always needs to be adjusted. Individuals and institutions also can have these blind spots. We should never get so comfortable about ourselves that we stop looking for ways to make these things better.”

Prof. Bailey concluded, “I just want the spirit of this to be the norm in every single Davidson class. Even if it does not have this designation, I still want the spirit of this initiative to affect every single class and everything else we do at Davidson.”

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Q&A

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Student Initiative on Academic Diversity (SIAD) The Student Initiative for Academic Diversity (SIAD) is a team of 24 students.

These students are trained to conduct on-campus interviews with potential tenure-track professors. SIAD members evaluate the candidates’ readiness to create an inclusive space in their classrooms to support and serve Davidson’s diverse student body.

Lucy Walton ‘21 | she/her

Interview by Andrea Liu ‘23 | she/her Let’s start with a brief introduction of SIAD. Daniel Thomas: SIAD interviews potential tenure-track professors to understand their teaching pedagogy as new cohorts of students come in each year, especially at Davidson, where [we really] value that professor-to-student interaction. From our view, it is really important to get the chance to have a voice in the process of the new professors we want to see teaching students and future generations [of students].

Lucy Walton: SIAD was founded in 2011 because a group of students noticed that the retention of faculty of color and queer faculty was very limited and that, because of tenure, it was possible for professors who were harmful in their rhetoric and pedagogy to have a lot of protection at Davidson. SIAD was formed with the intention of fixing both of those problems. We look at the ways that that person can engage with issues of diversity, inclusivity,[...] racism, homophobia, and sexism in the classroom; that’s what’s really important to us. SIAD [works by] interviewing and writing recommendations to the selection committee to say, “Here are the values that Davidson students need and want from their professors, and here’s how candidates are embodying them.”

I think that’s incredibly important, especially considering that the student body is diversifying quickly. How can students become involved in SIAD? LW: You can apply starting your freshman spring or sophomore fall. It’s an application process, and students can get in touch with Ramona Davis ‘21 or Cole Thornton ‘21; we are having an application cycle coming in the spring. You come to an information session, learn more about SIAD, and then fill out an application and go forward to an interview.

DT: I know that the recruitment team has put

3 with the intention of emphasizing equality of all members.

What kinds of questions are you guys responsible for asking candidates, and how are those questions decided?

LW: In training and as a group, we talk about what sorts of questions have been particularly successful. Each search team (three to four members) will come together and collectively decide on which ones would go well with that search. The questions are intended to get at several things: first, [whether] they have the ability to be inclusive to people of different backgrounds, [and whether] they include issues of diversity and issues that marginalized students face in their curriculum.

SIAD was the first organization of its kind in the country. I think every candidate I have spoken to has said this was the first time that they’ve ever had this during an interview process, so being sat down with students to talk about issues of diversity and inclusion often startles them. The ones who are startled the most, I think, are STEM-based [potential] faculty members just because there’s often this idea that [STEM is] separate from issues of racism, homophobia, sexism, xenophobia, all that. I think that’s one of the things we’re trying to get at — even if you’re in a field that is not traditionally associated with these issues, we know it very much is.

Some examples [of questions] are: how do you engage with people from different backgrounds than yourself? Could you give us an example of a time when you mentored a student who held a background that was different from yourself? How do you engage with issues of racism, homophobia, sexism, or xenophobia in your classroom? [And] what do you think are marginalized identities within your field, and where could it use more representation?

DT: [We also ask] questions about [their] teaching style: adaptability to assessing classroom proficiency, and adapting [their] teaching style to meet the needs of students.

Daniel Thomas ‘21 | he/him in meetings for getting to know students and virtual opportunities. Cole and Ramona are also very attentive to their emails and love reaching out to students who want to know more about SIAD, so it’s very easy to get in contact with any one of [us] to learn more.

Once students get accepted into SIAD, what does training look like?

DT: Once I was accepted into SIAD, I [went] through the HR training process, because I was put on a search [right away]. I got the chance to [get] better insight into the behindthe-scenes process of what SIAD would be doing and what faculty members are taking into account. I [also] got the chance to really connect with different members of SIAD. LW: A big part of our training [is] learning what we can and can’t ask, and how we can get to the point of what’s important to us: can this candidate create a classroom that is inclusive for people of all backgrounds and engage with racism, homophobia, sexism, [and] xenophobia.

What does the structure of SIAD look like? Do you have student leaders?

DT: We have our chair and co-chair [Ramona and Cole], and then from there we have a committee structure — I’m helping out this year with the recruitment committee.

LW: Right now we [also have] outreach/ publicity, there’s a website committee, and a mentorship committee for building mentorship relationships within SIAD. SIAD was created [to address] limitations of hierarchy both in the classroom and outside of it, [so] while we do have co-chairs, they don’t function as presidents, per se, they are more like organizers. The structure of SIAD is created

I feel like this is very enlightening in terms of the amount of care that SIAD puts into interviewing these candidates and making sure that Davidson hires good professors.

LW: I think it’s really heartening. We are a presidential commission, but the fact that Davidson’s president before Dr. Quillen helped create this, and that the departments actively work with us and respect what we have to say, gives me hope about Davidson’s future.

Could you guide me through the evaluation process of the candidates?

DT: [After the interview], we have a time of separation where we [gather] our notes to understand what we took from the interview — the facts that the person stated [and] how we interpreted them. We [then] come together as a group once again. And this [then] goes into the letter-writing component. We’re objective in evaluating the candidate based on the responses they gave us. And I think we do a good job of not judging candidates against each other but more so really looking at the candidate as a person, and crafting a powerful letter that really gets at what this person said. The [letter-writing] process is a very powerful way of synthesizing what we took from the interview as individuals and as a group.

LW: These letters get sent to the hiring committee, and our critiques [are] used as part of their decision making process. That isn’t to say that they always go with the exact person we’d like to see, but it does mean that if they choose a person that we saw having distinct weaknesses, they have an eye to the fact that there might be concern. And they very much listen to us. I’ve seen some really awesome professors come to Davidson that have been SIAD-interviewees in the last couple years.

On that note, what would you say SIAD’s relationship with the administration is like?

LW: We are an outgrowth of Dr. Quillen’s office, so in that sense, we have a powerful relationship with the fact that we can get a conversation with administrators going pretty quickly. Dr. Fuji Lozada, our faculty advisor, definitely goes to bat for us. Obviously SIAD is made up of a lot of people who are consistently and constantly questioning the administration and pushing it to be better; I think that’s inherent in the type of people who join SIAD, but in a very balanced perspective because we also see our work as one way that the administration is responsive to students questioning it.

What would you say are some of the major challenges you face in trying to hire candidates who fit the student body’s needs and wants?

LW: This is a smaller one, but I’d say that there are so many fantastic candidates that are beginning to come out of grad school, [but] Davidson doesn’t tend to be people’s first place where they are hired right out of school, simply because it is more prestigious.

I think one of the biggest challenges is with candidates who have never been challenged to think about these issues before. I’d say also that another challenge with hiring is that on the flip side, there are certain departments [where] these issues are part of their curriculum constantly, whether that’s Anthropology, Africana Studies, Latinx Studies, GSS, Asian American Studies, Jewish Studies, etc., a lot of those positions are hired as adjunct/visiting professorships or two-year fellowships.

We see a lot of difficulties with retention of faculty of color because many of them are hired into [those] two-year fellowships or visiting professorships. I would like to see more commitment from Davidson to hiring these people for tenure-track positions. Tenure track professors tend to stay for 40 [or] 50 years which is why we [consider our] work to be so important — [these professors are] going to be here for a long time. They’re going to have an impact on many students’ lives, and they have the ability to do a lot of great work or a lot of harm. SIAD attempts to remedy that, but when it comes to what Davidson could do better, it’s permanence I think.

DT: One of the challenges I was going to say was the retention for faculty of color, and you said it absolutely perfectly, Lucy.

When can students find out about the next application process?

DT: According to the preliminary timeline of recruitment, I know that as of right now, we’re really looking towards the first week [or] week and a half when we arrive back next semester.

LW: They can email me at luwalton@davidson.edu or Daniel at dathomas@davidson. edu, or Cole or Ramona to get a personal invitation; it’ll also go out in The Crier or an email from SGA. Any final thoughts?

DT: I think that in this moment, it’s so important that we have students within certain positions of power on campus who can have a voice in the [hiring] process. You know, we’ve come out of this past summer with the Black Lives Matter movement, but also with a greater focus on marginalized communities, that it really just adds so much more power to the work that we’re doing.

Our leading tenets of SIAD are diversity and inclusion, making sure that’s part of every single piece of Davidson. It feels wonderful to be a part of SIAD and of that change-making group that is leading Davidson and this whole process.

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In the May 12th, 2012 issue of The Davidsonian, News Editor Sarah Welty covered a bake sale protest outside of the Union following Spring Convocation. Modeled on an a sale sparked controversy by visually representing the lack of diversity in Davidson faculty and showing that Davidson did not value its faculty of color. This photograph wa

“Necessary but not sufficient” Aglanceat inclusivity inhiringat Davidson

by Charlotte Spears ‘24 | she/her ight years ago, the Davidson administration delayed a professor’s tenure. The motivation behind the deferral of Dr. Hun Lye, a Buddhist faculty member of color in the Religious Studies Department is unknown due to the confidential nature of tenure proceedings. Dr. Lye subsequently decided to withdraw from the process.

The event ignited debates and protests among students and faculty who viewed the act as racially discriminatory against the professor, and it drew into question the hiring and tenure process at Davidson.

According to Dr. Fuji Lozada, Chief Diversity Officer and Associate Dean of Faculty, the hiring process begins when the chair of an academic department submits a request to the Dean of Faculty for a tenure track proposal. The Faculty Hir-

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ing Advisory Committee collects the proposals and makes a recommendation to the Dean of Faculty and the president of the college. Once the proposal is reviewed and approved, a search committee is created and chaired by either the chair of the academic department or a professor within the department.

According to Dr. Lozada, the search committee, consisting of a chair, tenured department faculty, and an external member, drafts an advertisement for the position. A department may receive hundreds of applications for a given position.

The committee then reads and narrows down these applications. Different academic departments approach the narrowing down of applicants differently, but a committee ultimately brings three candidates to campus. The committee decides

on a candidate and the Dean of Faculty makes an offer.

The tenure deferral in 2012 prompted a reaction among students and faculty. Dr. Lozada remembers students working to change Davidson’s hiring process.

“The students got angry,” Dr. Lozada said. “In fact, they came to my house, and we talked. Their anger in particular gave rise to SIAD [Student Initiative on Academic Diversity] and equity advisers.”

So, in 2012, students changed Davidson’s hiring process by creating SIAD, a presidentially chartered, student-run organization that interviews every finalist up for tenure, and equity advisers, extra-departmental faculty that are trained in diversity, equity, and inclusion and sit on search committees.

Cole Thornton ‘21 and Ramona Davis ‘21 are the current co-chairs of SIAD.

“W p te

5 remember is the SIAD students; it’s not that it’s the toughest set of questions, it’s that it’s one way we sell Davidson. Because it’s not only that they want a job, it’s that we want them to come here.”

Since 2012, Dr. Lozada said that one critique of the adaptations to the hiring process has been that the organizations implemented to increase diversity are only present for a short time during the interview process.

“SIAD comes in at a very particular point in the process, and I’m not sure what level of certainty, how diverse and inclusive a candidate is before we get to them,” said Davis, co-chair of SIAD. “We are asking different questions than the committee. I don’t know what the department is doing to gauge inclusivity before we come into the process.”

According to Davis, candidates display a “broad range of knowledge” in SIAD interviews.

“It can be that a person has clearly thought about it or this person has never thought about it, and they are confused why they have to think about it now,” Davis said. “People don’t always react well to what we are doing.”

Dr. Lozada shared that the college only mandates that SIAD serve on tenure track searches. Visiting Associate Professor searches and other faculty searches occur without the letters of evaluation on inclusive pedagogy from students.

In addition to SIAD, the equity advisers were also implemented as a part of the hiring process after the 2012 event that sparked debates and protests.

Equity advisers are faculty members trained in diversi-

cording to Davis, SIAD shouldn’t be the only force dealing with inclusive pedagogy.

“In theory, it would be great if SIAD was involved in all areas of the process, but we can’t do that,” Davis said. “It would be great if there were SIAD-like organizations or initiatives, groups, processes at every stage that involve students or faculty. But SIAD can’t do everything, especially on a volunteer basis. I think that you need a series of organizations and groups with that same commitment to diversity and inclusion when it comes to pedagogy at every stage of the [hiring] process.”

In addition to believing that more outside organizations are necessary for the hiring process, Davis also emphasized that the role of ensuring diversity, equity, and inclusion shouldn’t fall into the lap of just marginalized groups.

“A lot of times what happens is the marginalized people of color, students, and faculty, are taking on the burden of trying to do all of that, and the reality is we can’t do all of that,” Davis said.

Davis hopes tha,t in the future, consulting work will play a larger role in at different stages in the hiring process “They could bring in multiple people that are trained in doing this to do this work,” Davis said. “They could bring in professionals, not to do SIAD’s work, but you could bring in people to do different versions at different steps of the process.”

According to the May 2nd, 2012 issue of The Davidsonian, when SIAD was founded, five of the seven most recent deni-

ty, equity, and inclusion every summer and participate as non-voting members of the committees. Equity advisers sit on the committee from the point an advertisement is drafted up until finalists are brought to campus.

“We come in as an unbiased and impartial perspective,” said Dr. Smith, who is currently an equity adviser for a search committee in the Health and Human Values Department. “We come in and make sure we are following equal employment opportunity laws, and we are working toward identifying the broadest, most diverse applicant pool possible. We are looking for ways that different applicants can succeed and making sure that our mindset and idea of what a successful faculty member has been doesn’t dictate what a successful faculty member will always look like and be like in the future.”

Dr. Cort Savage, professor and Chair of the Art Department, was one of the first equity advisers at Davidson.

“Equity advisers are people that sit on the committee to observe the hiring practices just to make sure that we are dotting all our ‘i’s and crossing all our ‘t’s with respect to legal issues regarding hiring and also trying to cast a clearer light on implicit bias,” Dr. Savage said.

According to Dr. Savage, they help the committee determine reasonable and unreasonable questions, analyze how deliberations take place, review how the committee is discussing an individual, and keep an eye on the overall candidate pool to make sure all people are recognized.

However, many faculty acknowledge that there is room for growth in terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion when bringing faculty to campus. SIAD is a student-run, volunteer organization. With a membership of about 20 students, the organization is unable to interview and write evaluations for every finalist brought to campus. There are eight tenure track searches this year; therefore, three finalists for every position would mean 24 meetings for SIAD, in addition to the visiting associate professor interviews they elect to take on. But ac-

als of tenure were for faculty of color.

“We saw what happened before SIAD; a high percentage of people who were being denied tenure were people of color,” Davis said. “The role that we play in the process would not be served otherwise unless you just happen to have faculty that’s well trained.”

Diversity is particularly hard to come by in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) departments.

Davidson doesn’t publicly break down statistics about race at the academic department-level because departments are small enough that individual staff could be identified. However, Dr. Smith and Davis agree that STEM departments at the local and national level “have had trouble making progress.”

“I think some of the problem is our own making,” Dr. Smith said. “I think there are far too many search committees at Davidson and elsewhere who have this idea that if we just continue doing everything we have always been doing, these candidates are going to magically appear and fill in the ranks, and we are going to catch up.”

Davidson has struggled in general with diversity and inclusion. Of the 14 Liberal Arts Schools that outrank Davidson College overall according to U.S. News, 13 of them also outrank Davidson in the website’s “Campus Ethnic Diversity” index.

“We have far, far more Ph.D.s of color than we’ve had at comparable times in the past, and the rate is accelerating,” Dr Smith said. “Yet those Ph.D.s aren’t making it into faculty ranks. The candidates are out there; we need to be doing a better job of changing our search procedures and doing a better job of identifying those candidates if we are going to resolve these issues.”

Dr. Kevin Smith believes that recent adaptations to the hiring procedure are “necessary but not sufficient.”

“The question of, ‘what’s sufficient?’ I don’t know, because we haven’t reached sufficiency,” Dr. Smith said. “I think we need to be changing a lot of minds, and more people on the committee making the hiring decisions to break out of their molds and models on what they think a successful candidate looks like, and that’s gonna take a lot more time.

We are talking about culture change.”

According to Dr. Lozada, the reason for continued critique of the hiring procedures is not just so that students of color and of different marginalized groups feel better, although he acknowledges that is one factor.

“It really is for that when y’all get out there in the real world, you have to be equipped to work in a global, multicultural world, and we want to make sure that you can lead and serve others in a disciplined way,” Dr. Lozada said. “We want you to have this skill so that you can make good in the world.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion is a resource for students.”

“The candidates are out the re; we need to be doing a better job of changing our search procedures and doing a better job of id entifying those candidates if we are going to resolve these issues.”

Dr. Kevin Smith

anti-affirmative action protest at UC Berkeley, the bake as taken for Welty’s 2012 article. Photo by Mark Sehnert “We will have a SIAD interview where three or four SIAD members will interview the candidate, and no faculty are present,” Thornton said. “From those interviews, we will write a letter of evaluation. We don’t rank. We don’t say, ‘this is who you should hire’. We, as objectively as you can, evaluate.”

The students’ evaluation of candidates and their experience with inclusive pedagogy is “unbelievable,” according to Dr. Kevin Smith, Associate Professor of Biology.

Dr. Smith, who now works alongside other faculty in the hiring process, conducted an interview with SIAD students when he was up for tenure eight years ago.

“I remember some of the names in the room. I remember faces,” Dr. Smith said. “I remember things we talked about.

I remember where we were and what I was eating, because it was such an impactful meeting to have that level of engagement from Davidson students. [The hiring process] was not just to recruit faculty but also to signal to me that if I am going to come to Davidson, I need to step up my game and make sure I am prepared to give these students the kind of experience that they are demanding.”

According to Dr. Lozada, “If you talk to any faculty member who has been hired since 2012, the one thing they will

high We saw what happened before SIAD; a nied percentage of people who were being de enure were people of color.”

Ramona Davis ‘21, SIAD co-chair

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Fostering Inclusivity and Respect in Science (FIRST) Fostering Inclusivity and Respect in Science Together (FIRST) seeks to expand inclusivity and reduce barriers in STEM at Davidson. The following is a conversation between Esther Lherisson ‘19, the FIRST Program Analyst; Haleena Phillips ‘21, a member of the FIRST Action Team; and Julia Knoerr ‘21, Co-Editor-in-Chief of The Davidsonian.

Esther Lherisson ‘19 | she/her

Interview by Julia Knoerr ‘21 | she/her Could you both tell me a little bit about yourselves and what both of your roles are?

Esther Lherisson: My name is Esther Lherisson, and I’m the FIRST Program Analyst for the grant that we are working under. I mainly work to be a liaison for students, to professors, as well as do a lot of faculty development and mentoring of the Action Team.

Haleena Phillips: My name is Haleena Phillips, [and] I am a part of the Student Action Team. I’m a part of a group of four other students who propose sustainable projects and ideas to go against things that hinder inclusive pedagogy in STEM. So right now we have five different projects [...]. [One] project of mine is the anti-oppression statement; I’m trying to get that implemented into different syllabi in STEM. I think of an anti-oppression statement as something that’s extremely significant [...] It’s saying that “No matter who I support, just know that I am here to help dismantle racist topics, and that you can talk to me if you need to.”

Could you talk a little bit about how FIRST was founded and also how the different organizational pieces of it function?

HP : Well Dr. [Barbara] Lom applied for a grant from HHMI, which is the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. They regularly give grants to institutions that are trying to do something inclusive or just change the way we do things now. Dr. Lom came up with the idea for FIRST, basically saying, “Hey, we can have more representation and fix things that students have worries about,” and stuff like that. So, she came up with this idea with the help of other faculty. [...] It became this faculty action team, and they became the leadership team. They realized there was a kind of rift between the faculty and the students, because the faculty will

Haleena Phillips ‘21 | she/her never know our experience per se. So they came up with the idea for a student action team that could basically be the center person between students and faculty.

What is the importance of this work within STEM specifically, as opposed to within the humanities or the social sciences?

EL: So FIRST represents Fostering Respects and Inclusivity in Science Together. A lot of our events are focused on faculty who are STEM members, although we do allow anyone to come. We also have multiple programs, so one of them is called FIRST Rate.

And this is a program for professors who either want to create a JEC [Justice, Equality, and Community course], re-design a course, or create a course that’s inclusive for everyone in the course. It is a great launching pad [...], mainly because it allows for the time and the money (we do provide a stipend) that they otherwise would not be able to use in order to create and have the time to make their courses better. We also have MILE. So we have a MILE Partnership, which is similar to the one in Bryn Mawr by Alison Cook, who began the entire SALT institution. SALT stands for Students As Leaders and Teachers, and it focuses on students, on their experiences within a classroom that they would never attend ever again [...]; it allows for faculty members to learn a little bit more about what the student perspective is and provides near immediate feedback.

The reason why we went ahead and focused on STEM is because of the fact that we ended up with data brought in by our Academic Assessment Coordinator [Brent Maher].

We all realized that the data [were] showing that students of color were falling behind in STEM and not continuing with STEM. We’re currently in gateway courses right

now, but for now, it’s best to say that the data showed that students of color were falling behind. And we all knew that it wasn’t the students’ fault; it had to be the instructors’ fault because student experiences are shaped by professors.

How have you drawn upon data from the academic assessment? From your perspective, is the role of data being able to identify that there is a problem and then figuring out how to address it?

HP : Because we were the pilot team, we had a responsibility of gathering attention to FIRST, so we wanted to have the data and [create] like a shock factor with it. What we did was we had these very informative infographics about faculty representation, what students who identify as students of color are in STEM, just basically to show people the info because you can’t fix a problem if you don’t know it’s there. On top of that, we also had a board out on the third floor of Wall. We would write questions on top, and we would leave markers for students to add to those responses, which also caused a lot of controversy because if you walk pass the board and you see something, you disagree with it, it’s anonymous; you’re gonna feel comfortable enough to just go there and say what you truly feel. So that brought a lot of attention, some good, some bad.

EL: Our data also works to show issues in the success rates of students of color versus white students. We also use data from our events. For example, we have evaluations, anonymous ones, after each event, and we ask faculty members to rate the events so that we can make sure that we are presenting what inclusivity would be and not repeating something that many people have heard before.

What sorts of overall feedback have you received? To what extent have you seen progress towards some of your goals in terms of reducing institutional barriers and increasing inclusivity?

EL: So what I realized very, very early on, is that faculty love student feedback. A lot of what we noticed [was] that for Action Team events, or for events that hosted students as well as faculty, we had higher attendances, and we also were receiving more comments than we normally would. The comments revolved around the fact that the faculty members were happy to hear student experiences, because it allows them first-hand to look at their assignments and realize where there may be some errors or where there may be some non-inclusive things. We also have the syllabus editing event, which usually faculty members are happy to go to.

And within that, we basically have myself, as a recent student, and a couple other folks who look over syllabi and provide their own interpretations on it.

Thinking about FIRST within the context of broader academic institutions, to what extent are there other organizations at peer institutions that do similar work to FIRST? Are there national organizations that have informed the work that you do or vice versa?

EL: Yeah, so FIRST actually has [...] communities of I think four or five institutions that work together and talk about the issues that they have. But there are also other channels [in] which faculty members at universities are able to come together and talk about the same problem that they all have. This is organized through the HHMI program; they want cooperation as they work on talking to other faculty members and making sure that everyone is on the same page about what inclusive pedagogy is [...]. And, we get together — all the institutions — once a year for our annual meeting, where we also share more ideas of what has been tried. One of the examples is that we got SALT, the pro-

gram, and we changed it to MILE [More Inclusive Learning Environments]. But we created our own program, and that started with working with Alison Cook in order to do so.

With the demands for expanding diversity in hiring, have you had any conversations about the national level scale and the factors surrounding that?

EL: Well, we think about Davisdon in particular because that’s where our goals are, but we also created other bounds and other resources, such as the FIRST Inclusive webpage, so that we were able to leave a more permanent effect that also would be there for other faculty members who would need it or would like to look at it. We’ve also started doing things such as recording our events, and so plenty of faculty members from other universities have been coming to our events.

Do you feel that overall FIRST has received support from the campus community? If so, has that been adequate? How do you feel that FIRST is supported or not by the administration?

EL : We have definitely felt the support of faculty members and administrators, as well as staff members who are interested in making our college more inclusive, especially in STEM, where we are lacking. I believe that we are having a positive influence, and we are being supported by faculty members because each year, we have an increase in attendance to events, and we get an increase of feedback. We also see our other programs growing. We see the numbers are rising in participation [by] faculty members. As far as administration, I would say that we do feel the support of administration. We work a lot with [Associate Dean of Faculty] Fuji Lozada, and Dean [of Students Byron] McCrae is also someone that we work with in order to create best practices and look at ways to make the school more inclusive.

[President] Carol Quillen also comes to our events from time to time, and so she has been very supportive and has emailed to say how much she enjoys FIRST and what we’re doing.

Based on the point that the organization is at now, what do you think are the areas for growth moving forward? What would you like to see happen in the near future?

EL : We’re currently in the stage of looking at changing Davidson’s culture, creating anti-racist policies, and evaluating [Davidson’s past] in order to right some of the wrongs that happened so long ago.

What we’re mainly focusing on is how to ensure that [...] FIRST’s influences remain past the time that the grant is available for, which is five years. And we’re just starting year three. We just want to create a more permanent program within Davidson that is supported hopefully by CTL [Center for Teaching and Learning]. [...] I’m hoping that MILE becomes a program under the CTL and that professors continue to meet in groups of 30 or more in order to actually talk about articles, inclusive pedagogy, work on it, and figure out more ways to talk to students, whether that be through surveys, open ended or not, or in office hours, where we’re also seeing a need for improvement.

HP: Yeah, I definitely hope to see it grow and have a lasting effect, even though the grant [will be] over. I hope that a lot of our projects are incorporated into Davison, and it becomes a culture. I hope that teachers are more receptive. I hope we reach teachers who aren’t as receptive so they can implement some of our stuff, because of course you’re always going to have pushback from someone, but I hope that we don’t stop because they’re pushing back and that we can reach them from a different area, like something that pleases them — but also works.

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Q&A

Asian American Initiative (AAI) This is a conversation between Sohan Gade ‘23 and the Asian American Initiative’s (AAI) five co-founders and co-organizers: Yashita Kandhari ‘22, Cathy Xu ‘21, Raven Hudson ‘21, Sanzari Aranyak ‘22, and Ashley Ip ‘22. AAI was formed in 2018 out of a “need for a space to build community, as well as visibility, for Asian American students.” Their current demands include the hiring of Asian American specialists and the establishment of an Asian American Studies major and minor.

Interview by Sohan Gade ‘23 | he/him

Ashley Ip ‘22 | she/her

Cathy Xu ‘21 | she/her

What is the current process that you all have set in place for advocating for hiring of additional Asian American Studies faculty?

Cathy Xu: We definitely [talked to] a lot of past students and current students who are doing similar things or did some more things and then got their advice. In the past, before the Asian American Initiative, there was a group called ExpectAsian, who tried to get Asian American specialists on campus. Their approach was very much talking to faculty departments and admin first, and that didn’t work out really well, just because they ended up having to go in circles a lot and go back and forth to different people. So then we took their advice, and we decided to go from the students up. We did some research with peer institutions and their Asian American Studies departments to show Davidson what type of structures they have in place. Then we also started a dialogue series, where we hosted guest lectures. We also did reading discussions. And we kept notes all the time. Every event that we had, [we took notes on] how many people showed up, to show that there was interest. We also did a survey to gather interest. So by the time we actually went to the admin, we had already talked to a lot of faculty departments who expressed interest in Asian American Studies, and [we] also had the numbers of expressed interest by students.

Raven Hudson ‘21 | they/he

Yashita Kandhari ‘22 | she/her

What are your current plans? What are your plans for the near future?

Raven Hudson: In terms of future plans, we have our demands, which is the blueprint. We were hoping that by, I think we said 2021, that there’d be several positions.

I think it’s difficult just because right now,

Sanzari Aranyak ‘22 | they/them

7 [our operation] is pretty decentralized [with us all being in different places]. There’s just so much else that people are worrying about right now, that it is not really the moment to be pushing our demands. We have been able to get several hires for this year and next year. That’s kind of where we are in terms of process: just kind of waiting for another, more opportune moment.

Sanzari Aranyak: We basically spent all of Fall 2019 trying really hard to get AAPI [Asian-American/Pacific Islander] professors to come to campus. The way that we did that was just through talking to basically every department on campus. We also talked to students, which is what we focused a lot on in Spring 2019, and then in Fall 2019.

That’s how Dr. Heidi Hong, who’s an Asian American English professor, is coming next semester. That’s how we got the Humanities program to start thinking about what it meant to get Dr. Diego Luis here. So, we really focused on a bottom-up approach, because in the past, going to admin first has not worked.

Now that you all have made a lot of groundwork in hiring, how would you address concerns about not having Asian-American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) faculty retained?

Ashley Ip: Well, I think the first thing we are trying to do, especially for this upcoming semester, is to have these classes filled and have it at the max capacity of students.

This shows the administration that it’s not just the five of us that want to take these classes, that there’s a bigger and greater interest. It’s also that we have to continue bringing younger students in, for example, because [in] two years, all of us are about to graduate. A key part of student activism is that the four-year turnaround that happens, right? All the current positions that we have right now are visiting professorships. And so it’s really hard, because you also don’t want to stifle the aspirations that those professors have in terms of their career. Davidson, for some people, is going to be just a stepping stone in going somewhere else.

Davidson’s tenured faculty is largely white.

A lot of colleges at this point are just doing visiting professorships, and that’s kind of their main way of hiring people. It’s just generally really hard.

SA: It’s hard to work within all of that. I mean, for one example, Dr. [Sarah] Waheed is the entire South Asian Studies department right now. She’s leaving after this year, and we won’t even have a South Asian Studies program at that point. So that’s really tough.

Retention is hard, as we’ve seen with the Africana Studies department. The institution at large isn’t willing to give people tenure. You either have visiting professors that just have a certain amount of contract, or ones like our assistant professors. [That’s] why part of our push originally in our advance demands for tenure track positions.

We know that Davidson and every other institution has a pattern of just giving visiting assistant professorships to professors from marginalized communities, and then just letting them go.

What would you cite as your biggest achievements in all this?

CX: I mean, within the year, we’ve been able to extend Dr. Yurika Tamura’s contract, and we have two visiting Asian American specialists for this academic year. I think it was important for us to show that Asian American Studies is an interdisciplinary major and that it can benefit people from different departments, which is also why we suggest that Asian American Studies could be established through the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies. It’s been cool to have specialists in different fields like Dr. Tamura. We extended her contract, and she’s in the Gender and Sexuality Studies De-

partment. Also, we have [Dr.] Diego Luis, who’s currently teaching Asian Diasporas to Latin America.

How would you ensure the AAI can continue this work? How would you ensure that it is continued by future classes?

Yashita Kandhari: We’re trying to get more people involved, like sophomores and firstyears, so it isn’t just us doing the work.

We’re trying to get better at delegating, because it ends up being us doing work most of the time. So there’s that. We have a new website. Ashley and I are also doing a “Stories Yet to be Told” project, and we’re adding that. It’s all there in one place, so that people who come after us can see the work that’s already been done and hear about our experiences and have a blueprint so don’t have to start all over again. Sanzari discovered the ExpectAsian website just by chance on Twitter. We had no idea that they existed or that there was a precedent for this. I guess even just having social media and word of mouth will be important to make sure the same thing won’t happen to us where people kind of just forget about our work.

RH: I think one thing that we have had to continue to realize, as other people have pointed out to us, [such as] Dr. Fuji Lozada: we often don’t really think that we’ve been able to do that much. He said that we’re the reason that Dr. Tamura is still here and that Dr. Diego Luis and Dr. Heidi Hong are coming here. I like bringing that up to just say that everything has had to be student-led. Academic departments and faculty are willing to work with students. I think that the students are moving things forward.

We have talked to administration; they’ve been really closed-off to us, and basically said that there just aren’t the resources to do what we want to do.

YK: I also think that yes, students are the ones that do all this work. We also get a lot of support from faculty who are here like Dr. Lozada, like Dr. Tamura, like Dr. Luis now. I also feel there’s no labor or no recognition or compensation for faculty who do so much for students, especially visiting professors. It’s really hard, because their contracts are limited, and they have to do their own research and apply for more jobs.

In other ways, Davidson just pushes people out and makes life so much more difficult for students and for faculty. When faculty get here, there’s no real resources or no support for the things that they do. I mean, this is not the official terminology, but you should get recognition from the college or if you put in a certain amount of work, whether it’s meetings with students, or participation in different faculty groups, things like that. Why isn’t there a system for faculty to get compensated for all of this emotional labor?

RH:. Cathy and I are just so incredibly fortunate that Dr. Tamura is still here, because I wouldn’t be doing my thesis on what I’m doing if she wasn’t here, and I don’t know who would be advising me. It definitely wouldn’t be an Asian person.

What would you say to people on campus who might be interested in helping out?

AI: I guess we can just say, if anyone is interested, we’re definitely looking for people. Yes, this is kind of our baby, and we definitely want it to be in good hands when we all leave, and also we want it to not just be our project anymore; we want all of the sophomores and freshmen to be involved. I think we just want more people to feel like they can get involved and to get involved.

We’re all benefiting from these professors.

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Q&A

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just the resources for our specific classes, but the kind of developmental resources that can enable students to have the broadest range of decisions. You know, somebody may want to finish their education with their college degree, and that’s great. But for those students who may never have considered postgraduate education, to make it possible for them to not only understand those processes, but to attain those steps along the way.

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Dr. Rose Stremlau

One of the initial action items of the Commission on Race & Slavery is to “review key practices (including those in hiring, contract bidding, compensation, admission, student discipline, and policing) through the lens of racial equity and building a just and inclusive campus.” Can you elaborate on what changes could be made to make the hiring process more equitable?

Interview by Hope Anderson ‘22 & Kaizad Irani ‘22 she/her & he/him Rose Stremlau: To start, I want to emphasize that the hiring process doesn’t refer to one thing. When we have conversations in higher education about hiring, we often reduce this to a series of steps that we assume can be uniform across different disciplines.

What the research on best practices suggests is that not only do we have to acknowledge that there are differences in hiring equitably and justly in a place like Davidson versus an r1 [A Doctoral University specializing in academic research], but even across [departments within] Davidson.

One of the main concerns that was reflected in the Commission’s discussion about hiring is that while Davidson has made some productive strides in terms of Equity Advisors and being very intentional about thinking in ways to diversify applicant pools, there is a need for both more systematic and specific thinking about how individual departments and programs can truly become the kinds of units that I think most faculty here want us to be. We have to acknowledge that there’s work to be done in finding those examples of who’s doing it correctly and thinking about the steps in the process.

credentials that we normalize and expect.

As a historian, thinking about what it means to both challenge the perception that there’s no one in the pipeline, when there are issues of recruitment into graduate programs [and] retention in those programs, but also understanding how we can’t use that as an excuse.

We have to use that as a challenge to think holistically about the process through which folks may begin thinking about attending college and going on for postgraduate education all the way through their graduate programs, and into their tenure track jobs.

Because we are not a graduate school, how do we fix that ‘pipeline’ issue and get our students into a variety of graduate schools?

RS: I come from a framework in which I understand that academic and intellectual form of excellence has nothing to do with pedigree, but that it often has very much to do with how supported a particular student is and how they are networked into resources. I think I recognized this early in on my teaching career, not because I was smarter or better than any of my colleagues, but because I came to Davidson after having taught

“It’s one thing to say you’re anti-racist, and another thing to say, ‘That means these 10 things; we are going to do these 10 things, [and] if we don’t do these things, we can be called on it.’”

You mentioned earlier the role of staff equity advisors. And I know from the [Commission on Race and Slavery] report, it says that it would support efforts to launch staff equity advisors and HR offerings of diversity and anti-racism training for all employees. Have those trainings started? And if so, what do they look like?

Why is it important to the mission of the Commission’s goals?

RS: As far as I know, they have not, and I think because of COVID. There are multiple models for this kind of training in higher ed. As far as I know, a decision hasn’t been made yet about which particular route Davidson will go.

Are there other models that have also been looked at? And you also mentioned the role of other institutions, looking at their work, and trying to follow that. Do you mind sharing some of those institutions, if possible, and what type of work they’ve done that Davidson has acknowledged and looked at?

for 10 years at a regional teaching institution, in which most of my students were first generation students. From the feedback we have received, many students of color and first generation students acknowledge the tremendous resources Davidson provides.

However, we need to do a better job making those resources available in an equitable and legible fashion.

RS: You can look at the UC [University of California] systems and their relationship with local communities, which can be everything from the programming that they do, to specific types of scholarships they offer, to resources that they make available, and so that these processes produce, again, tangible but also measurable results. It’s one thing to say you’re anti-racist, and another thing to say, ‘That means these 10 things; we are going to do these 10 things, [and] if we don’t do these things, we can be called on it.’

I think that feedback mandates us to not only be very intentionally transparent, but to be extremely mindful that we are making not

Why do you think it’s important for student groups and publications like The Davidsonian to try to track your work

Dr. Rose Stremlau

Something that I often hear as a historian, and the statistics show this, are that the number of faculty of color in history are abysmal.

As someone who does Native history, who is not a Native person and who is of settler descent, I can count on my fingers and toes the number of Native people who have PhDs in history. That says nothing about the talent or the intellectual ability of Native people, but that says everything about graduate schools, in particular, as a gatekeeping force in preventing people who could contribute tremendously to academia from getting the

We’ve always sent out emails with this information, but that doesn’t actually make information accessible. [...] It’s that imperative for us, for faculty, for staff, to be mindful and intentional, that we are making these resources available, and that we are actively recruiting those students we see in our classes, doing outstanding work, who maybe don’t fit the typical characterization or portfolio of the students who get trapped into those kinds of opportunities. Personally, I am very intentional in my classes about encouraging students who are interested in studying the history of race or gender, because I have resources with colleagues and can plug folks into job opportunities. If you can provide students with a couple of those opportunities in their undergraduate years, you make them more competitive for graduate school. I learned how to do that by mentoring non-traditional students, and I think we often take for granted that our students all have this sort of nice pathway to Ivy League postgraduate degrees. That’s not the case. If we want to change those pipeline issues, we need to be much more mindful about who we want in those pipelines -- and do that work on the end of the faculty.

and keep the college accountable on your promises?

Because we’re all human. This semester, unlike all others in the last decade, has felt like ‘Just get to the next deadline, just do the next thing.’ I think there is an inevitable kind of inherent tendency in higher ed, because we are so focused on this semester, the academic year, the four years that the typical student will take to complete their college education here, is that we often can backburner longterm thinking and visionary change; that takes sustainable effort.

We need reminders. When we involve a community, whether it’s our colleagues in a department or in an institution, it can be difficult considering the pressures we are under in the day-to-day, especially in this particular moment in the semester to be like ‘we’ll get to that.’ But, that’s not how change takes place and that’s not how we fundamentally alter institutional norms. This gets back to that idea of being both honest about the current policies and practices, but also how those should change so that when we are doing things to just, you know, get through the next semester, or get through the academic year, we’re intentionally doing them a little bit differently, or a lot differently, if that’s what’s appropriate, so that this, this work isn’t something that is understood to be, in addition to everything else, but rather, fundamentally driving how we will change this institution.

To give an example, I think we, at least in the searches that I’ve been a part of here, think people are really thoughtful about what the applicant pool looks like, especially when it gets down to the smaller numbers and you can look at folks as more than just one of many, many, many CVs. You can start to conceptualize human beings from these CVs, and letters, and perhaps writing samples or sample syllabi. And that’s a really good thing. But almost every search I’ve been on here, and in previous institutions, we give a lot less thought to who actually submits the applications for the job. [...] The job market situation right now is so dire, that everyone will apply. And what I know for sure, from my Indigenous Studies world, and having a foot in that, is that there are lots of folks who may not consider applying for a job at an institution if they look and they see […] for example, Davidson, they’re like, ‘Oh, they don’t have an Indigenous Studies program or a Native Studies program, why would I want to apply there?’ They might not realize that there are a bunch of folks here who are on faculty who are doing some of this work.

But that also that’s really wanted here, and that the students really want that knowledge here. And that we’re actually pretty close, I think, to having some sort of core group that could move in the direction of that kind of program. So then it would be on me, it would be on the other faculty who are here, to be posting those job ads in places where scholars from those intellectual communities and those cultural communities are and to encourage them to be applying. [...] People want jobs at places where they’re wanted, and we have to make people know that they are wanted and valued. *All interviews included in this issue were edited for length and clarity.

Thank You This issue would not have been possible without the help of our staff, peers, and mentors. We would like to sincerely thank the following people for their contributions: Alyssa Tirrell ‘22 Annika Thesing ‘21

Ashley Ip ‘22 Cathy Xu ‘21 Charlotte Spears ‘24 Cole Thornton ‘21 Dr. Fuji Lozada Dr. Joseph Ewoodzie Dr. Julio Ramirez Dr. Kevin Smith Dr. Rose Stremlau

Emma Brentjens ‘21 Esther Lherisson ‘19 Haleena Phillips ‘21 Hope Anderson ‘22 Jay Pfeiffer Julia Knoerr ‘21 Kaizad Irani ‘22 Kate Muntzner ‘24 Ramona Davis ‘21

Raven Hudson ‘21 Sanzari Aranyak ‘22 Sarah Austin ‘21 Sarah Lev ‘21 Sebastian Sola-Sole ‘21 Sohan Gade ‘23 Yashita Kandhari ‘22 Portraits courtesy of interviewees