A panel composed of four IU faculty members said being a person of color in academia is a struggle for many due to lack of diversity.
The panel was sponsored by the Latino Graduate Student Association and took place Tuesday evening at La Casa Latino Cultural Center. It focused on the struggles of being of Latino descent in academia and how to work through the lack of representation.
Assistant professor in the political science department Bernard Fraga, assistant professor in the sociology department Elaine Hernandez, Latino studies visiting assistant professor Mintzi Martinez-Rivera and assistant professor in the English department Alberto Varon talked about their experiences in higher education.
“I think it’s important to hear from Latino and Latina faculty members because we are underrepresented in higher education,” graduate student and LGSA co-chair Denise Ambriz said. “It just shows us that there are opportunities for us to continue on in higher education.”
The panelists discussed the good and the bad of being in academia. They said it was often a very alienating experience because of the lack of diversity and representation, and Hernandez said the expectations of being an academic person of color were demanding.
She said often papers are rejected, and publishing is a grueling process.
“You have to have the passion to keep you going,” Hernandez said.
Fraga spoke more in depth about these demands and said they were divided between teaching courses, completing research and providing service. He said research, not courses taught, determines tenure, promotions and prestige. However, he said faculty still need to give effort in all of three areas, which can be overwhelming.
The panel addressed the issues of hiring minority faculty in all universities and how the process is often political. Fraga explained the process started in the late 1900s with the first generation of minority faculty being hired because they were considered exotic. Then it moved on to tokenism — trying to have a minority professor in each department, he said.
He said now the bar has been raised even higher for minorities because they have to distinguish themselves from other applicants, especially other minority applicants.
“It’s not about going to be the exotic one or going to fill a quota,” he said. “You have to prove that you deserve to be there in the eyes of faculty who are automatically going to doubt you.”
However, Varon said that it was important for graduate students not to focus on affecting change in their positions. He said they did not have the power to enact change in their current place, so the important thing was to focus on their studies and create a community.
The panelists agreed this dynamic was a struggle they had faced and often created an odd guilt between wanting to see change but also waiting for a position with more power to affect that change.
Though the panelists said being an academic is tough, they did touch on the rewarding points of being able to shape students’ mindsets and make a difference. Martinez-Rivera said the networks of scholars who the panelists engage and work with is rewarding.
“We’re shaping the new generation,” she said. “It’s really amazing and beautiful to see the students flourish and transform by your classes.”
Gender studies Ph.D. student Daniela Gutierrez said she attended the event because she had an interest in seeing how Lantinx faculty were making their ways through academia. She also wanted to see what was waiting for her, as a Latin American, after her dissertation.
Gutierrez teaches an introduction to gender studies class this semester and will be teaching a themes in gender studies course in the fall. She said the Latinx population on campus is so small that it is often hard to know who to reach out to, so getting to know the four non-tenured professors was the most beneficial aspect of the panel for her.
“It was good to see in their first stages they were optimistic but honest about their struggles,” she said.
