In this new anti-Diversity, Equity and Inclusion environment, Black women, and particularly Black women feminist scholars, suddenly find themselves at tremendous personal and financial risk due to increasing attacks on their research, expertise and voice by university administrators, colleagues and worse, students.
I know this firsthand.
I am a Black feminist scholar – one of a handful out of more than 3,200 plus scholars teaching and researching at the University of Toronto. Only two per cent of faculty across the country are Black. Which means students rarely encounter Black professors—of any gender.
For the past 13 years, I have taught global development to mostly white students– because that’s who registers. Over the years, I have become accustomed to the diss-ease these students experience with the syllabus. Even though I hold a Canada Research Chair and belong to the College of The Royal Society of Canada, I am constantly asked why is understanding racial capitalism or feminist economics is even relevant in a course designed to teach students about various theoretical approaches to international development along with how concepts and practices have evolved. It’s as though my research chair has become a target and the institutional support that I need is nowhere to be found.
Incredibly, a handful of doctoral students actively refuse to participate in the course –even though they signed up for it—and don’t bother to drop it. This past year, a student who failed out numerous times in the program (learned from the University’s filing), filed a legal complaint against me (and the university) that my course “stereotyped” all white men and felt that the literature was “personally directed” to him as a white European male (worth noting that in that same class where I taught all-white men none of them felt this way). I was apparently too “feminist”. The complaint argued that I practiced reverse racism by including research, models and ideas from nonwhite scholars, peer-reviewed knowledge that has been systemically excluded for centuries. In fewer words, he said I, as an award winning and widely published internationally recognized scholar, was a sexist against men and a racist-against whites, a historically privileged group in Canada.
And if my employer does not do the right thing then I will find myself having to pay thousands of dollars for a lawyer out of my own pocket to defend my course syllabus to my own department and University administration. In my view the employer took this student’s white male victimhood complaint seriously when they refused to jointly-represent me, and in deciding that it said to me – and to all other scholars who value academic freedom that I did not matter. All I know is that my employer didn’t have my back. And it is not the first time either.
Another example. Black feminist colleagues and I frequently end up paying lawyers before publishing works or even books, again out of our own pockets, to ensure our research, work and lived experience stories told by Black feminist scholars and researchers will not be attacked or become a legal liability for the publisher.
Many Black feminist scholars now even budget for legal fees in grant applications.
If Black women’s scholarship is viewed as risky, it won’t get published. If we don’t get published, we don’t advance in our careers. So, we try to smooth the way by making sure that legal reviews have been done in advance, making it harder for publishers to say no.
We also personally pay for legal support when students feel “uncomfortable” when we use the words like racism or misogyny because we don’t want to lose our jobs.
No one else has to do this.
Academic freedom is a much-vaulted principle in our society but the truth is, it is not equitably applied.
If you are a racialized woman, especially Black or Indigenous, and if your syllabus doesn’t pass as acceptably white, pro patriarchy, pro capitalist, pro imperialist and pro-colonialist, its open season on your reputation—and job.
While the need to pay out of pocket to protect ourselves and our jobs is not new, the need to do so at all is increasing in this new anti-woke political environment.
Canadian universities and or their federated associations like the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) have historically defended academic freedom of faculty under fire—and paid the bill to do so. As far as I know there are no public statistics on how many Black women academics have been supported by CAUT.
Ultimately, Black women and other marginalized faculty in Canada continue to primarily rely on their own resources to fight for inclusion. Our employers harm Black women scholars specifically when they know they should be for example automatically representing them in cases or paying legal bills without pressure from a faculty association.
By not addressing this issue, and fast, we will not see more Black women scholars enter academia. That means students will not be exposed to anything but the same old mainstream, white supremacist and colonial readings, ideas and practices.
If we want to do better. If we want to achieve a truly equitable, functioning pluralistic society in which all can authentically flourish as themselves, we need to ensure our students, future leaders, are exposed to ideas that have previously been systemically suppressed, ignored or dismissed because the scholar is not a white man.
We need to protect plurality, fairness and academic freedom now more than ever.
Is there a simple path forward?
One route is to get the support needed to establish and resource a collective professional liability insurance fund specifically for racialized women faculty in Canadian universities. This already exists with professions like law, medicine and real estate.
Access to an innovative legal and financial safety net would ensure racialized women not only stay in our universities—but also thrive. Extending academic freedom fairly to racialized women scholars could also be a significant competitive advantage for Canadian universities and students who attend them. Imagine the brain gain!Canadian values such as fairness, human rights, equity and equality for all are frequently cited as a leading cultural and political differentiator. If we don’t want to become the 51st state. Let’s not act like one in advance.
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Nick Seebruch, editor
