تهدید به هویت علمی و تعهد برای دانشکده علوم رنگ

Scholars are trained to be experts in their discipline and to develop disciplinary identities and commitments. Faculties and administrators expect evidence of those identities and commitments in the form of publications and professional service for promotion and tenure. Yet faculty of color are typically disproportionately loaded down with special committee assignments, task force requests, student demand, and so on. The intent is certainly not malevolent. It is in the nature of “Oh, we need a Black/Hispanic/Indian/Asian …representative. Can you help us out?” or “Finally there is someone who can advise our Black/Hispanic/Indian/Asian… students”. Such demands serve the university's interests but have little to do with scholarly identities and commitments. They consume time needed to establish scholarly credentials, and they undermine disciplinary identities and compete with disciplinary commitments. In effect, the faculty member has her/his racial identity thrust upon her/him as THE primary identity. Yet when promotion and tenure roll around, colleagues who were so welcoming wonder why she/he wasn't more academically productive. There must be mechanisms for supporting the disciplinary identities and commitments of all faculty and reducing conflicting demands on their time and resources, or we will systematically destroy, for faculty of color, just that which we presume to value most.1