Confronting Institutionalized Racism in Higher Education: Counternarratives for Racial Justice

This book chronicles the experiences of faculty at predominantly white higher education institutions (PWI) by centering voices of racialized faculty across North America. Drawing on Critical Race Theory and critical, feminist, and auto-ethnographic approaches, the text analyzes those narratives, situating people’s words in a landscape of institutionalized racism within higher education. In order to support newer under-represented faculty, administrators committed to supporting faculty, and doctoral students interested in a future in higher education, the book offers strategies and implications for institutional reform and anti-racist faculty organizing/survival in academia. Despite claims by university administrations about commitments to diversity, this book demonstrates otherwise, offering counter-narratives from racialized faculty members who share their struggles.

Table of Contents:
1: Speaking Truth to Power: Institutionalized Racism in the Academy; 2: Teaching While Brown/Black: Racism All Day Everyday; 3: Stonewalling and Gaslighting: How Higher Education Continues to Shortchange Faculty; 4: Facing the Gauntlet: Racialized Faculty Navigate Tenure and Promotion; 5: Making the Road by Walking: The Formation of a Racialized Faculty Caucus; 6: Self-Care as Political Warfare: Racialized Women’s Survival in the Academy; 7: White Privilege, White Supremacy, White Resentment: How Racialized Faculty Get Invisibilized and How to Organize Against It; 8: Manifesting New Realities: The University the Way it Could Be

About the Author :
Dianne Ramdeholl is Associate Professor of Adult Education at SUNY Empire State College. Committed to adult education for democratic social change and justice-centered practice/research, Dianne's work has focused on developing educational projects with marginalized populations. She is co-convenor of the Racialized Faculty Caucus at SUNY/Empire State College. Jaye Jones is a higher education administrator at the City University of New York (CUNY). Her training as a social worker and adult literacy educator deeply informs her work as a leader committed to centering the voices and knowledges of marginalized communities of color.

Review :
Ramdeholl and Jones cast their text as a truth telling project. In actuality it is a truth experiencing project. The narratives not only strike an emotional chord but also speak to the rich and nuanced experiences of racialized faculty that are often invisibilized. With each chapter, readers are ushered into a deeper level of understanding the spaces these faculty occupy. The text offers a necessary indictment against DEI efforts that fail to focus on justice-centered, structural transformation. Confronting Institutionalized Racism in Higher Education: Counternarratives for Racial Justice is a necessary read for higher education administrators and faculty committed to creating and maintaining a socially just liberatory academic workspace. Lisa R. Merriweather, Professor of Adult Education and Co-founder & Senior Editor: Dialogues in Social Justice: An Adult Education Journal "In Predominantly White Institutions of every kind we see a status quo of White normativity and White supremacy that goes largely unchallenged. There are examples of performative commitments to inclusion, equity and diversity but the presence of anti-Blackness and anti-Brownness is ubiquitous. This remarkable book pays powerful testimony to the pain, terror and complete dysfunctionality of this reality. It is a must read for anyone of any racial identity committed to creating genuinely antiracist higher education institutions" Stephen Brookfield, Distinguished Scholar, Antioch University Dianne Ramdeholl and Jaye Jones have drawn on their own experiences, as well as those of faculty whom they have interviewed, to create an informative and powerful book describing the lived experiences of racialized faculty in predominately white higher education institutions (PWI) within North America. Chapters examine a range of important topics, including navigating tenure and promotion processes, incidents of racism (e.g. microaggressions, bullying, and gaslighting) in teaching and organizational spaces, self-care in toxic environments, and working toward systemic change. The book will be invaluable both to racialized faculty and to faculty and administrator accomplices genuinely committed to combatting inequality to create truly inclusive academic environments. Jovita M. Ross-Gordon, Distinguished Professor Emerita, Texas State University and Co-Editor-in-Chief, New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education