The Urgency of Anti-Racist Mentorship: Calling the Elephant in the Ivory Tower by its Name

Thursday, January 5, 2023
1:30 PM - 2:20 PM
Zoom

Presentor: Yalda Hamidi, Ph.D., Gender and Women's Studies

The anti-racist mentorship program addresses the urgency of mentoring graduate students of color while addressing struggles with microaggressions and racism on their way to their professional futures. Non-white and non-American faculty and graduate students are among some of the most vulnerable communities on American campuses. They usually carry unaddressed traumas caused by racism, xenophobia, the violence of war, and police brutality against their communities, which are then exacerbated by interpersonal racist comments or stereotypes they receive from their peers, supervisors, undergraduate students, staff, and other individuals who participate in microaggressions.

As an international graduate and later faculty member of color, I witnessed discrimination and microaggressions first-hand during the past decade of my American academic life. In addition to my observations, research conducted by scholars of color proves vast differences in the lives of different groups of graduate students of color in contrast to their white counterparts. These cumulative traumas result in a gap in graduate students' success and withdrawal, significantly impacting their mental and physical health; and continuously exposing faculty of color to losing or leaving their jobs.
In seeking help and finding a solution, I participated in multiple mentoring events and opportunities provided by professional institutions, such as NeMLA. Later, I served as a mentor for graduate students and a peer mentor for junior faculty of color in different places. I argue that without addressing racism in academic spaces or calling the elephant by its name, the superficial mentorship that solely relies on the discourse of professionalism does not effectively support scholars of color. In this presentation, I explain how an anti-racist mentorship program utilizes research, pedagogy, and mentorship to raise awareness, make a brave space, and advocate for restorative justice for graduate students.