A Q&A with Julie R. Posselt
Last month, Stanford University Press hosted an online discussion with Equity in Science » author Julie R. Posselt, Gibor Basri (UC Berkeley), and Natasha Warikoo (Tufts University). Because attendees of the talk posted more questions than could be answered in a short amount of time, we invited Julie to continue the conversation here.
Thank you for your work! During your fieldwork and interviews, how did faculty and/or graduate students (or administrators if they are part of the sample) think of themselves as workers? Did that come up at all, or did the “disciplinary steward” focus overtake most interviewees’ comments?
Graduate students have long been positioned dually as learners and workers, and mismanagement of that reality has been the source of graduate student protests and strikes in the last year. In my research on racially and gender diverse doctoral programs, students absolutely thought of themselves as workers as well as students. The students of color we interviewed recognized that their labor on behalf of the institution not only took the form of teaching and research assistantships. Departments striving for diversity leaned on students for other types of time and effort as well — engaging with prospective students for outreach and recruitment, providing support to other current students in the absence of faculty of color, and more. In some respects, graduate students were the ultimate cultural translators—an idea that I develop in the book—that allow these historically white and male organizations to transition into something more like the America we are becoming. All of this came with emotional labor for students, too, which they spoke about as a part of their work. It exacts a serious toll to conceal one’s negative emotions and reactions to everyday instances of racism and sexism, in order to help keep a positive tone.
Have you seen relevance of hiring and promotion practices of faculty in your case studies as shaping the grad student experience?
Faculty hiring and promotion is absolutely relevant to the student experience. My research has observed this in a few ways. First, the composition of a department’s faculty and availability of same-race or same-gender faculty to serve as advisors or informal mentors is important to recruiting doctoral students. Of course, students can learn with and from any faculty with the skill and disposition to provide guidance, but research demonstrates that the experience of being part of a community in which one feels they belong makes a significant difference to student wellbeing.
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