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Marybeth Gasman required students at her research center to sign blanket nondisclosure agreements, which experts say is unheard-of in academe insidehighered.com/news/2019/08/3…
There are so many things happening here and I just accepted that I am the one who has to say it so here it goes:
Black scholars, women in particular, have critiqued Gassman’s elevation to singular expert on HBCUs for a long time. No one cared.
Her likely student is margnized, along all kinds of identity: race, class, gender, sexuality, generational status. And higher Ed research is very hierarchical compared with other related disciplines. That is a recipe for abuse of power.
There is a lot of paternalism in a white woman speaking to and for black institutions that is very compatible with the black patriarchical leadership in many HBCUs and tertiary organizations like UNCF
Her students are not the kind that an institution with Penn’s dismal record on race, racism and diversity would care very much about. And her field of study is one where advisors have a lot of hierarchical power over students.
A culture of secrecy and sexual performance in that context is a huge problem. Overly broad NDAs are one thing, and we should pay attention to those in this case as an indicator for the state of the profession.
But they are also emblematic of more in this case because of race & gender.
There likely won’t be any institutional repercussions. Many of the students may not feel particularly violated. The culture described here can actually familiar to people from black churches or HBCUs and HSIs - authoritarian, hypersexualization.
But that is not the only criteria for an abusive relationship. In fact, whether the students fee abused should never be the main criteria. Those with power should check the abuse of that power. That’s on us.
Being a white woman who is fluent in the discourse of diversity and procures grant funding and provides instant diversity numbers for an institution provides an undue amount of cover for Gassman. And we should name that.
And it should not have taken a black woman to have said it. But here we are.
And people will have to deal with the typos. I haven’t even had breakfast.
