"'Inclusive excellence' is a way to maybe offer kinder or gentler exclusion, or a less transparent exclusion. But the category of excellence is still going to retain its ideological agenda until we confront it on a systematic, everyday, concrete basis." - Dr. Roderick Ferguson
(This is from Dr. Ferguson's #DiversityAtKU talk - couldn't fit the hashtag in this first Tweet!)
As I'm listening to Dr. Ferguson's talk I'm thinking about these current cluster hires for Black faculty (like at McMaster University, where I recently held a postdoc), and how universities talk endlessly about Black excellence but haven't even made commitments to Black life.
"We're asked to be satisfied by these individual and personal aggrandizements and enrichments, but what if you understood your meaning, your success, as the creation of collective opportunities for people?"
- Dr. Ferguson
- Dr. Ferguson
Dr. Ferguson talked about doing that isn't claimed by institutions (for things like tenure dossiers), and the deliberateness of that choice. My reflection on that is to not always assume that folks *can't* do parts of their work in academia, but that they don't *want* to.
Which is to say I also think about this from the position of students as well, particularly with the pressures of doing more work that is legible to the institution being a way of getting more opportunities for career advancement (postdocs, other fellowships).
(But I also think about it from the perspective of those who aren't trying to re-enter the academy after we've chosen to leave or had no choice but to leave or both.)
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