A quick🧵on Governing Boards >>One of the unfortunate realities of the UNC BOT decision to deny tenure protections to @nhannahjones is the predictability of it based on how out of sight/out of mind Boards are to many in academia until some campus crisis. 1/
In the last couple of years, thanks to stellar reporting by folks at the @chronicle - there's been a bit more attention - but still very little sustained inquiry into the work of boards - especially as it relates to governance, decision-making, and issues of equity. 2/
@FeleciaElana, @DoctorRaq, and I have dedicated a good portion of our young careers trying to illuminate the importance of governing boards generally speaking and especially in light of all the equity issues that intersect with postsecondary education issues 3/
So here are some highlights and stay tuned for an op-ed on this whole situation and other related Board happenings cuz there are a lot of harmful and misinformed takes out there (including from some within the academy)... 4/
Anyways, back in 2019 we did a presentation @AGBInsights conference -which kicked off our efforts to directly introduce boards to the equity conversation. 5/ 
What concerned us, was that per AGB's survey of Trustees - DEI issues were not high on the issues of most concern for Boards 6/
Hence - we made called for asking what is NOT an issue of equity as it pertains to the board, versus focusing on and fracturing equity issues into certain categories or as the domain of certain people on campus... 7/
To advance this work, we call for Boards to embrace "Culturally Sustaining Governance" 8/
What's been most troubling is routinely hearing in our presentations to boards, different audiences, AND from other scholars in review processes (looking at you reviewer 2), that it's "not the place of the board to be involved in DEI work".... 9/
Well - as we're seeing at FAU, UNC, and numerous other places that are attacking tenure and making DEI work all the more difficult, when Boards are left to be autonomous and independent.... 10/
you get the manifestation of undisrupted white supremacy, patriarchy, settler colonialism, ableism, the perpetuation of anti-trans* fear-mongering, lack of support for undocumented individuals, to name a few. 11/
I hope more folks will join us in identifying Boards in their scholarship, holding them accountable for DEI work, and fostering their evolution as an entity. /end
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