 I have the top of the hour, so let's begin. Let me welcome everybody. Welcome to the Future Trans Forum. I'm delighted to see you here. My name is Brian Alexander. I'm the Forum's creator, chief catator and host. And I'm delighted to welcome you all for a really, really important hour today. I'm absolutely delighted to welcome two faculty members from California, two experts on, among other things, Asian American women in the academy. We have two great professors. I'm going to bring them up in the order they appear on the slide. So first, let me bring up Professor Wei Ming, Bariatus, coming to you from San Francisco State University. Hello, women. Hi, Brian. Hi, everyone. Good to see you. Thank you for coming. Thank you. You know, I'm in awe of the amount of work you do and the amount of ideas that you address. And rather than ranting and raving about you for 10 minutes while you glow, let me ask you instead to introduce you by telling us what are you going to be working on for the next academic year? What are the major topics, the major projects that are uppermost in your mind? So for the next year, I'll be continuing my work as the faculty director for San Francisco State University's Center for Equity and Excellence in Teaching and Learning. I am a professor of Asian American Studies, but I've moved over to this semi-administrative role for the time being. And around May, we realized that we really needed to support faculty not only in being able to teach online, but to teach online with justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion uppermost in their pedagogies of inclusive excellence. So I use those are our terms that we use. And that spells out Jedi Pi. So we created a Jedi Pi Institute. My husband has threatened to actually bake a Jedi Pi for me. I don't know what that will look like. And we currently have 200 faculty enrolled in the fall Jedi Pi. And we put through over 100 in the summer Jedi Pi. It's an intensive operation. I have personally been consulting with deans across campuses, department chairs across campus to support them to create a more equitable and, frankly, specifically anti-racist approach. The College of Science and Engineering is actually the first one to decide they want to create an anti-racism task force on our campus. So I've been consulting with that dean. And so many individual departments in places that you might not expect, like geography, are trying to address anti-racism in their, not only in their teaching, but also in their interactions with one another, which I think is so powerful that it's being looked at holistically. The other, among many other things, my other major project is going to be a task force on teaching effectiveness assessment, which on the surface of it might not seem to be so critically urgent at this moment in time, but I think is actually the key to making huge shifts in our culture as a campus, and indeed as perhaps even a university system, the California State University system. And that is because, although it might start with teaching effectiveness, assessment, and frustrations that faculty have with the over-reliance on basically a little more than a student rating system of faculty, it's basically like Yelp, right? Rate my professor. And we rely on those numbers for really important decisions in retention and promotion when we probably shouldn't be. I would say definitely shouldn't be. And number one, we're not actually assessing for our desired outcome. We assess students for their desired learning outcomes, but we don't assess faculty for the desired outcomes that we have. Our campus's primary goal is social justice through education. Nowhere in any of our assessments do we actually ask about that. So that's going to be a big move push for me. And then I also edit our pedagogy newsletter, Seedle Circles, which you can find on the Seedle website. We have back issues. And we publish about one issue a month. Wow. I mean, I'm delighted that you've mastered the science of cloning because there's clearly fly-refix of you. Oh my goodness. Well, that gives us, all of us, a good introduction into you and your work. Let me bring up your co-author, or co-editor as well. Let me bring up Carolyn Culo Valverde. So let me see if I can get this up right. One more button to press. And here we go. Hi. Greetings. Welcome. Welcome. Thank you. Hi, you're done. I have to ask. I have to ask. Again, this is the same question. So I'm guilty of repetition here, but you also have so much work, so much going on, so many ideas, so many projects. If you could introduce yourself to people by telling what are you going to be working on for the next academic year? What are the big projects, the big ideas? What's uppermost in your mind? So I'm actually a trained political scientist. So I'll continue my work on looking at alternative sustainable development in Asia and diaspora connections, focusing on Vietnam. And I also am founding director of a new Vietnam Studies Initiative, where we look at contemporary issues and youth culture. So I'll definitely be continuing with that. But in terms of higher ed, I came into it as a calling, because I and William and others, we suffered through it in so many ways. And so what started as a movement that led to this tax, I will continue with that. So we'll continue to support individuals. I joke that we run the Harriet Tubman of academia, and certainly we'll continue to support individuals as they come in. And we initially had Asian-American women, then it became Asian-American men, then it became more Latino men, then it became white women. And we expect to have white men next to ask for assistance around issues of tenure, because as our book mentioned, this is a systemic problem that is about the institution and how individuals are treated, oftentimes based on race and gender. But we're all going to suffer in that. So in future projects, I'm going to be looking at the institutionalized activism of faculty and students, in particular weaponizing of students who target dissenting professors, which is something that has been observed for some time. And it's going into full swing with various faculty members that have been dismissed from their universities in these particular strategies that are insidious. And of course, I've been teaching since the beginning of COVID and through COVID. And so everything I teach now is in presence of COVID and Black Lives Matter. So definitely these events have been a catalyst of what we felt was going to happen all along in your works with Future Trends. You understand this all too well. And so I definitely will be doing the observing and also the research and teaching around these issues as they're relevant, because our students and faculty are definitely in the midst of this. And so how will university look as we emerge from this? Fantastic. Again, the two of you have mastered cloning at an epic scale. So I'm impressed at the variety of your work. And I promise I will follow up on questions of Vietnamese politics after this. I did want to just check in with both of you first. Since you were in California, are both of you healthy in terms of COVID and safe from ash and fire right now? There is quite a bit of ash in the air. My garden is covered right now. Yeah, so we're just inside with all the windows shut and all of our pepper filters on, something that most Californians have had to invest in if they can afford them. Lucky of which to have that resource. Yeah, I think aside from the physical and environmental dangers, there's then this visual psychological impact where our skies are orange. And so it really feels like the apocalypse. It really feels like things are dire. And so that definitely has its effect. And all through this, of course, it's been financially, spiritually, and certainly psychologically detrimental to so many of us. It's a terrible story. And my sympathies go out to both of you as well as to anybody involved in this conversation who is based in California or in Oregon, which is also baking in fling. I invited you both here in part because I learned about your book. And here is visual proof. Fight the Tower, which is an incredible title. And it's an amazing, amazing book. You should have on the bottom left of your screen is a kind of yellow orange colored button. And that'll take you to the Rutgers Publishing page for this so you can. I'm blown away by this book because, among other things, you have such a huge variety of topics. Everything from, well, as you just said now, psychological and spiritual issues, to questions of tenure, to questions of publication, to micro-politics of the departments, the larger interracial within the Asian diaspora politics. And you also have so many different Asian nations represented, everything from the Philippines, the Great Chapter on Pinae, people to Vietnam, to China, to Japan. I mean, it's just, and there's a wonderful chapter on Hmong people, which I really, really heartened to see. So first of all, this is just recommendation. Of course, get this book, grab it as soon as you can. And I have so many questions, but friends, if you're new to the forum, please know this is not a traditional interview in that I'm sitting here interviewing our two wonderful guests. The questions that are the best, the comments that are the best come from all of you. So I'm just gonna start off with a couple of quick questions, but I really, really wanna hear from all of you. So again, if you're new, just remember the bottom of the screen, there's a raised hand button if you wanna join us on stage. And there's also the question mark button if you'd like to just type in a comment or a question. So my first question, this is a really basic question. What have you learned from your audiences and readers? What kind of feedback have you gotten from folks? You wanna start winning? Sure, I mean, the first feedback that we usually get is tears. It is the feeling of authentication. I thought I was the only one. There's a great deal of isolation that people experience because the overarching message of the book is, academia is not a meritocracy. Unfortunately, Asian American women, perhaps as among all people of color, I think Asian Americans, more than other people of color by the myth that academia is a meritocracy. And that has to do with our position in terms of being this quote unquote model minority myth where we're always told we're good at school. School is the pathway to success and education. That is something that a lot of East Asians really emphasize because it comes from our own historical and cultural background. And so there's this emphasis on education as being a neutral experience, as a merit-based experience and one in which you will succeed. And indeed, many Asian American women experience that at least up until graduate school. At which point they then might start to experience harassment, they might start to experience as we actually have a couple of graduate students' narratives represented in the book. So they describe their experiences in graduate school. We have one undergraduate. I was really pleased that we were able to get one undergraduate to share. You're right, to share their experiences about being undergraduate Asian American women. But what we see is that by the time Asian American women enter into academia as professionals, they may have just then started to realize that in fact it is not a merit-based system or the image that we use in the book because we were both huge Star Wars nerds is it's that moment that you realize, wait, that's no moon. That's the death star. And we've been trapped in a tractor beam already. And that was the hugest thing is that people don't realize that it's actually in some ways not only just as, but perhaps even more of an intersectionally racist and sexist system that they've entered into. And it's a deeply hierarchical system, which is also I believe at odds with how most of us imagined academia would be. We thought it's our intellectual freedom. It's academic freedom. It's freedom. And it's not freedom. It is the opposite of that. I love that you have tears of recognition that speaks so well to the power of your book and what you've achieved with that. Do I have the numbers right that in American higher education, about 3% of the faculty are Asian American women? Keelan, do you want to do this? Yeah, it actually you start out about, we're, I guess, well represented in higher ed, but then by the time we're in getting tenure track positions where maybe at 6%, but by the time we go into tenure, we're less than 2%. And then moving up, it's even less than that. So what it says is like there is no door or window for Asian American women, okay? And this actually starts even in undergrad years. We have grad students and undergrad represented, but a study done by Catherine Milkman at all looked at 600, I'm sorry, 6,500 letters to 85 different universities. And the only thing they changed, okay? And these are letters that undergrads write to professors to for mentorship, moving towards grad school and their careers. And they use sort of Asian, native, black, Latino sounding names and white sounding names. And of course, white men receive the quickest and the most responses. But what was shocking even for the researchers that Asian American women were the least likely to receive responses and in the slowest amount of time from social science, humanities, all the way to STEM. And so that we are simply shining light on these statistics and they're abysmal to say the least, right? And then you juxtaposed it to what Wayming was talking about is this idea of what we term a privileged oppress because we're perceived this like this honorary white privileged group, you know, lay low and you'll get all these things you need it. But actually we are by far the easiest to discard, dismiss and stopped at every corner. And so, you know, aside from the testimonials and the tears that come about from those to get back to your question of those who receive our book, you know, we're in the heels of presuming incompetent, which is another great seminal piece edited anthology that was the first of its kind looking at women of color saying that, you know, this is what's happening as an epidemic is not a isolated incident. We're not isolated. We are made isolated. We are feeling worse in solitary as we're dealing with this but in fact, it's a phenomenon. And so we're in the heels of that and what our book attempts to do is, you know, once you have those tears and then once you realize you're not alone which presuming incompetent offered, you know fight the tower says, then are you ready to fight? You know, now is the time to fight. And so what we offer is empirical research and data to say, in fact, you know, you're not alone and that is not, you know she said, she said what have you and that there's actually evidential material. I mean, the chapter that I covered, for example you know, it's called Killing Machine and we, you know, survey 400 individuals and actually in a four day survey and the survey is quite long. It's like 30 minutes long and we sent it out to women in academia and we immediately got over 200 responses and they even said they wanted to respond more and we aggregated about 200 just less than 200 of these numbers of Asian American women and 75% that's three and four Asian American women said that they are suffering through health issues even chronic health issues that they attribute to the hostile environment of the university. So yeah, you think about the workplace, you know if you have three and four people experiencing health issues and, you know and we wrote this in part, you know because we were suffering health issues, you know I had a near death experience, for example and then others died. I was the lucky one. So, you know, we have poems by W.P. talking about Sufak Fang who, you know, died of cancer. And so we, no research shows that through, you know stress creates, you know your immune system is jeopardized and then, you know, all these diseases come in and so, you know, cancer is one of them. So we're also wrote this book because there's so many that don't have a voice even, you know, they're not here with us today. So it is a very, very real issue. It's not us whining about, you know tenure or not tenure, it's life or death. And that's why we were so moved to write this book. And we are moved to be able to read it. Thank you. That's an impressive reaction. Friends, I have a few more questions I'd like to ask but again, I'd really like to hear from all of you. So if you would like to take the stage just press the raised hand button and I can beam you up. And if you'd like instead to type in a question just go to that question mark button and type in a question or a comment and we'll be glad to relay that. So many other questions. I'm wondering if Carolyn, if I could focus on you for a second, you mentioned the model minority problem. And this is specific to Asian Americans is the non-white population that excels on all kinds of metrics. And yet this has a dark side to it if I can pick up what you've always been up for. Can you speak to the model minority problem for Asian American women in the academy? Absolutely. I think what, you know I want to even get it in deeper if you don't mind which is, you know, what brings what makes our book unique is that we make the claim that, you know, race and racial oppression and or gender oppression, et cetera was really, you know, socially constructed engineered, if you will by those who wanted to make sure that as they create these institutions that are unfair unjust and that, you know extracts resources that they keep us from each other. They keep us from each other. Okay. So the civil rights movement really was I mean, we go back quite far in history but let's just take the civil rights movement as a point where we came together and said no more for, you know for laborers, no more for, you know African Americans, Latinos and Asians, et cetera and we came together. And so, you know it became really a nuisance for those in power if you will. And so they had to sort of engineer and socially construct new ways to create difference between us. And so that was really the beginning of the model minority myth. They took, I believe Japanese Americans who were in turn doing World War II and were so frightened by that awful experience of in which their lands and property and lives and, you know, reputation everything was stripped from them forever. They took that population that was so keen at that point to assimilate and not ever again to be targeted as the alien other or as a traitor. And, you know, they married out at 80% rate in many instances. That's just one example. So they targeted this group to say, well, look at this model minority. They're so docile, they're so nice and their kids are doing so well that all these valedictorians and we can attribute that to say Confucian values, et cetera, et cetera. Why can't you African Americans you Latinos, you know with those kinds of stereotypes around, you know not violent or lazy, et cetera. Why don't you do as well? And so the first group, obviously, you know we're like, I don't know but then over time through generations and when you target a group that was made so vulnerable through psychological and physical, you know, oppression then, you know, they started to internalize that and then you have several generations down the line they don't even see anything different. I mean, I get students that absolutely adhere to the model minority myth and they believe it and they don't and they wonder why others are not and this, so you have to say through the social engineering project and construction of difference that you, you know, those in power were very successful, you know but it doesn't speak to the reality of us seeing, you know, us here, for example that have values around education you're here to, you know to promote these ideas with us here. So it's not, it's not so much about race or gender that makes this difference is how we were constructed so different and given little pieces of the pie so we can go, oh, okay, we're okay, we're okay. And so what Wimmy and I brought up bringing up is you tell this to a population and such as, you know aggregate a little bit more to Asian American women and so we internalize it, we believe it what happens when that, you know the tenure statistic comes around and we don't get tenure even when we've done everything right done maybe triple quadruple the work and we don't get tenure what does it say to our reality? It says that everything we've been brought up with for generations is a lie. It's an absolute lie. So what does that do to, you know, oneself? And so the answer is not to say oh, it's this, you know race, group, gender that is a problem is the institution is how things are set up is how the narrative has been so powerful and strong that, you know, it's set to follow generations after us if we don't speak up and that's what we're doing and the other thing we, you know we say fight the tide we're not talking about this moment we are in the heels of a history of women who have fought for us, you know they include, you know tongue, for example and, and, and Wang and others for, for example in Penn, in Penn University Penn sorry, University of Pennsylvania Rosalie Tong who was going, you know was more than qualified in her school of business to be promoted, but she was not and she was harassed in so many ways and it, you know it went all the way up to Supreme Court okay, Kestar was actually, you know her counsel and and, you know, she, she won you know, was overwhelming evidence and she opened her, her case set precedence that ten-year cases are able to review their cases before it was closed and now is much more transparent so in the heels of Rosalie Tong and Asian-American women American women fighting for tenure we now have ten-year cases open and, you know Jane Zhu at, at, you know in Iowa, Marcy Wong in, in Berkeley and, and even Donald Connichi who's a male Asian-American UCLA who has, you know been instrumental in support of this you know we had a meeting several years back at the Asian-American studies conference where there was four women four of them are, you know some of them were participants in our book now and he said, man you know 30 years ago there was also four phenomenal women you know fighting for tenure and making headway and here we are 30 years 40 years later and and we're doing the same thing you know so it is to say that there is history behind this we want to you know let that be known that we have always fought we are not these doll-saw Asian-American women that we saw in justice and our acts have made a difference in academia and we want to continue to do so and so that that's you know part of what we're trying to do here and you want to continue to fight thank you questions are coming in and at the same time Wei Ming is I think six people I think underestimated because the sixth person is now taking over the chat and giving you all kinds of great information so please if you want I'll try and copy that later on but it's really really good stuff we have questions coming in from all kinds of folks and I want to bring up one from the awesome Steven Downs who argues or asks is your sense that this is a US problem or a global problem who wants to take that first I'll take a little stab at it so that's a really important question and one of the things that we feature we actually have an Asian international women's scholar Kiko Takayama describing her experience and one of the things that is challenging of course is that for Asian international scholars and just to be clear the national data does not disaggregate between Asian and Asian American which is a problem because we're always seen as perpetual foreigners anyway so what difference does it make but in fact we have quite different experiences Asian international scholars when they come here they don't they often have not experienced being a minority before we just be really clear about that right they may be perceived as Asian women in an international context in their home nations in their interactions with people in a global context but they have not experienced being a minority before and what I mean by minority is not numerical but of course I mean a structural minority somebody who has lack of access to power Asian international scholars we found have absolutely almost zero we could not find any research about them there is no concern about them even though they I think make up a pretty significant percentage of the diversity of Asian American scholars in our systems they also face specific issues often their university holds their visa their university often holds their housing they therefore are more vulnerable and our scene is more vulnerable and are therefore more likely to be harassed and I mean a lot of what we found is that Asian American women in academia because they are seen as hypersexualized I call out to my colleague Celine Perranias-Chimizo in her book the hypersexualization of race that delineates the way that Asian American women are hypersexualized and hyper feminized I mean they're not just sexualized but they're sexualized as passive weak and victim victimizable and then further since they are in this dependent extra dependent position on their university so if they like don't make tenure they lose their visa right that is such a serious thing to consider if they experience problems their housing may be threatened being harassed or you know sexually harassed to be very explicit and that was something that we've seen in a lot of the cases that Asian American women experience the problems they experience with tenure and promotion are often because they've been sexually harassed and they have rebuffed the advances of their department chair or by powerful members of their departments or committees and they have no recourse Asian international scholars if they're not US citizens there are certain grants that they cannot be you know the primary investigator on and that will impact their tenure and promotion and then the last but really important thing is language and language discrimination so not only are they experiencing bias and student evaluations which is the obvious one they often will also experience bias from their colleagues we had a case at San Francisco State it never became a case it just disappeared when the faculty member disappeared but we had an Asian international women scholar in a field that was based on her cultural background I'll try not to be more explicit than that a field that was based on her cultural background she was denied tenure and promotion in her department she disappeared she left the university when people in her department who were all white men were asked why didn't she get tenured and promoted in your department they said she couldn't write she couldn't write so here we have people who are invited in presumably because they have strengths they have connections they have challenges that everybody knows that they were going to face all along are not supported in any way they're not given any kind of support let me just pause you for a second the asker of this question which is a great question wanted to just clarify he was thinking about do you have a sense of this in the international scene i.e. is this a problem is this the same kind of problem in Europe or is this the same kind of problem in Canada yeah of course it is especially in white European dominated countries like Canada in Europe we see the same problems the difference is that more often the immigrant populations are a little bit more recent so they might not necessarily have the same historical background that populations in the US have in the US the Asian American movement had been very intimately tied with black liberation movements and other communities of color that have been working together in allyship and in places where you might not have that in the same way it's different the other component of the international scene that I think is really important to mention is the places where Asians are supported as settler colonialists and so we look at Hawaii as an example of that but we can also look at places like Fiji I've been working with a graduate student who's looking specifically at Indo-Fijian women in there are very specific populations where Asians are a tertiary migration pattern where they were moved from somewhere in Asia through European colonialism to say an island in the Caribbean and then maybe they have moved here but during that when they're in that island in the Caribbean they are often put into a middle a middle person minority buffer position to buffer between the colonialists and the colonized or the African imported enslaved people and Lisa Lowe has quite a really useful analysis of this called the Intimacies of Four Continents which I recommend that's a great title yeah to jump on to that I want to two answers one immediately is doing COVID my international students and Asian American students have felt very acutely you know what's going on around discrimination you know what the administration and others in the government are calling this the Chinese flu etc the Asian American international students have been harassed attacked there's websites up and there's the highest number of reported of incidences around COVID is being attacked so this goes back to Vincent Chin and others so you're misidentified and so on and it also goes back to this idea that well if Asian Americans or Asians are doing so well in the academy you know how are they still vulnerable to these things because this is happening in universities it's happening in university towns and so they're made especially you know vulnerable to this and that's in essence this is the first time these international students have had a semblance of discrimination racial discrimination in the United States and they've told a very different story that's why they decided to come here internationally speaking but I wonder too if the person in the audience was talking about is this a global problem and I will say that I feel yes because the institutions that are in place and particularly higher ed is a neoliberal model and so what is happening is that it was already the bottom dollar so it wasn't this idea of education it wasn't this idea of fairness or meritocracy for a long time now so this is happening across the world in this idea of how are we supposed to treat education which is now what's happening with COVID because 75% adjuncts now contingency workers and so that group was not supported that group was not given research money they're not given training they're not giving so many things and so once education was already in question what is the value of your education and also then what is the cost then there becomes this cost benefit situation they're already paying too much there is this and that's why we have the occupy movement etc. and that's why we still have protests that's why in California in particular we have graduate students who don't have enough to eat and don't have enough to stay so this is all in part and parcel of the university neoliberal university and also that once you have a situation with remote teaching then students are asking is this even worse because now you're not getting the tenured professors you're not getting these individuals that can necessarily teach you're getting whatever you're getting and then you don't have the resources in New York quality of tech but yet they're having to pay all this money that they're not using the services but they're not getting tech support they're not getting allowance for that for example so students are staying outside of the few places that have internet access in order to get to their work the international students if they're at home they're up all hours in the day to take these classes and so there's so many things going on right now that is of a global scale COVID it has united in ways that are both extraordinarily painful but also enlightening that it makes us see okay now we have to take a magnifying glass to see how education was delivered and frankly it was not students were not getting a proper education and they were having to pay through the nose for this substandard education because money is going elsewhere it's not going to the professors it's not going to the resources it's not going to lowering student fees and so this is made even more pronounced during COVID and remote teaching learning teachers also I'm sure when we can attest to this we have had to fight tooth and nail for every resource we have including computers or chairs or desks or phones I mean these are really basic things that we've had to fight tooth and nail for and write grants for and beg and start up go fund me or whatever is needed in order to be a professor thank you for saying this and it also makes me thank Wei Ming because she's in a position now where she can hopefully ladle out some of those resources we have a stack of questions coming up and I want to make sure everyone gets a chance I hate to pause you because this is terrific but I want to make sure that everyone gets to throw in their ideas and questions here is one this is a question coming from Vassar college hang on one second Bader yes, while you asked your question I accidentally knocked Wei Ming off the stage so let me go ahead and I can see my big picture hi there I've of course experienced so many of these issues through my colleagues and friends at Vassar college I would think oh why is it happening at Vassar I'm a little bit relieved that it's more widespread but not that I want Vassar to do the same sort of things my question is sort of personal nature my wife is Indonesian I have two half Indonesian children they're 11th grade and 7th grade the older one is starting to she's on the equity team at school and she's very smart she's doing very well I'm just wondering if you have any advice or support that you could channel what words of wisdom can I help them navigate what you have already navigated on an ongoing struggle for many many many years for Asian American or Asian women in academia well thank you for your question and I want to give two answers to one is speaking of Vassar and other institutions I have to thank personally the women who were involved in this project because they did so at great risk to their career and some of it was quite nascent there were undergrad students there were untenured professors and there were other professors and so they did at great risk to write for us and one of the women who had a huge law case was actually from Vassar who ended up not contributing so there were many who were not able to contribute because of that fear as well we're unique into that we use everyone's names we didn't do anonymous though we gave people the option they felt it was important and so we thank them for that so just a shout out to all those who didn't quite make it and those who actually are in our anthology and then the second part is I can speak for myself and definitely others because I've heard these stories hundreds and hundreds of times is when we came into the academy we had this idea that if we just do our work and do it well then we get promoted and I was told early that you have to spend about 70% networking and I completely dismiss it like poo poo that's beneath me because I'm a scholar but you know in retrospect what I've learned is that actually you have to be a bit savvy about how your institution runs you have to be on committees you have to talk to people because frankly how it exists today and I don't like and I like it to be changed is who you know and it's the same with it's a corporation at this point so simply it's who you know how you get your work out and so people you know these committees, promotional committees or even in your department if they feel you're a certain way then they may promote you what have you and so in some ways I would suggest to your wife to build allies I'm not saying brown nose or do things that are disingenuous unauthentic but I definitely feel that with everyone who is going up for promotion in various ways know how the system works how the promotion works know the people involved that can mentor you through that process I think it's really important and I will say too at the end of the day I personally would not advise one to just kind of lay low and I would say because if something comes up that doesn't seem right you should say something too but two things happens once you say something you become a target number one in almost all the instances of the women that we are affiliated with they said they became a target the moment they defended somebody else you know it wasn't even for themselves because they thought they were fine they saw something going on over there and they brought it up and all of a sudden they were not part of the team anymore they became a target and then they went down this you know a decline if you will but it is what Audre Lord says and I wholly believe in it is that you know so as your wife is going through this you know speak up for herself and for others and find the evidential materials take notes you know you can almost I don't want to be a naysayer or not optimistic but you can almost for sure expect challenges that's putting it mildly so then you know make sure everything is documented make sure everything is she documents all the people she works with all the mentorships she does document all that and document if anything weird happens or document how other people are receiving promotions vis-a-vis in comparison to let's say her promotions to make sure that it's on balance definitely build eye-line ships at all levels find mentors and also be true to oneself when it comes to justice you know because that's the only time we can really make change those are my two cents I don't know if it would be effective I can't guarantee 100% that's a fantastic answer I Bernard thank you very much for asking the question and coming forward my pleasure we only have 5 minutes left so I'm going to direct the next question to give Wei Bing first crack at it but also it's not just one question it's a stack of questions all touch on the same thing in different ways so for example let's see we have one from Sandy who asks about Asian American women students are considering pursuing doctoral degrees and potentially joining academia but hang on then at the same time we have a question from Su Jean Co do you have strategies of resistance for scholars or don't have the benefit of tenure how to resist structures of violence in the academy and at the same time you see a theme here we have a great question I'm an Asian American woman in the academy and I often find myself the only one in various contexts how do you develop support networks when in such tokenized contexts these are all survival and fighting practical strategies from grad school on up Wei Bing do you want to take the first crack at this and share some of the advice you learned from this book so many things I would say the first bit of advice that I have is something that I learned personally and that is to build coalitions and relationships with one another because that is how we survive and thrive I'm very fortunate to be to have a group of close old friends women friends from our graduate program at UC Santa Barbara and the English department who are now all teaching or working in administration in academia in the Bay Area and that has been a really powerful force for me personally we support each other we got each other's first jobs we continue to work together as a network and also to function as role models in fact I interviewed two of these women who again I've known since I was 21 two years old one is an associate dean at USF and another is president of a local community college and I interviewed them both about their leadership and how they became leaders as well as what makes them different as leaders and that's something that else that we would like to uplift is Asian American women can indeed be leaders the problem is that they're often not seen as leaders for the same reasons and the same common stereotypes that I mentioned before we are seen as service providers we are seen as care workers but we are not seen as leaders often because we choose to lead in ways that are not recognized according to kind of white male standards or even white female standards of what leadership is on my own campus in the past couple years I've seen just literally in the past two years I've seen two Asian American women who were in interim dean positions be denied the opportunity to serve full-time in those positions and the reasons given were the same that they weren't seen as leaders because they were perceived as weak or passive when in fact the people who work with them were incredibly impressed by the way that they led that they were powerful through support right again to quote Audra Lord which was definitely a touchstone for us in writing so much of what we wrote for Fight the Tower Audra Lord says you must redefine power instead of the power to oppress, having the power to oppress power is actually the responsibility to support it's kind of a reframing like if we're going to not use the master's tools to dismantle the master's house but we must have power what is that power going to look like right and so me and also my colleagues again I've been really fortunate in my department we have a lot of really powerful women colleagues and we have supported and encouraged one another to seek higher and higher positions of responsibility and power in our university as well as in our academic circles so that we can be better positioned to support our women graduate students and non-binary graduate students and queer male graduate students and anybody else who is remotely femme in a structure where Asian Americans are already hyper feminized I want to add one thing real quick to piggyback on that is this you know this idea of being alone in you know see folks that don't necessarily look like you how do you find allies to address that question you know I found the most unlikely allies you know because my perception is that you know if those that look like me have my you know it's my gender sexual orientation etc they would be there for me and if they have been weaponized if they've been a part of this you know institutionalized activism sort of you know framework then they're not going to be after you they're actually going to be the ones that have been you know appropriate to hurt you so you can you will find allies in the most unlikely places and you will find those who are against you in what you perceive to be a clear safe space you know if you know what I mean so so understand that you know and know that we when we come together in many different ways as we talked about you know within our circles but also beyond that that's been amazing and that's what this book has has done for me has expanded my world so much you know I think I was so very um contained in Asian American studies and you know and understanding that so many of us in all different you know backgrounds have these similar experiences we're able to have to analyze in a much more broad framework and come together as allies I have to say with some regret that that is a fantastic point to end our program on we are right at the end of the hour we have just blazed through this topic and that's a great uplifting and practical moment we usually end by asking you guys how to keep track with you how to keep up with you in your work and obviously you can tell the key thing is grab a copy of fight the tower but also how do we uh how do we keep up with your your new projects in your continued work I mean do you have a social media presence Wayming I think you shared the Jedi Pi link in the chat yeah I also shared a link to Seidel circles which I'm publishing about once a month and I'm always including a Jedi Pi conversation now at the end of that excellent excellent thank you you can find more about me at Qling at gmail.com and also I'm sorry just email me at Qling at gmail.com which is my name at gmail.com also go to Qling.com and then in there there will be more about me and my projects and also other social media outlets just that's it fantastic fantastic again thank you both this is vital work I'm so glad that we could share it with everybody and thank you both for being so generous with your time please stay safe given this gallery of I really appreciate it don't go away friends I just want to let you know what's happening for the next few weeks again we are continuing to have sessions that blend in other topics with these questions of race and with covid so we have a second session on high flex coming up with the inventor of high flex we have a session on credit agencies a session on accessibility a session on admissions and a lot more if you'd like to go carry on these conversations if you'd like to share your exploration of tactics and how you can best succeed and protect Asian yourself if you're an Asian-American woman the academy we have lots of different platforms and social media where you can have these conversations if you'd like to go back into the past and look at some of our sessions that address some of these topics everything from discrimination by gender to questions of scholarship to questions of adjunct we have a whole stack of previous recordings just go to tinyorl.com slash FTF archive and of course let me just extend my best wishes to all of you this is an extraordinary fall semester we're all under a complex amount of pressures and stresses I'm grateful to all of you for spending an hour with us for thinking together and for sharing with us please all of you good luck with this semester stay safe I'd love to hear from you and above all take care see you online bye bye