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Higher education is facing unprecedented political pressure, leaving many scholars torn between their devotion to academic life and the systems that fail to protect them. Centering an ethics of care inside higher education is no longer just an ideal—it is a vital necessity for the future of sustainable learning. In this episode, Dr. Shawntal Z. Brown—incoming Program Manager for Freedom to Learn at PEN America and President of the Texas Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education—joins the conversation to discuss institutional belonging, workplace power dynamics, and the politicization of tenure. Drawing from her Substack, Loving an Institution That No Longer Loves You Back, and her article “Ethics of Care: Can Tenure be More Humane?,” Dr. Brown exposes what happens when educators are treated as disposable and explores how university leaders can move beyond symbolic gestures toward meaningful, human-centered care.

About Dr. Shawntal Z. Brown

Shawntal Z. Brown, Ph.D., is an educator, scholar, writer, and higher education leader whose work explores institutional power, equity, and organizational change. Through her Substack, Loving an Institution That Doesn’t Love You Back, she writes about the complicated relationships people have with educational institutions, examining questions of belonging, power, care, and what it means to work within systems that can both nurture and harm. Her scholarship focuses on how university leaders translate commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion into organizational practice. Shawntal is the incoming Program Manager for Freedom to Learn at PEN America and President of the Texas Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education. Across her scholarship, writing, and professional work, she asks how we can move beyond institutional symbolism toward more meaningful and humane forms of change.

Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawntalbrown/

Guest Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shawntalzbrown.phd/

Guest Substack: https://lovinganinstitution.substack.com/

Resources Mentioned:

Article: “Are we going to have a legacy or be forgotten”?: Organizational memory in an anti–diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) era., Shawntal Z. Brown, 2026

Article: From Symbolism to Substance: University Presidents, Executive Risk, and the Future of DEI Leadership, Shawntal Z. Brown, 2026

Show Notes:

• 02:10 Loving An Institution That Doesn’t Love You Back
• 04:17 Exploring Power, Belonging, And Care In Institutional Life
• 11:47 The Complex Realities Of Tenure And Institutional Support
• 19:55 The Impact Of State Legislation On Academic Freedom
• 37:16 Redefining Service And Community Engagement
• 41:22 The Chilling Effect On Classroom Teaching And Academic Freedom
• 50:30 Moving Beyond Performative Task Forces Into Real Action
• 55:25 Recalibrating Expectations And The Future Of Higher Education

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Rethinking The Ethics Of Care: Can Tenure Be More Humane? With Dr. Shawntal Z. Brown

Welcome Regenerators. Each episode, we explore the intersection of sustainability, justice and regenerative thinking to build a better future for people and for the planet. If you’ve found this episode, then you’re in for a real treat. I happen to come across our guest where I find a lot of people through their writing. She has a Substack called, Loving an Institution That No Longer Loves You Back.

It’s about the complicated relationship that many of us have with the institutions that we devote ourselves to, belonging, power, care, and what it means to stay committed to a system that can both nurture you and also hurt you at the same time. Perhaps, unsurprising to some, the article that grabbed my attention was titled the Ethics of Care: Can Tenure be More Humane?

Part of that reason is that ethics of care are central to any conversation about creating a sustainable or even regenerative future. That’s exactly why this is a topic of research I undertook from my PhD. In Shawntal’s Substack, she looked at the politicization of tenure under new Texas legislation and asks what it would look like to center a person’s humanity inside a system that was built to critically evaluate and rank them.

Which is absolutely what the tenure track does, it ranks you. Beyond her Substack, Shawntal Brown is an educator, scholar and higher education leader. She’s the incoming Program Manager for Freedom to Learn at PEN America and President of the Texas Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education.

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Shawntal, thank you so much for joining me. Welcome.

I’m so happy to be here. I’m just excited for the conversation that we’ll have.

I want to get the start just talking about your specific Substack. The title alone stopped me in my tracks, Loving an Institution That No Longer Loves You Back. It’s one-part transparent admission. I feel like there’s a lot of their there. Can you talk about it?

Loving An Institution That Doesn’t Love You Back

This was a place where after I navigated being laid off of my institution in 2024, especially for political reasons, we were navigating a lot of state legislatures. Unfortunately, practitioners are at the brunt of that. I realized how much I was like, “I want to speak about this.” No one’s talking about it in the way of like, “I don’t want this to be associated with me. I’m scared to talk about this. Who’s going to have access to this?” Thinking about surveillance.

I was like, “We need to have more conversations about how we’ve been treated by the institution, regardless of legislation.” Also, thinking about, overall, when we think about universities. I came into the field thinking this is a place where people are centered then to see that in practice in some areas. I was like, “This isn’t very care oriented, human focused as much as I thought it would be.” As I was thinking about how to articulate that, this is how the blog came, Loving an Institution.

I love this field of higher education so deeply, but then I’m seeing the practices, the processes and procedures are not that. They’re not loving me back in that way that I needed to. I wanted to go in and be critical of the institution as an organization because I’m like, “We need to hold the institution accountable for the harm that it can cause,” the people who love it so dearly. That’s how I came to have this blog at this point.

You write about belonging, power and care, as three different lenses on institutional life. I wondered if you could elaborate on that, because of those three, I’m not sure which one to pick out as the one that I would want to focus more on. They’re interdependent. They’re also different. Which one took you the longest to see clearly? Why do you separate them the way you have?

Exploring Power, Belonging, And Care In Institutional Life

The idea of power and power dynamics. That stuck out to me. I think about the time whenever I first started my role at UT Austin. I was taken aback by the workplace politics that my office at the time was navigating. My supervisor at the time didn’t have the best relationship with his supervisor. It did put us at this hard place to be in when you think about resources and access to partnerships and relationships because that overall relationship between the two supervisors was not ideal.

I was like, “I didn’t realize the power dynamics above me were going to impact me so deeply.” That’s even coming from someone who started in the field, who just started working and didn’t think too deeply about that until it directly had an impact on me. I was like, “I did not realize that these types of conversations are going to impact my trajectory and impact my access to certain things, do certain things.”

I even think it led me to critique even bigger conversations. My research primarily looks at university presidents. University presidents have such a significant amount of social power. It’s something I harp on when I share with the folks, they can do so much. To even recognize that at this level, everything that a president does can be politically motivated. It can be challenging. It can put them in a complicated situation. From my research in particular, I realized there is a way that you can use your power to benefit those around you. Benefit your institution and benefit how a workplace is received and perceived.

To use this concept of power and to dig into it is critical because we don’t talk about power enough, I feel. We could talk about it a bit more because it impacts all of us in a unique way. Let’s address this. Let’s talk about how our leadership needs to look at. The way they’re interacting with their cabinet. At that time, I was a coordinator. At the bottom of the chain, if you will, it can be brought up into those conversations. How can it be a bit more horizontal instead of vertical whenever we think about power at an institution? Especially as I mentioned earlier. If we care about people and want it to be human centered, then we need to rethink how we are engaging with folks across campus.

Those who don’t work in academics might not get the same depth or color to this conversation out the gates. I want to reflect for a moment back on my life as a student and undergrad. Now, I’ve been at three different academic institutions at the university level. Prior to that, I was also in a community college. I’ve had my exposure to several different types of schools through that time. When I was an undergrad at UC Santa Cruz, my first exposure to the real politics behind the scenes came about because I was nominated by three different professors to achieve honors in the major.

I had one who was very well known and very well respected who ultimately didn’t want me to get it. She was essentially trying to cast a vote against me and also lobbying against me to get honors. I only became aware of that because I had a confidant professor. I basically looked at her as my mentor. She knew I was considering going to graduate school. She said, “I know that Adrienne has a lot of pull.” This was Dr. Adrienne Zihlman. She was a collaborator with Dr. Jane Goodall, a primatologist.

As far as I know, she’s still living, likely retired but I can speak my truth. This is part of that power conversation. My truth is that I showed up every day for her classes. My truth is that I donated my time as a lab technician and I advocated for myself when she wasn’t clear in her grading. My truth is that I showed up every single day and worked hard but I didn’t want to be a primatologist. She saw anybody who didn’t want to be a human evolutionist or a primatologist as a bit of a waste of her time. That was her reason.

Her second reason was that I self-advocated because I said, “You gave me a grade on this paper. You said you marked it late,” which impacted my grade by about 25% on that significant paper. I brought it to her cause I thought it had just been a mistake. She must’ve put it in the wrong pile or something like that. She said, “As I recall, you came to class late that day.” Now, context is everything. The context of me arriving late that day for class, I was all of two minutes late. It wasn’t like I showed up half an hour into the class.

I had delivered my thesis presentation for my Zooarchaeology class, and the student prior to me who had presented ran over, and I was the last person to present in that class set. I still shaved about three minutes off my presentation, and I was at the top of Social Sciences too. A building that was across campus. I ran in the rain, during an El Niño season, all the way across campus because the bus wasn’t going to be there in time to get to her class. I walked in two minutes late and handed my paper in.

Did I deserve a markdown? When I advocated for myself, then I saw doors closing in her eyes. I feel very much that there has been this world of tenure that gets certain professors to stop thinking of themselves as collaborators with the people that they’re teaching. They stop looking at their students as a resource for them to keep their thinking live, vibrant, and current. As a professor of a whole person, you have your student body. They are whole people.

You should grant your students a modicum of respect. I was shown that I was not respected. I have mixed feelings about what tenure does from the student perspective. In some cases, it’s the breath of fresh air that gets these professors to be able to focus on being great teachers and great collaborators because they don’t have to worry so much about whether they are going to be dismissed or left over and they can focus on the things that matter to them.

On the other side, you get Adrienne Zihlman’s. Anyway, that’s my truth from a student perspective. I’d love for you to share if you have some overall view on what tenure does on the positive side, on the negative side, and then how these whole layers of DEI and what our administration is currently enforcing on institutions is doing in actuality.

The Complex Realities Of Tenure And Institutional Support

I see that tenure can bring so many amazing scholars to the forefront. Especially women, women of color, and folks of color at large whose work is so critical, unnecessary in society. Whenever those individuals aren’t granted tenure or offered tenure, it creates a complicated space. I’m thinking about it in the context of like, I’m in Texas. We have a lot of legislation that is surveilling what professors teach. That’s surveilling who can have access to tenure.

At one point, it was something where it’s like, this is going to be beneficial for folks to dive in deeply for the research that they do. To think more outside of my Texas bubble, there’s a lot of amazing folks that are in the field doing critical knowledge that deserves to be uplifted. They deserve to do these deep dives into whatever area they’re in. That provides a beautiful opportunity for people to see individuals who look like them and have tenure to go within my department.

At large, at the College of Education, I’m like, “It’s so beautiful to see other Black women faculty have tenure and have these awards and this procedure around them.” That’s wonderful. That’s something that’s impactful at one place. Going back slightly to the politicization of tenure. It’s like, who can have tenure and who cannot? In Texas, there’s been a professor at my alma mater, Iván Chaar López, who was rejected. He did not get tenure because he was a borderland surveillance scholar.

To even study things about, probably migration, immigration, things of all that sort within the State of Texas, where there’s a heavy ice presence is very complex. Also, you’re witnessing from the administration the abuse of power within that system. It’s frustrating to watch folks who deserve tenure to not have it or not receive it. In the same vein to what you were saying, there are faculty who have tenure and they forget that human aspect or that empathetic aspect of why they became faculty.

That is a challenging thing. That’s one of the bigger other critiques of the more negative side of tenure. People who don’t show that empathy, that care, or that support of their students who write their papers, get the research done, and get their grants and leave. Those are the folks that sometimes don’t always have the best impacts on campus. That’s heartbreaking knowing that is a thing. I had an opportunity to be a teaching assistant for a faculty member who was tenured. I taught British literature, which is not within my wheelhouse at all.

It was something where like this person didn’t seem as invested in the students. It was hard to know that they’re just relying on the fact like, “I’m tenured. I don’t have to put in this much effort. I don’t have to put in this much thoughtfulness.” When in fact, I feel like when you have tenure, you have to be top of your game. You have to have these expectations to do this work for your students. It’s a service for you to do this work to support the campus at large. To meet so many wonderful tenured people who, 1) love their students, and 2) do amazing service and research. I’m curious about the ways in which a university can better standardize what that looks like. What is the ideal tenor professor? Is there an ideal? I’m not sure.

When you spoke about your experience, it reminds me of another piece I wrote about my blog about epistemic harm, like, “That’s such a harmful way for a student to engage with a faculty member. What does epistemic care look like when you are welcomed, celebrated and truly engaged with as a collaborator in the classroom?” There’s just so much that’s within the tenure space that I feel I could do a significant 180 that could be improved upon as we think about the future of teaching and education at large.

This conversation also comes right back to the title of your blog. The second part of that sentence, an institution that doesn’t love you back. That’s part of the problem. Why do you think it’s important to name that? What does that position your thinking for?

The second half is from my personal experience, like going through the process of being laid off. Even before that, I remember how much I bought into the institution. I have a burnt orange blazer. I would do the hookup. I bought into the whole way of being at the institution only to realize that when this whole legislative landscape had shifted, that wasn’t the case. I loved it so much that it could not love me back because I am now seen as a risk.

I am seen as the problem of, “We’re going to have this, that, and the third many consequences because you are considered a diversity and inclusion or DEI professional. We don’t want that on our campus.” That’s the thing that I’ve noticed. As practitioners, we come to space because we have a why. Mine was always like the students. Mine was always wanting to make a difference. Mine was always to see or increase in belonging. I wanted to see a more equitable campus.

To only realize that the campus is so much more complex and so much more systemic than that. When I was impacting the way that I was, it was a shock to my system of like, “I am disposable. It hurts.” It hurts when that’s a reality of like, “You can find another of me.” My impact is not going to, I wouldn’t necessarily say make a difference, but they’re like, “We can find someone else who can do similar things to what you did, Shawntal.”

That is hard. I think about other colleagues who probably have had similar feelings of like, “I invested so much energy into this institution, to my office, and to these students only to not be offered that same thing back from an administrative level.” It’s painful. It’s an unequal relationship to be in. I even had colleagues being like, “This feels like an abusive relationship, unfortunately,” because it’s like you’re giving so much of yourself and not getting as much as you deserve in return. That’s why I’m like, “This is why it can’t love you back.” It’s like this space, at this current stage, does not have the capacity to love me back.

What you’re speaking to is one of the core problems of capitalism. We are essentially treated as disposable beings. That’s true outside of academics, definitely. You also write about Professor Iván López’s tenure denial at UT Austin as a specific example and about what that denial says and why it’s connected to Texas Senate Bills 18 and 37. How they’re reshaping, essentially, and what tenure means in your state. Can you talk about that example? What can we learn from it in the present time?

The Impact Of State Legislation On Academic Freedom

That’s such a great question. There’s a lot. From an institutional standpoint, at large, institutions are always prideful about the faculty they bring into their spaces. They’re like, “We have the top X faculty in the nation. We have the best faculty in this area, this, that, and the third.” I’m also thinking, if they care so much about this aspect of our faculty, what they bring into the space for their education and research, what is the institution’s responsibility to the faculty? It’s the question.

How are they being protected throughout this moment? In this unfortunate situation with Dr. López, he got caught up in political crosshairs of what’s currently happening at UT Austin, with the administration at UT Austin. It’s also thinking about who else could help at this moment. I know that I could go into a lot of detail about Texas, structure, border regions, but it’s thinking about departmentally. What was that conversation like? How was their chair having the conversation with them? What did they offer to Dr. López as a way to support them during this time?

Dr. López has spoken out in so many different areas, but I’m thinking about how can the institution or the department or this system greater than Dr. López be accountable to him? That poses a challenging question for even other institutions to reflect upon. Again, whatever happens in Texas isn’t going to necessarily happen in a vacuum. It has the potential to spread, but it’s important for institutions in their administration to reckon with that. How are you valuing your faculty? How are you listening to them? How are you engaging with them?

I find that is such a big aspect of this for folks to sit with, like, “I should bring in all these great individuals and scholars.” Also, how are you caring for them? Going back with the humanity, empathy and care center of all of this, especially whenever this moment with the attacks on teaching about gender, race and sexuality is on the front lines. What is the university doing? What are the administrators doing to make sure that you brought in this great crowd of people? How are you going to retain them at the end of this?

Do you think that in part, institutions are looking at tenure in these types of situations? Particularly those subjects as a liability presently. Simply because then, what if they have to cancel these classes and they have to keep this professor paid? I’m just wondering if there’s another element behind the scenes that we’re not thinking about as we foreground this discussion.

That’s useful.

It’s hard. I’m just thinking about the fact that so many degrees have essentially been defunded by federal loans. They’re saying, “We’re not going to fund beyond X dollars for this type of loan.” It can be challenging to even fund an undergrad education. If somebody wants to study something in the humanities, they’re a little bit SOL. Unless they’ve got an athletic scholarship or deep pockets or a nice savings for college, a 529 plan or something like that, they might struggle to be able to pursue the dream that they have for what their future would be.

I look at that, and I understand how institutions are funded. A lot of it comes plainly from tuition and often, international tuition. We have less of that coming in now because we’ve essentially locked the borders down to many countries. Student visas are harder to come by. I am looking at this with full awareness of what some of those background conversations could be because I’ve lived a life in the professional sphere working in executive teams. I understand budgetary concerns. I wonder if that’s weighing in.

I’m not sure. That is concerning in the greater scheme of things. In Texas, to say quite bluntly, it’s this big shift of we want to go back to these “American ideals” of what is education. Therefore, it’s being this direct attack on diverse populations, Black women, Black men, other communities of color, LGBTQIA individuals. That has also been like another trickle down into what has been taught. The erasure of these different areas of study, these fields of study, it’s heartening too, to have that caught up in this conversation about tenure and who has access to it. It creates this more complicated spiderweb in the midst of this.

It’s been hard to untangle. Also, we think about all these things that are happening, there’s this immediate satisfaction that I feel like this had at a legislative level here in the state. There’s also not an understanding of the long-term consequences of what this is going to look like in the future of these institutions. It’s that both and, or at least both and from how I perceive it but I don’t think, from a policymaker perspective or a legislator perspective, that both and perspective is being looked at in a critical way that is going to be necessary in the future.

You described tenure as something that looked easy from the outside until it didn’t. I’ve already touched on this in my own way, but I’d love to know what changed the way you saw it.

I had a beloved professor who is in the geographies. It was always so impressive because she was always doing so many talks and research labs. She’s publishing. She’s writing books. She’s teaching these classes. I remember working with her because she was supporting me through my first manuscript. She sent me a simple message saying like, “I’m going for tenure. I’m putting together my dossier. I will have to follow back up with you in like X amount of weeks.”

It was something that struck me because I was like, “This labor to put into this packet and to have these recommenders.” Again, you have all this put together and you have to put it before your department chair and whoever’s on that committee. It became intimidating to me because I was like, “Here are these individuals who are going to determine yes or no, if this is going to be my next step in my career or not.” It made me back off.

When I started my program in the College of Ed at UT Austin, there was a professor, in previous years, that was denied tenure. They had to go back up for tenure. I remember a peer of mine shared with me like, “This professor struggled after being denied,” because that’s a hard thing to hold. That’s the shame, the guilt, or whatever other feelings that you have.

It’s rejection. It’s like, “You’re not good enough.”

You have to deal with that in real time, continue to teach and continue to write those papers, then have to go back through the process again. That’s so much to shoulder, I feel, whenever you’re going through that process. To know that this laborious practice of putting together all these materials and then there is that possibility of rejection, that’s a lot on the line.

It made me feel like taking a step back, like, “Is that what I want?” In the broader scheme of things because that’s a lot. I found my research and the work that I do is personal to me. It’s something I care deeply about. To have someone review it, judge it, critique it, and then to not get it as a potential option, it’s hard. It’s a hard thing to hold knowing that’s on the line.

I used to think tenure was called tenure because it takes roughly ten years to get it. At least there’s a joke there. Often in academics, as in other places, women, minorities, people of color, there’s gender and race bias, obviously. You hear the mantra of something like, “Working twice as hard to be just as good.” You’ve in fact made that comment about what it takes to gain tenure as a person of color, as a woman, or as somebody who’s LGBTQ, sits in these classes that get looked at differently. How do you think about that pressure without accepting it as a cost of entry?

That’s so hard. It’s hard to know what the cost is. That’s where I was writing within my blog of like, does it have to be this way? Does it have to be this intensive of an approach? Is there a different way that we can engage with what tenure can look like in the future? Only because there is so much on the line. There is so much bias within the process. There’s so much to it that could be a lot better for the wellness for faculty that I do believe it should be reconsidered overall. I have so many thoughts and I feel like there are more ideas and less concrete, unfortunately. I can just reimagine so much so it could be a better progress or process for everyone.

Back in 1998, when I was graduating with my degree and having this private conversation with Diane Gifford-Gonzalez, my zooarchaeology professor. She discouraged me from going to graduate school for one reason. She understood that the path for somebody studying archeology would be a track to professorship and she wanted to make it very clear to me that most institutions were not like UC Santa Cruz. UC Santa Cruz was dominated by women in their entire Anthropology department which included archeology, physical anthropology, cultural anthropology and all the different         pologies, archeology, technology, everything that relates.

There was perhaps one male professor for every five female professors in that division, which is very uncommon. She stated plainly that people hold on to their tenure until long after, in many cases, that they should stop teaching. The field of archaeology in particular was very male dominated in 1998. It still is. She’s like, “You don’t necessarily get to choose where you go. You might get a professorship somewhere that you don’t like living. That’s just where you’re at.”

You’re not safe or secure until you gain tenure. It’s because often when there are funding changes or institutional shifts, your head could be on the chopping block, and then finding the next role could be double the challenge because now you were never tenured at that institution. It doesn’t look great on your resume to suddenly be a free agent, so to speak. I’m like, “Wow.” These are the politics I didn’t think about.

I just always saw it as that challenge, that cost of entry. I’m a woman, so I’m going to have to work harder. I definitely took that approach in business. I didn’t expect it to be the truth in academics because I thought of it clearer. You perform in a class, you get a grade. You study the thing, you write a paper. It’s about what you achieve.

I didn’t see it as being as bias-ridden because it looked so in a way, structurally complete from the outside. Getting that earlier view behind the scenes, it was deflating. It was a deflating moment. It is perhaps part of the reason that I didn’t pursue going to graduate school. There were other reasons. I was severely burnt out. Many students who both work and go to school at the same time because you’re a poor kid just trying to pay for college. It takes a lot out of you.

I needed to pay down my college debt. I didn’t want to take on more debt and then just end up in this cycle of forever that so many students are faced with. They graduate with a liberal arts degree and $100,000 in debt. When are you going to see your way out of that? I got into the world of business and happened to be quite successful and then used some of that money to pay for my MBA and PhD. I’ve done it now. I’ve gone through and have a terminal degree.

I often wonder what could have been different if I hadn’t heard that conversation from her. She thought she was doing me a favor, to help me understand the challenges I face. If I’d gone blindly in and done it anyway, where would I be? It’s like this big question. I do feel she actively discouraged me because she thought she was doing the right thing for me. I also think that my naivete was an asset in that moment. The reason behind why I’m even asking you this question is like, growing up as a Black woman, you are much more aware that there are these societal limitations than a little White girl might not have been. I was naive in this way.

I wonder if knowing as you’re growing up that these are additional challenges, that cost of entry is going to be something you have to work doubly hard for. You might run into more blocks than your peers just because of how you show up in the world, your visage, so to speak. How do you think that changed things for you? The deep questions.

It’s so much in so many ways. In a similar way like growing up from a working poor family, being first generation, being a Black woman, going to predominantly white schools, it colors everything. Even going back into the larger scheme of teaching, that was something I held closely. Thinking about how my students perceive me? Do they see me as knowledgeable? Do they see me as someone who is credible? Those are the imposter thoughts that you get whenever you’re teaching in front of folks and you’re trying to share this knowledge. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s had those thoughts like, “I have to present myself in a certain way in order to gain this amount of respect within the classroom.”

I’m thinking about, “If I did go through the route through tenure, how would that go?” I didn’t reckon with those feelings and went through. If it would have been like, “Faculty all the way How would I be? How would I physically have been either thriving or surviving in that space?” I would need to acknowledge all of those things that colored the way that I’ve seen that world before me. The obstacles like you mentioned, the barriers that I navigate it through, and then to also feel like an imposter of like, “Do I even belong here? Do I even feel like I can do this?”

Mixed up with trying to be within this system of tenure of trying to be successful in that sense. That would be a difficult journey if I didn’t sit down with these things that have impacted me throughout my entire educational career. It’s like when you ring a bell, you can’t un-ring it. It’s like something that’s been ringing in my ear for so long. To put this in the conversation of the systemic practice of tenure is doubly complex in that way, I feel.

I see that clearly. Now, I want to talk to you for a moment too about what it takes because you argue care can’t rest solely with one individual faculty member. That the expectations themselves might have to change, both of the individual, but maybe of the institution. If you could redesign what counts towards tenure. Starting from care instead of output, what could that look like?

Redefining Service And Community Engagement

I specifically remember this faculty member. I forget when they were speaking to us. I believe it’s during my master’s program. They were in African and African diaspora studies at the time. They were up for tenure when I remember them speaking. One of the things that struck me was that he said that one of the biggest critiques on his dossier was that he did too many serpents. I thought to myself, “Oh my goodness.”

Too much service?

Yes. Too involved in the community.

You were too available. You were too involved with your students.

I’m like, “What if we rethought that? What if that is filling their cup? What if that’s helping their retention to think about it? What if that is helping them?”

It sounds like you’re saying you’re doing too good of a job. It’s like, “We want to just spend more time writing papers and less time advocating for students.”

I’m just like, “I don’t feel like that’s an adequate critique of that person’s ability to be a tenured professor. Being in service in the community is another way to help think through research as well. It shouldn’t be thought of separately. In addition, it can also help with teaching. You can go out to the community and teach certain topic areas and be useful in that way. To think about service as this neat and tidy resource box, no. That is so important to think about how this is contributing to this individual’s sense of retention, as I mentioned, but also their sense of care to themselves too.

Tenure can be redesigned to not be so focused on the institution or the ivory tower so concretely in that way. Get out into the community. There are professors who literally are in front of their computer in their office all day and do not interact with students and do not do more than the bare minimum of teaching.

I’ll even go back and say, the person who’s sitting in front of the laptop doing their work all day may even be praised for that because they’re “focused.” Whereas this person who received the comment of being too much of the community is seen as, “You’re doing too much.” I like this idea of moving away from this productivity approach.

The reason it strikes me so much is that, what is it that it takes to get into an Ivy League school? It’s all of those things. It’s the things that you do outside of the normal school day that make you the whole well-rounded person that is suddenly attractive to Yale or to Stanford or Cambridge. It’s so strange to me to hear that feedback. It makes no sense, “You’re focused on service too much.” That’s probably the most surprising thing you’ve said to me so far.

It struck me, too. I was like, “Why is that a bad thing?”

I feel like it’s, so much is asked of us as it is. This next conversation or this next part of the conversation I hope to have just about academic freedom under pressure because, to me, that’s an example of having some academic freedom. Let’s say you take your work and you take it into the community and you make it real. In a way, given that you’re in Texas, it has become something of a bellwether for what’s happening to academic freedom nationally. You’re seeing those constraints sooner in a way. From where you sit, what does that pressure look like day-to-day inside a department or inside a classroom? Is it affecting things at that level?

The Chilling Effect On Classroom Teaching And Academic Freedom

I will, first and foremost, highlight the amazing work that the Texas American Association of University Professors or AAUP is doing. I feel like they’re the lead on doing work on academic freedom because they are the ones that are helping the faculty navigate all of the things that are going on. Overall, there’s a chilling effect that’s going on. People are afraid to teach the classes that are discussing race, gender, or sexuality. Even at this point, the ethnic and gender studies departments, specifically at UT, and I’m sure this may spread, have been dismantled.

In these other areas, within history, for example, within English. I can only imagine how they feel trying to teach those topics, talking about The Bell Jar, for example, and talking about feminist ideologies within those spaces. It creates this complicated space for everyone to figure out how they’re going to teach within the classroom. It’s not just those specific fields or scholars, but everyone’s in this complicated era that we’re in Texas.

We’ve seen a lot of the impacts of this social political climate by a lot of the professors who are in Texas who are well-renowned are leaving. A lot of students are not getting access to certain classes anymore. That’s unfortunate because they signed up to be, for example, a gender studies major and now it’s no longer available. They want to have conversations and conferences about these certain topics and now they can’t.

Even their research they’re conducting was funded. Suddenly, it had the word gender somewhere in the description and the funding dissipated from the NIH.

Exactly. It’s just creating this hostile, chilly space for individuals who aren’t sure how to navigate the next steps or how to move forward within their classes. It’s an unfortunate space for us to be in.

Another academic, Dr. Timothy Snyder. He talks about not obeying in advance. I feel very much that certain institutions decided they were going to and preemptively removed some classes that were focused on ethnic studies, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Made some changes. Signatures of emails could no longer state your preferred pronouns or that you were on the unceded lens of the Ohlonia as I am here. Those were definitely preemptive. I wonder what your thoughts are about that and how far a professor that isn’t tenured might be able to push the boundaries versus one that is.

That’s a great question. The boundary pushing for tenure professors versus non-tenure is complex. To even think about who is tenure, I wish I had like demographic data about who is and who isn’t. I will speculate that at UT Austin, that’s probably predominantly like White professors are tenured. The faculty of color may be at a lower percentage. However, I also acknowledge that there’s less faculty of color at the institution. That might skew some data.

To think about that as a demographic data point, and then also the number of people who aren’t tenured folks, that poses an interesting power dynamic that we were talking about earlier. Who’s comfortable using their power as a tenured individual to speak up against this? I do want to shout out Dr. Brian Evans, who is a tenured professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He does amazing work. He worked closely with the AUP. He’s within the School of Engineering.

To have this significant individual who is a White man in a field that’s not going to be affected by any of this legislation leading these efforts or have led these efforts to fight against the attacks on academic freedom, that’s key. That sets an example of what we are expecting tenured folks to do. He’s a prime example, in my opinion, that this is what it can look like. This is what you can be doing to be able to support and serve your colleagues. It’s not enough to be like, “It’s not happening to me in my department.” We’re at the point where it’s like, who’s next? Who’s on the chopping block? How can we mobilize and strategize in order for this to not continue in this way?

I know you’ve also spent your career researching how university leaders translate DEI commitments into practice. When the legal and political ground shifts as much as it has been in Texas and just the United States as a whole. What happens to translating that work? Does the practice disappear or does it just go underground? What are you seeing?

It’s going a bit underground, in my opinion. There’s this low level, and I think about that through my tad of heat lens. People still care about the work. It’s the fear of being surveilled or being associated with the work and then getting the consequences of being fired. That’s hard. That’s hard to advocate for the work and you have to choose between a paycheck, your family, insurance and then wanting to fight the good fight. I get that. I’m just hard headed through and through.

I’m willing to fight the good fight, but we’re at this point where people are scared and unsure how to move forward at this moment. We’re still trying to bring those folks in. We still want them to show up to these things. You may have to approach the work a little bit differently or the way that we interact with you, may have to be slightly adjusted to protect that individual’s identity or who they’re affiliated with. We want them there with us, alongside us to continue to do this work.

Only because it’s outlawed in this state, doesn’t mean it’s outlawed in other states. It doesn’t mean it’s outlawed across globally. It feels dystopian to feel like, “We can’t talk about it here. That’s that.” It’s still happening around us. We still have the right to engage with it and to use those values to help with our leadership or teaching. It’s that moment where while people are still scared, there’s still things to be done. There’s still an opportunity to be had here.

I’ve thought about this a fair deal because I often will put she/her pronouns on just everything. Even she/they because I’m comfortable if somebody calls me by a they/them too. I don’t care. I feel like it’s a solidarity question, at least it is for me. If we’re being discouraged from doing that even, it becomes an act of activism in a way to reveal your pronouns.

I get the sense that there are some people who are more willing to push that and to say, “This is something I stand for.” Now, as we talk about academic freedom, there’s different forms of academic freedom. People often assume it’s settled, like you have or you don’t have certain amounts of academic freedom. Is there a form that you don’t think is settled at all?

I don’t think so. Maybe it’s just because I’m seeing this bigger slice of academic freedom and the smaller slice of this pie that is being attacked. I’m not quite sure. I don’t know what else will be missing. I have to think about that a bit more.

Your scholarship returns to this idea of moving past institutional symbolism towards something more meaningful. What does pure symbolism look like when you’re inside a college and institution? Whether it be a statement, a task, a force, or a website page. What’s the tell that tips you off if it’s symbolic and not structural?

Moving Beyond Performative Task Forces Into Real Action

I’ve been reflecting about my experience in the university since my undergrad to grad to work. The symbolic ways that we use certain mechanisms like a task force, we come together. We say, “This is what we’re going to do.” Afterwards, we feel good that we met and maybe we produced something. Maybe we changed something on campus. I’m thinking, “I have a big critique of my alma mater’s Eyes of Texas task force that they had amid the 2020 racial reckoning, the murder of George Floyd. They studied the alma mater song or the chant, the Eyes of Texas. I don’t personally sing it, but it’s like, “The Eyes of Texas are upon you.”

Talk about surveillance.

There are some connotations where it is associated or affiliated with the Confederacy. There was a lot of conversation around like Black student athletes did not want to sing it. Other students of color were not comfortable singing it. The UT band was split of who wanted to play it and who did not want to play it. A task force was created. There wasn’t a result of the task force in the way of like, what changed? The song is still there. The song continues to be there. The song is beloved by alumni who were the bigger group that pushed back against getting rid of it.

Things like that, when you put together a task force, they produced a document. They had the report and they clarified about the origins of the song and address, to an extent, the sociopolitical climate at the time, but what more can we do? The symbolic ways of doing these on campus feel like a period and not a comma. The need to continue to do it or even an ellipsis, it needs to continue to be done and acted upon. It shouldn’t just stop with this one thing. That is my issue with the symbolism. That it just stops there and that’s the end of the story. It shouldn’t be that way.

We want to move beyond the glad handing into real action. Now, speaking of action, you’re stepping into the program manager role for Freedom to Learn at PEN America on top of leading the Texas Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education. I feel like that acronym needs to be easier to understand. I looked at it and I’m like, “TADOHE.” I don’t even know if that makes sense. I’m just saying this is a lot to take on. It’s beyond the more performative task force that you might be referencing. Why take this all on now in a moment when the work has never been more contested? What are you getting from it? What are you able to achieve?

It’s this idea of resilience and hope. That’s just so needed. When we’re starting to witness what is happening with higher education, the Department of Education, and our university, it can feel blunt, soul crushing. It can be a lot. It can be so hard to want to continue to do the work but being in these spaces and also being a community with folks within Texas and across the country. It’s so fulfilling to know that there are people who are willing to fight their fight with you. That you’re not doing it alone. That’s what helps is that I’m not alone doing this work. I have people who are to my left and to my right.

It makes it feel so much more valuable that it’s a collective effort of us doing this work and wanting to fight this fight. Rather than you’re in a big old shit and you’re trying to paddle your way through. You have someone who’s handing you your proverbial life jacket, and they’re bringing the boat to come get you. Know that this is not something that is a single person’s effort. It’s a collective effort. That’s what keeps me going. That’s what makes the work so rewarding.

I have a whole set of extra questions I would have for you that I feel like I want to hold for another conversation when we dive more into what it takes to truly be or have a sense of freedom and security within academics at the present time. As we round out, I want to talk about the future of the university. If institutions are going to survive this fractious period with their missions intact, what has to be true of them in order for them to sustain the next five years?

Recalibrating Expectations And The Future Of Higher Education

There’s going to have to be a lot of conversation across campus stakeholders and community members and to recalibrate what are the expectations that we have of our universities. That’s the first and foremost. We’ve seen the universities and the ministry should be so reactionary to what’s going on in this critical moment that we need to sit down and figure out, what are we standing for? What do we need more resources and access to?

Who are we surveying? To re-emphasize those questions, just because at this moment, university leaders have acted in certain ways that are not aligned with what their stakeholders are valuing. It’s frustrating to know that there’s no alignment. I’m thinking more about the Texas context. The lack of alignment between the leadership and campus stakeholders in the community is concerning. To take time to sit with what we are evaluating, who we support, all those questions are going to be necessary to have those proactive conversations for the future of higher ed.

It won’t just be over in two years. It’s like something that’s going to take time. That’s why I asked for the next five years because I feel like there’s definitely going to be a period of reckoning, contending, deciding, moving, and rebuilding. It’s a huge responsibility to undertake. As we close, for someone reading who works inside an institution that they love and that hasn’t always loved them back, what do you want them to do or to walk away with that might help them resolve some of that tension?

That’s a wonderful question. It’s a personal evaluation to reflect on the career, the opportunities and access that you’ve had thus far. That’s hard because it’s a deep evaluation. It’s necessary to have that understanding for yourself and also have that critique for yourself to figure out how you move through this moment. It’s not easy.

That’s something I struggled through whenever I was having that period of job searching and trying to figure out where I belong. Do I belong in this field or do I belong elsewhere? What vantage point do I want to be at doing this work or working in higher education? Those are the questions I had throughout this entire process. You can love this work so deeply, but it’s a question of cost. What is the cost?

Shawntal, thank you so much for joining me. For naming what it feels like to love something that doesn’t love you back is so important. It’s brave. It’s revolutionary. I just encourage you to keep at the work because this all connects to ethics of care. That really matters. As I’ve said before, and I will say again, issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion, issues of ethics and care have everything to do with building a sustainable future. As people in Texas are probably prone to hear, y’all means all.

We need to be thinking in that way. We need to be thinking about all of us, not just some of us. I’m confident we’ll get through this era but it will take longer and a more honest approach than we’ve taken in the past to handle these challenges. I see in the background behind you, Angela Davis, and I’m not sure who else is over your shoulder. That looks like it could be Beyonce. These are two people that you have resting on your shoulders and champions for all. I love that. Thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you.

What closing words might you have for our audience?

Overall, this time may seem difficult for this field, but there is hope. There really is. I don’t mean it to be cliché, but I’ve been seeing the bright spots and it’s important to hold up to those bright spots.

Again, thank you for joining me.

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I’ve loved this conversation so much and I look forward to the next one. We’re in talks about producing a series where we might dive a little deeper in a shorter format into particular areas of this conversation and which would be less interview and more collaborative. Before we go, I want to share a quick word about this show’s cause partner, which is Prescott College. They are celebrating their 60th anniversary as we speak, and in a couple of weeks, probably around the time this show airs, I’ll be at Prescott College’s 60th anniversary celebration.

That’s where I earned my PhD in Sustainability Education, and I’m told my diploma is in the mail. Prescott trains people to think systemically and lead regenerative change. In a moment when higher education itself is under this much pressure, institutions like it need our support more than ever. If you’re able, please join me with a monthly gift of $60 in honor of their 60th anniversary. If that’s too much, give what you can, because believe me when I say that institutions like Prescott, they need all the love and support they can get in a time like this.

Institutions that stand up and stand for DEI with this administration in office, they have acted bravely, just like Shawntal. Go to CareMoreBeBetter.com/Support for details. To you readers, if this conversation stirred something in you about the institution that you belong to, whatever they are, I hope you’ll carry Shawntal’s question with you. Not just how do we protect what we’ve built, but how do we make it more humane for the people inside it. Care more, be better, and let’s build institutions that earn the love we give them. Thank you.

Important Links

• Shawntal Z. Brown on LinkedIn
• Shawntal Z. Brown on Instagram
• Loving an Institution That No Longer Loves You Back
• Ethics of Care: Can Tenure be More Humane?
• PEN America
• Texas Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education
• Iván Chaar López
• Diane Gifford-Gonzalez on LinkedIn
• American Association of University Professors
• The Bell Jar
• Dr. Brian Evans on LinkedIn
• “Are we going to have a legacy or be forgotten”?: Organizational memory in an anti–diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) era. Shawntal Z. Brown
• Support – Care More Be Better