Andrea Smith denied Tenure

Call for Action: Andrea Smith Denied Tenure at University of Michigan

See http://www.woclockdown.org/ for more details including press release, talking points, and petition.

Here is a letter from Sarita See:

Dear Colleagues,

I always have understood that the tenure process resembles an application for membership in an elite country club much more than it does a path toward intellectual autonomy. There simply have been too many examples of outstanding scholars of color and queer scholars who have joined the ranks of what might be called the Talented Untenured Tenth. But the case of my colleague Dr. Andrea Smith here at the University of Michigan effectively destroys any vestige of faith in meritocracy that one may have.

The current director of Native American Studies at the University of Michigan, Andrea Smith is the author of the monographs Conquest: Sexual Violence and Native American Genocide (South End); Native Americans and the Christian Right: The Gendered Politics of Unlikely Alliances (Duke UP); co-editor of several journal issues and anthologies including the forthcoming Native Feminisms Without Apology (U of Minnesota P); and author of fifteen peer-reviewed articles in scholarly journals like Hypatia, American Quarterly, American Behavioral Scientist, Meridians, Feminist Studies, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion and Australian Feminist Law Journal. She has outstanding undergraduate course evaluations, with students regularly reporting that their experience in her classes has been profoundly transformative, and a record of fine advising with a growing cohort of Native American and Native Pacific Islander graduate students. Her organizing and activist work has garnered a well-deserved national and international reputation, and she is high demand as a speaker, panelist, and conference organizer. She is a colleague who daily reminds me of a basic premise in the humanities and social sciences: That philosophy and theory are ever transformed by practice. Indeed, Andrea found out about the University of Michigan's recent negative tenure decision while on her way back from the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, where she had testified in the United States' hearings before the Convention to Eliminate Racial Discrimination.

This is a crucial opportunity--a potentially historic moment--for scholars in Asian American studies to join with those in Native American and Native Pacific Islander studies. These attached documents compiled by student organizers invite you to write to administrators at the University of Michigan and to voice your opinion about Andrea Smith's case as it moves to the Provost for review. Yet it is to Andrea's credit that she always has objected to campaigns that focus on individual tenure cases. With that in mind, I invite you to join us in creating and shaping a political context in which university administrators and departments find it harder and harder to act with impunity in all such cases and decisions, certainly in the present and well into the future.

Best wishes,

Sarita See

Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies

Program in American Culture and English Department

The University of Michigan

3700 Haven Hall, 505 South State Street

Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1045