A Black/Gay Professor's Experiences in Academia
Professional Isolation, Sabotage, Fraud, Racism, and White Privilege
I agree wholeheartedly with Professor Wallace Stanley Sayer of Columbia University who said:
"In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake....That is why academic politics are so bitter." They are so bitter because the stakes are so low.
I created this website to tell my truth and to expose the fraud and the unethical behavior of my colleagues. Therefore, I understand that the allegations and assertions on this website are not consequential when compared to our epoch-making current events or to the life-and-death issues in many people's lives. These white collar slights and professional skirmishes pale in comparison to the tragedies that people grapple with each day. I acknowledge these important facts about what is important and what is not.
DISCLAIMER:
INTRODUCTION
Sociologist Susie Scott writes about the “paradox of shy performativity, whereby people who identify as shy in everyday life can nevertheless give confident displays on stage [or as professors in the classroom].” I suspect that this paradox explains my penchant for preferring to be anonymous or unseen in spite of the fact that I have successful dual careers, alternately as a professional actor and as a college professor. Consequently, I have lectured or performed for thousands of people in theatres, on television/film and in the classroom.
Because I am a Gay Black man, I have often found myself shut out of the rooms where influential people made important decisions that impacted my personal and professional lives. Consequently, time and again I have fantasized about somehow going into the rooms where those influential White men hold sway so that I could confirm that I was being treated in a fair and unbiased manner. Invisibility would afford me a way to enter these rooms and to see for myself how those decisions about my life were actually being made.
However, as I near the end of my professional career, I suddenly find myself having access to confidential information and/or being in the rooms where crucial decisions are being made, e.g., tenure/promotion reviews, etc. It is as if I finally possess my coveted superpower of invisibility because I am now able to surreptitiously watch - in real time - what goes on in those rooms of power and influence.
-
At CCNY I reached the rank of full professor and I am now in the "rooms where it happened..."
-
At Cornell, during the discovery phase of my 1996 lawsuit against the university, I was able to break down the ivied walls of confidentiality and see the tenure files of the five White professors who were tenured/promoted before and after my 1995 tenure/promotion review.
It pains me to report that what I have seen and heard in these highly confidential deliberations has been disheartening. There really are two sets of rules in America when race is involved. Race does indeed matter. At Cornell in 1995 and at CCNY today, I have observed how White men and women, with a fraction of my professional accomplishments, were respected, lauded, and promoted while I have been disrespected, demeaned, and/or denied promotions.
“White people give each other free stuff when they are alone...”
Just as Murphy’s character discovered the ways Whites are favored during drugstore purchases and in bank loan negotiations, etc., my experiences at Cornell and CCNY have revealed the truth about the tenure/promotion process:
“White people [do indeed] give each other free stuff when they are alone:”
The documents and evidence that I have posted on this website will expose the unjust influences of White Privilege in the tenure/promotion adjudications that I have observed.
When I uncovered these truths about this blatant racial bias in academia, I was not watching furtively cloaked in invisibility. Rather, I was in those rooms as a very visible and proud Gay Black man. I now bear witness to what I saw, heard, and read in those heretofore all male, all White, "rooms where it happened..."
The African American comedic actor, Eddie Murphy created a brilliant and wry comedy sketch about what White people do behind closed doors when Blacks are not present. Murphy’s character (who is made-up to appear to be a Caucasian man) infiltrates Whites-only spaces and discovers that:
Keith Lee Grant
However, in spite of my long history of public performances as an actor onstage and professor in the classroom, if I could have a superpower, it would not be Herculean strength or the ability to fly. I find those superpowers to be more performative and public. For that reason, I would choose the power of invisibility. As long as I can remember, I have been intrigued by the thought of being invisible. And after spending over fifty-years in the Performing Arts and in academia, I now have some insights into why I desire that secretive superpower the most.
"The room where it happened
The room where it happened
... How the game is played
The art of the trade
How the sausage gets made..."
HAMILTON: Music, Book and Lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda