Shattering the Silences The Case for Minority Faculty

Shattering the Silences: The Case for Minority Faculty offers everyone in higher education an unprecedented opportunity to see American campuses through the eyes of minority faculty.

Across America, the battle over campus diversity captured in the film remains urgently relevant. While the documentary profiles a period when affirmative action programs were first being banned, ethnic studies departments defunded, and multicultural scholarship impugned, these same conflicts have intensified today with recent Supreme Court rollbacks and state-level bans on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. At the time of filming, faculty of color made up less than 9.2% of all full professors, and minority student enrollment was dropping for the first time in 30 years - warnings that directly mirror the structural challenges higher education faces today.

Shattering the Silences cuts through the rhetoric of the current Culture Wars by telling the stories of eight pioneering scholars - African American, Latino, Native American and Asian American. As we watch them teach, mentor and conduct research, we realize in concrete terms how a diverse faculty enriches and expands traditional disciplines and contributes to a more inclusive campus environment.

These eight professors also discuss the excessive workload and special pressures minority faculty face everyday in majority-white institutions. For example, minority teachers are disproportionately tapped to provide diversity on faculty committees and in scholarly organizations. They often find themselves de facto advisors for all the students of their ethnicity on campus. Their research and teaching is held to different standards from that of their white colleagues. Dr. Darlene Clark Hine looks back on the first wave of minority faculty as "a sacrificial generation."

Shattering the Silences has been designed to help universities and colleges remedy many of the recruiting and retention problems the video reveals. Academic affairs officers, affirmative action directors, minority student advisors, department chairs, faculty and students can use this film to:

• Develop a clear consensus around the educational benefits of a diverse faculty and a more culturally inclusive curriculum.

• Become more sensitive to the singular pressures minority faculty face - both professionally and socially

• Explore ways to make campuses more welcoming to minority scholars

• Rethink definitions of merit used to evaluate scholarship, teaching and service

• Recognize the connection between faculty diversity and recruiting and retaining students of color

Faculty Featured in Shattering the Silences:

• Miguel Algarin, Associate Professor of English, Rutgers University

• Gloria Cuádraz, Assistant Professor of American Studies, Arizona State University

• Darlene Clark Hine, John A. Hannah Professor of History, Michigan State University

• Robin D.G. Kelley, Professor of History, New York University

• Nell Painter, Edwards Professor of History, Princeton University

• Alex Saragoza, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley

• David Wilkins, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona

• Shawn Wong, Professor of English, University of Washington