Question: I’m not the person your column is aimed at. I’m white, male, middle-aged, tenured. I’m also committed to sharing advice and publishing opportunities with new faculty members. My past successful mentees have been of both genders, but all of them have been white, because of the demographics in our field.
Our most recent hire, “Dr. Nouvelle,” is a young black woman. During her first semester, I suggested on a dozen occasions that the two of us go out to lunch or that she join me and several others for lunch. The purpose of the lunch was to talk about what it takes to make tenure. She always sounded enthusiastic, but always backed out. At first, I asked once a week, and then every few weeks, and now it’s been months since the last time I asked. I can only handle so much rejection.
Recently, at a faculty meeting, Dr. Nouvelle suddenly launched into an impassioned speech about how she’s been left all alone ever since she’s been here, twisting in the wind with no one offering any help. I believe everyone in the room was shocked by her feelings and the passion with which she expressed them. She’s said to be on the job market again.
I feel as if there is some detail I’ve left out that would explain everything, but I can’t figure out what it could be. What should I have done?
Answer: Ms. Mentor salutes your lively commitment to her favorite activity and is glad you are no Maundering Mentor with old war stories: “When I was your age, we walked barefoot uphill both ways in the snow to get to the Faculty Senate ...” (Epidemics of eyerolling among the young.) She admires Mighty Mentors, eschews Maladroit and Malicious ones, and welcomes questions from the sincerely bewildered -- with whom she will now share some of her perfect wisdom on the matter of Dr. Nouvelle.
Ms. Mentor feels obliged to point out that few white people, however well-intentioned, know how deeply racism pervades the lives of African-Americans -- from random name calling, to assumptions of prowess in music and sports and nothing else, to routine police harassment just for being in certain areas (“driving while black”). By the time someone like Dr. Nouvelle is hired at a university, she will have endured constant insinuations that she got where she is through affirmative action, not through her own merits. She will also have been told that racism is no longer a factor in academia (Ms. Mentor calls this “epistemological solipsism": If I don’t know about it, it doesn’t exist.)
Dr. Nouvelle will have dealt repeatedly with wrongheaded assumptions about poverty, drug use, and sexual availability. At the Modern Language Association conference a few years ago, a new Ph.D. standing outside a hotel room, nervously awaiting her job interview, was accosted by a hotel detective who suspected she was a prostitute: “Well, you’re young and black and a hottie, and it’s the middle of the afternoon,” he told her.
When, in Dr. Nouvelle’s new job, a middle-aged white man invites her to lunch, she might very well feel uneasy. Bluntly, she may have thought you were hitting on her -- making a sexual overture -- and she wanted to avoid an unpleasant scene. She may have interpreted repeated invitations as harassment from a powerful white man. It’s also possible that she could not afford to go out to lunch. Like many African-American professionals, she may be part of an extended family, and responsible for aged or disabled relatives. Black faculty members at most universities also try to “give back to the community” -- give time and money to each other, to students, to troubled children. Everyone should do so, Ms. Mentor believes -- but it does clash with the career-at-all-costs mentality that makes ambitious people “successful.”
Or Dr. Nouvelle may genuinely not have known that “doing lunch” -- networking -- is vital. Most graduate advisers do not discuss the politics of an academic career, and few students know that whether they (your senior colleagues) like you will make the most difference in your tenure prospects. Most African-American graduate students, in particular, are not mentored. Too many are passed on, without constructive criticism or serious engagement with their work. African-American faculty members often find themselves patronized or bullied, but few are mentored about hidden agendas and processes.
Perhaps, Ms. Mentor suggests, it will help to think of Dr. Nouvelle as a foreigner in the land where you’ve been comfortably ensconced all your life. Dr. Nouvelle’s speech may have seemed especially impassioned, or even out of place, to people not familiar with African-American women’s more assertive cultural style. White women are more apt to speak deferentially, with apologetics and qualifiers. Or perhaps Dr. Nouvelle’s speech was a cry for help, in a world that seems hostile and mysterious.
Ms. Mentor urges you to be explicit about your intentions: “Let’s have lunch to discuss tenure procedures.” Use unquestionably professional language: “Let’s meet over lunch,” not “Let’s have lunch as a couple.” And when you suggest lunching in a grubby school cafeteria, it will be clear that your intentions are not romantic. Avoid awkward emotional climates, and do not emulate “Dr. Science,” the department chairman who, one Friday afternoon, called a meeting of the tenured faculty (all male) and the three untenured women. They all sat down, and Dr. Science abruptly told each woman to select a mentor from the assembled professors. Some of the men straightened their ties, while others looked away (“don’t choose me”). All were embarrassed -- and once the women, reluctantly, chose their mentors, the losers were angry for the next four years.
It is much better to have faculty volunteers, like yourself, officially assigned to mentees -- for when mentoring is formal and institutional, it’s not seen as a quirk of personality or misread as some kind of stalking. Women can also be encouraged to serve as mentors for each other. And, of course, all women should buy and read Ms. Mentor’s tome.
Ms. Mentor, finally, is heartened by your letter, for not enough senior professors still ask questions about how to be ethical and generous academics. You have, in fact, mentored Ms. Mentor’s readers. You are a mensch.
Question: Did you not answer my letter because you’d already answered one like it, or because other columns on the site had answered it, or because it didn’t seem unusual or interesting enough, or because someone else’s seemed more urgent or vital?
Answer: Yes.
SAGE READERS:: Ms. Mentor’s summer mailbox is now open, and she welcomes searing questions, fierce rants, and imaginative scenarios. A recent correspondent fantasizes about breaking into his enemy’s computer, getting at his new novel, “and putting in cliches, every few paragraphs.” Ms. Mentor reminds readers that she rarely answers letters personally, and they should not presume upon their acquaintance with E. Toth (with whom Ms. Mentor sometimes disagrees). Ms. Mentor will not open attachments, nor will she be rushed, nor will she advise individuals about which graduate schools to attend or which personages among their acquaintance they should marry, humiliate, or flatter. Some matters need to be left to individual initiative.
Ms. Mentor, who never leaves her ivory tower, channels her mail via Emily Toth in the English department of Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge. Her Chronicle address is ms.mentor@chronicle.com
Her views do not necessarily represent those of The Chronicle.
Ms. Mentor’s Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia, by Emily Toth, can be ordered from the University of Pennsylvania Press by calling (800) 445-9880 or from either of the on-line booksellers below.