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| Sekile M. Nzinga |
In “Lean Semesters: How Higher Education Reproduces Inequity,” (published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020), Prof. Sekile M. Nzinga offers an honest and often uncomfortable view and critique of the intersections of sexism, racism and capitalism to produce inequitable academic and professional lived realities among Black women. Nzinga Jones’ research delved into the systemic exploitation of Black graduate students and faculty members in corporatized higher education institutions.
Through interviews among Black faculty and graduate students, the author documented sentiments, experiences and perspectives on the barriers facing women of color in academia. Issues ranged from from hiring and retention practices and pay equity to institutional supports for students and junior faculty. Nzinga focuses the spotlight on massive federal underfunding of colleges and universities, as well as reallocation of institutional funds to professional education.
Nzinga, director of the Women's Center at Northwestern University, highlights narratives that speak truth to how Black women are “mortgaging [their] brains” to access academic opportunities, while navigating life and work with near-poverty wages and job insecurity. We learn about Marquita’s dilemma being the primary breadwinner and needing to access food stamps to survive. Black women in academia encounter existential crises in aligning their passion for teaching and contributing to their students’ social consciousness with productivity demands of institutions that value productivity and profitability above all. We understand Charli’s unrelenting focus on teaching critical thinking skills, which is undermined by her institution’s emphasis on skills that underscore employability.
Despite myriad challenges, Black women continue to persevere beyond the confines of productivity to “subversively transform” society through teaching, mentorship, scholarship and loyal service to their institutions. The realities revealed in y Lean Semesters" provide an overwhelming insight into serious educational justice issues that underpin neo-liberalism in the higher educational enterprise, creating and sustaining profit-driven institutions that are built upon the under-appreciated and under-compensated labor of women of color, particularly Black women.
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