Or, when discourse is contested, professors will hurl ‘you can’t handle criticism’ (126), which I also hear quite often, a phrase that requires a lot of elaboration in situations involving power.

These insides will make my walk as a diversity, equity, inclusion and anti-racism professional much more effective.That being said, there were some stylistic and structural choices that detracted from the work as a whole. I make it clear that I welcome feedback with which I can engage and even reject, but I suggest that a dissertation is a project that I shape that does not belong to her expectations.

To be heard as complaining is often attuned to sound, to how we sound, how we are heard as sounding, to how words sound, to how we sound, how we are heard as sounding, to how words sound, stories too’ (17). According to her unique positionality, she is both a witness and party to the community of people who supply the knowledge and encouragement complainers rely on to see their complaint through. A lot of people talked to me about how when they tried to make complaints, it was often the diversity agenda that would be used against them—as if they weren’t doing this the right way, as if they weren’t being appealing enough, as if by even using certain words they were trying to make life difficult for other people, including other minoritized staff.Could say more about that, the communities or modes of communicating that opened themselves up to you once you made your exit? And those books weren’t purely descriptive or analytical—they also formed part of the real-life work you were doing to try to change the institution you inhabited. Only 4 stars because I felt some parts of the text were less accessible, but overall absolutely worth a read for anyone who has ever tried to complain to an institution or has not complained but wanted to.

I didn’t have any publications, but they interviewed me, and they hired me, partly, I think, because I was so enthusiastic. It might be that you’re at an event surrounded by peers, and maybe you signed a confidentiality agreement, or the institution that’s hosting the event is the institution in which the thing happened—there’s a restriction on what you can say about what went on.Essential reading imo for all diversity work in higher ed as well as for academic learning designers, advisers, and educators.

While the universities are rendered as safe spaces for many, the institutions abound with experiences of sexual assault, bullying, and many other forms of antagonisms. especially when I and others have seen many complaints go through institutional processes that led to nowhere or are ‘buried’, as one participant shared (38).

I unflinchingly say the word ‘whiteness’ to discuss her arbitrary expectations and she then asks me to explain how I perceive the situation as racist or about whiteness. They’re told it will end their careers, that it will end the careers of the people they should be in allegiance with and depend upon, that it will end everything. Many of us know professors who fit this categorisation, those who perform critical analysis but insist on sovereign lecterns or using the traditional classroom space to ‘objectively’ teach. There's probably a way to have the information condensed and one could just present it in a direct form, but then it would not highlight the writing style. from her own experiences (she resigned from an institution after they mishandled a series of complaints), her engagement with a “complaint collective” in the UK, and her decades-long scholarship in feminist, queer, and race studies.