Imagine, writes Lisa Reyes Mason, if more of us in academe publicly shared our research expertise to help address crucial social issues. What impact could we collectively have? How could lives change?
Conditionally Accepted
Conditionally Accepted
Many individuals are drawn to higher education, including academic careers, because of academe’s potential for change. Countless prospective and current graduate students note that their desire to make a difference in their communities or society in general was their primary decision to attend graduate training. Unfortunately, many colleges and universities in the U.S. have practiced outright discrimination and exclusion throughout history, particularly against women, people of color, and disabled people/people with disabilities.
Today, academe — like every social institution — is structured hierarchically, producing numerous professional and personal obstacles for academics from marginalized backgrounds. Scholars who are women, of color, lesbian, trans, bisexual, gay, queer, disabled, working-class or poor, immigrants, fat, religious and non-religious minorities, and/or single parents are faced daily with the difficult tension between academe's narrow definition of success and their own politics, identities, needs, happiness, and health.
Conditionally Accepted was created as a freestanding blog in July 2013 as an online space for scholars on the margins of academe. It has steadily grown since, becoming a career advice column for Inside Higher Ed in January 2016. In this column, we provide news, information, personal stories, and resources for scholars who are, at best, conditionally accepted in academe. Conditionally Accepted is an anti-racist, pro-feminist, pro-queer, anti-transphobic, anti-fatphobic, anti-ableist, anti-ageist, anti-classist, and anti-xenophobic online community.
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Conditionally Accepted Archive
March 20, 2020
March 13, 2020
Unspoken rules and vague expectations contribute to holding down and pushing out scholars who have been historically marginalized in the academy, Kamden K. Strunk argues.
March 6, 2020
When Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt asked a large group of underrepresented faculty members why they left their higher education institutions, they told her the real reasons for their departures -- those that climate surveys don't capture.
February 28, 2020
For poor students of color, college contributes to the very inequality people have been taught to believe it erases, argues Blaque Robinson.
February 21, 2020
We should hold each other and ourselves accountable for the oppression we perpetrate, argues Jennifer M. Gómez.
February 7, 2020
Dada Docot provides advice for effectively preparing ahead of time.
January 31, 2020
Challenging interpersonal and systemic transphobia requires context-specific interventions, writes Derek P. Siegel.
January 24, 2020
Bertin M. Louis offers five tips for moving past intimidation all the way to completion.
January 17, 2020
In spite of the growing attention given to body positivity and fat acceptance movements, Bobbi Reidinger writes, weight-based discrimination affects the levels of power and influence afforded such a scholar.
January 3, 2020
Bertin M. Louis Jr., the new editor of Inside Higher Ed's column, describes his vision for it moving forward.
