Join the Navigationalists with Dr. Toby Jenkins to discuss promoting yourself, being present, addressing benevolent bias, and staying authentic at the very beginning. We want you to know that you belong in higher ed. We talk about the why and the how.

Today, we will discuss the impact of the scholar strike and reliving our trauma; what does it mean when you receive a grateful, secret, supportive email from your white counterparts in secret; and how to address one of the irritating microaggression of all, failure to differentiate.  In this episode, we have Dr. Tsedale Melaku, sociologist and author of You Don’t Look like a Lawyer:  Black Women and Systemic Gendered Racism, and Robert Reece, Assistant professor/ scholar.The podcast questions include:

1.  Hello, my name is Dr. Withers.  I participated in the Scholar Strike.  Well, I attended several forums that begged me to divulge my soul and now I am tired.  How can I continue this push for anti-racism in higher education?  How can I effectively do this without being perceived as too pushy and/or letting other people take credit for my efforts?
2. Hello, I am Dr. Lee.  Since the George Floyd incident, many of my white counterparts are calling me.  Even e-mailing me more than usual.  Some seem sympathetic.  One even said he was my ally.  What is that? Someone had to literally die for me not to be invisible anymore for them.  How can I address this with them? 
3. Hello, I am Dr. Louis Martinez.  A proud Puerto Rican.  Let me say, I usually experience microaggressions every day, but one that irks me is when they get me confused with another person of color.  Race does not matter.  They confused me with our president of our college.  And he is a darker African American, 7 feet tall.  How can I address these microaggressions with these people?

The Guest Navigationalists include:Dr. Tsedale M. Melaku is a Sociologist, Author, and Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas & the Caribbean (IRADAC) at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her recent book, You Don’t Look Like a Lawyer: Black Women and Systemic Gendered Racism (2019), reflects the emphasis of her scholarly interests in race, gender, class, workplace inequities, systemic racism, intersectionality, organizations and diversity. Dr. Robert L. Reece is currently an assistant professor of sociology at UT-Austin.  His research explores the question "what is race," particularly through exploration of themes related to the origins of racialization and racialized social outcomes, the slipperiness of racial categories, and how physical appearance maps on to and intersects with race. My work has been published in various peer reviewed journals and in public outlets such as the Southern Poverty Law Center's magazine Teaching Tolerance and the National Housing Institute's blog Shelterforce. 

Join me and co-host Dr. Carolina Bailey with Dr. Anna CohenMiller of Nazarbeyev University and and Dr. Kim Case of Virginia Commonwealth University.    Today, we will discuss what motherhood actually looks like in higher ed, how to handle a person who has a bad case of mansplaining, and how to handle disruptive, challenging students in the classroom.Podcast questions include:

1. Hello, my name is Dr. Rodriguez.  I am a proud mother of a beautiful baby boy.  This joy was not without issues at work.  For one, my male supervisor seemed not to know anything about my rights or FMLA.  And it was my responsibility to find a substitute.  Also, they left me out of projects, saying they were trying to be considerate because I might be tired due to the pregnancy, without even asking me! Why do people fall into this "benevolence bias" assuming that we are "protecting" pregnant female employees because they cannot perform their work?
2.  I thought this thing of male explaining was a myth until I was at a meeting.  He re-explained every detail I have just explained – like I did not have an engineering degree.  When I have an idea, they never take me seriously unless a male coworker expresses it as his idea! How do I disrupt this?
3. I just completed this course.  It was awesome or at least, I thought it was awesome.  I had two white students who were very rebellious and confrontational at first, but I continued with my lesson plan.  I gave them an assessment to get a vibe, and they talked great about me, but on gradeyourprofessor.com, they described me as caring, easy, soft, pushover while they are addressing my male colleagues in more "professional" terms.  How do I address bias with students

Guest Navigationalists:Anna S. CohenMiller, PhD, is an educational leader and qualitative methodologist focused on social justice and equity in multicultural educational contexts. She specializes in arts-based methods to facilitate voice of participants and marginalized communities.

Broadly, Dr. CohenMiller focuses on solving issues of gender in education and the workplace and on innovating teaching to facilitate learning in preK – higher education contexts. Currently, she is working on a textbook about qualitative research, Questions in Qualitative Research in Multicultural Contexts (Routledge, 2021, CohenMiller & Boivin). Currently, Dr. CohenMiller is an Assitant Professor of Education in the Graduate School of Education at Nazarbayev University and Co-Founding Director of The Consortium of Gender Scholars (Kazakhstan).

Dr. CohenMiller is committed to developing international networks to build collaboration to bring awareness and solve complex social problems. As such, she has developed interdisciplinary, international initiatives such as The Motherscholar Project (Founding Director), The Consortium of Gender Scholars (Co-Founding Director) and Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy(Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief).Dr. Kim Case  previously served as Professor of Psychology and Women’s and Gender Studies, Chair of the Faculty Mentoring Program, Director of the Teaching-Learning Enhancement Center, and Director of the Applied Social Issues Master’s program at her previous university. Her mixed-methods research examines ally behavior when encountering bias and interventions to increase understanding of intersectionality and systemic privilege, reduce prejudice, and create inclusive spaces within educational and community settings. Her pedagogical scholarship, including three books, addresses diversity-course effectiveness, inclusive classroom practices, and teachi