Red state, blue state: Part 2

Some red-state scholars are paying a price

Note: this is the second installment of a series on leaving academic positions for political (and safety!) reasons. In Part 1, I described how we left Missouri in part to protect our transgender child. Special thanks to IB and BD for our text conversation on this topic.

The truth is that our decision to move from Missouri to Oregon this past winter was motivated only in part by the growing anti-trans movement in MO (see last week’s newsletter). For years my husband and I had been dreaming of a move back to the west, where we both grew up and went to school, and where Griffin’s grandparents live. We missed the literal and figurative landscapes of the Pacific Northwest: the mountains, the ocean, the improbable number of Gen-Xers who say they saw Nirvana play the HUB. I’d tried to find a faculty position on the west coast, but never made it to an interview. Academia was losing its luster, anyway, and my lab was dwindling in size. And we had the financial wherewithal to make this decision for ourselves.

Even with all of this wind at our backs, it was still really hard to pull up our roots and leave!

And, I feel a lot of guilt around the decision to leave rather than staying to fight. As a result, I want discuss the challenges of academics who live in a red state and choose to stay, despite disagreement with recent laws targeting women and members of the LGBTQ community. I also want express support for those in this group that are pre-tenure and in the most vulnerable part of their careers, and brainstorm ways to help.

But first, I have to be completely honest—this newsletter has been hard to write. I am afraid of appearing to minimize the harm and bodily danger perpetuated by the current flurry of anti-trans laws, and the restriction of abortion access. Nothing is farther from my heart. I am also painfully aware that my family is privileged and lucky to have been able to move across the country when we saw the writing on the wall. And, frankly, I feel protective of the community of scholars in the midwest and south, as I was one of them, and so many of my friends and colleagues still are. But I hope there is room for this conversation.

Leaving isn’t available to everyone, nor is it everyone’s choice even when available. A scholar in a red state might need or wish to be near family, or a particular research area (like a field station). They might love their specific jobs, or their town, or their local community. They might just want to stay and fight locally. Leaving a bigoted state is not the only just response if you care deeply about justice; many are trying to make a difference by running for local office, marching, writing letters, and donating money.

I try to imagine being a young pre-tenure faculty member in a Florida state school. What is your life like right now? What is happening to your career? I suspect that many of the scholars who choose to stay in red states will pay (or I guess, are already paying) a steep professional price. Of course, some red state scholars agree with these laws and/or are benefitting from their implementation. This post is not for them.

Some of the Price being Paid (especially for Junior Faculty):

• Networking. I am sure that my career benefitted from attending and helping organize local conferences. As a young mother, I was able to attend a meeting in Madison, WI with my husband and toddler by driving there and staying with family. I also remember the pleasure of hosting meetings in St. Louis, inviting colleagues to dinner at my house, and being part of local organizing committees where I met new friends and clumsily tried to give others the opportunities I’d been given as a junior scientist. Similarly, I loved hosting seminar speakers—arranging their schedule, talking in depth about our work, and taking them out on the town with local colleagues. For junior scholars, hosting a seminar speaker can be a fantastic way to eat a fancy meal for free get to know more established scholars (and particularly those who might be writing you a letter for your tenure case!).

  Now, attending local conferences, as well as hosting seminar speakers and conferences, is likely to be more difficult for many red state scholars. National and international conferences are relocating away from states that have enacted anti-transgender legislation and abortion restrictions. University of California employees are not allowed to use California state funds to travel to twenty-three states with discriminatory laws. Many academics (and rightly so) don’t feel safe traveling to, and/or don’t want to spend any money in, these states right now.

• Recruiting is harder (and problematic). I always struggled with recruitment; and things were only getting harder for me in recent years (no shade on my lab members—they were all awesome—I just wanted more!). The PhD program at my institution leaned pretty hard on how far a graduate stipend could go in Missouri, and that remains true, but I suspect will not be enough of an incentive for many in the coming recruitment season.

  It is getting harder (and problematic) to recruit trainees and new faculty. No one should move somewhere they aren’t safe, and red state scholars must be honest with those they are recruiting about the political environment they’d be getting into. They may well already know: at least one study showed that high school seniors consider the political landscape of a state when considering a prospective school. So how to build a lab if you feel conflicted about recruiting to your state?

• Then for the ultimate academic career horror—red state scholars are being denied tenure, or are currently watching it disappear altogether.

Outcomes

At the very least, all this means that red-state scholars will likely have to work even harder than their blue-state peers to network with colleagues and to recruit students and postdocs. This is an especially heavy price to pay for young pre-tenure folks or those with families or other situations that make long-distance travel difficult. Taken to an extreme, it could mean creating a two-tiered educational system, where faculty with the means, privilege, and/or professional reputations move to blue states, while those without must stay.

And, I haven’t even addressed the outcomes for students, postdocs and the populations that these red state scholars and institutions serve. Those who want to stay near home, near family, and/or near community deserve an education as much as those willing to uproot for it or those lucky enough to already be in a safe state.

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Discussion Section

Yes, red state scholars need to advocate for change—as do we all. Hopefully everyone is donating money and/or time to candidates and organizations that are fighting for change in these states. But in the meantime—what can we do to directly help our red-state colleagues, especially young faculty? I have started a list below. PLEASE add your thoughts to the comments (or email me directly if you’d like to remain confidential) especially if you are a young red state scholar! I will update the list here, and share it on social media. Please be kind, and keep in mind that people have many reasons for choosing to staying in a place, and that everyone deserves to have educational and career opportunities.

—Conference organizers could acknowledge that red-state scholars may have no choice but to travel long distance to attend ANY meetings—by giving travel awards to those scholars and students.
—Blue state scholars could make an extra effort to help red state scholars network by inviting them to speak at department seminars and at conferences. Instead of thinking “who’s the latest faculty hotshot from UCxx?” think “who is doing interesting work and could use the exposure?”
—Blue state colleagues (and red state colleagues) could also work at addressing bias in the grant review process. Instead of thinking “can’t send that grant to a red state” think “there is a good person in a red state, and this money will help them make a difference.”