Navigating Higher Education: Layered Oppression Through the Eyes of a Student, Researcher, and Professor

• In Event: Addressing Intersecting Oppressions in Institutional Review Board Processes: Constraints, Strategies, and Future Directions

Abstract

Objectives
This paper brings attention to the difficulties that women of color with dis/abilities face navigating higher education. Awareness of the system’s flaws is necessary to disrupt respectable notions of knowledge production, the hegemony of normalcy, and idealized notions of learning and research structured by white western patriarchal society.

Theoretical Framework
Dis/ability Critical Race Studies (DisCrit) and Intersectional Feminism were both used in this research study. DisCrit builds upon a dis/ability studies to amplify traditionally marginalized voices and identities (Annamma, Connor, & Ferri, 2016). Intersectional Feminism creates spaces for voices who experience intersectional oppression in academia (Crenshaw, 1991).

Methods
Autoethnography is the method which is used in this paper. Autoethnography allows one to write about personal lived experiences navigating higher education and observations in academia, through the lens of culture (Jones, 2005). This writing requires self-reflexivity to identify the personal, cultural, and societal (Ellis & Bochner, 2000) factors that perpetuate the privileging of certain voices and bodies in academia (Dolmage, 2017).

Data Sources
Higher Education and academia should be a place where the diversity of voices are heard and valued. However, as a woman of color, the common experience tends to be one of oppression. This was true for: (1) students, (2) researchers, and (3) professors.

Student
There are five major oppression problems for students. These can include: the dangers of a mono-lens in a professor (Fisher, 2013), experiences of students with dis/abilities due to the hegemony of normalcy (Ferri & Connor, 2006), cultural devaluation (McLaren & SooHoo, 2016), gender and orientation (Grant & Evans, 2008), and problems of access that students face during a pandemic.

Researcher
There are two major oppression problems that researchers of color with dis/abilities often face in academia. These include: who are the gatekeepers who determine the fate and success in academia and the valued research structures that result in diverse cultural ways of knowledge being undervalued (hooks, 1994).

Professor
There are two major oppressions that professors face in academia. These include lack of representation of individuals of color in academia resulting in the lack of mentorship for individuals of color, and the women’s role as mother not being valued in academia (Berry & Mizelle, 2006).

Substantiated Conclusions
First academia must acknowledge intersectional oppression that women of color and individuals with dis/abilities face within a system that was created for and dominated by white male patriarchy. Next, we must work together to re-envision teaching, research and service in academia. Finally, COVID-19 has created an opportunity for diverse bodies to listen and work together to approach schooling in nontraditional ways.

Scholarly Significance of the Study
The significance of this work is that it brings attention to those who continue to be marginalized in academia. Until all voices are heard and treated with equity ultimate progress and development of academia cannot take place.

Author

• Kimiya Sohrab Maghzi, University of Redlands