“The department doesn't see me”: Interrogating departmental climate

• In Event: The Wages of Blackness: Black Women and Women of Color in the Academy

Abstract

This qualitative study explores how 25 Women of Color faculty members experience departmental marginalization and isolation while navigating academic environments shaped by educational gag order laws in Florida and Texas. Situated within contemporary political and higher education discourse, the study critically analyzes how these laws, which are rooted in racist and white supremacist ideologies, perpetuate epistemic injustice and silence Women of Color. Drawing on Critical Race Feminism and counternarratives, the researchers highlight how these women experience exclusion and the devaluation of their scholarship. The study also explores how they engage in strategic compliance and exercise agency to resist marginalization, build solidarity, and create spaces of belonging within academic environments that are increasingly hostile to their presence and perspectives.

Authors

• Daisy Rodriguez, Pennsylvania State University

• LaWanda W. Ward, Pennsylvania State University