The following statements are regarding the Dartmouth administration’s tenure process and the retention of BIPOC faculty.

As the newest member of the faculty at Dartmouth Geography, Tish became an instant mentor of mine. She made the transition to the College smooth and welcoming. She continues to be a role model for how to manage personal commitments to feminist praxis alongside the demands of the tenure track; I was looking forward to having a senior colleague with such conviction and clarity of purpose to help me prepare for the tenure process. Her tenure denial certainly puts a sour taste in my mouth about my own future as a faculty member of the department and at the college. Not only am I losing a brilliant colleague and mentor, but her tenure denial means that Geography will not have a tenured woman of color until 2029, if I am successful.

Jane Henderson, Mellon Faculty Fellow of Geography, Research Associate and Lecturer of Geography, Dartmouth College

It is hard to describe thoughts and opinions on a process that is so opaque. That everything happens behind closed doors makes it easy for people to be denied tenure at various steps of the process. I realize this is the case at some Ivy league schools that wish to distinguish themselves from public research institutions by adding an air of mystery to the process, but it is not working and Dartmouth is losing so many incredible scholars.

Tracey Rutler, Associate Professor, Penn State University

Whatever politics are behind the denial, it speaks volumes about the pettiness and myopia that elite institutions sometimes harbor. Shameful.

Arun Saldanha, Professor, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

This is sadly not the first time that Dartmouth has denied tenure to an incredible scholar deserving of tenure at Dartmouth. Even more sad is that the faculty and administration don’t seem to care because it is students, current and future, who will feel the burden of this decision. And justly, Professor Lopez will go on to immediately get tenure someone else that respects and values her contributions to her field and community. Those students will benefit from Dartmouth’s continued marginalization of faculty and students of color.

P.M., Dartmouth alumnus and Assistant Professor at another institution

Dartmouth purposely values faculty who don’t care about students.

Anonymous, Dartmouth Faculty

It is inevitably the most transformative colleagues, the ones I am proudest to work alongside and from whom I learn the most, whom the college fails to retain; that these are almost always also faculty from outside the over-represented majority is shamefully predictable.

Bethany Moreton, Professor, Dartmouth College

The decision by Dartmouth College to deny tenure to Dr. Lopez, and the lack of unanimous support from the Department of Geography reflects the persistent short-sighted, dated, and racist nature of both the College and Geography. This is nothing new — the growing less-than-stellar and narrow-minded reputation of both Dartmouth as a whole and Dartmouth Geography is amplified in this misguided decision around Dr. Lopez’s tenure, but this isn’t confined to this tenure decision.

Both the College and Department have benefitted enormously from her brilliant teaching, mentorship, service, and scholarship, standing back as their expectations and unwillingness to take on mentorship and service evenly across the Department and College disproportionately burden Dr. Lopez. The Department has gained many majors as a result of being inspired by Dr. Lopez alone. This has resulted in Dr. Lopez working herself to the bone to provide unparalleled teaching excellence and mentorship.

It’s no new phenomenon that faculty of color (and women and non-binary folks especially) are disproportionately tasked with service and mentorship and Dr. Lopez’s case is yet another glaring example of this unfolding at Dartmouth. She is punished for caring, picking up the slack left behind by others who focus instead primarily on their own career advancement with things (like research and publishing) that “count” more than the inspiration, education, and mentorship of students (a new generation of scholars and public citizens).

If any good can come out of this decision, it has to be the wholesale rethinking of the tenure process at Dartmouth. Dartmouth and the Department of Geography need to reckon at a deep and historically reflective level with their inability to support BIPOC faculty and students, their persistent denial of tenure to BIPOC faculty, and their inability to retain some of their best faculty and BIPOC students. The arcane tenure process at Dartmouth needs to be made transparent — both in what is required for tenure so there’s not a moving goal post, and in how tenure decisions are made. Justifications for the denial of tenure need to be clearly communicated.

Dr. Lopez’s denial of tenure is not in any way her failure; it’s the failure of the College as an institution and of her Department to support her and share the burden of labor that’s taken her away from dedicating enough time to focus on things that “count” more than teaching.

Finally, the things that “count” need to be radically rethought to reflect the value that teaching and mentorship of a new generation has in this time of deepening global crisis.

Dr. Lopez has always been too good for Dartmouth. The College and Department are unaware of the harm they’re causing to students and to the overall quality of the institution with the denial of her tenure. This is most certainly a personal blow to Dr. Lopez, but she will go on to do something more meaningful, more expansive, more profoundly impactful — where she can inspire and move others in a way unrestricted by institutional gatekeeping. Her work going forward will make an even larger difference in the world as she can focus on embodying care, justice, and social change without the deadening effects of Dartmouth.

Kathryn Gillespie

While I was at Dartmouth, I definitely remember a number of white male professors who had tenure and definitely didn’t deserve it, given their poor teaching skills and/or lack of interest in their students. Then again, such decisions are a microcosm of our society’s willingness to let white men fail upward, even as their female and BIPOC counterparts work twice as hard to get half as much, be that salary, recognition, or status.

A fellow alum, Steffi Colao, probably said it best in her article in The Dartmouth from May of 2023:

“Yet almost a decade later, CAP has not changed its pattern of discrimination, and Dartmouth has not done better. Still, just 12 percent of its tenure-track faculty are people of color. It is once again time for a serious reckoning with the unjust tenure process.

These tenure denials show two things. One, that CAP acts in complete disconnect, if not total opposition, to student opinion. CAP does not retain the educators who students clearly love, value and want to work with. Their method of evaluating tenure candidates does not prioritize what students value — mentorship, faculty involvement and support.”

The disappointment with Dartmouth’s ability to actually effect change in terms of faculty diversity, while advertising the opposite and trying to talk a good game, is yet one more reason I have not donated to the college in years, and don’t plan to unless I see major changes regarding the structural racism embedded in things like its tenure granting process.

Mayank Keshaviah, Dartmouth alumnas

Dartmouth is hostile to BIPOC faculty, particularly in the tenure process. While I’ve been at Dartmouth, I’ve routinely seen the most brilliant, hard working, and committed academics I’ve met forced to leave. They have been denied tenure, overburdened with service work, and had their work and teaching belittled because it centers the concerns of those (like minoritized students) whom CAP considers unserious and inconsequential. BIPOC faculty come to Dartmouth looking for a way to leave before they are inevitably pushed out. The administration’s response has routinely been to sweep the issue under the rug by releasing flimsily insufficient statements, printing up more catalogues that cynically use the images of the very students they are hostilely failing to support, and recruiting temporary (and also overworked) contingent labor to fill in the gaps and teach the classes that students clamor for but Dartmouth refuses to staff in a meaningful and sustainable way.

R.C, Dartmouth Faculty

I do think that some people have easier time blending in with the culture of this elite New England university. Is not impossible to overcome the gaps in cultural knowledge but people who grew up in non-Western countries, blue collar, etc. for instance have to work harder to be considered somewhat adequate. Someone like me is never seen as an equal of Anglo American men with an Ivy education. That’s just a fact of life. If Dartmouth wants to retain faculty of diverse background, there are many things they can invest more funds and efforts in. But I don’t think that’s their priority.

Sachi Schmidt-Hori, Associate Professor, Dartmouth College

This decision is not only an injustice to Professor Lopez and her students, but to the future of Dartmouth itself.

The degree of incompetence it takes to deny tenure to the very model of an excellent professor is almost farcical. Yet, it is unsurprising, given Dartmouth’s history of denying tenure to its faculty of color.

Dartmouth is well known for its love of tradition, just ask anyone who’s attended its Homecoming bonfires. Many of Dartmouth’s traditions have been rightly overhauled after student activism has outed them for upholding white supremacy, elitism, and sexism on campus.

Yet one tradition Dartmouth built and cannot let go of is that of bringing in excellent BIPOC faculty, touting its diverse faculty to recruit excellent and diverse prospective students, relying on BIPOC faculty for their time-intensive support and labor that many students (especially BIPOC, first-gen, women, trans, and non-binary students) need to survive Dartmouth, and — finally — denying BIPOC faculty’s right to a secure tenure position that they more than deserve. I don’t think it is even possible for one person to meet Dartmouth’s strict process for tenure approval while also meeting the many other demands Dartmouth makes of BIPOC faculty. White professors simply aren’t faced with this same amount of labor — they’re taking a different (easier) test altogether.

As of 2022 Dartmouth’s endowment stands at a whopping $8.1 Billion. It’s not a leap to call Dartmouth “well resourced,” and well within reach to drastically improve the college experience for students who are likely to face institutional barriers. Yet Dartmouth’s business-as-usual puts the onus onto BIPOC faculty to provide the student support that Dartmouth refuses to.

Dartmouth is failing its BIPOC faculty and thus failing all of its students. Dartmouth needs to address the root causes of harm and white supremacy that students of color face, and make its tenure process an equitable one.

Megan Larkin, Dartmouth alumnas

In no other moment does a university make its values and priorities as clear as in tenure decisions.

Abigail Neely, Associate Professor, Dartmouth College

Dartmouth needs more BIPOC faculty, PERIOD. If the administration cannot understand why at this point, we can’t be bothered to explain.

Isabella Villaflor, Dartmouth Student

I am new to Dartmouth as a Latine postdoc in a field with few faculty of color. I came to Dartmouth specifically because a Latine faculty member was available to mentor me. What message does this tenure denial send to undergrads of color who do not see themselves in the academy, to ECR who face a dearth of faculty mentors who share their experiences? I am faced with a culture of white faces that assure me I am welcome and wanted, only to see the doors close to faculty like Dr. Lopez. Actions speak louder than words. I am signing anonymously as I rely on the goodwill of Dartmouth funders to retain my position.

Anonymous, Dartmouth Faculty

I was shocked to hear of the denial of tenure of Dr. Patricia J Lopez by Dartmouth College. Dr Lopez is a highly respected member of the geography community, and I am certain is likely a valuable resource in her department and on her campus for BIPOC students. Women of color are frequently stretched thin at institutions like Dartmouth where they are often asked to play an outsized service role while also acting as informal mentors to many others–work that they are almost never credited for. Lopez’s scholarship has made very measurable impacts on our discipline, in particular to the field of health geographies. It is impossible to know the circumstances, of course, but I will say that I would anticipate that Dr Lopez would have been awarded tenure in my own department–one of the top geography departments in the country–and that this fact alone warrants that University to at reevaluate their initial decision on the matter.

Kelly Kay, Assistant Professor, UCLA

I’ve been teaching Prof. Lopez’s work at institutions in the U.S. in Canada for almost a decade. It’s appalling to me that an internationally renowned leader in health geography would be denied tenure, and it adds to the litany of grievances against the institution with respect to discrimination against BIPOC faculty.

David Seitz, Assistant Professor, Harvey Mudd College

Dartmouth is once again sending a strong message that its stated efforts to foster Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are merely for show. Accountability is listeed as one of the main components of its plan. Yet, the criteria by which faculty are evaluated remains obscure. If scholars do not know why specifically they are being denied tenure, the university can hide behind vague explanations that paint a picture of a substandard academic. But based on the comments from current and former students represented on this web site alone, Tish embodies the values that Dartmouth claims to stand for, helping students to believe in themselves and their potential, making them feel welcome at an institution that has a history for doing just the opposite, and teaching them different ways of seeing the world. Her students present at national conferences, go on to attend graduate school and are well-poised to continue to make meaningful contributions to the world. Because Tish’s academic scholarship, teaching and mentorship are interwoven, my above comments already indicate the impact that Tish’s scholarship has had. But she has also published multiple articles, edited books and statements that change the way we think about components of health geographies and create an environment that tells other brilliant young scholars that they belong. If Dartmouth’s Promotion and Tenure committee were to evaluate Tish based on the broader ideas they themselves have outlined in their DEI plan, I strongly believe they would come to a different conclusion about Tish’s tenure status. To fail to do so sends a strong message of what really matters at Dartmouth and is a big loss to the university.

Dena Aufseeser, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland Baltimore County

I don’t know much about the tenure and promotion process at Dartmouth, but I do know that if a scholar-teacher like Tish was denied tenure, it says more about the gatekeeping fantasies of senior faculty, built as they are on a vision of the academy that no longer exists than it does about Dr. Lopez’s excellent work and contributions to our field.

Richard Nisa, Associate Professor, Fairleigh Dickinson University

I urge the administration to reckon with its persistent racism and sexism. The ongoing devaluation of women of color scholars, their labor, their pedagogy and mentorship, is unethical, unjust and must be changed. Dartmouth should immediately reverse course and make a plan to retain their faculty of color, especially women of color from underrepresented backgrounds

Madelaine Cahuas, Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota

Dartmouth is hostile to faculty of color. My message to administrators: Quit recruiting faculty of color that you refuse to support. Reform your tenure process. Recognize the incredible contributions of BIPOC scholars.

Anne Bonds, Associate Professor University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

I’m only recently tenured and I’ve never been on the evaluating side of the tenure process, but what I can say is that when I was at Dartmouth, I saw several accomplished faculty of color – scholars and teachers who served as hubs on intellectual and social life at Dartmouth – denied tenure. In those cases, it struck met that these were faculty who had been asked to do a great deal of service work, including outreach to students of color, as if they were expected to perform an additional, unpaid role for the College.

Christian P. Haines, Associate Professor, Department of English, Penn State University

I am outraged and disgusted by Dartmouth College’s decision to deny Tish tenure. She vastly exceeds any conceivable standard for tenure and is already an internationally recognized and respected scholar. In the 21st century, any scholar with Tish’s record should be be unquestionable in the deliberation process. The fact that she is a woman of color makes this decision even more suspect. Dartmouth should immediately rescind their decision.

Anonymous, Associate Professor

Absolutely ridiculous and shameful. Professor lopez is the ONLY professor who took a true interest in supporting and mentoring students of color. As a government major, I took multiple courses with professors who would make offensive and/ignorant comments during discussion about “third world” countries and cultures. Those professors have tenure but it seems like every year Dartmouth denies tenure to professors that are actually supporting the “diverse” student body that the college prides itself on. Dartmouth is a hostile environment for all BIPOC but especially hostile for BIPOC faculty who are undervalued and underrepresented.

Jessica Cantos, Dartmouth alumnus

The tenure process was designed by a particular demographic (white, heterosexual, cisgendered men) in order to retain that same demographic. The process and P&T guidelines favor the types and methods of work that are accessible to people who, non-exhaustively: have support at home for house and child care; have had success modeled to them by people who look like them; produce work exactly like the work that came before; understand all of the invisible curriculum; have mentors that share their identities; have extensive networks of elders to support them; do not need to fear that their work will be judged “me-search”; can trust that reviews by students are not colored by systemic racism, abelism, transphobia, or sexism. That the Dartmouth geography department has -never- tenured a woman of color is a reflection not on Tish and the women who have come before her, but on the inherent racism, sexism, and classism in Dartmouth’s tenure process.

Nikki Stevens, Dartmouth Faculty

My experience at Dartmouth positively impacted my professional trajectory, both in terms of academic discipline and activism. I am a professor in the Geosciences and Ecology but also work on equity, diversity, and inclusion issues within STEM. It is disheartening that my alma mater falls into the category of institutions that are harmful and inequitable to faculty of color in the tenure and promotion process. Since starting my own faculty position, this disparity becomes more apparent throughout universities. Dartmouth can do and MUST do better.

Sora Kim, Dartmouth alumnas, Assistant Professor, University of California, Merced

I am outraged, devastated, yet not surprised that Dartmouth administration has once again failed to support BIPOC professors. Over the last decades, Dartmouth has consistently denied tenure to faculty of color such as Aimee Bahng, Sharlene Mollett, and many more caring and supportive scholars who have provided such radical and engaging learning environments for BIPOC/FGLI/international students. According to Dartmouth’s Office of Institutional Research, only 12% of tenure-track faculty are BIPOC. Dartmouth needs to do better! The College continues to devalue the unpaid care work performed by faculty of color, labor which has enabled students from underrepresented backgrounds to survive in a violent institution like Dartmouth. The College’s decision to deny tenure to Tish reflects poorly on Dartmouth and illustrates its commitment to upholding racist, sexist, and ableist values.

Jimena Natalia Perez, Dartmouth student

Dartmouth seems to use faculty of color to provide immeasurable support to students of color without any plans to retain them. These faculty members are expected to be the primary student mentors, to expand course offerings, and to improve Dartmouth’s image, but Dartmouth does not reward the investment faculty make in the College. Though Dartmouth relies on and values this labor, the College does not seem to value the people responsible for so much of what makes the school work. Dartmouth instead has displayed a complete lack of institutional support for its faculty of color. Most faculty of color who I’ve taken classes with have left.

Steffi Colao, Dartmouth alumnus

This decision reflects what we’ve all known about the deeply colonial white supremacy that still runs rampant at prestigious institutions of higher ed, and it is eternally disappointing that Dartmouth has again chosen arbitrary measures over the actual value Prof. Lopez offered to students and the university community. The loads of additional emotional, social, and academic support that Lopez provides students a beacon of light in an otherwise overwhelmingly white department and college. The amount of advising support and class signups Lopez had should alone cement her value, let alone her amazing and deeply important scholarship. Dartmouth’s vague standards for tenure are set up to create impossible invisible barriers for faculty of color who are deeply important pillars of support for BIPOC students.

Jasmine Butler, Dartmouth alumnas

Dartmouth continues to fail not only BIPOC students, but also BIPOC faculty. The fact that only 12% of tenured faculty are BIPOC is truly embarrassing. Dartmouth continues to extract labor from BIPOC Professors and later dispose of them without any care. BIPOC Professors continue to put in academic work, communal support, and much more for the larger Dartmouth community, work that white Professors often fall short of. Yet they are not compensated or even offered security for this form of labor. Dartmouth needs to do better, as BIPOC faculty are vital for marginalized students!

Lizet Garcia, Dartmouth student

The number of BIPOC faculty that I had has professors during my time at Dartmouth as an undergraduate can be counted on one hand. Unfortunately, this can partly be explained by my academic interests. This should not be the case. Students should be able to experience the benefits of learning from BIPOC faculty regardless of their majors and minors; BIPOC faculty should not only be retained in disciplines related to identities (i.e., Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; African and African American Studies; Sociology; and so many more rich and critical disciplines). Yet for too long, it has been the case at Dartmouth that many students only have a BIPOC professor if they enroll in a course in such disciplines, as most other departments (e.g., English, Economics, Physics) have no BIPOC professors, let alone any with tenure. This must be remedied immediately, and one immediate (but not the only) solution is a complete re-writing of Dartmouth’s tenure process, to ensure that the varied and critical value BIPOC faculty bring to the institution is appropriately understood and weighted in the decision-making process. As it stands today, these contributions from BIPOC faculty is not holistically valued, and this undermining of BIPOC faculty is undermining the quality of education and institutional support that Dartmouth students are receiving. The longer this status quo is upheld, the worse the environment will become for BIPOC faculty, BIPOC students, and ultimately everyone else at the institution. Action must be taken now to prevent further harm and start developing a culture that encourages BIPOC faculty to support Dartmouth with their research and teaching contributions, and then rewards those faculty with tenure, thereby deepening the institution’s support of BIPOC faculty. Importantly, Dartmouth’s support of BIPOC faculty cannot begin at tenure; support must begin before hiring, so that the support is embedded within processes and culture, rather than a separate process than can be disrupted or pushed aside for alternative priorities.

M.L.S., Dartmouth alumnas

Dartmouth needs to do better.

G.M., Dartmouth alumnas

Dartmouth simply needs more faculty of color and of diverse backgrounds. While Dartmouth has made some progress, there is still much more to be done. Dartmouth is an incredibly isolating place for students of color and of marginalized identities, so having faculty with these identities helps improve the overall students experience.

C.B., Dartmouth Student

Dartmouth needs to do better. It has no excuse not to. Women of color have been not only going above and beyond with contributing brilliant and thoughtful scholarship, but providing care work to many students of all identities. So many students have felt inspired by Professor Lopez’s teaching and supported by Professor Lopez’s care. Dartmouth needs not only to re-evaluate its decision, but systematically change its tenure process and show a stronger commitment to BIPOC faculty.

Julia Tran, Dartmouth Student

Dartmouth disappoints, again. If you want to brag about a diverse student body, then retain the elite, diverse professors to educate them. Do not cast them aside as you have so often done.

Max Brautigam, Dartmouth alumnas

Far too often, I have seen BIPOC professors loved by students across campus leave too soon because they were treated without disrespect or dignity by the administration. For exactly, I think every professor who is a women of color, particularly those whose work involves scholarship about people of marginalized identities, who people recommend I take classes with my freshman year no longer work here by my senior year because they did not receive tenure.

Sabrina Eager, Dartmouth Student

Dartmouth’s failure to attract, amplify, support, retain BIPOC faculty is disgusting and so transparent. If I had a dollar for every mediocre white man tenured professor at Dartmouth who gave a half-hearted lecture about something they didn’t care about, I would have egregious student loans. If I had a dollar for every professor who, like Tish Lopez, approached teaching with care, empathy, inclusivity, reciprocity, enthusiasm I’d have like two dollars. From taking Tish’s class twice.

Annika Bowman, Dartmouth alumnas

By denying excellent BIPOC faculty tenure, you are preventing BIPOC students from finding mentorship and succeeding in academia, blatantly furthering structural inequality and going directly against Dartmouth’s self-proclaimed ideals of promoting diversity

Corinne Vietorisz, Dartmouth alumnus

Dartmouth should be ashamed. This is a slap in the face and truly proves that Dartmouth continues to lie about supporting POC faculty and students. Loss for words. Professor Lopez is brilliant; no other explanation for denying her tenure other than blatan, deplorable racism from Dartmouth admin.

Nashe Mutenda, Dartmouth alumnus

Respectfully, fuck this shit

Ashwini Narayanan, Dartmouth alumnus

It is truly disturbing and saddening to hear of yet another BIPOC professor being denied tenure. Dartmouth’s faculty does not represent the student body and change needs to be made.

Adamari Benavidez

I am aware that Dartmouth has a history of denying qualified BIPOC faculty tenure. Furthermore, the lack of transparency regarding the official statements against Dr. Lopez’s tenure are troubling.

Gabriel J. Fraley, PhC

During my time at Dartmouth, the only woman of color professor in Geography was denied tenure (Sharlene Mollett). Pr. Mollett was the best professor I had in my entire four years at Dartmouth and is the person who inspired me to change my major to Geography which has led me to now pursue a Ph.D. in Geography. It is extremely disheartening to see history repeat itself with Professor Tish Lopez. There are so few BIPOC faculty at Dartmouth and these faculty are the ones who tend to serve as mentors to the many students of color that have never considered going into academia. It is imperative that Dartmouth change the structure of its tenure process to consider how its upholding whiteness and privilege within academia and how they can diversify its process to reflect how academia is changing more broadly.

M.G., Dartmouth alumnus

From what I have read, there is a concerning pattern that I hope can be curbed by granting Dr. Lopez tenure.

S.K.

I’ve heard from multiple different professors of color who have gone through this process that it is complex convoluted and difficult to understand. For professors coming from families with professional and/or white backgrounds the process is much more intuitive and those privileged professors have a larger support system to lean on during the process. I would expect that white professors also have a larger community in Dartmouth in the wider academic community from which to pull on in times of need. I found that professors with left-leaning politics and commitment to student livelihoods through organizing and activism on campus are penalized by not being offered tenure. Dartmouth consistently make statements through their tenure confirmations/denials about who is welcome their college, and who is allowed to teach our students. Given the ongoing suicide epidemic at the college I would expect that the college, maintain support and look for professors with a depth of care for student life. This is not the case.

Olivia Audsley, Dartmouth alumnus

Taken directly from the Call to Lead website, Dartmouth claims that its “commitment to an incomparable student experience begins by placing topflight teacher-scholars in the classroom.” The subtle positioning of words here, I think, is not to be disregarded: the phrase reads “teacher-scholars,” rather than the other way around. Indeed, Dartmouth frequently lauds its classroom experience as one of the distinguishing factors of the College’s professors come all the way to the middle of the woods not solely to pursue cutting edge research, after all, but to interface with the driven student body here.

It is true that I had an unforgettable academic experience at Dartmouth as an undergrad. Yet among the best educators I had the privilege to learn with, not a single one was a tenured faculty member. Notably, the majority of these outstanding teachers were women, and about half were BIPOC. There seems, then, to be significant disconnect between the College’s self-proclaimed prioritization of the educational experience and its actual material acknowledgement of excellent teaching.

Further, it is wholly disheartening to see Dartmouth College verbalize intentions to improve the campus’s culture of mental health and fill Mass Row, for a few fleeting hours, with free slushies and gimmicks in the name of said mental health support‚ yet continue to undermine the people who truly serve as lifelines on this campus, namely BIPOC and women or non-binary faculty. It is these individuals who so often provide invisibilized care labor‚ coincidentally, something we delved into in Tish’s classes‚ far beyond the requisitions of their jobs. Particularly for students who may find it most challenging to get by at Dartmouth, namely, those who don’t fit the majority white, upper class, heteronormative mold, professors and role models who can speak to their experience and offer empathetic mentorship are crucial. BIPOC professors who prioritize the well-being of their students over academic output, like Tish, are subversive to the model of extreme productivism and constant burnout‚ both of which stem from the pervasive hegemony of whiteness‚ on which higher education institutions like Dartmouth thrive.

R.K, Dartmouth alumnus

Dartmouth consistently fails to put its money where its mouth is. If Dartmouth is as committed to anti racism and building an inclusive campus as they’d like us to believe, it’s far past time they show a material commitment to supporting its BIPOC faculty, staff, and students.

Thomas Bosworth, Dartmouth alumnus

BIPOC faculty are under supported, pressured into doing a tremendous amount of service, and generally not given the benefit of the doubt that folks from less marginalized positions are afforded. The college relies on their hard work and challenging perspectives, but does not compensate or support their work adequately.

M.M., Friend

Dartmouth administration barely goes out of its way to meaningfully impact the lives of its BIPOC students, and by extension, the failure to retain BIPOC faculty is no surprise. Dartmouth fails to acknowledge the heavy burden that BIPOC faculty play in supporting students of color, and the fact that that thankless work is what keeps the campus machine running. There is so much invisibilized labor that BIPOC faculty do, that white professors would never even consider doing, and the fact that the tenure process does not currently weigh non-traditional measures of educating students, will make Dartmouth a place where BIPOC students, workers, faculty, and community members do not feel safe.

Z Spicer, Dartmouth alumnus

White supremacy is a very deep and insidious force that when unexamined is quite invisible. It is no one individual’s fault, no one is by nature racist. It is something that we have learned. And if we are to unlearn that it starts with each individual doing their own deep work to recognize the invisible forces at work here. I implore you for you to take a look at yourself, and pick up some books that will teach you about how to see yourself in a different way. Don’t be afraid. Because of your privilege, you have much less to be afraid of them those who are under the thumb of this insidious force. As the administration of an established place of learning, it is up to you to stop the cycle of harm that exist because of this type of ignorance.

Erin Johnson, CIIS Adjunct facility, Synaptic Institute

I only recently learned that Dr. Sharlene Mollett [person of color in Dartmouth Geography Department] had also been denied tenure at Dartmouth. This is really alarming and makes me want to know more about the tenure process itself at Dartmouth.

Soohyung Hur, Dartmouth alumnus

Far too often, I have seen BIPOC professors loved my students across campus leave too soon because they were treated without disrespect or dignity by the administration. For exactly, I think every professor who is a women of color, particularly those whose work involves scholarship about people of marginalized identities, who people recommend I take classes with my freshman year no longer work here by my senior year because they did not receive tenure.

Sabrina Eager, Dartmouth Student.

BIPOC faculty do the incredibly time consuming and incredibly necessary work of mentoring students of color. The time they put into their students on a personal level is most valued by students and clearly undervalued by the college. As a former student, I am certain my experience wouldn’t have been as rich and rewarding without the time faculty of color dedicated to understanding and supporting my academic growth on a deeply personal level.

Milla Anderson, Dartmouth alumnas

It is awful and should be discussed and examined more thoroughly. Painfully transparent.

Heidi Edwards, Friend

Tish has worked hard for over 8 years within your business infrastructure. It is strange to see these types of decisions. I am not certain all of the details but to the fact that she has a petition out to assist her, she really does care about the position and the services she was providing for Dartmouth.

Shepard Griffin, Friend

Now more than ever across the US we need to support teachers like Professor Lopez who have demonstrated their commitment to higher learning and to their students. We need to hear ALL sides of the stories so that students can learn to think critically about the world around them. Marginalized communities especially need to be heard, need their stories told and need to feel welcome to do so. Please reconsider your decision. Thank you.

Julia Wharton, Friend