From The Outside Looking In: A Strange New World

*In May 2024, I lost my job as an associate professor at Northland College as the institution went through financial exigency. From The Outside Looking In will be a series about my reflections about leaving academia. This is the first post.*

If I was still an associate professor and didn't lose my job at Northland College nine months ago, I'd currently be teaching a 300-level class for college students that I created called Comparative Race Studies.

This week, Trump was inaugurated--again. And along with thinking about how much my life has changed since 2016, I've been thinking a lot about this specific class. It's a class I believe is very important, and yet I'm so relieved I'm not teaching it right now.

TBH, I named the class before I taught it for the first time, and in hindsight, I'd probably name it something different. But I knew I didn't want to call it Critical Race Theory. And I am glad that I didn't call it that. Not only because CRT became way more of a hot topic than I ever anticipated when I proposed the class in 2018, but also because I knew putting CRT in the title wouldn't accurately reflect the content.

Like CRT, the class focused on systemic racism in the U.S. However, the goal of the class wasn't to have students learn about CRT, how it developed, and its relevance in the present. Instead, the goal of the class was to have students engage with the (big) question: what can we learn about U.S. history if we shift our focus to Indigenous peoples, Black peoples, other racialized peoples, and the relationships between these groups? We also focused on related questions like, what does this shift add to our understanding of American history? What narratives does this shift challenge? What does this shift ask us to reconsider what we think we know about history?

I'm glad the class didn't have CRT in the title. But I also didn't end up loving the title I chose. When I chose it, I hoped the title invoked bringing together these different histories of Indigeneity and racialization. But I was also early in my teaching career, and titles weren't my strength, and the class evolved as I taught it. If I kept teaching it, I would have changed the title at some point.

While the title needed tweaking, I was happy with how I arranged the class. Each week, we'd focus on a specific historical event or era (like the American Revolution or the Removal Era or the Progressive Era) and read a variety of related texts related, including:

* a primary source (or two)

* short definitions of terms from an intro to American Studies textbook

*an academic article or book chapter

*a news article, or listen to a podcast, or engage with some other piece of connected present-day multimedia

The historical events/eras were introduced on chronological order. However, we were also connecting history to present-day issues. So in other ways, the class was also moving between historical time periods in a nonlinear way.

I love this class. I believe in it. But the reality is, it was time-consuming and exhausting to teach. Connecting historical events/eras to current issues and speaking to students' interests required constant updating. Every time I taught it, major political events occurred that were connected to the material. So, it also required remaining up to date and connecting the class material to whatever was happening. For this class to be relevant, I couldn't just prep it and tweak it. It required thorough updating every time. And throughout the class, students worked through violent and difficult moments of history. So there was also a lot of ongoing emotional labor.

So while I love this class and believe in it, I am *so* relieved I'm not teaching it as the United States begins a second Trump presidency. The uncertainty and instability of knowing any day, an executive order could be signed that throws a wrench in our topic of discussion or even completely overturns a foundational concept in the course (like Indigenous sovereignty). I mean, that already happened on Day 1 (with an Executive Order attempting to eliminate birth right citizenship). Working through all this took so much time and emotional labor, especially helping students process it.

And make no mistake, there was still massive emotional labor teaching this class (or other upper-level classes I taught, like Gender and Indigenous Borderlands) under Biden or Obama. But under Trump, the emotional labor needed increased—a lot. I already lived this reality for 4 years.

So while I believe this work is more critical than ever, I'm relieved I am not teaching the class. And I have no idea how we fairly compensate professors doing this type of critically important work at teaching institutions, which these days are generally strapped for resources. Maybe they aren't struggling as much as institutions in exigency—like Northland. But even at well-funded R1s, humanities departments, and tenure-track/tenured lines are in jeopardy. Scarcity and precarity have defined the humanities in higher ed for decades, and it's only getting worse. It wasn't getting better under Biden and it certainly won't get better under Trump.

It feels weird to know this work is needed *and* that I don't want to do it right now. I've trained for it. I've gotten good at teaching courses like this. I find it fulfilling on an emotional level.

But something weird happened when I lost my academic job. Even though I grieved it immensely, the thought of returning to academia as a faculty member became increasingly unbearable as the weeks went on. The work was fulfilling but it was also equally draining. The emotional labor along with the precarity, scarcity and, instability are why I can't go back.

I'm thinking about what my life would have been like in academia a lot this week as I work a "regular" 9-to-5 job during the week Trump was inaugurated for his second term. I miss being there for students and the community we created. But I'm also extremely relieved I get to prioritize myself and my family in a way that is completely new for me. And I also feel like I have energy I can invest in local, regional, and national issues. It felt like teaching took all this energy.

Life outside of academia: it's a strange new world for me.