“White supremacy in these institutions bleeds through the photos of white men which hang in the halls of the university, in the syllabi that privilege white cannon and lack any type of representation for people of color, and in the university’s inability to hire or retain black and brown faculty, in the university’s disavowal of Ethnic Studies as a legitimate field of knowledge.”
By Nelson Santana and Amaury Rodríguez
December 3, 2019
Students question the decision made by the college administration
Collective calls for the formal establishment of an Ethnic Studies Department
A petition is currently circulating
Last year Professor Lorgia García-Peña was the victim of a hateful attack
On Monday, a coalition of concerned graduate students and scholars published a petition response to Harvard’s tenure denial of Dominican scholar Lorgia García-Peña, Roy G. Clouse Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of History and Literature at Harvard University. According to The Harvard Crimson, close to 50 students staged a sit-in, in protest of García-Peña’s tenure denial. The students and allies not only protest García-Peña’s tenure denial but also call on Harvard to create an Ethnic Studies Department.
In their petition response, the students and scholars make four demands:
1. The immediate public release of President Bacow’s letter to Dean Gay with the final decision as well as Dean Gay’s letter to RLL Department Chair, Professor Mariano Siskind
2. The creation of an investigative committee to review Professor García-Peña’s case for procedural errors, prejudice, and discrimination
3. Increased transparency in the tenure review process
4. Formal establishment of Ethnic Studies Department at Harvard University with a plan for sustaining the Department
Support Professor Lorgia García-Peña by signing the petition
The collective response rejects the tenure denial letter, calls for the creation of an investigative committee to review García-Peña’s case, demands more transparency with regard to the tenure process at Harvard, and also calls for the formal establishment of an Ethnic Studies Department at Harvard.
“The extreme demand for Professor García-Peña’s advising and scholarship across campus exemplifies the need to dedicate more resources to faculty engaged in the pedagogical and intellectual questions that she and many students are enthusiastically posing.”
According to The Harvard Crimson—a daily student newspaper—demonstrators occupied the lobby of University Hall for 48 minutes, corresponding with the 48 years that students have dedicated to requesting the establishment of a formalized Ethnic Studies Department.
The Harvard Crimson cites an open letter written by Harvard students and sent to University Provost Lawrence S. Bacow, Provost Alan M. Garber ’76, and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Claudine Gay. According to the letter: “While looking outwardly for faculty members that can conduct and teach Ethnic Studies research, it is absolutely unacceptable to deny Professor García Peña tenure, especially as a member of the search committee herself.” The letter continues, “It is hypocritical for University administrators to claim they are invested in furthering Ethnic Studies scholarship at Harvard while simultaneously denying tenure to a leading Latinx and Ethnic Studies scholar.”
“Although brilliant scholars are often denied tenure at Harvard, it is also not possible to ignore the instances of racism and discrimination that scholars such as García-Peña have endured.”
Another article by The Harvard Crimson sheds light into the secretive tenure process at Harvard. “Tenure at Harvard is very difficult to get, particularly promotion from within. From job offer to tenure offer, scholarship and teaching are intensely scrutinized. For young scholars hired into the tenure track and brought up from within, evaluation occurs in Harvard’s classrooms and among its academic circles.” In another passage, the author writes, “The promise of internal promotion, they warn, may be hurting Harvard’s commitment to offering tenure to only the very best in a given field.”
“It is hypocritical for University administrators to claim they are invested in furthering Ethnic Studies scholarship at Harvard while simultaneously denying tenure to a leading Latinx and Ethnic Studies scholar.”
A Resilient Scholar Who Provides a Voice to the Voiceless
Although brilliant scholars are often denied tenure at Harvard, it is also not possible to ignore the instances of racism and discrimination that scholars such as García-Peña have endured. A little over a year ago, an investigation was opened with regard to a hateful attack on García-Peña. The culprit or culprits left a note on García-Peña’s office door, insulting García-Peña’s Dominican ethnicity and immigrant status.
García-Peña is a prominent leader and empowering voice within academic circles that extend beyond Harvard. In “Microeditorial: A Mediation on Possibility in Academia,” published in Aster(ix) she wrote:
And yet, I would urge us to talk beyond these awful violences, beyond the mourning and anger, to dig deeper into the “seamless” ways in which white supremacy shapes our institutions and every aspect of our lives. This is most evident in my location of work, in my subject position as a scholar of Latinx Studies. Colleges and universities, particularly the elite kind, were not created for people like me: a Dominican Latina immigrant from Trenton, NJ. Harvard’s manufactured “science” denied Puerto Rican citizenship and produced rhetoric which deemed black people as inferior. White supremacy in these institutions bleeds through the photos of white men which hang in the halls of the university, in the syllabi that privilege white cannon and lack any type of representation for people of color, and in the university’s inability to hire or retain black and brown faculty, in the university’s disavowal of Ethnic Studies as a legitimate field of knowledge.
Support Professor Lorgia García-Peña by signing the petition
Award-winning scholar Lorgia García-Peña has been a critical and necessary academic voice for many. And now, she needs the support of her friends and colleagues.
Her first monograph, The Borders of Dominicanidad: Race, Nation, and Archives of Contradiction (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016) is a “study of the impact of stories — historical and fictional — on the national and racial identity of a people,” offering the Dominican experience as a case study. The Borders of Dominicanidad has won multiple awards including the 2017 National Women’s Studies Association Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize, the 2016 LASA Latino/a Studies Book Award, and the 2016 Isis Duarte Book Prize in Haiti and Dominican Studies. García-Peña is also the recipient of multiple awards, honors, and fellowships including a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, Dean’s Competitive Fund for Promising Scholarship, Elson Family Art Grant for Course Development, and many other awards and honors both within and outside of Harvard University.
García-Peña is an exemplary scholar. As per her curriculum vitae, here are some of her accomplishments and list of publications:
Honors and Awards
2017: MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award (for Freedom University)
2017: Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award
2017: Roslyn Abramson Award for outstanding undergraduate teaching
2016: Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Research Award
2015: Editor’s Choice 2015 Top Article "Translating Blackness: Dominicans Negotiating Race and Belonging." The Black Scholar 45, no. 2 (2015): 10-20
2011: Macanogni Prize for Best Research Proposal, Willson Center for the Humanites and the Arts, University of Georgia, Athens
2005: International Young Scholar Award, Mexican Ministry of Education, Mexico
2005: Global Scholarship Initiatives Award, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
2002: Graduate Student Teaching Award, Rutgers University, New Brunswick
2002: Latina Leadership Award, New Brunswick, NJ 1998 Phi Beta Kappa
Selected Fellowships and Grants
2017: Lasky Baraja’s Fund for Mind the Gap (with Medhin Paolos)
2017: Dean’s Competitive Fund for Promising Scholarship
2016: Elson Family Art Grant for Course Development, Harvard University
2016: Provostial Fund for the Arts and Humanities, Harvard University
2014: Elson Family Arts Grant for Course Development, Harvard University 2014: Provostial Fund for the Arts and Humanities, Harvard University
2013: Milton Grant, Harvard University
2013: Nominee and finalist. Excellence in Graduate Teaching. Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, University of Georgia
2012: Franklin College Seed Grant for Innovative Research, University of Georgia
2011: Macanogni Prize for Best Research Proposal, Willson Center for the Humanites and Arts, University of Georgia, Athens
2011: Sarah Moss Fellowship for the Advancement of Research. Center for Learning, Georgia.
2010: Postdoctoral Scholarship in African Diaspora Studies. Johns Hopkins University
2009: Future of Minority Studies Fellowship, Syracuse University. 2006 Dissertation Fellowship, Ford Foundation
2005: International Scholar Award, Mexican Ministry of Education, Mexico
2005 Visiting Scholar Fellowship, Universidad de Chiapas, San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico
2005: Global Scholarship Initiatives Award, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
2003: Nominee, Latina Leadership Award. Douglass College, Rutgers University
2004: Pre-dissertation Fellowship. International Institute, D.C.
2002: Graduate Student Teaching Award, Rutgers University, New Brunswick
2000: Rutgers University Graduate Fellowship, Full tuition 2000-2003
1998: Phi Beta Kappa
Fellowships
2015: Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship
2015: Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Sabbatical Fellowship
2015: David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies Research Fellowship
2011: Sarah Moss Fellowship for the Advancement of Research 2010: Postdoctoral Scholarship in African Diaspora Studies, Johns Hopkins University
2009: Future of Minority Studies Fellowship, Syracuse University
2006: Dissertation Fellowship, Ford Foundation
2005: Visiting Scholar Fellowship, Universidad de Chiapas, Mexico
2004: Pre-dissertation Fellowship, International Institute, D.C.
2000 Rutgers University Graduate Fellowship, Full tuition 2000-2003.
PUBLICATIONS
Books
The Borders of Dominicanidad: Race, Nation, and Archives of Contradiction (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016) argues that official narratives and histories have been projected onto racialized Dominican bodies as a means of sustaining the nation's borders. The book constructs a genealogy of dominicanidad that highlights how Afro-Dominicans, ethnic Haitians, and Dominicans living abroad have contested these dominant narratives and their violent, silencing, and exclusionary effects through the study of literary, historical and cultural texts (1822-2010).
Awards
2017: National Women’s Studies Association Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize
2016: LASA Latino/a Studies Book Award
2016: Isis Duarte Book Prize in Haiti and Dominican Studies
In Progress
Translating Blackness: Migrations and Detours of Latinx Colonialities in Global Perspectives. examines how race, immigration and coloniality intersect to produce restrictive categories of citizens in the new millennium. Through a genealogical analysis of Afro-Latino intellectual discourse (1874-2016), the book examines how people, particularly Afro-Latin American migrants and their descendants, find ways to translate their experiences of oppression and exclusion through the very hegemonic ethno-racial categories invented to exclude them (black/Hispanic/Latina/Migrant), in order to gain access to services and to connect with wider international networks of contestations.
Los bordes de la dominicanidad: raza, nación y archivos de contradicción: A translation of The Borders of Dominicanidad.
Articles in Referred Journals
"Black in English: Race, Migration, and National Belonging in Postcolonial Italy." Kalfou 3, no. 2 (2016).
"Translating Blackness: Dominicans Negotiating Race and Belonging." The Black Scholar 45, no. 2 (2015): 10-20 (Awarded Best Article in Black Scholar, 2015).
"Un-Bordering Hispaniola: David Pérez's Performance Actions of Haitian-Dominican Solidarity." Afro-Hispanic Review 32, no. 2 (2013): 57-71.
"Being Black Ain't So Bad... Dominican Immigrant Women Negotiating Race in Contemporary Italy." Caribbean Studies 41, no. 2 (2013): 137-161.
“New Freedom Fights: The Creation of Freedom University Georgia.” Latino Studies 10, no. 1 (2012): 246-250. “De dominicano a Dominicanyork. El viaje en la narrativa de Josefina Báez y Junot Díaz.” Xinesquema, Revista literaria dominicana 2 (2009): 23-38.
"Performing Identity, Language, and Resistance: A Study of Josefina Baez's Dominicanish." Wadabagei: A Journal of the Caribbean and Its Diaspora 11, no. 3 (2008): 28-47.
Peer-Reviewed Book Chapters
“La Mucama de Omicunlé: Una Reseña.” Rita Indiana. Archivos. Ed. Fernanda Bustamante. Cielo Naranja: Santo Domingo and Berlin, 2017.
“Almost Citizens: Transnational Belonging in the Age of Immigration.” Forthcoming in Translations: The Future of the Humanities. Duke University Press, Summer, 2017. https://humanitiesfutures.org/papers/almost-citizens-racial-translations-nationalbelonging-global-immigration-crisis/
“Junot Díaz.” In Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography, edited by Franklin W. Knight and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. London: Oxford University Press, 2016.
“Más que Cenizas: An Analysis of Juan Bosch’s Dissident Narration of Dominicanidad Ausente” in Voices from Abroad: Hispanic Caribbean Literature of Migration, edited by Vanessa Pérez Rosario, 52-72. New York: Palgrave, 2010.
As of this writing, the petition has more than 2,400 signatures.
More Social Media Reactions
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On Professor Lorgia García-Peña’s Tenure Denial and the Future of Ethnic Studies at Harvard
Dear President Larry Bacow and Provost Alan Garber,
We are a coalition of graduate students and concerned scholars writing in response to the news that Harvard University has denied tenure to Professor Lorgia García-Peña. Given Professor García-Peña’s academic profile, teaching record, and professional service, we are dismayed and do not understand why she was denied tenure. This denial strikes us as a disavowal of Harvard’s recent commitment to invest in Ethnic Studies. Denying tenure to a faculty member of color who is actively serving on the committee for new hires in Ethnic Studies undermines Harvard’s commitment and betrays efforts to advance diversity and inclusion at this institution. Although Harvard has responded to the call of the student-and-alumni group Harvard Ethnic Studies Coalition (HESC) by pledging to hire a cluster of four Ethnic Studies faculty members, the outcome of Professor García-Peña’s tenure case damages this important cause.
Thus, to address the ramifications of this particular tenure decision, we submit a series of demands. These demands call upon the administration to respond directly to Professor García-Peña’s tenure denial and to take action to create stability and resources for Ethnic Studies at Harvard. We demand:
1. The immediate public release of President Bacow’s letter to Dean Gay with the final decision as well as Dean Gay’s letter to RLL Department Chair, Professor Mariano Siskind
2. The creation of an investigative committee to review Professor García-Peña’s case for procedural errors, prejudice, and discrimination
3. Increased transparency in the tenure review process
4. Formal establishment of Ethnic Studies Department at Harvard University with a plan for sustaining the Department
1) The immediate public release of President Bacow’s letter to Dean Gay with the final decision as well as Dean Gay’s letter to RLL Department Chair, Professor Mariano Siskind
All tenure review processes should be transparent. The history and frequency of hostility faced by junior faculty of color at Harvard makes it particularly imperative in this case. Moreover, the enthusiastic support of Professor García-Peña’s case by colleagues and students compels us to question the scholarly justifications for this decision.
According to the FAS Appointment and Promotion Handbook, the President makes all final decisions regarding tenure appointments. This individual must then document that decision in a letter to the Edgerley Family Dean of the FAS. We know that, if any participant in this review process determines that the case should not progress, it is mandated that a letter must be sent to the candidate from the Chair of the Department.
We demand a public release of both these documents—the President’s final decision as well as the draft letter from Dean Gay—in order to understand the intellectual and scholarly reasoning behind the rejection of Professor García-Peña’s promotion.
2) The creation of an investigative committee to review Professor García-Peña’s case for procedural errors, prejudice, and discrimination
Harvard’s Inclusion and Belonging Taskforce limited its investigation of junior faculty experiences to the question of mentorship. We believe that Harvard’s procedure for tenure promotion requires further review because it allows for bias to remain institutionalized with little chance of redress. In fact, the university has reversed tenure decisions in the past on the grounds of discrimination. According to a 1985 report by The New York Times, Harvard reversed the tenure decision of Professor Theda Skocpol after, “[a] special Harvard investigating committee concluded later that the [sociology] department had failed ‘to consider seriously any woman for tenure appointments over the past decade.’” We believe the tenure decision with which we are particularly concerned exemplifies bias in the review process against professors of Ethnic Studies, whose scholarship and mentorship often put them in tension with Harvard’s administration.
We call for this investigative committee to review Professor García-Peña’s case specifically. We also call for this investigative committee to review tenure decisions of the past 10 years to determine how combinations of gender, race, and field of scholarship affect outcomes. The results of these investigations must be made public.
3) Increased transparency in the tenure review process
The university's refusal to make tenure decisions with transparency is premised upon anonymity. Professor García-Peña’s tenure case confirms that the current model of anonymity allows individuals in positions of power, who are non-experts in the field, to play a decisive role without accountability. The current "confidentiality" of the tenure review process does not protect those who stand to be most affected by the abuse of power; on the contrary, in the name of “confidentiality,” anonymity insulates power from accountability. We call for tenure decisions to be made with transparency because in Professor García-Peña’s case we see no adequate reason why Harvard has denied her tenure.
Professor García-Peña’s intellectual leadership in her academic fields, contribution to the faculty, university, and the wider scholarly community, and her excellence in teaching and advising a diverse group of students undeniably exceeds those of her peers. Her first monograph, The Borders of Dominicanidad, garnered national and international recognition and numerous awards from top national and international scholarly organizations across multiple fields. In addition, she has published eight articles and four book chapters with a forthcoming book, Translating Blackness: Gender, Migration, and Detours of Latinx Colonialities (Duke University Press). She has received numerous teaching awards at Harvard including Professor of the Year in 2015, Roslyn Abramson Award for excellence in Undergraduate Teaching and Graduate Mentoring Award in 2016, and Harvard Professor of the Year Selection by Graduating Class of 2017, to name a few.
In addition to her ground-breaking scholarship and awards, Professor García-Peña has contributed a wealth of professional service. During her six years at Harvard, Professor García-Peña has served as part of multiple search committees for divisional tenure-track positions in Gender and History, in the annual hiring process for lecturers in History and Literature, the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, and, currently, for Ethnicity and Migration under FAS. She, along with Professor Ju Yon Kim, were on the faculty search committee for the 2019–2020 Warren Center Faculty Fellowships.
Lastly, Professor García-Peña has been a key player in establishing the secondary field in Ethnic Studies for History and Literature concentrators, as well as the graduate secondary field in Latinx Studies. She is also affiliated with the Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights; the Graduate Program in American Studies; the Committee on Women, Gender, and Sexuality; the Afro-Latin American Research Studies Institute, the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the Observatorio de la Lengua Española-Cervantes at Harvard.
We cannot understand the grounds upon which such a prominent scholar like Professor García-Peña would have been denied tenure at Harvard. And thus, we ask that the tenure review process be made transparent by making the reasons for the tenure decision public.
4) Formal establishment of Ethnic Studies Department at Harvard University with a plan for sustaining the Department
While we recognize that the university has been responsive to the call for Ethnic Studies, as demonstrated by ongoing meetings between administrators and undergraduate students, the failure to recognize and retain scholars of color, like Professor García-Peña, is a turn away from promises and assurances that Harvard has made in its hiring search and vision for Diversity and Inclusion. We believe that the establishment of an Ethnic Studies Department and a plan for resource allocation is the only way to support the number of students and faculty committed to this field.
It is worth repeating that Harvard students have pushed for Ethnic Studies since 1972. Over twelve proposals have been carefully drafted and submitted by students, highlighting the need for the recruitment and retainment of Ethnic Studies faculty and faculty of color. However, despite various public commitments made by Dean Kelsey and other administrators from 2017 to the present, students have witnessed the consistent removal of faculty of color dedicated to Ethnic Studies. Harvard has seen recent departures of many scholars who predominantly served students of color, including Professors Sergio Delgado Moya, Genevieve Clutario, Ahmed Ragab, and Natasha Warikoo.
In mid-June of 2019, The Harvard Gazette published a formal announcement by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences regarding their plans to hire a cluster of faculty in the areas of ethnicity, indigeneity, and migration during the upcoming academic year. In the article, Dean Claudine Gay defined the search as “an opportunity to accelerate our efforts with a set of hires that we hope will be bold, field-defining and intellectually synergistic.”
With this current search for scholars of Latinx, Asian American, and Muslim studies to join Harvard faculty, it is critical to note that Professor García-Peña is the only Latina professor on the tenure track, and her academic work in Latinx Studies, along with her efforts to institutionalize Latinx Studies, make her an excellent candidate to lead the Ethnic Studies initiative. Moreover, she has foregrounded the needs of her students and their well being which has meant urging for more resources for faculty to support students seeking to engage with the field of Ethnic Studies and more.
If the goal of the search is to seek out faculty who are leaders in their field of specialization, who demonstrate a deep understanding of Ethnic Studies, and who have a distinct ability to teach and advise students, then the rejection of Professor García-Peña’s tenure promotion is a signal to interested applicants that the administration is not committed to supporting or retaining those faculty members. This denial sends the message that the administration is not interested in excellent teaching in Ethnic Studies, the future of Latinx Studies, or supporting students’ scholarly pursuits in these fields. We see this outcome as contradictory to the stated commitments of administrators such as Dean Gay and Dean Kelsey.
We demand the administration listen to students and stand by its spoken commitments by establishing an Ethnic Studies Department. We urge you to address the consequences of this denial through structural and institutional redress.
*
The extreme demand for Professor García-Peña’s advising and scholarship across campus exemplifies the need to dedicate more resources to faculty engaged in the pedagogical and intellectual questions that she and many students are enthusiastically posing.
Professor García-Peña’s absence will undoubtedly result in a void of mentorship, advising, and teaching in Latinx Studies, Ethnic Studies, and American Studies. What will the university do to ensure that undergraduate students continue to have course offerings, advising on their junior and senior essays, and guidance in linking their lived histories with critical scholarly frameworks, such as those of diaspora, migration, race, ethnicity, and empire? The vast majority of History and Literature concentrators at Harvard are pursuing the Ethnic Studies secondary field with 40–50 students declared as of May 2019. Professor García-Peña’s Fall 2019 course, “Performing Latinidad” currently has 61 students enrolled.
How will the need for specialists to supervise graduate student exams be met? How will the university guarantee that Professor García-Peña’s current advisees, who are at varying stages of their PhD programs, will continue to advance to completion? Professor García-Peña is currently sitting on twelve graduate dissertation committees and advises eight pre-dissertation graduate students. Her tenure denial will have serious repercussions on the progress of their academic work and career trajectories. We demand the administration listen to the continuous voices of faculty and students and commit to the creation and sustaining of an Ethnic Studies Department to ensure the retention and support of faculty and resources dedicated to the field of Ethnic Studies.
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While each of our demands are distinct, we consider them together as indissociable. Our demands are not only indissociable in principle but also for the case at hand. How can the search for new Ethnic Studies hires be successful, when an eminently qualified committee member has been denied tenure? The recent withdrawal of applications by qualified applicants anticipates the negative effect that this tenure denial will have on the future of Ethnic Studies at Harvard University.
For these reasons, we call on the Harvard administration to establish an Ethnic Studies Department and publicly distribute a resource allocation plan for the support of Ethnic Studies at Harvard.