The purpose of this APA Blog series, What It’s Like to be an HBCU Faculty Member, is to spotlight faculty members in our profession who work at historically Black colleges and universities, which are minority serving institutions. The blog also aims to introduce and familiarize faculty members at majority serving institutions with the distinct perspectives, experiences, and, sometimes, limitations, that are unique to students and faculty at historically Black colleges and universities. If you have a recommendation for a faculty member at an HBCU, or other minority serving institution, who deserves recognition, please feel free to nominate them!
Anika Simpson, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Morgan State University. She also served as the coordinator MSU’s Women’s and Gender Studies program, which was established under her leadership, and was co-chair of the LGBTQA Advisory Council. She is currently working on a manuscript entitled Single Black Mother: Queer Reflections on Marriage and Racial Justice.
Why did you choose to teach at an HBCU over a PWI?
I have been reflecting on this question quite a bit as my two-year Visiting Professor position at a PWI is coming to an end. The stark and subtle differences between my experiences teaching at an HBCU vs. a PWI have been put into sharp relief during this time. The most significant difference has been the mis/alignment of my personal and professional lives. For over a decade, I worked as a black woman at a historically black university, while residing in a primarily black neighborhood in what once was known as Chocolate City. Adjusting my personal and professional comportment to navigate successfully as a “minority” within this new space influenced my teaching in unexpected ways.
During the first semester of my visiting appointment, I devoted two weeks to the topic of race and free speech in an applied ethics course. My overwhelmingly white class provided very vehement arguments in support of First Amendment rights and noted that hate speech should be protected and tolerated. They demonstrated little to no understanding of how hate speech foments racial violence. I did not realize how emotionally taxing it would be listen to such privileged naivete as I was personally reeling from the insidious invectives streaming from the current political administration. I had taken for granted that my (black) students would understand the relationship between hate speech and physical violence. Shortly, and tragically, after our unit on hate speech, the mass shooting occurred at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA. This tragedy led to the awakening of a few students but the majority remained resistant to accepting a connection. The following semester, I shortened the race/hate speech unit to one week for the sake of my own emotional well-being.
During the spring semester, a student, in my previous fall course, was filmed uttering a racial epithet that was posted online and caused a furor on campus. The incident left me disheartened and wary. I was disheartened by my seemingly failed pedgagogical efforts as my former student apparently learned nothing during our time together. And I became wary as I wondered if this student, alongside my other smiling, polite students, thought of me as their n*^*^r philosophy professor. This academic year, I removed the race/hate speech unit entirely. In conversations with my black colleagues at other institutions, I’ve learned that I’m not alone in making race-based decisions on what issues and readings to address in predominately white classrooms.
My teaching style and demeanor with students has also changed during my PWI tenure. There is a sense of familial love and a respect for elders between students and faculty at HBCUs that differs from the student-faculty relationship at PWIs. An understanding of that love and respect allows for a sharpness of tone that is commonplace with faculty interactions with HBCU students. I learned quickly that this tone is considered to be offensive by my PWI students. I do not mince words with my Morgan State students concerning my conviction that they will meet my high expectations of their intellectual capabilities and their academic achievements. I have found my PWI students to be, dare I say, a bit fragile. So I make a conscious effort to engage them with a softer touch than to which I am accustomed. The one time that I let my PWI mask slip with a group of students, who failed to complete 50% of a group project assignment, they marched collectively to the Dean’s office and demanded a meeting concerning the unfair treatment meted out by their “aggressive” professor.
On the whole, my experience at a PWI has been quite positive one. I have congenial colleagues, well prepared and interesting students, and a wealth of resources to further my research. However, after two years, I still wrestle with the mask that so many black professionals wear in order to make it through the day. I also lament the various struggles that my POC students share with me when they make their way to my office for solace. In part, my decision to have remained at an HBCU for so many years reflects my choice to maintain alignment between my authentic self in my home and in my work.
Did you go to an HBCU yourself and how do you think it affected your relationship to Philosophy?
When I first arrived at Spelman College, I was convinced that I was embarking on a path towards a medical career as a pediatrician. Those plans quickly changed when I enrolled in Clarence Sholé Johnson’s Intro to Logic course during the spring semester of my freshman year. To this day, I am still not sure how Dr. Johnson fostered this Continental philosopher’s love for the discipline through logic but somehow he did. I changed my major by year’s end and never looked back.
Majoring in philosophy as an undergraduate at Spelman had a profound impact upon my relationship with the discipline. I spent my formative years engaging in philosophical discourse in classes alongside my black peers from both Spelman and Morehouse. The works of historical and contemporary Africana philosophers were centered within course syllabi and were not incorporated as parenthetical to “real” European philosophers. Our readings of canonical figures were subject to a critical lens that reflected the particularities of our lived experiences as students of the African diaspora. At the time, I was completely unaware of the disciplinary insulation that I was experiencing at Spelman. I was free of the alienation and disaffection that is so often experienced by Africana philosophers within the academy. In my cocoon, I was able to cultivate a love for philosophy itself. I enjoyed the freedom of engaging in philosophical thought without the weight of knowing just how marginalized Africana philosophers and Africana philosophical thought is within the discipline. I did not realize how rare it was to have a room full of black women “doing philosophy.” I did not know that all professors were not invested in cultivating black women in the discipline. In hindsight, I am grateful for this period of naïve, intellectual bliss.
It was not until I reached graduate school that I came to realize what a gift those years at Spelman would be for my career. The reality that Africana philosophers represent only 1% of the academy became readily apparent in my doctoral program. I quickly learned that, indeed, not all philosophy professors support black women in the field. I also discovered that many philosophers erroneously consider race and gender to be ancillary to their philosophical work. The biggest gift from Spelman has been my enduring love for philosophy itself, which could not be undermined by the academy at large. Spelman provided me with a clear vision to delineate between philosophy itself (and my rightful place within it) and the multifarious modes of anti-black racism embedded in the academy.
Given that people may presuppose homogeneity at an HBCU, how would you define diversity at an HBCU and do you think this conception/experience is unique and/or uniquely valuable?
In most respects, the diversity found on HBCU campuses mirrors the diversity on PWI campuses. Our students hail from around the world. I have taught students from Nigeria, Trinidad, Vietnam, Nepal, and Saudia Arabia. Our students differ in socioeconomic status, political ideology, gender identity, sexual orientation, and religious affiliation. Some are first generation college students, while others are legacy students following in the historical footsteps of their parents and grandparents. The notable difference in the heterogeneity at HBCUs is that our individual differences exist in relationship to our core mission to provide a challenging and nurturing educational experience focused squarely upon the needs of black students. For those for whom the notion of heterogeneity within HBCUs is still foreign, I’d suggest watching a few episodes of A Different World, or perhaps, revisiting Spike Lee’s School Daze.
Teaching philosophy within this environment can be a pedagogical delight. The familiar historical debates waged within Africana philosophy come to life in the classroom. Modern day WEB DuBois meets Anna Julia Cooper meets Charles Mills meets Kristie Dotson and so on. While the majority of our students self-identify as black, their relationship with that identity marker varies greatly by individual. This makes for engaging philosophical debates around the efficacy of various Africana philosophers’ arguments across the subdisciplines of ontology, ethics, epistemology, etc. In the classroom, I am often reminded of Patricia Hill Collins’ assertion that the work of black feminist academics must be validated by everyday black women and their academic black female peers before consideration for publication in mainstream academic outlets. My students are not shy when interrogating the merits of the arguments offered by the philosophers that I put before them, especially when these arguments center the experience of those of the African diaspora.
What kinds of Philosophical conversations are happening between scholars (and students) at HBCUs that are not—but should be—happening at PWIs?
I have the pleasure of teaching Contemporary Africana Philosophy with undergraduate and graduate students during my PWI visiting position. I have learned that this course represents the first sustained exposure to Africana philosophical thought for many of my students. It was relayed to me that one student had never thought about being both black and a philosopher. I must admit that the comment was both puzzling and a bit sad to me. I have never thought of these two identities as being separate, owing, in large part, to my undergraduate philosophical experience at Spelman. Feelings of dissonance, or erasure, should not frame one’s engagement with philosophy as a black student. I cannot say that conversations about what it means to be both black and a philosopher are not happening between PWI faculty and their black students. They may very well be. However, what cannot be replicated on PWI campuses is the ethos that is unique to the HBCU educational experience. Black students are centered in every facet of University life, to include philosophy departments.
Do you think that the field of Philosophy can achieve its goals of diversifying or decolonizing without vested engagement with HBCU faculty and students?
Increasing the numbers of black philosophers in the academy will not happen without significant engagement with HBCU philosophy departments. The data on our success rate preparing high-achieving, confident, and successful graduates supports my unequivocal assertion.
A recent Gallup study found that:
- black HBCU graduates are more likely than their black PWI peers to be thriving in the areas of finance and purpose well-being.
- black HBCU graduates are more than twice as likely than their black PWI peers to recount feeling supported by an undergraduate professor.
- almost 55% of black HBCU graduates “strongly agree” that their schools prepared them sufficiently for life post-college in comparison to less than 30 percent of their PWI peers.
Further, while HBCUs account for only 3% of graduates from four-year nonprofit colleges, our alumni account for roughly 80% of black judges and 50% of black lawyers and doctors. The unique HBCU ethos that I described above engenders our alums’ outsized representation within professions in the legal, medical, and STEM fields.
To that end, we are cultivating students with the intellectual tools and emotional fortitude to thrive within the 1% realities of the philosophical profession. Those within the academy, who are keen to diversity, would be wise to foster relationships with our faculty and students with vigor and tenacity.
Shay Welch
Shay Welch is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Spelman College. She is currently the Scholar-in-Residence for the city of Atlanta's public art project; the project is titled "Public Performance Art as Resistance to Epistemic Injustice". Recently, she was the 2020-2021 Carnegie Corporation and Rockefeller Foundation Distinguished Research/Creative Scholar. She was Chair of the Association for Feminist Ethics and Social Theory and is a committee member for the Emotions Matter national non-profit organization. She is especially interested in supporting first generation students and students with cognitive and affective disorders.
