When I started teaching here at a university for five years ago, I was told that I would earn tenure if I simply fulfilled the School's requirement for one major research/creative project, maintained a satisfactory record of teaching, and served the School, the University, and the Profession. The University's regulations state that tenure is earned by the junior faculty member who shows evidence of "a successfully developing career."

Unfortunately, in the time since I began here I have experienced prejudice and oppression above the level I've experienced in all but a few other workplaces in my wearying 25 years as a minority professional seeking success in journalism.
I am one of only about 40 Asian-American or Hispanic journalism professors in the country. My father is a Filipino of Spanish descent who immigrated to the US from the Philippines. My name is the 944th most common Spanish surname out of approximately 1600. Because I'm not like them nor anyone they've ever worked with, many of my colleagues here allowed their ignorance and fears—and in some cases hatred—to lead them to apply negative racial stereotypes to me and to question my abilities, my intellect, my character, and my motivations. From the beginning, it was obvious to me that I would neither be judged for who I really am, accepted as an equal, nor allowed the fullest opportunity to succeed. Throughout my five years here, I have labored under that assumption, knowing that my record would need to be exemplary for me to succeed. I have worked to build a record that would be embarrassing to reject.

Admittedly, minority status alone does not automatically result in complete rejection. Those minority people and women who remain docile and servile are tolerated as long as they affect acculturation. But any minority people and women who succeed in this kind of workplace do so only after convincing the mainstream that they will be loyal soldiers--regardless of the consequences for their stigmatized peers. "Troublemaking," "uppity" minorities and women simply are not tolerated.

So, where I went wrong was that I have had what many of my colleagues see as fatal audacity because I actually publicly complained that I've been being treated unfairly. Then, after a particularly nasty and unnecessarily tumultuous confrontation with the former dean resulted in his resignation, many of my colleagues blamed me for his self-destruction. In the years since, I have been subject to an astonishing level of discourtesy, disregard, and disrespect. After vainly seeking help from the University and the State, I filed suit in federal court, charging race-based discrimination and retaliation.

From early on, I served with and supported diversity activist groups. I served as chair of the University's Human Relations Committee and am a founding member of the University’s Sexism & Racism Victims Coalition. As the person responsible for telling the world this story through the Coalition's website, it is no wonder that the Administration sees me as particularly "troublesome" and "uppity."

What's most hurtful about the decision of my colleagues is that each and every one of them knows why I'm here and why I've worked so hard to succeed here. They all know that I'm in Lawrence—the hometown of my ex-wife—to participate in the rearing of my son, who lives in my home four nights each week. Everything I've done here I've done to insure that he wouldn't be separated from either his mother or his father. In that light, the enmity and lack of common decency in their personal and political decision become all the more heinous.