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Hunter College’s Acting Provost Rebukes Department of Film and Media Studies for Its Negative Campus Reputation & Image That It Is Hostile to Black Instructors and Staff — Part 1
The rebuke was delivered at a ZOOM Faculty Meeting — not by the acting provost but by Department Chair Kelly Anderson.
There was no outrage expressed in response to the rebuke. Instead there was weirdly operatic kaffeeklatsching discourse about “mentoring.” There were were phony apologies, pretentious mea culpas and testimonials of a self-congratulatory manner by colleagues in the course of the meeting that they had to do more “mentoring” of Black members of the department.
It was obscenely patronizing — yet, descriptive of the second, if not third class treatment that can exist in an higher ed academic department.
[Usually, for this kind of techtonic announcement, the message is delivered by a dean to emphasize the administration’s concern about the serious nature of a pronouncement or declaration or rebuke or a waning shot across the bow of a department in trouble. The reality that it wasn’t, indicated to me that a game, some kind of falsehood, fakery was in play.]
Colleagues Larry Shore and Isabel Pinedo, at times drawing on what they said were their personal…
