I am in agreement with Dr. Larson in his assessment of the role of the administration in the increasing number of faculty resignations. As he states, diversity faculty are particularly prone to mistreatment by the administration. We will be exploring this issue in our ISCORE workshop, “American Indians in the Academy: Challenges and Responses” on March 1. The issues addressed affect non-diversity members of the Iowa State community as well. As such, all concerned parties are encouraged to attend.

Here is the abstract for our workshop:

American Indians in the academy commonly face issues of racial discrimination. This workshop will examine the experience of some of the faculty members of the American Indian Studies Program at Iowa State.

The goal of the workshop is to continue the process of developing effective strategies to interrupt cycles of racial discrimination in order to create a positive and safe working environment for diversity faculty in general at Iowa State. The workshop will focus on two areas – problems encountered by American Indians in the academy and strategies which have been developed to deal with those problems.

Problems encountered include the dismissal and devaluing of work done by American Indians, resistance by non-Indian faculty and administration to consider American Indian concerns, and the firing of American Indian faculty.

Strategies to be discussed will focus on both tribal-based methods for dealing with challenges, as well as established principles for functioning within an institutional setting. Tribal strategies include use of the spiritual, focus on the long-term good and storytelling.

Non-tribal responses include understanding the process of redress for grievances – what to expect and not to expect – use of outside resources and publicity.

Lawrence W. Gross

Assistant professor

American Indian studies program and

Department of philosophy and religious studies