Forum 34 | Sara Ahmed | Complaint: Diversity Work, Feminism, and Institutions

good afternoon I'm Provost Ralph Hexter and it's my pleasure to welcome you to the third event in the 2017-18 season of the UC Davis forums on the public university in the social good for those of you who might be unfamiliar with this lecture series the UC Davis forums was established in 2012 and presents about a half dozen lectures each year by experts from a range of fields the series was designed to promote informed and thoughtful dialogue among members of the campus community and the public about this serious challenges facing the public university ways of responding to those challenges and how the public university is evolving with an ultimate goal of helping to produce a public university that will best serve society and individuals this series opposes the following question what should and can the public university in the 21st century be so far this season we've had two wonderful events in the first UCLA professor Sylvia Hurtado spoke about how we might boost success for underrepresented students in the STEM disciplines in the second UCLA professor Michael's torpor and UCSD associate vice chancellor of Mary wallchuck discovered two issues me discussed how universities have affected the development of several urban areas San Francisco Bay Area San Diego and Los Angeles today's forum promises to be a fully worthy successor to these preceding events were privileged to welcome to UC Davis dr. Sarah Allman who will speak on a topic that is at once important timely urgent of keen interest the title of her presentation is complaint diversity and work feminism and institutions I know we're all eager to hear from dr. Ahmed but before our moderator formally introduced her I have a number of thank-yous that I really need to make first I'd like to thank everyone who made this event possible first and foremost dr. Ahmed for generously agreeing to travel to be today as many of you know the great interest in her presentation nested a recent move to this larger venue in this connection let me thank the School of Veterinary Medicine which stepped up at the 11th hour to make this space available next the UC Davis forum steering committee led by Martin Kenny professor of human and Community Development and also Colleen Devorah associate professor in the gender sexuality and Women's Studies program and director of the feminist Institute who is serving as the moderator of today's event finally I want to acknowledge the many campus units in an exemplary demonstration of interdepartmental collaboration that have joined my office in sponsoring this lecture the community and Regional Development Program the Center for regional change the feminist Research Institute the College of Agricultural and environmental sciences the Graduate group and cultural studies the office for the vice chancellor for student affairs in campus diversity the College of Biological Sciences the School of Law the School of Medicine office of equity diversity and inclusion the Institute for Social Sciences the department of gender sexuality and Women's Studies the department of American Studies the Department of English the designated emphasis in critical theory the Graduate group in performative studies the department of comparative literature and the department of anthropology looking ahead I encourage everyone here to attend as many of our upcoming forums as you possibly can the next one which will be held only a week from today on February 22nd will feature USC professor Shaun Harper speaking on the topic how universities sustained racism in America for information on this and all of the season-- forums as well as access to our video archive of past events please visit the series website at forums UC Davis edu one more announcement after today's presentation there'll be a question answer period and then a reception just outside this room you're all invited to stay for talk and refreshments and I happily evil the podium to Professor Vora Thank You Provost Hexter I have the distinct pleasure of introducing dr. sara ahmed today i will give you a sense of her impact as a scholar and as a public intellectual in the briefest possible time since we are all very much anticipating her lecture many of us follow the public intellectual work of dr. ahmed on her blog feminist killjoys and via her Twitter posts her commitment to this public work is particularly impressive given her prolific and essential scholarship her two decades of work include eight single authored monographs and a list of articles in many prominent critical cultural critical and cultural theory journals the list is even longer than list the list of supporters of this talk today so I'll let you look it up dr. Ombuds field defining research in post-colonial feminism's an economies of affect and on the cultural politics of emotion have been essential to the field of post-colonial studies gender studies queer theory and critical race studies since the late 1990s her publications and public lectures have influenced the work of a generation of scholars including my own and have helped grow and establish feminism feminist and critical race studies in the Academy for example her monograph entitled the promise of happiness published in 2010 was awarded the feminist in Women's Studies Association Book Prize in 2011 for on Genuity and scholarship in the fields of feminism gender and Women's Studies more recently she has turned her analytical acumen to work on the university itself as a research site now as an independent scholar in 2012 she published the book on being included racism and diversity in institutional life in 2014 willful subjects and most recently in 2017 her widely read book entitled living a feminist life dr. Ahmed is former Faculty of Lancaster University and later of Goldsmith's College University of London among her current projects is research into complaint particularly complaint demanding inquiry into sexual harassment and misconduct please join me in a warm welcome for dr. Sara Ahmed [Applause] thank you so much and thank you to everyone who made it possible for me to be here today it's an absolute pleasure to join you in the shared project of thinking about with on and at the University so my lecture today is called complaint as diversity work a complaint can be what you have to make because of how a space is occupied I'm speaking to a woman of color academic she set up a writing group in her department because she wanted to create a more collaborative research culture but the meetings quickly became dominated by senior men what I found in each of the meetings with senior men who were bullying everyone in the room the bullying took the form of the constant belittling of the work of more junior academics as well as postgraduate students the first session someone was being just really abusive about someone's PhD saying it was rubbish racist comments are made I'm from London and London is just ripe for ethnic cleansing she described how people laughed how the laughter filled the room ablest and sexist comments are made a woman is described as obviously mentally ill she commented on these comments these were the sorts of things being aired these were the sorts of things sentences as sentencing violence thrown out as how some are thrown out these were the sorts of things being aired even the air can be occupied so what do you do what to do she decided to make a complaint because she wanted it recorded and because the culture was being reproduced for new PhD students a complaint becomes a recording device you have to record what you do not want to reproduce she gathered statements from around 20 people in her department a complaint can be a feminist collective a meeting set up in response to her complaint and at that meeting she was described by the head of Human Resources as having a chip on her shoulder as if she complained because she had a personal grudge she as they treated the submission as an act of arrogance on my part it is as if she put a complaint forward as a way of putting herself forward a complaint is treated as self-promotional one way a complaint is heard or not heard is to discredit the complainer as if the problems she identifies is a problem with her her complaint goes nowhere and the issues are to use her terms swept under the carpet covered over when those who try to stop a culture from being reproduced are stopped a culture is being reproduced a complaint about what is going on within a university can provide us with an alternative catalog of the university complaints can teach us how a university is built in today's lecture I want to think about complaint as diversity work we become diversity workers when we try to dismantle the structures that are not built to accommodate us in understanding diversity work in this way I'm building upon work done by Chandra top a mohanty Gloria veca Jackie M Alexander and Heidi Mirza who have offered powerful critiques of diversity in the Academy as a way of building feminists of color and black feminists counter institutional knowledge complaint a word can bring up a history the word complaint derives from the old French compound heir to lament a lament an expression of sorrow and grief from Latin lament um wailing moaning weeping wailing moaning weeping a complaint seems to catch how those who challenge power become sites of negation to complain as to become a container of negative effects a leaky container speaking out as spilling over I'll be drawing today on data I've been collecting for a new project on complaint I was inspired to do this project after taking part in a series of inquiries into sexual harassment and sexual misconduct prompted by a collective complaint lodged by students which is to say I have been inspired in this project by students I've since conducted interviews with and received written testimonies from those who understand themselves to have been involved in some way in a complaint process including former students students administrators early career academics senior academics and retired academics I will also be drawing today on arguments from a book I've recently completed entitled what's the use in this book I follow use around the way I followed happiness in the promise of happiness and the will in wilful subjects and I follow youth right back into the university as a way of thinking about how universities are built as it were brick by brick once assembled it can seem that universities are as they are you come to know how being as they are is work when you work to change how things are so my task in today's lecture is to think about diversity work complaint and universities by starting with youth a small word that has a lot of work to do youth has had and does have many uses so this first section is called uses of use so one way to think about institutions will be to think about habits when something becomes routine it becomes part of the background what is expected as well it's not as what is not noticed the institutional as usual but if we talk habit as our primary unit we might miss the smaller steps that accumulate to take us somewhere youth is a smaller step use when used as a verb can mean to employ for some purpose to expand or consume to treat or behave toward to take unfair advantage of or exploit to habituate or custom youth is a relation as well as an activity that often points beyond something even when youth is about something to use something points to what something is for some objects are made in order to be used we might call these objects simply designed objects what therefore brings them into existence a cup is made in order that I have something to drink from it is shaped this way with a hole as its heart empty so that it can be filled by liquids we might summarize the implied relation as for is before however even if something is shaped around what it is for that is not the end of the story as Howard was actually notes in a theory of craft use need not correspond to intended function most if not all objects can have a youth or more accurately be made usable by being put to use a sledgehammer compound or it can be used as a paperweight or lever a handsaw can cut a board and be used as a straight edge or to make music a chair can be sat in and used to pop open a door these uses make them useful objects but since they are unrelated to the intended purpose and function for which these objects were made knowing these uses doesn't necessarily reveal much about these objects so youths can correspond to intended function but use does not necessarily correspond to intended function this not not necessarily is an opening I'm not so sure users are quite as unrevealing about things as Rosetta Li implies here I'm being told something about the qualities of a sledgehammer that it can be used as a paperweight that a sledgehammer can be used as a paperweight tells me about the heaviness of the sledgehammer so something cannot be used for anything use is a restriction of possibility that is material was that implies here that youth makes something usable use can also make something used I think of a table worn and scratched wear and tear usually means a depreciation of valium mark suggests that when a table is exchanged it ceases to be a mundane object an ordinary sensuous thing to use the table is to bring it back down to earth we would think of the marks left by use not then as the erosion of value but as testimony the table as testifying to a history a rather queer object Marx discusses wear and tear in relation to machines the material wear and tear of machines is of two kinds the one arises from youths as coins wear away by circulating the other from non use as a sword rusts when left in its scabbard for Marx machinery intensifies rather than saves labor you have to get the most out of a machine before it wears out a wearing that is passed on to workers wearing out as passing on and passing out used as used up a worn thing might eventually break when something breaks from use it might be taken out of youths rather like this cup which has lost its handle a rather sad parting when we think of something as being in use we might think of a sign on a door occupied the sign is telling us the toilet is in use it tells us we cannot use a toilet until whoever is using the toilet is finished you the toilet use often comes with instructions that are about maintaining social as well as bodily boundaries or take this image of a post box there is a sign that politely asked sir would be post and not to use a post box by posting a letter into the box so in the previous image the toilet was occupied because it was in use in this case that post box is out of youth because it is occupied although of course from another point of view it is in use the post box has provided a home for nesting birds so intended functionality can mean who something is for not just what something is for and this means that something can be used by those for which it was not intended a change of youth in this case however does require a sign please do not use to stop what would be usual which is posting a letter through the box the sign we might assume is temporary the box will come back into use as a post box when it ceases to be a nest so back into youth use can involve comings and goings take this example of a world trodden path the path exists in part because people have used it use involves contact and friction the tread of feet smoothing the surface the path is becoming smoother easier to follow the more a path is used the more a path is used how strange that this sentence makes sense without use a path might disappear becoming overgrown bumpy unusable like this path we know it's a path because of a sign but you can hardly see the sign for the leaves youth can be necessary to preserve something use it or lose it this is not only a mantra in personal training which apparently it is it can also become a philosophy of life not using not being a path can appear like a line on a landscape but a path can also be a route through life collectivity can be acquired as direction the more Apophis traveled on the clearer it becomes you can be supported by having a route cleared for you heterosexuality for instance could be thought of as a path a route through life a path that is kept clear maintained not only by the frequency of youths and a frequency can be an invitation but by an elaborate support system when it is harder to proceed when a path is harder to follow you might be discouraged you might try and find another route just think of how we can be dissuaded by perpetual reminders of just how hard something will be deviation is hard deviation is made hard thought feelings they too have paths the used path is in youth as a way of thinking about thought John Locke for example once suggested that thoughts once said of going continue in the same shape they are used to which by often treading a worn into a smooth path and the motion in it becomes easy and as it were natural used you see a history of youth as a history of becoming natural William James cites the work of demand on habit everyone knows how a garment having been worn a certain time clings better to the shape of the body than when it was new a lot works better after being used sometime at the outset a certain force was acquired to overcome certain roughness in the mechanism so a garment becomes more attuned to the body the more the garment is worn youth is how things cling better the example of the lock and the key suggests that it is through you said things become easier to use so if use takes time youth saves time less force is required to complete an action we could consider how institutions are themselves shaped by youth they have postbox yes paths yes communication systems transportation systems institutions are furnished tables and chairs are how we are seated how spaces are occupied diversity work teaches us to pay attention to the furniture to what usually recedes to front up to what recedes is to become conscious of youth patterns of youth might go unnoticed until they are contested so through the lens of diversity work we could thicken the account of youth I've offered thus far in the Academy you might be asked to follow the world trodden paths of citation to cite properly as society those deemed to have had already the most influence the more a path is used the more a path is used the more he is cited the more he is cited we learn how a path has kept clear through work how acupuncture such white man becoming an originator of a concept an idea as becoming seminal by removing traces of those who were here before or we might consider institutions as worn garments they are shaped by those who tend to wear them such that they are easier to wear if you have that shape what clings better to some just will not fit to others when you don't meet the requirements you might become a misfit to use Rosenzweig Allen Thompson's important term she describes being a person with a disability in an ableist institution is like being a square peg in a round hole fitting becomes work for those who do not fit you have to push push push and sometimes no amount of pushing will get you in if you don't have the right key and a body can be a key using the lock would not ease the passage of the key but damage the lot as well as the key the difference between use that smooths and enables and use that corrodes and damages could be understood as a distributed difference so when we thicken our account of use we complicate that account talking about locks might lead us to do you might use a lock to lock the door for instance to stop the wrong people from entering doors and not just physical things that swing on hinges although they are that they are mechanisms that enable an opening and a closing for those without the key a locked door might as well be a wall it is what would stop your progression walls came up rather a lot in my data on diversity that I presented in on being included and as you'll hear today doors have come up rather a lot in my data on complaint it might seem curious that walls come up given that diversity seems to be if anything the way things are going diversity is a rather world travel paths becoming a narrow even which can be an obstruction and that's also a direction go that way the ease with which diversity travels might be why diversity work is such hard work one diversity worker describes how diversity is a big shiny Apple one with a rotten core it all looks wonderful but the inequalities aren't being addressed the word diversity might be used more because it does less diversity then becomes a sign of the difficulty of getting through this same practitioner described her own work thus it's a banging your head against a brick wall job a job description becomes a wall description and if you keep banging your head against the brick wall but the wall kicks its place it is you that gets sore and what happens to the wall or you seem to have done is scratched the surface and this is what doing diversity work often feels like scratching the surface scratching at the surface and even then even if you've only scratched the surface you can still be liable for damages for this section is called institutional we learn about the institutional as usual from those who are trying to transform institutions I've described diversity work as mechanical when you are trying to transform the system you have to work out how the system works making a complaint can also require becoming an institutional mechanic you have to work out how to get a complaint through a system because of the difficulty of getting through a complaint often ends up being about a system this point might seem counterintuitive given that organizations have complaints procedures and processes surely to make a complaint is to follow the procedure for making a complaint in fact listening to those who tried to make formal complaints has taught me that the gap between what is supposed to happen and what does happen is densely populated in the UK many universities include as part of their complaint policies a discussion of how they will record and monitor complaints one University Rights Act complaints will assist in identifying problems and trends across the university so hear complaint as data collection they then write that complaints will form the basis of positive publicity in demonstrating that identified issues have been resolved so when a complaint records a problem complaints can then be quickly folded into a solution a record of how universities have resolved something Resolution dissolution complaints can that's be used in a similar way to diversity as a way of appearing to address a problem a complaint procedure particularly for student complaints in the UK is typically represented as a flowchart flow-flow away we go with paths and arrows that give the would-be complainant a route through em if field I spoke to one administrator about her work and supporting students through this complaints process she describes for us so your first stage would acquire the complainant to try and resolve it informally which is really difficult in some situations and which is where it might get stuck in the department and so it takes a really tenacious complaining student to say no I am being blocked so you can imagine that something on paper that looks very linear is actually very circular a lot of the time and I think that's the problem nothing's getting resolved and then they are in a murky place and they can't get out so a procedure exists in order to clear a path but as this administrator describes that path can be blocked at any point in order to proceed you have to keep saying no which she describes as requiring confidence and tenacity two qualities that might have been worn down already by the experiences that lead students to need to make a complaint in the first place so a complaint is not simply an outcome of a No a complaint requires you to keep saying no along the way so unsurprisingly then stopping is often a part of the life course or the biography of a complaint so I want to return here to an example for my research into diversity as it has much to teach us about how things are stopped in this example I call it a wall story a diversity practitioner it's trying to get a new policy agreed so they're all - they're all academic members of appointment panels receive diversity training so this is a story it's a wall story so it's a long story and I need to read it for you to hear how stopping works the story when I was first here there was a policy that you had to have three people in every panel who had been diversity trained but then there was a decision early on when I was here that it should be everybody all panel members at least internal people they took that decision at the equality and diversity committee which several members of the senior management team were present at but then the director of human resources found out about it and decided we didn't have the resources to support it and it went to Council that taken out and counts were told that they were happy to have just three members only a personal counsel who was an external member of the Diversity Committee went ballistic and I'm not kidding went ballistic and said the minutes didn't reflect what had happened in the meeting because the minute said the decision was different to what actually happened and I didn't take the minutes by the way and so they had to take it through a reverse sucked and the council decision was that all people should be trained and despite that I then sat in meetings where they have just continued saying that it has to be just three people on the panel and I said but no council changed their view and I can give you the minutes and they just look at me so I'm saying something really stupid this went on for ages even though the council minutes definitely said all panel members should be trained and to be honest sometimes you just give up so here a decision made in the present about the future is overridden by the momentum of the past the past becomes that world warm path what usually happens still happens and note that the head of Human Resources did not need to take the policy out of the minutes for it not to come into effect I call this dynamic non performativity when naming something does not bring something into effect or when something is named in order not to bring something into effect so I think of the wall as a finding let me summarize the finding what stops movement moves I think this is important because it means that the mechanisms for stopping something are mobile and when we witness the movement we can miss the mechanism now organizations can be quite good at creating evidence of movement but creating evidence of doing something it's not the same thing as doing something in this example what stop something from happening could being the removal of the policy from the minute and then the head of Human Resources would have had a hand in what did not happen but that wasn't what stopped it it could have been the failure of anyone at Council to notice the removal but that wasn't what stopped it it could have been a failure to put the decision back into the minutes but that wasn't what stopped it the policy was stopped by how those within the organization acted after it had been agreed this means that agreeing to something can be another way of stopping something from happening so a diversity policy can come into existence without coming into use I discussed early that a sign is used to mark the transition of something being in use and out of use so maybe the diversity worker deposits the policy in a post box because she assumes the boxes in use she's following the procedure so it's an assumption that she's received from others a post box that is not in use but appears to be in use might have another function to stop the policy from going through the whole system so the policy then becomes dusty rather light marks as rusty sword from rusty to dusty a policy can become unusable by not being used a complaints procedure might come into existence without necessarily coming into use one problem identified in some of my interviews is the relative inaccessibility of policies and procedures one student described it took us forever to try and find the complaints procedure PDF on the database when you would existed but it was like a mythical golden egg we just couldn't find it and then we did it was so big that even two PhD students spent weeks trying to get through the small print to find out what the complaints process was if you can't find the policy you cannot follow the entry point to the path laid out as procedure or if you do find it but it's hard to use you might be discouraged remember the lesser path has use for Less a path is used complaints could be stopped can be stopped by how they are being heard one academic describes what follow when students made a complaint about the behavior of professors at research events and meeting a set up they said they would have an open meeting but it was just about calming students down you can indicate you're willing to hear a complaint in order to dissolve a complaint the example of the diversity policy that did not come into use implies that an organization can say yes to a new policy when there's not enough behind that yes to bring something about so perhaps an organization can allow a node to be expressed when that no has nowhere to go venting is then used as a technique of preventing something more explosive from happening you can let a complaint be expressed in order that it can be contained once the students have vented their frustrations once they have got complained out of their system the complaint is then out of the system this mechanism functions rather like a pressure relief valve that releases just enough pressure so that it does not build up and cause an explosion I'll return to explosions in my conclusion so complaints can also be stopped by the use of warnings a warning is an ominous sign a sign of the danger to come a warning can function rather like a singular exclamation point we know what it means by how it is used use as instruction one student describes I was also told that if I made a formal complaint this was a head department I had to think about my career another I ended up going back to the chair and saying look this is harassment and I'm going to file a complaint and his response was essentially well we are just thinking about your career how this will affect you in the future the implication in both courts is that to proceed with a formal complaint it's not to think about your career being advised not to complain is offered as career advice your career might be a vote here is a kind of companion who needs to be looked after maybe your career is like a plant that needs watering so it does not wither away so if your career would wither away as a consequence of complaining then your complaint is framed as negligence and indeed as carelessness sometimes warnings are used as threats that you will lose the connections that you would need to progress another student describes I was repeatedly told that rocking the boat or making waves would affect my career in the future and that I would ruin the department for everyone else I was told if I did put in a complaint I would never be able to work in the university and it was likely I wouldn't get a job elsewhere the complaining is framed as self damage but also as damage to others ruining a department no less this student describes for us how the pressure not to complain was exerted in just one day I was subjected to eight hours of grueling meetings and questioning almost designed to break me and stop me from taking the complaint any further note the implication that stopping a complaint is part of the design of the system you don't have to prevent people from doing something you can just make it harder for them to do something remember deviation is hard deviation is made hard complaints can be stopped after they have been lodged one method is to declare a complaint not a complaint because it doesn't fulfill the technical requirements to be a complaint for example a member of staff made a complaint about bullying from her head of department the experience of bullying would be devastating and she'd suffered from depression as a result it took her a long time to get to the point where she could write to that complaint she describes what happened once she was able to put it in I basically did it when I was able to because I was just really unwell for a significant period of time and I put in the complaint and the response that I got was from the deputy VC he said that he couldn't process my complaint because I had taken too long to lodge it so some experiences are as we know so devastating that it takes time to process there and that length of time can be used to disqualify a complaint if organizations can disqualify complaints because they take too long to make they can still take too long themselves to respond to complaints one student described how the university took seven months to respond to her complaint and then another seven months to respond to her response to their response to her complaint and their their own procedure was to maximum three months she says this is this is her words it is my theory that they've been putting in the long finger and pulling this out dragging this out over unacceptable periods of time to try and tire me out so that I will just give up so sometimes it can seem exhaustion it's not just the effect but the point of a complaint process exhaustion can even be a management technique tearing people out so they are too tired to address what makes them too tired if you do keep going if nothing stops you or indeed your complaint where do the complaints end up thus far I've received numerous accounts of complaints that are lodged and still nothing happens perhaps complaints sit there rather like that diversity policy becoming dusty perhaps the postbox becomes a filing cabinet a complaint is filed away files can also function as bins how things are discarded one student describes of her complaint it just gets shoved in a box one academic made a complaint about sexism to her head of department and he responded by saying I would like to throw that issue into the dustbin the response to a complaint is a rubbishing of a complaint which is to say rubbishing or what their complaint is about it is sexism that enables sexism to be treated as rubbish racism that enables racism to be treated as rubbish and so on you encounter what you complain about when you complain about what you encounter when a complaint is filed away or Bend those who complain can end up feeling that they too are being filed away or Bend we need to remember that a complaint is a record of what happens who a person complaints a personal complaints are also institutional records they are records of what happens in an institution complaints are institutional the personal is institutional to file a complaint can mean to become alienated from your own history a history that can be difficult painful and traumatic this section is called a complaint biography so my project began as a project on formal complaints I wanted to follow them around to give them a biography but early on I realized the tightening of the complaint genre a complaint as a requirement to fill in a form is how many struggles are not recorded I also began to realize how we have our own complaint biographies our own ways of relating to the institutions that accommodate us which might include moments of crisis when you have to decide whether or not to say something in response to what is being done or not being done the story of a complaint can be about how you do not fit how are you are not attuned to the requirements of an organization a complaint then as a misfit genre to evoke again Rose McGowan Thompson's terms diversity can be experienced as a requirement to become attuned to an organization you might end up on a Diversity Committee because of who you are not not white not this not able-bodied not man not straight the more nots you are the more committees you end up on it can be a misfit even on these committees a woman of color academic describes I was on the equality and diversity group in the university and as soon as I started mentioning things to do of race they changed a portfolio of who could be on the committee and I was dropped to say the word race as a woman of color is to be heard as complaining just the word will do it if you embody diversity you're supposed to do that work with a smile she added whenever you raise something the response is that you're not one of them when a complaint is necessary because you do not fit a complaint seems to amplify what makes you not fit picking up what you are not the not almost becomes an exclamation mark another academic describes how she is to keep pointing out that rooms are inaccessible because they keep booking rooms that are inaccessible she says I worry about drawing attention to myself but this is what happens when you hire a person in a wheelchair there had been major access issues at the University she spoke of the drain the exhaustion the sense of why should I have to be the one who speaks out you have to speak out because others do not and because you speak out others can justify their own silence they hear you so it becomes about you major access issues become your issues personal to you maybe you end up feeling used up limp spent rather like this tube of toothpaste as if you've got nothing left nothing left to give or maybe you reach a point a breaking point when it all spills out you might fly off the handle while I like that broken cup an expression that can mean to lose your temper and other academic describes hearing the wearing in our own voice and then of course to get witch-hunt you get scapegoated you become the troublesome uppity woman you become the woman who does not fit you become everything the bully accuses you are because nobody is listening to you and you can hear self started to take that not petulant tone bangs table come on you can hear them saying oh there you go many years earlier diversity practitioner had said something similar to me oh there she goes both times we laughed it can be relief to have an experience put into words the feminist killjoy that leaky container she comes up here she comes up in what we can hear we hear each other in the way and the tear of the words we share we hear what it's like to come up again it's the same thing over and over again we imagine the eyes rolling as if to say she would say that it was from experiences like this that I developed my equation rolling eyes equals feminist pedagogy you have to keep saying it because they keep doing it a complaint is treated as a broken record as if she's always stuck on the same point but you say what you say because they do what they do a complaint then is not the starting point to make a complaint formally or informally is to complain about something that precedes the complaint and what precedes the complaint can be what stops a complaint from getting through one student gives it a counter turning up at a postgraduate retreat she'd been away from the department for some time and she senses that something shifted it was a cultural shift I recognized as I came through the doors there was a lot of touching going on shoulder rubs and knee Pat's it was the dialogue they were making jokes jokes that were horrific they were doing it in a very small space in front of staff and nobody was saying in a thing and it felt like my reaction to it was out of kilter with everyone else it felt very disconnected the way I thought about the way they were behaving and the way everybody else was laughing they were talking about milking I still can't quite get to the bottom of where the jokes were coming from nobody was saying anything about it people were just laughing along you can open the door and be hit by it a change in atmosphere intrusions into personal space words out words about the sexist expression milking seems to have a history each time that expression is used that history is thrown out like a line Aulani have to follow if you are to get anywhere when laughter fills the room like water in a cup laughter as holding something it can feel like there's no room left to experience such jokes as offensive is to become alienated not only from the jokes but the laughter that surrounds them popping them up giving them somewhere to go she describes further I got a sense that he realized that I was we're not very happy or what was going on maybe it was just something everything about my person was just this is not acceptable I was just not condoning the way they were behaving I was not finding it funny he started stand out in that way you were just not playing along he was doing things I think to try and provoke me to react to him I think he was doing under the guise of humor but he specifically went for me verbally at a table where everyone was eating lunch it was a large table of numerous amount of people around her including staff I was having quite a personal conversation with someone and he literally leant across a table physically came forward he was slightly ajar to me he was really close and he said oh my god I can see you ovulating a complaint can be heard before she says anything just by not laughing not going along with something she comes to stand out because she does not find the jokes funny because she is not condoning the behavior because she is not happy of what is going on he comes after her her personal space invaded words flunk out slang at reduced to body pull back woman as ovaries she's not allowed to do her own thing to be a student to have a conversation with others words can be how spaces are occupied how the university becomes occupied how bodies can take up spaces as if those spaces belong to them the student describes what follows this experience I think the staff member knew I was deeply upset by it I pretty much left the table and he followed me out and started the conversation this is probably in hindsight where it started to get difficult in that staff members had to lean on me immediately he said to me oh you know what he's like he's got a really strange sense of humor he didn't mean anything by it and the implication was I was being a bit oversensitive and then I couldn't take a joke and I need to sort of forget about it and move on there is an effort to stop the student from complaining about the situation in the situation she was told not to say anything not to be oversensitive not to do anything not to cause trouble and this too is how banter is used to justify use as if words can be stripped from a history such that to hear a wrong would be to hear wrongly to impose something on somebody a use can be sustained by a fantasy that a youth is suspended and the staff member by leaning in this way positions himself with the harasser treating the verbal onslaught as a joke as something she should just take the harasser physically comes forward the staff member leans on her the response to harassment is harassment this is the institutional response so this powerful testimony gives us just a glimpse of how a complaint can be expressed by somebody who is not at home a complaint is in the middle of something it's right in the thick of it violence is channeled toward a complainer or a would-be complainer as punishment for the mere act of identifying something as violence I've only shared with you a tiny fragment of a story of her story a story of how she in her terms pretty much left the table but I can share with you that she did not just leave the table but once she completed her PhD she left the Academy she left in part because of what she learned about the institution from how it responded to her complaint much more violence followed she described the process for us I lost my roast in two glasses the way I saw those faith has being a place of excellence I thought they were welcoming a difference I'd worked really hard to get to that space when it come from the kind of background I have no one had been to university to do a degree I noted earlier how diversity can be a way of not addressing something diversity can also be used as an address welcoming of difference diversity might be represented as an open door students from diverse backgrounds are welcome come in come in diversity as a tag line tag along tagged on I think back to our post box there could have been another sign on the post box that said birds welcomed that sign would be a non performative if the post box are still in use because if the post box are still in use and the birds will be dislodged by the letters and that's destroyed before it could be created you can stop others from using a space by how a space is being used I know that early that use can be a restriction a possibility that it's material you can use the paper for some things and not others because of the material qualities of paper we are learning how the restrictions can be made through use those letters in the box the words that are thrown out and about they become materials what stops others from making use of something if the restriction of possibility is material that restriction is only experienced by those who are not accommodated before as before acquires a new resonance here when a space is assembled for some they come before others a door can be shut because of what a space is being used for for as door I'm speaking to an academic about her experience she had when she was a student one of the lecturers on her course had been making her feel uncomfortable one time she enters his office and then one afternoon I went into his office to talk to him about something was an office a bit like this but without any glass the door that opened inwards and opened on a latch and he pushed me up against the back of the door and try to kiss me and I pushed him away it was an instinctive pushed him away and I try to get out of the room and it was a horrible moment because I realized I couldn't actually it was very difficult to operate the latch and so I left and I ran down the stairs and I gather my thoughts that got to the next floor I walked into the common room and just talked to whoever was there about anything you must have thought I was quite strange at the time because it wasn't very coherent and I heard her follow me down and just turn around and go back up again we are back to the door the back of the door a door that glass solid can't be seen through a door is what you're pushed against the latch that won't open getting stuck trying to get out the work you have to do to get out behind closed doors harassment happens there out of you in secrets you can be locked in you can be locked out that door is a teacher it teaches us the significance of a complaint about harassment being lodged in the same place the harassment happened a door is shut on her the same door is shut on a complaint the same door she submits in this case a formal informal complaint a letter detailing the assault what happens to her complaint her letter ends up with the Dean who happens to be friends with the person who harassed her and what did the Dean do the Dean basically told me I should sit down and have a cup of tea with this guy to sort it out so so often a response to a complaint about harassment is to minimize harassment as if what occurred is just a minor squabble between two parties something that can be sorted out by a cup of tea their English signifier of reconciliation a complaint then becomes a failure your failure to resolve the situation more amicably she did not proceed to a formal complaint her complaint was stopped but he was not now I say her complaint was stopped rather than she was stopped because she did go on to have a career she is now a professor but this experience of being assaulted and harassed when she was a student stayed with her she describes I thought I got a first because of a current merit but then after this happened I remember thinking but hang on maybe not maybe this was some sort of ruse to try and keep me in institutions who could keep the content going it starts undermining your own sense of your academic merit the quality of your work and all that kind of stuff being harassed by a lecturer can damage or sense of self-worth your intellectual worth leading you to question yourself doubt yourself her complaint was stopped she was not but she carries that history with her I could hear that history in her testimony I could hear the self-doubt in her voice her complaint will stop but he was not so what happened to him she tells us he was a known harasser there are lots of stories taught about him I had a friend who was very vulnerable he took advantage of that she ended up taking her own life she ended up taking her own life so much more pain so much more damage at the edges of this one woman's story of damage he went on he was allowed to go on when her complaint and for all we know there were others too we do not know how many said no did not stop him he has since retired much respected by peers no blemish on his record no blemish on his record no blemish on the institutional record the damage carried by those who did complain or would complain if they could complain is carried around like baggage slow heavy down to hear complaint is to hear from those weighed down by a history that has not left a trace in the official records damage to a person is deflected by being treated as potential damage to an institution its reputation and as potential damage to a person if a person is indeed identified by a complaint such potential damage is often a vote through or as concern as a concern for consequence for how much he or they would have to lose careers data standing and so on and so organizations become aligned with those who abuse power because they share an interest in stopping what is recorded by a complaint from getting out one student that said to me it is like you were complaining to your abuser the institution in protecting that abuser will take his place and I will adhere that when that protection fails when an abuse of power does get exposed or come out the figure of the abuser is often quickly transformed into that of the stranger or the foreigner a foreigner not expressive of the values of the organization to stop him would require does require transforming a system that is built to enable him so a complaint teaches us about the continuity of abuses of power with the youth patterns of an institution and by youth pattern I'm not referring to official policies I'm referring instead to how universities are occupied how a network can come alive to stop a complaint from getting through rather like how electricity travels through wire hiring as wiring hiring as wiring how data is transmitted through organizations the speed with which some information travels has something to do with how they are built to meet some people's requirements so paths into an organization hiring become paths through an organization wiring the more a path is used the more apophis use the more he is connected the more he is connected when a circuit is broken is conductive elements no longer form a complete path so a complaint can become a crisis for an organization because or when it threatens to break a circuit a complaint then functions like a switch an alarm or an alert that triggers a reaction when a network comes alive it is in order to protect those who are the most network which is to say a network can be how a complaint is stopped and when I say a network comes alive I'm not suggesting this activity is coordinated by one person or a group of people who are meeting in secret though I do think secret meetings happen but meetings do not need to happen what doesn't get out is what is built in so I think a complaint here is treated as a loose connection as what would deprive others of the benefits that follow the more use path one student describes how her complaint was framed by her peers we were accused of having caused a disruption in their studies they valued their desire to have him as a professor over those who were suffering psychologically because of his harassment we needed to be in solidarity with those whose education was now being disrupted not the other way around so a complaint is framed as a failure of the students to share that connection a lack of solidarity with others who were then cut off from this source of information and energy with the professor becoming the body through which that energy and information circulates I think we could also rethink the feminist killjoy in these terms the feminist killjoy as a loose connection she'd apprise others of what would follow a shared connection she causes damage by not being properly attached so a connection is also an investment in that connection the more he is connected the more are invested in the connection when one mA student made a complaint about the conduct of the most senior member of her department she was told by the convener of the program be careful he is an important man he is an important man this tech question functions not only as a warning tread carefully it won't end well and I think an appeal be kind be nice he matters but also as a justification he does this because he's an important man because he's an important man he does this this student went ahead with a complaint in her terms she sacrificed the references in reference to the prospect of doing a PhD she said that door is closed that door is closed references to you can function as doors mechanisms that enable an opening or a closing how it is made possible for some to progress others not reference systems are paper trails letter sent out that reach their destination their house some are enabled by connections how some can gather speed and velocity more and more faster and faster he is an important man references can be withheld or they can offer faint praise when praise is faint and no is being expressed and a no can be how someone has nowhere to go many do not have make complaints many do not make complaints because they feel they cannot afford to lose the references in fact it's by far the most common reason people do not make complaints because they do not feel they can lose the references to lose the connections know also then that the punishment for complaint can entail the withdrawal of support to a draws support is enough to stop someone from going somewhere power manifests as though a draw of support for those who show how power manifests this is my conclusion it's called lifting the lid I share with you a tiny amount of the data I've collected thus far on complaint in the accounts we have much institutional wisdom we have a way of understanding how power works drawn from the experiences of those who challenge how power works we have insights into why many do not make complaints drawn from the experiences of those who do we know that to experience something as harassment or bullying let alone to formalize that experience into a complaint can lead to more harassment and more bullying many do not complain because of how it has made costly to complain and yet we are here in this room as diversity workers because people have complained to describe the work of complaint the hard work of complaint is to account for how it is possible to inhabit space that were not intended for us if to complain is to locate a problem a complaint becomes the location of a problem when I shared my reasons for resigning from my academic post in protest at the failure of the institution to address sexual harassment as an institutional problem I quickly became the location of a problem the cause of damage what a mess Sara my colleagues say I became a leaky pipe drip drip look what a mess you've created all girls Asians will try and contain that damage the response in other words is damage limitation indeed this is how diversity often takes institutional form as damage limitation so a student might make a complaint about racism an organization will say oh we have a diversity week that use of diversity to contain the damage being located by an accusation happy shiny policies might be put in place holes left by the patch was filled with no reference to what went on before a mess it's something that can be mopped up and away but there is hope yeah I have hope they cannot mop up all of the mess a leak can be a lead a leak can be a feminist lead when I shared my reasons for my resignation many people shared with me their own stories their own institutional battles when you lift a lid more and more comes out and this project really came from that experience of what came out so it might seem that complaints that do not get anywhere disappear about a trace like their unused path hard to find harder to follow but in saying no we keep a path alive we do not let it go feminist memory can be a counter institutional project we have to find ways of creating paths for others to follow to leave traces in places now a current institutional project is still an institutional project it is still a building project for example we have to work together this is something I really believe fundamentally we have to work together as feminists to ensure that making a complaint does not mean the door and support I would add needs to be public if we are to create a feminist public one student who made a complaint about sexual harassment commented on how the support was all being done discreetly I felt like that was the exact opposite of how it should be dealt with it was like this secret little thing we've got to we've got to fix I think support needs to be loud not quiet not secret not behind closed doors not in the same places the harassment happened and leak can be a lead complaints that do not seem to get anywhere can still lead us to each other those who make complaints do often end up finding out about others who made them before them complaint as a kind of intergenerational intimacy one student noted the scale of the response was so extreme in a way compared to what we were complaining about now an affection I guess was because there were hundreds of complaints they had suppressed they did not want to have a lift literally lifted lift lid and it lifted on us hard to say hard to do and she and her her peers actually found out found the names of all these other students in past years who tried to make complaints before them so you when you give a problem a name you can find out the names of those who gave problems their names so when you lift the lid more and more complaints come out even what has been bent can acquire a new life and it can be explosive what comes out I think we need more explosions but of course this is why many of our professional norms of conduct are about keeping a lid on it silence as institutional loyalty silence in case of institutional damage and yes much of this data if released would be damaging to an organization's reputation or then perhaps if it would be perhaps it should be if to address a problem is to cause damage if that's how its addressed then we might need to cause damage and some of that damage is a result of what we are not allowed to address we might use guerrilla tactics write names of harasses on books distribute leaflets write graffiti and toilet on walls we do this kind of work because we have exhausted the usual procedures or because working in house too often ends up being a restoration project a way of polishing the furniture so that appears less damaged a labor I've called a reference to uses of diversity institutional polishing of course we have limited options we have for the University and we might need to use whatever tools available to us at the university to build feminist shelters to after all requires resources and sometimes we do what is required we might even be willing to reflect the good image the institution has of itself back to itself but you have to be careful not to lose yourself in the reflection we do not want to polish away those scratches remember they are testimony so yes so scratchers we are back to those scratchers we can reach each other through what appears as damage as mere scratch and scribble feminism becomes writing on the wall we were here we did not get used to it thank you [Applause] you [Applause]

Channel: UC Davis Forums - Public Univ. & the Social Good

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Id: 4jf4sgw5NeQ

Length: 70min 35sec (4235 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 20 2018