Harvard's Denial to Latina Professor's Tenure Insults Latino Students

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Harvard University's decision of not granting tenure to Lorgia García Peña, an Associate Professor of Romance Languages, is an insult not only to the Latino students and faculty members but also to the academe's diverse community. This prompted more than 4600 students and senior scholars across the United States to protest against the said verdict, according to an article published in Latino Rebels.

In a letter addressed to Harvard President Lawrence Bacow on Monday, the scholars in Latino and Latin American Studies, Caribbean Studies, Dominican Studies, Ethnic Studies, Women's and Gender Studies, African American and Black Studies, and American Studies questioned Harvard's ability to properly evaluate García Peña's scholarship and urged the university to closely reexamine García Peña's merits for tenure.

"Dr. García Peña is an internationally-recognized leader in Latinx Studies and Dominican Studies," the letter reads. "She has been instrumental in expanding the conversation around Ethnic and Latinx Studies at Harvard through events and symposia, and she was a leader in establishing a subfield in Latinx Studies."

Commended as one of the most brilliant practitioners of her discipline, García Peña has won major awards for her first book, The Borders of Dominicanidad: Race, Nation, and Archives of Contradiction, which the said scholars referred as "possibly the single most important book to be published in English in Dominican Studies in the past ten years." They also noted that García Peña's work is so impactful on the entire academe that it "is nearly impossible to find new work in the humanities around Dominican or Latinx Studies that does not cite or reference" her book.

"The book makes groundbreaking connections between Caribbean and Chicano/Latino/a studies, specifically by linking Gloria Anzaldúa's concept of the borderland with the notion of the rayan in Hispaniola," the signatories stated in the letter. "In the process it uniquely applies a borderlands methodology to Latinx Caribbean studies, traditionally understood through migration and diaspora."

For Juliet Hooker, Professor of Political Science at Brown University, the lack of representation of Latino faculty at premiere higher education institutions devalues intellectual excellence and is a disservice to students. She added, amidst rising xenophobia, anti-immigrant, and anti-Latino sentiment in the United States, cultivating vibrant Ethnic Studies and Latinx Studies departments is essential, as they equip future citizens and leaders.

For Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Professor of English and former director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University states, the prevalent marginalization and exclusion of Latino scholars in US universities is unjustifiable.

"Not only do institutions fail to support talented individual scholars and the production of crucial knowledge. This failure also sustains unacceptable inequities in the academy, and in society at large. Fortunately, universities can make a different choice: create truly diverse centers of learning capable of meeting the urgent challenges of the present, including the making of a more just world for all," she added.

According to Daily Beast, Gloria Jean Watkins, an acclaimed author, professor, feminist, and social activist who is known by her pen name "bell hooks," also expressed her support to the professor, saying, "Harvard's denial of Dr. Garcia Peña's tenure is a testament to the ways that Black and Latinx studies continue to be ignored as sites of vital knowledge production in the academy."

A wide-spread student protests also took place inside the campus where García Peña is recognized as an influential researcher, teacher, and mentor, especially to students of color.