There are a number of policies and practices in academia which are designed to maintain the status quo (which largely means white male privilege) and which are unethical, immoral, and often illegal. Tenure, hiring, and salaries / promotion are the most evident arenas, and decision-making is often hidden under the guise of “personnel issues.”
But there are other domains guarded by white male dragons, including curriculum and departmental funding. Departments / majors in which professors / students tend to be primarily women and/or people of color tend to be underfunded compared to other disciplines. While these inequalities result most immediately from imbalances of power within the college themselves, they also tend to reflect racial and patriarchal discrimination by the government and society (in grants, scholarships, research priorities, and other forms of sponsorship).
Two stories from my experience (white male teacher, retired for some time).
(1) When I was in grad school at a large public Southern university, a new department chair (in a humanities field) hired a number of Italian-Americans (the chair and other department faculty were all white, predominantly male). The teacher who succeeded as chair fired all the Italian-Americans while they were still on tenure track. When one of the fired faculty pushed for an explanation, he was finally told that “his roots were not in the South.” Moral of the story: Biased administrations / tenure committees will resist making the reasons for decisions public. You have to fight, using not just attorneys but public groups dedicated to justice and open government.
(2) My father worked at a state research facility (in animal science) but was within the University System, so he was once tapped to serve on a tenure appeal committee. To minimize departmental interference, he was assigned to review the case of a female professor in the Education Department who had been denied tenure. He told me that the woman was clearly qualified, and that the only reason he could think of that she was refused tenure was jealousy from the tenured faculty. The appeals committee reversed the original decision. Moral of the story: You will find allies from many sides in your journey toward justice and equality. Your fight is critical and eventually the forces on your side will win.
