Participants felt passionate about their research, teaching, and community engagement. They imagined and built contributions that were transformative–co-authoring with community members, creating new programs on their campuses, and publishing studies despite the doubts and even active obstruction of department colleagues.
At the same time, most participants desired and were intentional about cultivating spaces work would not touch. As personally connected as these faculty felt to their research, there was also a palpable sense of exhaustion with the performances required by the academy. Performances included explaining: patiently explaining research agendas again and again, remaining calm and non-reactive in the face of active hazing from colleagues, explaining the need for practitioner and community member engagement in campus programs and research, explaining the relevance of serving minoritized students with culturally sustaining leadership curricula, and explaining service, teaching, or administrative loads when fending off requests pre-tenure. “Leaving work at work” was protective and defensive as well as proactive, a sign of valuing oneself, one’s family, and mitigating or managing institutional disaffection.
Studies
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