College Campus Activism:
Editors Note: This piece is a part of a series called 'College Campus Activism'. Start exploring here. For a list of sources, visit our bibliography.
What makes Stanford care?
by Rhea Karuturi
December, 2016
Who’s Teaching Us? is a group on Stanford University’s campus that was started in 2014 by the Stanford Asian American Activism Committee (SAAAC) when “the Stanford English Department denied tenure to Professor Stephen Hong Sohn, a queer Asian American scholar with a vital mentorship role in the community.”
Who's teaching us?
The group, in its own words, “raises awareness on the need for faculty diversity and support for marginalised students and community centers on campus.” The group aims to “uncover the mystery that shrouds the tenure process” and “push the University to be transparent and accountable to hiring and retaining diverse faculty.”
The group has made a large impact on campus conversation, sparking debates regarding the movement’s goals and their methods for expressing these goals — specifically centering around a list of demands presented to the University and then released to the Stanford student body. The group has also organised protests, ‘teach-ins’ and other forms or awareness raising. The group regularly uses the hashtag ‘#WhosTeachingUs’ and has made central to their campaign the statistics that Stanford professors are 73% male and 73% white.The group has also garnered attention from media outside campus, and has worked with student groups in other universities to show solidarity and continue their activism.
