Surviving Departmental Toxicity: An Autoethnographic Reflection of Navigating Gendered and Racialized Violence in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management

All my life I had to fight!¹ Without a doubt, I am tired. I am tired of the stress I endured as a first-generation graduate student, feminist academic, and community-based researcher. I am tired of microaggressions, lack of mentorship, and lack of validation. I am tired of departmental neglect, lack of concern for my health and well-being, and what Koritha Mitchell (2018) terms "know-your-place aggression." I am also tired of hazing, sabotage, and emotional abuse, in addition to the illegibility of my knowledge production, as a result of my racial, epistemic, and methodological difference. I am tired of being othered, denigrated, and presumed incompetent (Gutiérrez y Muhs et al. 2012) as a Black woman and interdisciplinary scholar-activist in a predominantly white environmental space.

But how did I end up in such a toxic space? Why did no one warn or prepare me? Why am I still here? I will attempt to answer these questions as I reflect on my journey as a Black female academic who lost her adviser to tenure denial. I will also outline and discuss how administrative and departmental structures often fail to protect and support graduate students of color, how I built alternative mentorship networks, and how I survived professionally and personally as an "undisciplined" scholar-activist. This is my truth, and in the words of Donna Haraway (1988), this is my "partial perspective."

The Beginning

I was geeked when I first received my acceptance letter to a public land-grant research university after graduating from an HBCU dedicated to educating women of African descent. Not only was I awarded three years of nonteaching funding, I had the opportunity to work under a Black feminist cultural geographer who researched African Americans and their connection to the great outdoors. Once I was welcomed into my adviser's lab, I discarded my applications to other universities. I was excited to attend an institution that valued student activism as indicated by its involvement in the free speech movement. As a working-class student, I thought I had "made it" since graduate school symbolized social mobility and financial security. I fantasized about singing "Kumbaya, My Lord" while conducting cutting-edge, socially relevant environmental research with my colleagues. I romanticized my life as an academic and thought I had arrived at a place where I belonged.

The Betrayal

My first year of graduate school was difficult because I learned to identify liberal racism and the impacts of privatization on campus programs and initiatives. Although I belonged to a lab group of mostly Black women, I was situated in a larger white and male-dominated environmental department that did not willingly interrogate the intersections of race, gender, class, and nature. Although I was exposed to new ideas and words, I encountered the performance of academic jargon and misuse of theoretical ideas by more privileged classmates. When I entered my department, likeminded professors simultaneously retired or left my division for more affirming university homes. I was thus left with fewer professors to engage with intellectually. My peers and I also differed in how we conceptualized and approached interdisciplinary research. I eventually realized that I would not receive the mentorship I deserved because my advisor's tenure review occupied all her time and energy.

With my rose-colored glasses shattered and hippy dreams disintegrated, I knew that my advisor, the only Black woman in the College of Natural Resources, would be denied tenure. Although my division overwhelmingly supported her promotion, the other two divisions, dominated by white men and biophysical/natural scientists, did not. Although a book is usually sufficient in many social science and humanities divisions, they wanted her to produce more peer-reviewed journal articles. Her "untraditional" approach and value of public scholarship did not meet the standards of rigor defined by "objective" white male scientists. Her colleagues, jealous of her success and unfamiliar with her creative approaches, did not grant her tenure.

Fortunately, my department's Graduate Diversity Council decided to protest this injustice. We...