Podcast
Academic Aunties
Hosted by Ethel Tungohan · EN
Academia. It is a site of exclusion. For those of us who are first-generation, who are racialized, who are women, and who inhabit social locations that are traditionally unrepresented in this space, academia is full of landmines. This is why we need academic aunties. This podcast will bring you stories and advice about how to navigate this treacherous world and maybe even plant the seeds for structural transformation. Come listen to Auntie Ethel and her friends. Episodes drop monthly. Message us on Twitter at @AcademicAuntie and visit us online at academicaunties.com.
24episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Organizing, Mobilizing...and AI
May 14, 202500:47:00Tap to summarizeSeason finale!The past year, we’ve talked a lot about just how much we’ve had to fight for the university. From authoritarian leaders who wish to suppress dissent and protests in universities, particularly protests in support of Palestine, to rudderless senior administrators who suspend programs, fire long-term staff, and hire expensive and useless consultancy firms, there’s a lot of reasons to feel disheartened because the odds seem stacked against us. And yet, the fight continues. And we are seeing lots of victories. To counter Donald Trump’s attacks against higher education, more and more chapters of the American Association of University Professors are being founded. Unions are being established. And continued organizing for Palestine has led to a number of wins. The University of Toronto’s Faculty Association, for example, successfully passed a motion divesting from companies that fuel genocide in Palestine and in other illegally occupied territories. On a more personal note, witnessing and reporting and mobilizing against senior administrators’ decisions has actually pushed me to get involved in the fight for our university. Overcoming my aversion to running for positions, I ended up running for a seat in our university senate, and won! So did all of my progressive, feminist friends who are sick of being told by senior administrators that we just had to trust that senior admin knows what they’re doing. We’re there to roll up our sleeves, dig up reports, and ask questions. So organizing matters. Being savvy, strategic, and smart matters. And building relationships matters the most. This is the core of our organizing work. In today’s episode of Academic Aunties, our season finale, my new friend, Dr. Elisha Lim, and I talk about organizing tactics, the importance of relationships, and the potentialities of artificial intelligence. That's right, AI can be be put to good use. Elisha is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and does groundbreaking research on AI, social media, critical race theory, and much more.Related LinksDeclarations of Interdependence: How Media Literacy Practices are Developed, Negotiated, Rejected, and Exploited Across Social Media Platforms, by Elisha Lim, Gina Marie Sipley, Ladan Siad Mohamed, Francesca Bolla Tripodi Tripodi, Vincente PerezProf explores colonial roots of digital platformsThanks for listening! Get more information and support the show at academicaunties.com. Get in touch with Academic Aunties on BlueSky, Instagram, or by e-mail at podcast@academicaunties.com.
Transcribe →Communities of Care
Apr 30, 202500:50:13Tap to summarizeThe need for care - for radical care, for decolonial care, for accountable and reciprocal and emancipatory care - has never been more obvious. In a world where it is clear that institutions don’t care for us and that many of our elected political leaders just want to amass power and wealth, it is clear that it is our “communities of care” that hold us up. The importance of “communities of care” is something that my badass friend , Dr. Valerie Francisco-Menchavez, has stressed over the years, both in her academic work and in her activism. Val is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Sexuality Studies at San Francisco State University.On this episode, we talk about her new book, Caring for Caregivers: Filipina Migrant Workers and Community Building During Crisis. We talk about care as a practice, about the centrality of community-led and community-centered ethos to our work in the academy, and about the sustainability of the work that we’re doing. The conversation was especially healing in the wake of the Lapu-Lapu Tragedy in Vancouver, where eleven people died - most of whom were women - and many more were injured after a car drove into the festival. It was devastating to see a day that was meant to be a joyful celebration for the Filipinx community in Canada end in grief. So Val and I talked about the care that the community showed too, immediately after what happened, with organizations mobilizing rapidly to provide support and to create space for grief. Related LinksFilipino BC InstagramCaring for Caregivers: Filipina Migrant Workers and Community Building During CrisisMatatag Photovoice ProjectThanks for listening! Get more information, support the show, and read all the transcripts at academicaunties.com. Get in touch with Academic Aunties on BlueSky, Instagram, or by e-mail at podcast@academicaunties.com.
Transcribe →Depleting Higher Education
Apr 17, 202500:48:27Tap to summarizeWe are living in an age of fascism where you have political leaders who disregard democratic process and are going full steam ahead in shaping the world the way they want it to look like. And this world includes a depleted higher education sector that they see as enemy number one. All over, we are witnessing a move to defund higher education, pushing universities and colleges to adopt corporate, neoliberal norms and practices. Programs are cut while tuitions fees rise with little tangible improvements in education.So where is the money going? Why do senior administrators keep bringing their hands saying that there is a budget crisis? And why is it that as members of the university community, we can't seem to get any answers from our university leaders who are resentful that they keep being held to account for poor management decisions?To talk about this, we speak to Dr. Todd Horton, the chair of the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations' Governance Working Group. We also talk to Dr. Sheila Embleton, a colleague at York University, and the former interim president of Laurentian University.Thanks for listening! Get more information, support the show, and read all the transcripts at academicaunties.com. Get in touch with Academic Aunties on BlueSky, Instagram, or by e-mail at podcast@academicaunties.com.
Transcribe →Fear, Heartbreak, Betrayal
Apr 2, 202500:51:12Tap to summarizeHigher education is under attack. You've probably heard about the cases of Mahmoud Kahlil, Rumeysa Ozturk, and Alireza Doroudi. Students, studying in American universities being arrested and disappeared for their political stances. And our academic institutions are all too willing to capitulate in the face of the fascist, anti-education turn of our leaders. On this episode, we try to make sense of this all. Host, Dr. Ethel Tungohan speaks with Academic Aunties producer, Dr. Nisha Nath, and friend of the podcast, Dr. Shaista Patel, an Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at UC San Diego, about what it's like to be an academic in the United States, how colleagues and institutions–who until very recently called themselves allies–have been all to quick to betray us, and how what is happening in the US can and is happening around the world.Thanks for listening! Get more information, support the show, and check out our newsletter at academicaunties.com. Get in touch with Academic Aunties on BlueSky, Instagram, or by e-mail at podcast@academicaunties.com.
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