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My Responsibilities

I present as an older white male faculty member at my university.  Through my entire life folk have listened to my counsel and allowed me to exercise power by default aside from my qualifications and competencies because of this accident of birth; this has only increased with age.

Because I am the beneficiary of a power imbalance long in the making I bear some responsibilities:

  • I must encourage the younger, the non-white, the non-male to take the spotlight whenever possible. I have already had more than my share of the spotlight.
  • When a risk needs to be taken in my community, after a due pause to see if anyone else wants to take it on, I should put my neck on the line rather than play it safe. I have more power and as Stan Lee wrote, with great power comes great responsibility. Or to quote William Sloane-Coffin, what's the point of having tenure if not to use it to fight for justice?
  • Because silence in the face of bigotry leads to more bigotry, I must never be silent when I witness someone trying to take power from those who have less. I should try to be constructive but that is icing on the cake; what matters most is that I not be silent.
These are aspirational goals, not achievements, and my past failures and successes matter very little compared with what I do at the moment on any day.

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