The University of Arizona Press
May 23, 2025
Higher education is in trouble, and not only due to a decline of public trust. As a microcosm of our broader culture, universities are inequitable and often harmful, especially for marginalized people.
Betrayal U: The Politics of Belonging in Higher Education intervenes in this context with a diverse, rich collection of essays, art, poetry, and research that explores these inequities through the lens of institutional betrayal, theorized by psychologist Jennifer Freyd. Edited by Rebecca G. Martínez and Monica J. Casper, this collection brings together thirty-six contributors who share personal experiences covering a range of topics in higher education. The work spans five thematic sections that examine the complexities of belonging and exclusion in academic settings.
Read an excerpt from the book’s introduction below.
Our (Partial) Stories of Institutional Betrayal
As women with doctorates, we each have our own stories of institutional betrayal—the lived experiences that brought us here, to each other as friends and colleagues, and to the making of this collection of heartfelt, painful, and galvanizing stories of rejection, harm, institutional malfeasance, and courage. Though no story is the same, because people are not widgets despite how institutions may treat them, the stories we offer here, both our own and those of our contributors, share common themes of betrayal, including dashed professional expectations, myriad forms of violence and harm, psychological abuse, racism, misogyny, classism, homophobia, ableism, elitism, hazing, and business as usual no matter the consequences. Universities are, in a word, dangerous—but not for everyone and not equally, as Candia-Bailey’s story reveals. Higher education is as stratified as any other industry in the United States, despite its alleged ethos of inclusion, and inequalities have only deepened in the long pandemic. In 2021, for example, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported that only 2.1 percent of tenured associate and full professors in 2019 were Black women. The numbers were even lower at public flagship universities such as University of California, Berkeley, where Black women represent a mere 1.3 percent of tenured faculty (June and O’Leary 2021).
In sharing our own stories as a prelude and companion to the others in this collection, we aim not to be exceptional—indeed, we are anything but. Our experiences mirror those of so many other scholars at the margins, especially women. Some of what we share below is simply par for the course of academic life, the daily ins and outs of being employed in/by complex institutions. But some of what we share extends beyond the Sturm und Drang of academic life, into the realm of preventable harm and institutional malfeasance, even while we hold certain privileges. The American Association of University Women (n.d.) reports that only 36 percent of full professors are women, while women make up the majority of non- tenure-track lecturers and instructors. Malika Jeffries-El (2022) notes that “non-white groups are underrepresented in the academy, accounting for a collective total of only 25.1 percent of all faculty positions, despite representing nearly 40 percent of the U.S. population.” She suggests the term systematically marginalized groups rather than underrepresented minorities, “because the underrepresentation of certain people in certain places is not coincidental, it is intentional” (Jeffries-El 2022).
Rebecca’s Story
As the daughter of parents who never attended high school, as the daughter of an immigrant woman from Mexico, and as a woman of color who grew up poor, I was not supposed to be an academic. The ivory tower was never meant for people like me, like many of us whose stories are told in this anthology. We have fought for our inclusion and representation and, through our stories here, continue to illuminate exclusionary practices in higher education, so that we can spur change. When we do make it into the rarefied spaces of academia in a tenure-track position, the tenure process can be particularly alienating and harsh for women of color, who must deal with sexist and racist microaggressions from students, faculty colleagues, administrators, and staff, as well as the sexism, racism, classism, heteronormativity, and ableism that are built into the very structures of our “hallowed halls.” Add to this mix of marginalization the fact that we also lack role models and mentors who understand what we experience and who can help guide us through it.
Rebecca G. Martínez is an independent researcher and writer, formerly at the University of Missouri. Her research interests and publications are in the areas of reproductive health and health inequities in Latin America and the United States, gender and migration, and critical university studies. Her first book, Marked Women: The Cultural Politics of Cervical Cancer in Venezuela, was awarded the Eileen Basker Prize by the Society for Medical Anthropology.
Monica J. Casper is dean of arts and sciences and a professor of sociology at Seattle University. A First Gen scholar, she is the author of numerous books, essays, and articles and is also a creative writer. Her first book, The Making of the Unborn Patient: A Social Anatomy of Fetal Surgery, won the C. Wright Mills Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Her most recent book, Babylost: Racism, Survival, and the Quiet Politics of Infant Mortality, from A to Z, explores ignorance and inaction in relation to maternal and infant death in the United States. With expertise in women’s health, racial and gender disparities, trauma, disability, gender-based violence, and bioethics, her work centers questions of whose lives are worth saving, whose deaths are accelerated, and whose existence matters. A seasoned university leader, she has been recognized for her efforts to foster humane workplaces.
