Eight professors of color discuss the special pressures that minority faculty face in majority white institutions. SHATTERING THE SILENCES: THE CASE FOR MINORITY FACULTY offers everyone in higher education an unprecedented opportunity to see American campuses through the eyes of minority faculty.
Across America, campus diversity is under attack; affirmative action programs are banned, ethnic studies departments defunded, multicultural scholarship impugned. Even so, faculty of color remain less than 9.2% of all full professors and minority student enrollment is dropping for the first time in 30 years.
SHATTERING THE SILENCES cuts through the rhetoric of the current Culture Wars by telling the stories of eight pioneering scholars - African American, Latino, Native American and Asian American. As we watch them teach, mentor and conduct research, we realize in concrete terms how a diverse faculty enriches and expands traditional disciplines and contributes to a more inclusive campus environment.
"SHATTERING THE SILENCES is a shattering experience for a liberal like me... What we see is not pretty and it makes me uncomfortable. This is a powerfully effective film which deserves screening on all our campuses." - Stanley N. Katz, President, American Council of Learned Societies
"One of the most important films to be produced about higher education or race this decade. It puts before us a vision of how to build strong interracial communities both within the academy and outside its walls." - Paula Brownlee, President, Association of American Colleges and Universities
"Beautiful and brilliant...We are left cheering, wincing, crying and applauding...A must-see for anyone concerned with the dynamics of race, ethnicity and power in the American university." - Arthur C. Jones, Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues