The Discourse with Dr. Shea
This is a podcast where storytelling meets scholarship, bridging knowledge, culture, and lived experience. Hosted by higher education scholar and practitioner Dr. Shea, this space offers honest, unapologetic conversations about race, power, identity, and institutions.
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March 14, 2026
Still on the Plantation: The Dear Colleague Letter and the Restructuring of Higher Education
In this episode, Dr. Shea pulls back the curtain on the quiet, surgical removal of Black professional staff from the American academy. Following the 2025 "Dear Colleague" letter, institutions engaged in "Preemptive Compliance...
March 2, 2026
Mechanisms of Control: How Higher Education Maintains Power
In this episode, we move beyond individual experiences to examine how higher education institutions maintain power and reproduce inequality, often without appearing overtly racist. This conversation centers the experiences of...
March 2, 2026
Proximity, Protection, and Power: White Womanhood in Higher Education
In this episode, we examine how white supremacy is maintained not only through institutional policy and formal authority, but through relational dynamics shaped by history, gender, and credibility. Building on earlier convers...
March 2, 2026
Counterstory: When the Rules Change but the Outcome Doesn’t
In this episode, a counterstory examines how institutional procedures can maintain the appearance of fairness while preserving predetermined outcomes. Drawing on Critical Race Theory and plantation politics, this episode expl...
March 2, 2026
Respectability, Gratitude, and Institutional Gaslighting
In this episode, we examine how institutions maintain power not only through policy and structure, but through psychological and cultural mechanisms. Centering the experiences of Black professional staff in higher education, ...
Feb. 21, 2026
The System Wasn't Built for Us
In this episode, Dr. Shea reflects on what it means to work inside systems that were never designed with Black folks in mind. This conversation isn’t about discovering harm, it’s about naming what many Black professional staf...