The Discourse with Dr. Shea

In this season finale, I share a speculative fiction counterstory inspired by themes that emerged from my research on the experiences of Black professional staff in higher education. Grounded in Critical Race Theory and the tradition of counterstorytelling, this narrative invites listeners to consider how power, resistance, silence, and possibility operate within institutions. The counterstory draws upon realities that many will recognize and serves as an opportunity to imagine what might be pos

This two-part conversation with Dr. Fredrika Cowley, explores the intersection of lived experience, scholarship, and the current state of higher education. Dr. C is a Black feminist scholar whose research focuses on Black women professional staff and how they engage in acts of everyday resistance. In Part 2, Policy, Power, & the Dear Colleague Letter, we expand the conversation to the structural level, exploring policy, institutional response, and the impact of the Dear Colleague Letter on Bl

This two-part conversation with Dr. Fredrika Cowley, explores the intersection of lived experience, scholarship, and the current state of higher education. Dr. C is a Black feminist scholar whose research focuses on Black women professional staff and how they engage in acts of everyday resistance. In Part 1, Scholarship, Work, & Lived Experience, we ground ourselves in the experiences of a Black scholar-practitioner, examining identity, professional navigation, and the realities of working wi

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," sacrificing the very people who function as the university's "Invisible Engine" to protect federal funding and institutional "property." Using the lens of Critical Race Theory, we deconstruct the factual "Massacre" of Black labor and the scholarship of Interest Divergence

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 Black professional staff, whose labor sustains institutions while protections and decision-making power remain unevenly distributed. Drawing from critical race theory and lived experience, Dr. Shea explores how shared governance, institutional history, policy, funding stru

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 conversations about structural control and institutional gaslighting, this episode explores how white womanhood has historically been positioned within systems of racial hierarchy, from slave plantations to modern higher education, as a form of relational authority that helps stab