Teaching in the face of adversity

November 9th, 2016 at approximately 2 A.M. I was curled up in my room shocked as I watched state after state turn red. Thoughts raced through my head: what would happen to my undocumented friends who had worked so hard to make it to university, some on full ride scholarship? What would happen to my best friend, who is black and goes to college in Birmingham, Alabama? What would happen to myself and countless other friends of mine who were LGBTQA+? What would happen to another friend of mine who is a Muslim and is the best artist I know, she got a full ride to SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design), and is the kindest and most caring person I have ever met.
I then thought what would happen to my future. All that I had worked for over this summer, all the progress that I have made. What would a career in academia be like in a Trump Administration? More specifically I was terrified that, because of all the misogynistic rhetoric that has been spewed by Trump during the campaign, the progress made by women in military history would be ignored and I would be shut out and laughed at. My greatest fear as I have gone forward in military history, is not being taken seriously. But now is not the time for fear, now is the time to push even harder, to go even further. To inspire women, to fight against the greatest accomplishment that they can achieve under a Trump administration is a size zero.
We can no longer ignore differences, we have to acknowledge them, and work accordingly. I am going to have a harder time getting into the military history community than a white male, and a PoC is going to have a harder time than I am. We must take that into account. Even though I’ve talked about myself a lot in this, this is not just about me, it’s about the people I’ve mentioned in the first paragraph.
I’ve stated in blog posts, in conversation, at conferences, that the field of digital humanities is open and full of possibilities and opportunities that would not be allowed outside of it.
Instead of cowering in fear and resigning ourselves to saying “this is reality there is nothing I can do”, we need to accept what has happened and teach in light of that. We need to teach that in the face of adversity we need to fight for diversity in thought, in character, and in academia as a whole.


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