Dear Higher Education: Letters from the Social Justice Mountain

Dear Higher Education: I Am Still Learning to Belong Here

Veneice Guillory-Lacy

Guillory-Lacy

Abstract

This letter to Higher Education emerges from my lived experience as a Black and Indigenous (Nimiipuu/Nez Perce) assistant professor at a Minority-Serving Institution (MSI). Situated at the intersection of K–12 leadership and the professoriate, I write from the in-between space of someone who did not set out to become an academic but who now finds herself navigating tenure-track expectations shaped by colonial mindsets, individualism, and productivity metrics that often contradict relational and justice-centered ways of knowing. Drawing upon my journey from high school English teacher to principal, to the professoriate, this letter reflects on the tensions between institutional belonging and cultural integrity.

I narrate the emotional, spiritual, and intellectual labor required to survive and transform academic spaces that were not designed for scholars like me. This contribution calls higher education into dialogue about how it measures merit, defines rigor, and sustains or silences social justice work. Rather than presenting an academic argument, I offer testimony: a reflection on community, isolation, race, gender, Indigeneity, and the longing for collective academic futures rooted in community rather than competition.

This letter invites institutions to reimagine tenure, mentorship, and knowledge production in ways that honor community, lived experiences, and transformative possibility.