Dear Higher Education: Letters from the Social Justice Mountain

On Silencing, Disappearance, the Refusal to be Defeated

M. Cristina Alcalde

Miami University

Abstract

At a moment when diversity, equity, and inclusion offices have been eliminated across higher education in response to federal and state legislation, this letter reflects the category of Why We Come to the Mountain to name what institutional announcements tend to avoid: the silencing and disappearance of women of color from higher education leadership. Written from the author's positionality as a scholar-practitioner, feminist anthropologist, and former vice president whose role and division were eliminated, the letter identifies three interconnected dimensions of institutional erasure by exploring the impersonality of compliance-focused communications, the physical dismantling of office spaces built through years of collective effort, and the resulting disappearance of leaders. The letter argues that current events do not represent a departure from higher education's historical patterns of exclusion but rather a more visible iteration of them. Higher education’s erasure of names, accomplishments, and grief from official communications reflects institutional cultures that benefit from the labor of women of color while refusing accountability for its costs. The letter closes by insisting that the refusal to be disappeared is itself a form of feminist leadership. This letter speaks directly to women of color navigating higher education’s contradiction of simultaneous dependence on our skills, expertise, and leadership on the one hand and exploitation and exclusion on the other hand.