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Kerry Ann Rockquemore & Tracey Laszloffy
The Black Academic’s Guide to Winning Tenure—Without Losing Your Soul
Reviewed by Dr. Tiffiany Howard
The Black Academic’s Guide to Winning Tenure—Without Losing Your Soul presents a realistic portrayal of the many challenges facing African American junior faculty at universities across the country.
The authors provide critical insight into the experience of the black assistant professor by acknowledging the racial politics that emerge in academia, and how departmental politics are often tied to race and ethnicity. Instead of avoiding the difficult topics and issues, Kerry Ann Rockquemore and Tracey Laszloffy discuss how black assistant professors, in their quest for tenure, sometimes experience isolation, double standards in the classroom, hostility, the excessive burden of mentorship, alienation and exclusion from networks. The authors also point out how multiculturalism and diversity programs are not always the answer and that in some cases have led to color blindness, where university administration has thus ignored the complexities of race that remain salient in spite of these initiatives.
What I found invaluable about this book was that the authors provide strategies to black junior faculty to help them successfully negotiate the tenure track process. Rockquemore and Laszloffy go so far as to discuss the process of interviewing and job hunting, and the things a job candidate needs to pay attention to and the questions that need to be asked before accepting a tenure track position. The authors also discuss writing techniques, and other research and publication strategies, that will help African American junior faculty establish a productive research agenda. Beyond providing research strategies, Rockquemore and Laszloffy also discuss how to balance teaching and service. Black junior faculty are often the single face of the department and the service load for such an individual can be daunting. The authors also point out that in addition to service, the teaching demands can be just as overwhelming. One of the most important messages of that section is the importance of saying no. Rockquemore and Laszloffy discuss the eagerness of black junior faculty to be visible and active mentors and a contributing member of the department, but that it is important to find a healthy balance.
I found The Black Academic’s Guide to Winning Tenure—Without Losing Your Soul to be thought provoking and engaging. Rockquemore and Laszloffy are very detailed oriented and objective in how they present the experiences of black junior faculty. It is clear their main objective is to provide black junior faculty with viable strategies that will help them achieve tenure and promotion. This book is certainly written with the African American junior scholar in mind, but I would highly encourage all junior faculty who are interested in acquiring the necessary tools to achieve tenure to read this book.
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Reviewed by Dr. Tiffiany Howard
 Dr. Tiffiany Howard received her dual PhD in Political Science and Public Policy from the University of Michigan in 2006 and is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in the Department of Political Science. Her fields of specialization include international relations, conflict and security, international and domestic migration policy, and quantitative methodology. She is the author of The Tragedy of Failure: Evaluating State Failure and its Impact on the Spread of Refugees, Terrorism and War (Forthcoming from Praeger: March 2010). Other recent publications include “Ending the Debate: Re-evaluating the Causes of Refugee Flows,” in the Fall 2004 issue of International Policy Solutions; “Poverty and Politics: Expanding on the Theories of Political Violence, Economic Insecurity and the Root Causes of Forced Migration,” LBJ Journal of Public Affairs, Spring 2005 and “Revisiting State Failure: Developing a Causal Model of State Failure Based Upon Theoretical Insight.” Civil Wars, 10:2, June 2008.
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