When diversity in education is discussed, the subjects focussed on are usually the student population in universities, schools, youth organizations etc. and the challenges educators face, when dealing with the diverse classrooms. Less research is done on the question, what it means for scholars, teachers and educators who are themselves marked as ‘diverse’ to work in an environment, where most of their colleagues are white, able-bodied, speak the national language as their first language, and do not have any own or family-based experience with migration. Drawing on Pillay (2015) it can be argued that: “Being at the heart of epistemic violence, the university is [...] not simply [...] a conveyor belt of automatons, or robots or ideological zombies of the dominant interests and order. The modern university is also that site of constant invention, contestation, negotiation, subversion and potentially, reinvention.” Hence, the university being a significant site where social discourses are formed and influenced, it is vital to guarantee a maximum of participation of different groups in society ̶ and especially of those who are marginalized. To understand how participation is possible or what the obstacles are, it is not only important to identify discriminatory practices the marginalized academics face, but also to identify strategies to build safer spaces inside.

The topic is not a new one; however, most of the existing research is related to the US-American and Canadian context (cf. Niemann & Gutiérrez y Muhs, Gabriella, Gonzalez, Carmen G., 2020; Settles et al., 2018; Willie-LeBreton, 2016) and therefore, does not reflect the situation of educators in the German speaking environment. Even though a few studies exist in Germany, Austria and other European countries, particularly in England, their focus is more on the experiences of discrimination inside academia and less on the strategies of resistance (cf. Ahmed, 2012; Akbaba et al., 2022; Arghavan et al., 2019; Caceres et al., 2017; Puwar, 2004). That is why the project to be presented: “Scholars of Color in the German and Austrian Acadamia” pays special interest on questions of resilience and resistance (cf. Ahmed et al., 2022).  

Based on the theoretical background of post- and decolonial approaches that aim at intervening in the epistemic violence and exclusion(re-)produced in westernized academia (Bhambra et al., 2018; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018), the central questions asked in the study are: “How do scholars of color deal with their various experiences of discrimination and which strategies and resources they come up with to stay inside academia?” Even though the main focus is on discrimination through racism, other forms of structural discrimination like (hetero-)sexism, ableism, linguicism and classism are taken into account from an intersectional perspective (Crenshaw, 1991).

An important aspect of understanding university as a space where counter-hegemonic knowledge, resistance and resilience can be formed, is to understand the university classroom as an interface to society. Working with students means to have the possibility to teach them a critical diversity literacy  (Steyn, 2015) that they will continue to develop and use outside the constraints of the academic institutions. Therefore, for the study to be presented, the criteria for choosing interview partners were not only that they should be teachers of color with teaching experience inside a university in a German speaking environment but that they also consider a critical approach to power-relations in the disciplines they are teaching.

The qualitative study, was conducted in 2020 but ̶ due to the pandemic ̶ could not be presented yet. An interdisciplinary team of four researchers of color (2 from the field of Educational Science, 1 from the Islamic studies, 1 from the Legal studies) conducted interviews with eight Scholars of Color who identify themselves as Black and/or Scholars of Color. All of them were experienced with teaching in the German speaking academia. Furthermore, they were all able to reflect theoretically on the questions of power-relations inside the academia as they taught these issues. A common interview guide was used to keep the interviews consistent, asking about own experiences, coping-strategies, resources and claims. Even though the researchers, who led the interviews, limited themselves to the role of the interviewer, they did not suggest any 'neutrality' with regard to the subject. Rather they made their own involvement transparent. Probably, because of this attitude, the conversations were characterized by a striking openness. Conducting the interviews, enabled the researchers not only to broaden their own perspectives and experiences. Rather, the field phase, the interviewing itself, led to experiences of solidarity and mutual strength, reverberating even today after the project officially ended. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed with the help of MaxQDA2020 on the basis of the Grounded Theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1996). After coding the material with three main categories: a) experiences b) consequences c) resistance/resilience, all three categories were sub-coded. So further coding was created, from which some examples are presented her: a) experience: ‘everyday racism’, ‘de-thematizing racism’, ‘experiences of devaluation’, b) consequences: ‘exhaustion’, ‘pressure to prove legitimate presence inside the academy’, ‘questioning of authority’ and c) resistance: ‘taking on the role model function’, ‘informal mentorships’, ‘widening horizons’, communicating one’s own value’, ‘playing a theatrical role’, ‘Politics of Fit’, ‘keeping the formal distance’, ‘focus on agency’, ‘networks and solidarity’. These codes will be elaborated on in the presentation. As the study is a qualitative one, it neither claims to be representative nor objective. But it hopefully serves to understand one more piece in the complex relations inside the western academia, which is necessary to go further in creating an environment for more equal participation in the scientific discourse.

Scholars of Color who stay inside academia pay a high ‚inclusion tax‘ (Melaku, 2019). If there is a serious interest in keeping them inside the white, capitalist and Eurocentric institution, universities have to work on deconstructing their own racist structures. While this is a process, perhaps never to be completed, there is also a need to provide resources to build networks, where marginalized scholars can find a safer space, to gain strength and to get a break from the permanent pressure of legitimizing their existence. Much of the feminist work done to get a legitimate space inside universities for queer and female bodies can be used as a point of reference for the steps that have to be taken to open up the space: for bodies who do not conform to the expectations of whiteness, gender, sexual-orientation, ability, and/or are socialized in a working-class family. Through presenting the paper, I hope to open up the academic space of the conference for joint reflections and discussions about how to create a more equal space inside academia. With conservative right-wing movements getting stronger every day, we need to engage with the challenges, options and responsibilities that we have as academic educators in a changing Europe, that cannot build on its long-told stories of a homogenous, superior, white identity anymore.

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