I was on a fantastic panel with lovely people, who are also department chairs, on leading during a pandemic today. The conversation was amazing. But I have rarely felt so out of place. #CovidChair

There really is something about your first adventure in academic leadership happening as a POC, at a poorly resourced public university, in the middle of a pandemic. #CovidChair

If we think faculty culture promotes and rewards a kind of normative whiteness, wow, leadership culture makes faculty culture seem positively diverse. #CovidChair

The weird irony is I was with the nicest people who were clearly welcoming! But the gulf between our institutions, resources, and student populations meant we clearly spend our days having very different conversations. #CovidChair

And this makes me suspect that the models for leadership are really premised on a very small, elite segment of higher education institutions — and different strategies are warranted when you work somewhere else, and where there isn’t money to solve pandemic problems. #CovidChair

But as a WOC, it also feels like there isn’t a lot of space to be yourself in leadership contexts — which isn’t unique to higher ed. #CovidChair

And the policing of this seems to come more from peers within our own institutions than anything else. #CovidChairs

Last week, my coach said to me that maybe this confluence of institution, personality, identity, and pandemic is an opportunity to define a new model of academic leadership. #CovidChair

I think that’s kinda lofty (but she’s getting paid $$$ to unleash my inner badass, true story), but I definitely had this moment of wow, I *really* don’t do things like other people and if I did, I would be worse at my job. #CovidChair

TL;DR the academy is still the academy. #CovidChair

TL;DR 2, furloughs and wine in a box and ballots still being counted #CovidChair