DEFINING MENTORING

Scholars have traced the term “mentoring” to Homer’s Odyssey, in which Odysseus’s friend Mentor offered wise guidance and advice to Odysseus’s son Telemachus when Odysseus left for the Trojan War (Anderson and Shannon Reference Anderson and Shannon1988; Kalpazidou Schmidt and Faber Reference Kalpazidou Schmidt and Faber2016). Although contemporary uses and definitions of the term vary, we understand it to describe a relationship in which more senior members of a profession (in this case, academia) commit their time and energy to guide more junior members of that profession toward fulfilling their teaching, research, and service responsibilities and advancing their career more broadly (Caskin, Lumpkin, and Tennant Reference Caskin, Lumpkin and Tennant2003). Mentoring relationships may be formal, such as when administrators or professional associations (for example) ask senior or experienced scholars to mentor more junior scholars, or more informal, arising from relationships that develop through meetings and peer networks (Bryant-Shankin and Brumage Reference Bryant-Shankin and Brumage2011). Mentoring activities also range widely, encompassing everything from offering technical advice (e.g., how to structure a course syllabus and where to submit a paper for publication), to providing letters of reference and feedback on drafts of written work, to more personal and psychological support (Kalpazidou Schmidt and Faber Reference Kalpazidou Schmidt and Faber2016). Whereas some of these mentoring activities dovetail with those associated with advising, mentoring tends to combine professional guidance with a more personal relationship, in part because it develops over time and because the mentor takes a special interest in the mentee’s professional development (National Academy of Sciences 1997).

Figure 1

“Mentor” in American English-Language Books, 1800s–2000s

Source: Mark Davies. 2011. Google Books Corpus (based on Google Books n-grams).

One of the many benefits of mentoring is that it provides graduate students and junior scholars with support and insights about the norms and expectations associated with an academic career, as well as financial resources, “access” to professional opportunities, and letters for employment and other professional opportunities. Empirical research demonstrates that this support and “insider knowledge” are essential for professional advancement. Inge Van der Weijden and her coauthors (Reference van der Weijden, Belder, van Arensbergen and Besselaar2015) found, for example, that junior scholars who are mentored effectively have more positive views about their work environment and that they tend to publish at a higher rate. Research also suggests that the benefits of mentoring can be reciprocal. For example, Evanthia Kalpazidou Schmidt and Stine Thidemann Faber (Reference Kalpazidou Schmidt and Faber2016) found that mentors benefit from mentoring junior scholars through professional development, institutional recognition, and personal satisfaction. Moreover, mentors also may gain research assistance and coauthorship from their mentees, all of which increases their productivity.

CAN WE MENTOR OUR WAY TO EQUITY AND DIVERSITY?

In addition to mentoring’s important role in scholars’ and teachers’ professional development, satisfaction, and success, it is often proffered as a way to promote equity and diversity in the academy. For example, although women now comprise the majority of students in colleges and universities, they still occupy only 27% of tenured faculty at four-year institutions (Turner Kelly Reference Kelly and Bridget2019 Reference Kelly and Bridget).Footnote ¹ People of color are also vastly underrepresented on college campuses. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics (2018) indicate that “of all full-time faculty at degree-granting postsecondary institutions, 42 percent were White males [sic], [and] 35 percent were White females [sic].Footnote ² Because gender identity and sexual orientation are not protected categories under federal civil rights laws, analogous data about LGBTQ people are not readily available.Footnote ³ As a consequence, “data sources we commonly use such as the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System do not track sexual orientation and have no means of tracking transgender identity” (American Federation of Teachers, Higher Education 2013). However, as the authors of a report from American Federation of Teachers, Higher Education (2013, 5–9) explained, whereas it may be “difficult to collect data that would enable analysts to understand how pervasive the discrimination against LGBT people actually is,” there nonetheless is “ample evidence” that they face “an array of challenges, ranging from personal attacks, both verbal and physical, to actions (intentional or otherwise) that isolate and alienate LGBT individuals, to institutional policies that prevent individuals from freely expressing their sexual identity and/or gender identity.”

Similarly, despite improvements in disability-related accommodations at colleges and universities since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, little research and information has been published on faculty members with disabilities; consequently, there are few data about the experiences of faculty members with disabilities. The data that do exist suggest that people with disabilities also remain vastly underrepresented among college faculty. For example, although 22% of the general population has a disability, the National Center for College Students with Disabilities estimates that this is true for only 4% of faculty members (Grigely Reference Grigely2017 Reference Grigely). Moreover, American case law suggests that college and university faculty members with disabilities face a range of problems including discrimination, architectural barriers, and tenure denial, among other issues (Rothstein Reference Rothstein2018 Reference Rothstein).

Although these inequities present academy-wide challenges, efforts to increase equity and diversity are particularly important in political science. Although there are important variations across subfields, political science nonetheless is a discipline that remains overwhelmingly straight, white, and male, and it has been slower than many others in the humanities and social sciences to incorporate and make central the study of race, gender, and sexuality. APSA reports that in 2014, for example, women accounted for 44% of all doctorates conferred in political science but held only 39% of full-time faculty positions. Moreover, the proportion of women in full-time positions is significantly lower in the 20 largest PhD-granting political science departments (APSA 2016). Women of color are even more woefully underrepresented. For example, whereas the proportion of white political scientists decreased from 93.4% in 1980 to 76.2% in 2017 (APSA 2011; Hildago et al. Reference Hildago, Linn, Roberts, Sinclair and Rocio2018 Reference Hildago, Linn, Roberts, Sinclair and Rocio)Reference Hildago, Linn, Roberts, Sinclair and Rocio Reference Hildago, Linn, Roberts, Sinclair and Rocio, in 2010, women of color comprised a mere 13.4% of full-time faculty members in political science—well below their share of the general population (APSA 2011).Footnote ⁴

There are many sources for these disparities, of course, but chief among them is that neither the academy nor political science is immune to the well-documented misogyny, racism, homophobia, and ableism—and the intersections among them—endemic to the educational system and to the broader labor market. As such, in addition to the “regular” demands of their jobs, women, LGBTQ faculty, faculty of color, and faculty at the intersections of these social locations face challenging and sometimes even hostile campus environments. They must contend with harassment and discrimination; their research is often devalued when it comes to publishing, tenure, and promotion (particularly if it addresses issues of race, gender, and sexuality); and their service burdens typically are heavier and unrecognized (APSA 2011; Gutiérrez y Muhs Reference Gutiérrez y Muhs2012; Smith Reference Smith2013 Reference Smith). Women, LGBTQ-identified faculty, and faculty of color also must contend with more challenges in the classroom: their authority is challenged more often than that of their male counterparts, and studies of teaching evaluations clearly indicate that students’ racism, misogyny, and homophobia influence the assessments of their teaching abilities (American Sociological Association 2019; Anderson and Kanner Reference Anderson and Kanner2011; Martin Reference Martin2016; Novkov and Barclay Reference Novkov and Barclay2010 Reference Novkov and Barclay).

The lack of equity and diversity in political science (and the academy more generally) creates significant feedback effects for students and scholars in the discipline. For example, this environment contributes to conditions that lead women and faculty of color to leave the discipline—which, in turn, exacerbates their underrepresentation among the political science professoriate (Gutiérrez y Muhs Reference Gutiérrez y Muhs2012)Reference Gutiérrez y Muhs. This ongoing underrepresentation means that political science faculty are unlikely to descriptively resemble their students, particularly as access to higher education has increased among members of the very marginalized groups that remain underrepresented in the discipline. Moreover, because women, scholars of color, and LGBTQ scholars are more likely than their straight, white, and male colleagues to study marginalization and its relationship to politics, the lack of equity and diversity also contributes to the underrepresentation of research about issues such as race, gender, and sexuality (Key and Sumner Reference Key and Sumner2019; Teele and Thelen Reference Teele and Thelen2017 Reference Teele and Thelen). The result is that “[p]olitical science is often ill-equipped to address in a sustained way why many of the most marginal members of political communities around the world are often unable to have their needs effectively addressed by governments” (Pinderhughes et al. Reference Pinderhughes, Fraga and Givens2011 Reference Pinderhughes, Fraga and Givens, 1).

MENTORING IN POLITICAL SCIENCE

A large and growing body of scholarship has made clear that these and other forms of inequality and marginalization are the result of deeply ingrained social and cultural processes and structural factors (Gutiérrez y Muhs Reference Gutiérrez y Muhs2012)Reference Gutiérrez y Muhs. In the context of the contemporary neoliberal university, however, the lack of racial diversity and gender equity is more typically treated as an individual-level problem that can be addressed with individual-level solutions. In this context, mentoring relationships are particularly attractive to resource-constrained college and university administrations. As the n-gram data in figure 1 suggest, the popularity of the term “mentoring” increased in tandem with the period of constricted state funding for public universities (Lipsitz Reference Lipsitz1990 Reference Lipsitz). Recognizing that university-based mentoring would not solve the problems of recruitment, promotion, and retention in political science, APSA established a task force on mentoring in 2002, which was composed of members of APSA Women’s Caucus and APSA Committees on the Status of Women, LGBTQ, Black, Latinos, and Asian Americans. Based on the task force recommendations, the APSA Mentoring Program was created the following year.Footnote ⁵

There is evidence that such efforts can be effective. In their report for the Task Force on Political Science in the 21st Century, Dianne Pinderhughes and her coauthors (2011, 49) noted, for example, that mentoring “is often cited in the literature of higher education as one of the few common characteristics of a successful faculty career, particularly for faculty of color and women.”

LIMITS OF MENTORING: NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED, AND BAD BEHAVIOR CAN BE ITS OWN REWARD

Although mentoring can have important benefits for members of marginalized and underrepresented groups, it is no panacea. Moreover, because—like so many forms of labor—the burdens of mentoring are not evenly distributed, there is reason to be concerned that mentoring also might exacerbate some of the very problems it is intended to alleviate. This possibility manifests in at least two relevant and important ways.

First, the senior scholars most likely to provide both formal and informal mentorship to members of marginalized and underrepresented groups—women, people of color, LGBTQ people, and first-generation college students—are often themselves members of these same groups. Several studies make clear that many of them already shoulder disproportionate service burdens (Mitchell and Hesli Reference Mitchell and Hesli2013 Reference Mitchell and Hesli). Because these demands are exacerbated by the fact that many political science departments have few, if any, senior scholars who are members of marginalized groups, senior scholars who do belong to them often find themselves serving as mentors to many graduate students and junior scholars beyond their own institutions. For example, many political science departments have few or no “out” LGBTQ people on the faculties. As a consequence, LGBTQ-identified graduate students often reach out to scholars from institutions other than their own for advice about issues such as how to be “out” in graduate school or as a junior faculty member and how to navigate self-presentation on the job market. Although these more senior scholars are likely grateful to be in a position to give such advice and often have benefited from it themselves, it also is likely the case that straight, white, male scholars are not typically expected to provide guidance about such issues. Furthermore, because mentoring by and of members of marginalized and underrepresented groups often entails that scholars intervene in situations with some of the same senior colleagues who undervalued, bullied, hazed, and harassed them, this mentorship can be both time-consuming and emotionally challenging. In these and other ways, although often gratifying, mentoring can also contribute to the “tax” borne by so many women, LGBTQ people, and people of color in the academy—a tax that essentially demands that they provide free “overtime” in the form of additional, lower-prestige, and time-consuming service and emotional labor (Disch and O’Brien Reference Disch, O’Brien, Aikau, Erickson and Pierce2007 Reference Disch, O’Brien, Aikau, Erickson and Pierce).

Second, but in some ways conversely, mentoring may do little to challenge the status quo, at least in part because senior scholars from underrepresented groups often are reluctant, disinclined, or not well positioned to do so. That is, rather than questioning and pushing back against problematic disciplinary norms and practices that have long served to exclude and marginalize scholars from and scholarship about these issues and groups, some members of these groups understand their role as mentor to be primarily about “gatekeeping,” making graduate students and junior colleagues conform to and meet those norms. Perhaps because they feel that they “made it” on their own, other members of marginalized groups reject the notion that they have any obligation to help their junior counterparts; some are even themselves bullies, gatekeepers, or power abusers.

At the same time, members of dominant and “unmarked” groups—who are most likely to hold power in the discipline—are not expected to share their resources, networks, and research collaborations with members of marginalized groups. As such—like whiteness, masculinity, and heterosexuality themselves—the benefits of mentorship to unmarked groups themselves remain unmarked, thereby normalizing and sustaining their power in the discipline. Among the results of these dynamics is that the mentoring benefits to members of unmarked groups are “submerged” (Mettler Reference Mettler2011 Reference Mettler), creating a feedback loop in which straight people, white people, and cisgender men are allowed to feel as if they “made it” on their own, whereas members of marginalized groups are seen as “needing” mentoring to compensate for what are treated as their individual deficits, serving to perpetuate meritocratic mythologies.

OVERVIEW OF ARTICLES

The articles in this symposium offer a range of contextual and experiential reflections about mentoring in political science. In “Mentoring: Past and Present,” Dvora Yanow situates the practice of mentoring historically, explaining how this practice has evolved from one largely defined as a workplace relationship between a senior man and a junior one to one defined as a “solution to perceived problems of employee retention and promotion” as members of underrepresented groups entered the workforce in increasing numbers. However, as mentoring has grown more popular and “essential,” Yanow demonstrates that it also has become a more highly professionalized and managed practice. Drawing from two moments in her own professional history, she shows what a more informal, organically developed mentoring relationship can look like and addresses questions about present-day managed mentoring practices.

Following Yanow’s broad discussion of the evolution of mentoring, Peregrine Schwartz-Shea situates it within the specific context of the modern, “corporatized,” and neoliberal university. She discusses how macro-factors such as, inter alia, measuring faculty “productivity” have affected mentoring as well. Using evidence from a review of online mentoring resources and her own experiences as both a mentor and mentee, Schwarz-Shea argues that the formalization of mentoring is indicative of the corporatization of the university—a process that also, paradoxically, has undermined the academic culture that makes mentoring viable. Her article concludes with thoughts about how faculty can navigate this paradox while also challenging discourses and practices that weaken the academic cultural conditions essential to genuine mentoring relationships.

The remaining contributors focus on a theme that emerged in our 2017 APSA roundtable: the relationship between mentoring and various forms of discrimination and harassment. The prominence of this theme became even more striking in the months following the conference, as an array of sexual harassment and assault allegations emerged to indicate that prominent and powerful people in a wide range of industries and professions had been using their position to exploit and compromise the careers of their employees and junior colleagues. The academy provides no shortage of its own examples of allegations of long-standing patterns of harassment on the part of individual faculty members (Anderson Reference Anderson2018; Flaherty Reference Flaherty2018 Reference Flaherty), as well as evidence of widespread harassment at professional meetings (Sapiro and Campbell Reference Sapiro and Campbell2018 Reference Sapiro and Campbell).

That political science has not been immune to such behavior is reflected in Natasha Behl’s article, “Violence and Mentoring: Race, Gender, and Sexual Harassment,” in which she brings research about mentorship into conversation with her personal experience of sexual harassment as a woman of color graduate student. In particular, she examines what happens when race and gender intersect with epistemological and methodological differences between students and faculty in ways that make some students more vulnerable to sexual harassment in the mentor–mentee relationship. She shows that whereas this relationship indeed may empower and lift up members of underrepresented groups, it ultimately is difficult to “build trust and solidarity in a hierarchical power structure also divided across racial, gender, and epistemic differences.”

Nadia Brown and Celeste Montoya also discuss how race and gender operate and intersect in the mentoring process in “Intersectional Mentorship: A Model for Empowerment and Transformation.” They demonstrate that whereas mentoring is “a vital means of helping women of color and members of other marginalized groups,” like Behl, they argue that mentoring also may perpetuate oppression if mentors fail to account for and challenge multiple and intersecting forms of marginalization. Although they have benefited from engagement with women’s caucuses and status committees that attempt to address this oppression in political science, for example, they articulate their frustration with the single-axis models of representation and advocacy that such efforts typically offer. Instead, they argue for “a more intersectionally conscious and action-oriented model of mentorship.”

Together, the articles by Behl and by Brown and Montoya underscore a key barrier to mentorship: that colleagues often regard women less as scholars and more as potential conquests (Sapiro and Campbell Reference Sapiro and Campbell2018 Reference Sapiro and Campbell). The consequences of these attitudes and behaviors typically are borne not by those who perpetrate them but instead by members of marginalized groups, who often must endure the bad behavior and the attendant feelings of isolation, lost confidence, and helplessness that they engender. These feelings can be particularly acute when someone who shares a marginalized identity and who may have been a potential source of mentorship and protection instead harassed and bullied them. Such violations of trust can make it feel ever-harder to ask for help of any kind.

In the final article, “A Black Feminist Autoethnographic Reflection on Mentoring in the Discipline of Political Science,” Lahoma Thomas indicates what intersectionally conscious and action-oriented mentoring may look like in a tribute to her mentor, the late Dr. Lee Ann Fujii. Drawing from Black Feminist Thought and her own autoethnography, Thomas shares some of the ways in which graduate students encounter interlocking systems of oppression that often leave them isolated and alienated in the academy. However, she also shows how Dr. Fujii’s “unconventional mentorship”—which emphasized frequent, candid conversations about the challenges and barriers experienced by racialized scholars in the academy—shaped Thomas’s research interests and enabled her scholarly progress.