Who is Ana Maria Candela? SUNY Binghamton prof says White male students must clam up
A SUNY Binghamton professor has been slammed for allegedly saying White students should clam up in class and allow others to lead academic discussions. A syllabus for Ana Maria Candela's class said she would be calling on non-white coeds first. Candela teaches sociology. Candela's policy, dubbed “progressive stacking, aimed to “give priority to non-white folks, to women, and to shy and quiet people who rarely raise their hands,” the syllabus read.
Candela wrote, "If you are white, male, or someone privileged by the racial and gender structures of our society to have your voice easily voiced and heard, we will often ask you to hold off on your questions or comments to give others priority and will come back to you a bit later or at another time.”
READ MORE
Jenn Jackson: Professor slammed for calling 9/11 ‘attack on heteropatriarchal' system
Watkins Elementary: School under fire as teacher forces third-graders to reenact Holocaust
Who is Ana Maria Candela?
Candela, who is now under fire for her syllabus, is a historian of Modern China and Assistant Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York. The professor's research focuses on Chinese migrations to Latin America and on the global dimensions of Chinese history and China’s social transformations. Candela has received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship and a Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation Scholar Grant.
Candela's areas of research interest include Transnational and Migration History, Nationalism, Region Making, Third World and Global South History, Settler Colonialism, Historical Sociology, and Spatial Imaginaries. Her publications include “Sociology in Times of Crisis: Chen Da, National Salvation and the Indigenization of Knowledge” in the Journal of World Systems Research (August 2015), “Qiaoxiang on the Silk Road: Cultural Imaginaries as Structures of Feeling in the Making of a Global China” in Critical Asian Studies (September 2013), among others. The university seems to have removed Candela's bio from its website.
Student Sean Harrigan has filed a Title IX discrimination complaint to the school. Harrigan claimed that Binghamton officials have scrambled to revise the existing syllabus. The officials then reportedly said that they opposed the practice. “How am I supposed to get a full participation grade if I’m not called on because of the way I was born?” Harrigan, an economics major, told New York Post.
A school spokesperson said, "The faculty member has updated their syllabus, removing the section in question, and is now in compliance with the Faculty Staff Handbook." In the first draft of her syllabus, Candela praised the strategy, saying it yields “tremendous benefits for our society.” The academic said, “those who feel most privileged to speak begin to take the initiative to hold space for others who feel less comfortable speaking first, while those who tend to be more silenced in our society grow more comfortable speaking.”
Harrigan has also accused candela of equating capitalism to slavery during her lectures. “This is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “The sociology department scares me.” Harrigan claimed that when it comes to progressive curricular trends, campus opinion varies from some appreciating it and not embracing it.
“The Faculty Staff Handbook outlines principles of effective teaching, which include valuing and encouraging student feedback, encouraging appropriate faculty-student interaction, and respecting the diverse talents and learning styles of students,” the school said. A school official added that Candela’s syllabus “clearly violates those principles."
