"I Can See How This Place Has Changed You" but "We Will Continue to Build:" a Collaborative Autoethnography on Critical Scholarship amid Systemic Suppression

Background: While suppressive policies initially started in Texas and Florida, rapid proliferation throughout the U.S. and codification by the federal government through executive orders in 2025 has resulted in the closure of multicultural centers, removal of funding, denying of tenure, and doxxing and harassment among faculty. Though this moment is marred with violence—be it mental, physical, or political—critical scholars working towards social change continue to challenge the status quo in the face of suppression. Yet, the impact on faculty conducting anit-racist and anti-oppressive research to inform socially justice policies and practices is unknown. In response, a group of 5 anti-racist scholars with diverse positionalities at the intersections of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and disability across Texas, Tennessee, Florida, and California conducted a collaborative autoethnography to answer: (a) How are critical social work scholars affected by the oppressive neoliberal higher education system, and (b) how do they maintain and advance anti-oppressive scholarship? Grounded in Black feminist thought and Afropessimism we describe the implications for maintaining and advancing scholarship that advances policy and practice.

Methods: Using collaborative autoethnography, we engaged in reflective and dialogic processes to document our experiences and strategies for sustaining critical scholarship. Collaborative autoethnography combines individual and collective efforts, where researchers collect, analyze, and interpret autobiographical materials to understand sociocultural phenomena reflected in their personal experiences (Chang et al., 2012). Our diverse positionalities and geographical locations across Texas, Tennessee, and California enable us to discern commonalities and differences in our experiences. Following a carefully structured protocol, data were collected between January - July 2024 via bi-weekly Zoom meetings, guided personal memos, and autobiographical materials to examine our experiences of systemic suppression within higher education. Reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022) was used to collaboratively code meeting transcripts and memos. The group met weekly to discuss ideas, interrogate assumptions, and explore multiple interpretations of the data. Codes were then categorized by identifying the commonalities and differences and categories were grouped based on similarities of meaning to generate themes.

Results: Through our analysis we identified three themes: navigating surveillance, mitigating “soul crushing” conditions, and “creating liberatory spaces.” Salient throughout our transcripts was our hypervigilance of the surveillance of our institutions, colleagues, and students. Our decision-making evolved to calculate new risks to our lives and livelihoods, weighing pros and cons within a suppressive political climate. We all described the “soul crushing” effect of internalizing the harms of the system. And in answering our second research question, theme three highlights how we are “creating liberatory spaces wherever we are.” Instead of waiting for the institutions to change, we began to create the liberatory spaces we desired.

Implications: Results from this study will guide discussions on how to maintain academic integrity and advance critical scholarship and teaching under conditions of political censorship, surveillance, and suppression. By using specific examples from the data, presenters will reflect on the tension between activism, safety, and career advancement highlighting the supports that are essential in continuing critical scholarship that leads to social change amidst political repression.