Charfauros Embodies Oberlin

To the Editors:

I am writing to express my anger and dismay at the dismissal of Professor Antoinette Charfauros McDaniel. As a senior Sociology major the teaching and mentorship of Ms. Charfauros have both maintained and sustained me through the course of my studies. Her courses on critical ethnography and educational sociology have provided me with the necessary academic framework and ethical methodological skills and practice to undertake advanced work in the field. Her courses are logically structured and draw on a mixture of primary, secondary and field resources to create a complex yet complete context for examining situations from a sociological perspective. She addresses ethical implications of field research in both a professional light as well as one of social responsibility. At an institution where students are encouraged to think one person can change the world, Ms. Charfauros stresses a need for service-based learning and connecting classroom experience and intellectual work with lived experience and activism, a model that I intend to follow throughout my professional career.
Charfauros embodies the ideal of an Oberlin professor. She has a passion for teaching, a commitment to supporting her students academically and personally, is accessible and available outside of the classroom and imbues her teaching with a focus that is at once social and political, contextualizing the material’s relevance in modern society. Charfauros steps outside of the ivory tower and engages her students in ways that make course material both personal and real. Not only has Charfauros been integral to my academic development as a sociologist, but she has also had immeasurable influence on my personal and political development. It is through her lectures, the readings she has assigned and the conversations we have had that I have begun to critically analyze and acknowledge systems of power and privilege in the United States. She has given me the necessary context to process and comprehend major global political movements and events, and helped me to develop my personal and professional goals. Her classes support students in our struggles against both latent and manifest racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and ethnocentrism. She encourages students to acknowledge and confront their preconceived prejudices and biases and to truly challenge themselves to overcome them. Her teaching enabled me to begin deconstructing my internalized intolerance and committing myself to dismantling the institutionalized forms of oppression and prejudice that are so prevalent in our society.
I have no great personal stake in Ms. Charfauros’ future at Oberlin College. Come May, I will graduate and there will be no real or tangible impact on my life should her dismissal not be overturned. Those who will suffer are the future students of Oberlin who will not have the benefit of her teaching. Ms. Charfauros ensures that this institution and its students remain self-reflective and self-critical. She takes on difficult battles such as APA and Comparative American Studies and offers the academic context and support necessary for students to question and evaluate their beliefs. She integrates social action into her academic work, and encourages her students to do the same. She takes a personal interest in her students, offering them empathy and encouragement during both academic and personal challenges. Oberlin College prides itself on its mission of retaining excellent faculty who offer both dynamic pedagogy and close, individual relationships with students, and on its longstanding history of and commitment to racial, ethnic and gender diversity as well as social justice. To fire Antoinette Charfauros McDaniel would be an affront to that mission and a clear and definitive step backwards for the College.

–Jennifer Katz
College senior

December 6
February 2002

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