Merlin Star's Website

I want to avoid some of the more common prejudices that folks pick up on during a PhD. While I know that I can’t avoid all of it and that much of it is systemic, I do at least want to minimize the elitism that I pick up from academia along with the anti-Indigenous attitudes.

So, here are my very basic thoughts that I need to think on more:

• Connect with those that don’t have a PhD in academia, like some of the lecturers.
• Connect with adjuncts. Adjuncts notoriously get some of the worst of elitism for academic positions and some tenured faculty make this openly known.
• Connect with Indigenous scholars whose research I am interested in. I want to avoid tokenization. How I will do that is by looking at Indigenous research that interests me and then connecting with the Indigenous folks that do this. I will also be looking up tribe specific information (preferably written by the actual group) and learn basic information to reduce the chances of harm.
• Connect with interdisciplinary researchers, especially those that work in less common areas. Elitism can show up in disciplinary attitudes and I find that interdisciplinary researchers tend to be the least prejudiced in terms of this.
• Find journals that are run by Indigenous folks.
• Connect with students pursuing a master’s with no doctoral intent.
• Connect with those that have a terminal degree that isn’t a PhD. This can include EdD, PsyD, MFA, MLIS, etc.
• Connect with international students. They tend to have a lot of elitism thrown at them along with xenophobia.

Obviously need to think on this way harder and deeper and will update this thread, but I wanted to jot down some of my thoughts before I forget to jot them down again.