Presumed Incompetence of Deaf ASL Faculty

I want to pick up where I left off last year before I got sidetracked. I promised a follow up vlog on a post I made regarding the significance of the growth of tenure track positions for ASL faculty. Here’s the post I’m talking about.

Bald white man wearing a green-blue spotted polo signing against a cream background.

In that vlog, while I celebrated the positive progress this represents, I also noted a troubling statement. It appears that some colleges and universities do not respect people who teach ASL and assume incompetency when it comes to our ability to use English in collegiate settings. Here’s a few examples I noted.

1. A college on the West Coast, in their posting for a tenure-track ASL faculty, containing much of the standard language for tenure track job postings also mentioned that the candidate had to demonstrate proficiency in English. That reminded me of…
2. A college in New England several years ago that had the same line in their job posting for a non-tenure track ASL instructor. I checked their other postings for foreign language instructors: Korean, Arabic, Chinese, Russian, French, Spanish. None of those postings had that statement about “demonstrated ability to write in English appropriate to collegiate settings” or any language related to any level of proficiency in English.
3. Dorian Yanke, a deaf man here in the U.S. who taught ASL for many years at a community college in Southern California recently posted a long document describing his experience with audism at that college. Yanke taught English for a number of years in Texas before applying for an ASL teaching job seeking a change of pace. During his interview, the hiring committee asked him to sit and write a writing sample while they watched. [Aside: Yanke was reported missing in late August while boating off the Delaware coast. He has still not been found. I remain hopeful he is found safely at sea- I’ve read many stories where people survive on rainwater and fishing while awaiting rescue.]

These three examples led me to wonder about those institutions’ perception of us. That we’re inherently incompetent and illiterate unless proven otherwise? If we are applying for a tenure-track job or any type of faculty job, it’s assumed we have at least a college degree because that’s a standard requirement. Do not our college degrees communicate some minimum level of competency in using English? Do they think that we have our interpreters do all the reading, writing, and thinking for us to the extend that we never develop the ability to function in English-using settings? Do they have negative attitudes about the quality or reliability of certain degrees from certain undergraduate degree granting institutions?

The other problem here is just how are we measuring “proficiency” in English? And what is appropriate for “collegiate settings”? There’s clearly no one standard way to use English in such settings. I’ve taught at 5 different higher education institutions: each of them have very different cultures surrounding how we write and communicate with each other. One of my colleges was really posh, we wrote very formally — among faculty, between faculty and students, and between faculty and administrators — using jargon and esoteric vocabularies. In other institutions, it’s been very informal and casual. In my most informal institution, we used slang, shorthand, emojis, and ASL-inflected English to communicate, be it between administrators and faculty or among faculty.

Last, for ASL teaching, just what type of English or level of proficiency is necessary to teach ASL, especially at the elementary level where we’re not teaching translation or discussing complex concepts? I’m just mystified at seeing that kind of language in job postings for ASL faculty.

I want to say bluntly that if a college/university includes that kind of language in their job postings, they shouldn’t be offering ASL at all. They shouldn’t be profiting off ASL while holding such low opinions of deaf people. They should not be materially benefiting from our existence without engaging in sincere reflexivity, unpacking their attitudes and perceptions of deaf people.

I also want to mention that there are benefits in having faculty that have idiocryansices in how they use language or use language more colloquially. Students have a great opportunity here to learn how to calibrate, how to listen more creatively, how to read more flexibly, to think about Global Englishes and transgressive uses of English that resists settler-colonial expectations, [and to unpack their own language ideologies and attitudes] while learning about language deprivation and its various expressions. There’s so much wealth and so many lessons we can learn from people who language non-normatively. We understand that normative is determined by white supremacy and settler colonial logics.

Colleges and Universities that claim a commitment to social justice, equity, accessibility, disability rights, linguistic equity, or materially benefit from ASL in any way, including research grants have an obligation to unpack their attitudes and work through their biases in dismantling attitudes and expectations that create barriers to employment for deaf people. That kind of language simply has no place in ASL faculty job postings.