[00:00:00] This is a Dauntless Media Collective Podcast. Visit dauntless.fm for more content.
[00:00:07] We have enemies within our country. I think it's a combination of demonology and
[00:00:22] sia. The citizens are going to rise up and become deputized. I have always heard
[00:00:27] President Trump. I like the way he talked. He reminds me of most men. Joe Biden last night
[00:00:32] in the debate, he's like he's not even a human being. Donald Trump and the migra
[00:00:36] Republicans represented extremism. Can you imagine repatriating all the black
[00:00:42] Americans that pet this book about to Africa? Now this is the evidence. You want me to make an
[00:00:47] act of faith risking myself, my wife, my woman, my sister, my children on some idealism
[00:00:54] which you assure me just to America which I have never seen.
[00:00:58] This is Profane Faith. A podcast that engages faith on the margins. Faith that has been
[00:01:04] labeled profane, non-conformist or even out there. We'll be exploring the intersections
[00:01:10] of the sacred secular and profane define God. And look we won't be trying to answer difficult
[00:01:16] questions. Rather, we'll be engaging them in asking better ones regarding faith, race,
[00:01:22] gender and religion. I'll be your host, Daniel Whitehodge.
[00:01:26] Hey, welcome back. Welcome back to Profane Faith. You know who it is. It's me, Daniel Whitehodge
[00:01:41] back here in effect. My goodness feels like the time is just moving. It's always amazing
[00:01:51] to me just to see, you know, just how quickly things move around. I was reading, I'm forgetting
[00:01:57] where I was reading a couple of weeks ago. I can't remember it was the Washington Post
[00:02:04] or it was the Atlantic but it was an article looking at the different frequencies of
[00:02:09] the earth. And the author was making the case that there are frequencies that the
[00:02:15] earth is changing, whether it be at the poles from the equatorial frequencies and that
[00:02:23] they're speeding up. And so it feels like time is moving forward and they were making
[00:02:30] the argument in case that something was moving around and shaking cosmically speaking.
[00:02:39] And that we as humans were feeling time moving a lot quicker. Which is interesting, I don't
[00:02:47] know if I necessarily completely hop on that. I would want to read a little bit more into
[00:02:52] that. The stuff I have read on in regards to time and time travel is time, a lot of
[00:03:03] theorists look at time as an illusion. You know, I mean think about it like this, right?
[00:03:08] When you're having a good time, time flies, right? When it sucks, right? You sitting
[00:03:14] at the DMV or you sitting in a boring ass church service, you know, it's time drag. So
[00:03:21] that right there shows you just the illusionary, the magic behind just how time, how we perceive
[00:03:30] time. We as humans have created elements of time, right? 60 second minutes, 60 minute
[00:03:37] hours, you know, 24 hours in the day. You know, those type of things, you know, we've set
[00:03:46] ourselves up on a, you know, Gregorian calendar, which if you look at other ancient civilizations
[00:03:54] would say the earth is much older than what we make it out to be. And then of course
[00:03:59] you have others who say, you know, the earth is much younger. So, you know, it's interesting
[00:04:04] just to kind of, you know, waffle through components of time, time, movement, time dilation.
[00:04:13] You know, time is interesting because we know that for example, a day on Mars is not the
[00:04:18] same as a day on Earth. So, you know, we move beyond our own solar system and begin to
[00:04:27] look at, you know, look at other worlds, especially if the worlds are bigger than Earth. How do
[00:04:30] we measure time? If a planet is, you know, take 72 hours of our hours and that's considered
[00:04:37] today. What does that mean? What does, you know, what if it means, you know, if something
[00:04:41] like Mercury that's closer to the sun, maybe it's a red dwarf, you know, that's where
[00:04:45] you have to be closer because it's a less mass star. And you know, that habitable
[00:04:51] zone is much closer to that star than, you know, that rotation period may be a lot quicker.
[00:04:57] A day maybe hour, 15 hours or 10 hours, right? So time is interesting. We don't have an
[00:05:04] necessarily a universal time setup. We tend to gauge everything by Earth's rotational
[00:05:10] period even when we think about light years and how long it takes a light to, you know,
[00:05:14] to move through the, even the solar system, our galaxy, it's still measured in relation
[00:05:19] to time on Earth. So it's interesting to hear some of these frequencies. I know just, you
[00:05:27] know, from talking with, you know, different people, just anecdotally speaking that, you
[00:05:32] know, you graduate high school and time seems to kind of just move. And mainly because,
[00:05:38] you know, so much of us, so many of us, you know, don't like, you know, didn't like our
[00:05:42] high school experience. And so it was just great to get out. And then once you get out,
[00:05:47] right, you enter a quote unquote, the adult realm. And then, you know, your life isn't so
[00:05:53] much subjugated by, you know, semesters. Obviously mine still is. But that is my profession,
[00:05:59] right? So again, time is interesting. Time travel does exist. You can move forward in time
[00:06:06] by strong enough gravitational mass, right? You get close enough to a big black hole. Time
[00:06:14] slows down for you. And that's it, you know, it's a, it's a weird thing, right? And I've been
[00:06:23] looking at, you know, different theories and philosophies behind, you know, going back in time
[00:06:32] and outside of a wormhole and even even the construction of a wormhole, right? The use of dark
[00:06:38] matter, use of exotic components, you know, like that, like such as dark matter, dark energy.
[00:06:47] You know, it'd be at least at this point, from what I'm seeing, it is beyond our technological
[00:06:54] capabilities. Although there are those that say, especially when you think about, I am forgetting
[00:07:01] the guy's name. Hold on. Bob Lazar, Bob Lazar probably one of the most renowned folks for
[00:07:08] looking at U.F.ology and, you know, U.A.P. phenomenology. You know, his claim is that he worked
[00:07:17] at Area 51 and saw this technology in the U.S. reverse that technology from crashed alien
[00:07:26] spaceships. It's fascinating stuff before you just dismiss it. You know, it's some fascinating
[00:07:34] things. You know, he predicted an element back in 86 and forgetting the name of the element
[00:07:40] and it didn't exist yet and lo and behold, you know, a couple decades later, it ended up,
[00:07:46] you know, it ended up finding it and whatnot. So there's some interesting overlays with Lazar's
[00:07:52] story and just some of the claims that he's made but folks like him would say that our
[00:07:58] technology is at that level but it's not shared with the public and that it is really something
[00:08:04] that is secretly kept. But again, I know people say, man, there's no way, right? There's no way
[00:08:12] to secretly that big could be kept. So I don't know, you know, it's one of those things,
[00:08:17] right? It's one of those things. But nevertheless, time still feels like it's moving quickly.
[00:08:21] I'm like, oh my gosh, we are finishing up March and we are in the April and, you know,
[00:08:28] bringing it full circle and spring. I'm waiting for my lawn and my soil to warm up about 50 to
[00:08:33] 55 degrees is what it, what it needs to be. And currently it is, let's see, I can tell you
[00:08:40] accurately have an app, the yard mastery app. If you're into yards like me, you got to get the yard
[00:08:45] mastery apps really good app. It gives you the soil temperature and all that you know, do your
[00:08:50] soil tests, all them things input it right into this thing and it gives you its spits out of a
[00:08:58] customized lawn program for you. I love it. But my soil temp right now is 37 degrees. So
[00:09:07] still a, you know, a few few degrees away from the ideal temp. Before we get to our guest,
[00:09:15] another thing that popped into my mind this week, mainly because I was attending a, well,
[00:09:20] online, I was attending a memorial service for a good and dear friend of ours that passed
[00:09:25] away recently. And unfortunately, she was really young and cancer got the better of her.
[00:09:32] And we're, you know, it's a memorial service and there's a lot to be said about that
[00:09:37] service and about the relationship that she had with her parents. She was African-American
[00:09:43] and she had a really fraught relationship with her mother and they ended up having the
[00:09:51] memorial service at her mother's church, which was a very, shall we say black church. I think
[00:09:58] what stood out as I watched online, first of all, the pastor screwed up her name, the Annunciation
[00:10:05] and pronunciation of her name. I think what stood out was one, I used to be a part of that in all the
[00:10:12] ways. Sure, I was part of the black seventh, the Adventist Church, but I still had all the
[00:10:17] nomenclatures and the sayings and the discourse and rhetoric, all the little things that I knew
[00:10:23] how to say. You know, you say that three A-man's at the end, amen, amen, amen, amen, right?
[00:10:29] That type of stuff, those of you who've been in the black church, you already know.
[00:10:33] So it was a little triggered and it's a little activating. And I think what got me was
[00:10:43] that it's interesting to see it now. I haven't been part, well, I've been part of a church in years,
[00:10:49] but specifically black church, I've been part of a black church.
[00:10:54] 22, 23 years, I mean, it's been since I've been an active member of any kind of black church.
[00:11:02] And you know, it's fascinating to kind of see that. I mean, I have struggled. I know, and this
[00:11:09] is something that I'm hoping to put into my own memoir book that I'm hoping to get out. I
[00:11:17] want to get that out. I want to get that out. I've shared with you last season that I've just been
[00:11:21] having a real writers block and it's been coming on since the pandemic. But one of the things that
[00:11:29] gets me excited about writing again is writing my own story about what I have experiences
[00:11:34] a black and Latinx male living in this society, especially when we work my way through
[00:11:41] Christian higher ed. And you know, it just I want to say, particularly, I think where I get
[00:11:52] I think where I get a little tongue tied with it is just trying to get my head around that,
[00:11:57] hey, I was a part of this and for a lot of people it's still a major meaning making
[00:12:04] system, right? And I don't want to disparage that. I think where I struggle with is just
[00:12:09] all of the things. I mean, just the the serious amount of God as a male pronoun
[00:12:15] that threw me off, right? He does he that he does, you know, he's going to do that. He's going to do that.
[00:12:20] I mean, so that alone always tells me something about the church. That always tells me something
[00:12:24] about the location of where people's minds and worldviews are set in regards to gender.
[00:12:30] If you're just you're just naming God still in the male pronoun sense, and there's no other
[00:12:37] variants to that. Like I get folks who switch it up like he this she that they this them that
[00:12:45] okay, that's cool. You know what I'm saying? Or just not even giving God a type of gender,
[00:12:52] you know, in that sense. I'm fine with that too. I think, you know, for me though, it just says a lot
[00:12:58] about where the church stands and by and large so often the black church is still kind of rooted
[00:13:04] in that now that's not across the board. I would say the black evangelical church which tends to be
[00:13:11] very fundamental, very democratic in the sense politically speaking in the sense that you have
[00:13:20] somebody like a Jesse Jackson that you know tends to lean left or maybe center left depending on
[00:13:26] you know, where you see his positioning at and whatnot of political affiliations. But the
[00:13:32] theologically tends to be very, very, very conservative. And then you have all the, you know, sexual
[00:13:41] stuff that goes down in places like that. So I think, you know, it's it's a fascinating thing.
[00:13:46] I think I know that it got me to start thinking like I really want to do something on the black church.
[00:13:51] Like, where are we at right now? I think about my boy, you know, Dr. John Gill was doing some amazing
[00:13:57] work. He's finally at a full time spot and not working freaking, you know, 12 different universities
[00:14:03] and traveling all over the state. I think about that and I think about just his position and having
[00:14:10] him come from that and now not being in that his positioning and theological position and imagination
[00:14:17] when I was teaching in a demon program. I had him come out and we were in Pasadena and he just tore it up,
[00:14:24] you know, and talking about that right because I just think there's something to be said about black
[00:14:30] humanists, about black narcissism, the black, black atheism and black afro-presumism. You know,
[00:14:37] I think I said it before, you know, I really aligned myself with afro-presumism and I wouldn't go
[00:14:42] as far as to say, you know, I'm a humanist and as far as see, not stick atheist. I do still believe
[00:14:48] there's God, just not the God that the evangelicals have created. I don't think there's a cosmic person
[00:14:55] up there that's listening to prayers and, you know, granting wishes and denying, you know, things. I
[00:15:00] I just don't I can be completely wrong but the reality of it is is that no one really knows.
[00:15:07] That's just it. We as humans are trying to figure our way is out on this planet and there's so
[00:15:12] many things, so many things wrong with the interpretation of our current Bible, irregardless if you
[00:15:20] read New King James, New English translation. Right. So I've talked about this, you know, Adnazim
[00:15:27] on the show. I'm not going to get back into that and rehash that. You can go back and look which I
[00:15:31] always hope y'all are going back and looking at previous episodes, you know, cherry picks and I
[00:15:36] am putting together a hot list on sound clouds. So if you go to sound cloud, I actually have playlists
[00:15:43] already set up. If you want to hear some of the ones that I've picked out over the last man,
[00:15:48] been going since 2017. What is that? Five, six years. You can go again, check out our sound cloud
[00:15:55] account. There's some there's some lists there, promotional stuff all kind of good stuff but I'm
[00:16:00] setting up different playlists. And so when people say, Hey, what's your best episode? I can say
[00:16:06] here this, this one right here's a playlist of some of the ones I think stood out to me and that's
[00:16:12] not to take any back anything away from any of the conversations or episodes that I've had. I've
[00:16:16] enjoyed them all. Right. I'm just putting some of those out there that kind of, you know, stand out per
[00:16:23] say and yeah. So anyway, sound cloud, check that out. I do want to do a special episode looking at,
[00:16:31] you know, what does the black church look like in the next 50 years? Because I do things changing.
[00:16:36] And I do think the old form of it, right, when you get up and you open, go, Hey, yeah, all that
[00:16:42] mess. I think that's winding down from what I can tell if I'm what I can pick up on and I know
[00:16:49] some people probably, you know, be like, Oh, no, no, no. But you know, I'm tired of hearing all the
[00:16:54] spirit is moving. Oh, there's a revival. We hear that every freaking year at the beginning of
[00:17:01] years and new revival. I don't see that revival set that last week about the whole what was it?
[00:17:05] Asbury, Seminar, wherever they were, that do talking about this revival. It's like what is the revival?
[00:17:10] What is what is changing? Okay. It's like when people say, oh, go out and vote. Nays has been voting for
[00:17:17] 60 years and we still have oppression. We still have black bodies being killed. We still have people
[00:17:23] after we still have the means, well, we don't have access to the means. We don't have access to power
[00:17:29] and resources in this country. People were saying, you know, this 50 years ago, like, how if we can just
[00:17:34] get black people in the polis? We can just get black people in positions of power and politics.
[00:17:39] We've been at that and we still worse off than we were. So what do you do with that?
[00:17:46] What do you do with that? How do you hold that intention? How do you hold that?
[00:17:49] I'm speaking, we got another voting season coming up and people are going to be like, oh, he got
[00:17:52] a vote your life on there. You know, you're early as good as good as you got to get
[00:17:57] choose between these two candidates. I'm like, man, we gotta have more choices, man.
[00:18:01] We gotta have more choices. It's gotta be more than just a binary party system.
[00:18:07] Because these cats ain't doing that. It's like they's having the mayor or old thing run off here in
[00:18:12] in Chicago. You know, if you listen to this in real time, the current mayor I knew she was going to
[00:18:16] survive. I knew that was just like, oh, man, she can move. So I knew she was falling out. But then
[00:18:22] these two, they got these two mayoral candidates, right? It's always between kind of like a uh,
[00:18:26] and a uh, you know what I'm saying? Uh, uh, uh, uh, right. We always, we always, it usually comes down
[00:18:33] to that, right? It's just kind of like Trump or Biden. It's like, oh man, you gonna put that out there.
[00:18:40] So I don't know. That's a whole another conversation, but I want to put it out there because this is
[00:18:43] profane faith. And I think we gotta have these conversations around, you know, what does it mean
[00:18:48] to be black and into the church? Um, you know, it's still, you know, especially folks who still
[00:18:54] think it's going to be worth something and still trying to save it. You know, saying, I'm let that
[00:19:00] month ago. It's done like, let's begin to imagine something different. This is where I think
[00:19:06] Afro futurism has a role. Um, and we can begin to think outside of the box. Um, but you know,
[00:19:12] at the same time, we have still yet to move from an evolutionary position where we look beyond our own
[00:19:19] right collective unit, our family, our friends and whatnot beyond that and say, okay, we're going to
[00:19:25] embrace those we don't know, right? We, we, we can do it on some levels, uh, but not collectively.
[00:19:32] Um, and as society were very distrustful. So I don't know. I don't know when that change is going to
[00:19:36] come. I don't, I honestly don't see it in my lifetime. So that's why I keep saying I don't know what's
[00:19:40] next, but there's there is a change. There is a change coming. I just don't know what that's going to
[00:19:45] look like. Um, I don't know if any amount of research can show that it might be able to. Um, but you
[00:19:52] know, there's a lot of things moving at this point. And the fact that black people are worse off now
[00:19:58] economically, financially, um, educationally, health wise. Um, yeah, I, yeah, it just don't
[00:20:07] bode well. Just doesn't sit well with me. People just telling me just to vote. I was saying,
[00:20:11] in vain, somehow voting is going to fix it because it's not, it's not. All right. Let's just come
[00:20:18] clean with that shit, man. Let's just come clean with it. Um, so irregardless. That's my little
[00:20:24] spiel for this, you know, this, this, this episode. I know for some of you like, oh man,
[00:20:28] maybe just fast forward through this and now I'll get to, oh my goodness, my little buddies here.
[00:20:34] Um, um, uh, house sitting little dog Emerson. He just made his way down to the basement. He was
[00:20:41] just a whining here. Hopefully he didn't pee anywhere in my cat, my cat, my cha, um, who's three and a half
[00:20:47] months old. It's, you know, chasing him around and stuff. So, um, he rules the couch, but she rules
[00:20:52] everything to other plays, man. So irregardless. Um, I guess this week, uh, brother, Dr. Juh,
[00:20:59] Justin Smith, um, man, I tell you, we had such a great conversation just lamenting and talking
[00:21:05] about being in Christian higher ed. I met Justin a while back and, uh, I really appreciated his
[00:21:11] perspective. Um, I knew this brother had grown up around, you know, white who's grown up around
[00:21:16] Black folk and he was down. I was like, all right, this, this brother's down. And he's, he's,
[00:21:20] he's got some cool stuff. He and I chair, uh, the critical approaches to religion and hip hop,
[00:21:25] uh, with the AAR. Uh, if you don't know what that is, uh, highly recommend checking out American
[00:21:31] catting me religion. Um, and even that's going through changes too, right? Uh, like who's going to
[00:21:38] conferences and spending, you know, who has the $15,000, $1,500, $2,000 to spend on it? All that
[00:21:43] to say, uh, Justin's a good guy. And I wanted to get him on the show, been wanting to get him on the
[00:21:48] show, uh, just to talk about life and theology and where he sees himself, uh, in relation to being a
[00:21:56] PhD, um, as a white male, white cis head male, uh, in Christian higher ed. Um, he teaches at a
[00:22:03] school I used to teach that, uh, that I'll be honest and say I'm thankful. I don't teach there
[00:22:08] anymore. But I'm also thankful that people like him are still there. And, uh, and, and, and, you know,
[00:22:14] just get in there doing the shit that gay, you know, I give it to him. I give it to anybody who's
[00:22:18] still in out there, you know, doing the shit. So, um, yeah, enjoy this conversation, enjoy, uh,
[00:22:24] what he has to offer and, uh, if you get a chance to look us up, yeah, when you come to AR, uh, do
[00:22:31] that and check out those frequencies, fam. See what's going on with all that stuff. Okay? I here we go.
[00:22:37] All right, I hit record. We are live. Um, folks, here we are back again, um, profane faith and
[00:22:51] I got a good friend that I'm my only regret is that I wished that we had hung out when I was actually
[00:22:57] in California. Uh, you know what I'm saying? I mean, uh, it, it, um, I'm like, damn, how did, how did
[00:23:05] I miss that? Maybe it was, you know, the, the 13 classes that I was teaching this semester. I don't
[00:23:11] know. I mean, me and in a newborn, you know what I'm saying? Uh, but Dr Justin Smith and I, uh,
[00:23:19] co-chair the critical approaches to hip hop and religion with the AAR. If you listen to the show,
[00:23:25] you know, I am an avid fan of a AR and SBL. And, uh, I've just come to know him and just really
[00:23:32] appreciate what he has to offer. I was like, I got to get this button on the show. So please welcome
[00:23:36] Dr Justin Smith, brother. Welcome to the show, man. Thank you. It's, it's a pleasure to be here.
[00:23:41] It's funny. I feel like we've been talking about me getting on the show for about five years. Right,
[00:23:46] right. But it's felt like it. So I'm glad that we both have a little bit of a break in our schedule
[00:23:52] so we can, we can share some time together. Yes. Yeah. No, absolutely, absolutely. Well,
[00:23:58] I'll start off with the question I ask everybody, man. What's been happening from birth to now?
[00:24:01] I know you a Callie boy and I love that. Um, but yeah, what's been going on from birth to now,
[00:24:07] man? Why higher ed and what led you to that? Sure. So I'm an LA native. We do exist.
[00:24:15] Right. People that everybody who lives in LA is from somewhere else. No, my parents are from
[00:24:20] somewhere else, but I was born and raised in LA. Okay. Now public school kid grew up
[00:24:26] going to public school graduated from Westchester High School. Okay. Those who keep up with high
[00:24:32] school sports will know Westchester High School for its basketball program. All we do is win state
[00:24:37] championships, or at least all we did climate and the climate in Los Angeles high school sports has
[00:24:43] changed in the last decade or so. Okay. From there to Occidental College in Northeast Los Angeles
[00:24:50] did agree in religious studies played a little bit of D3 football. So I um,
[00:24:56] sacrificed my body to the football gods with essentially no payoff whatsoever, no NIL,
[00:25:02] no actually no, no, no anything. No, um, it was, uh, it was a tough existence on that front and
[00:25:10] fuller seminary so you and I both, I believe, went to Fuller and uh, didn't end of it Fuller
[00:25:17] and then went from there to the graduate theological union in Berkeley. So I lived in the Bayer
[00:25:21] for a few years in Berkeley. Okay. In biblical, uh, biblical languages. You said a PhD in
[00:25:27] biblical language? No, I did another master's in in, um, biblical languages than I mean and that's
[00:25:34] a sort of sort of interesting story. So I'm at Fuller. This is early 2000s, 2000s,
[00:25:41] 2003, uh, applied for their PhD program and my topic was critical race theory and whiteness
[00:25:50] and the sermon on the map. And I know small, small, small topics, man. I was young,
[00:25:59] I was young and you know, full of all kinds of things and thought, well, this would be something
[00:26:05] that nobody is writing on at that moment. And I was so right, um, because nobody at Fuller wanted
[00:26:10] to take on that topic. Um, at least I was my understanding. I had a friend who was, um,
[00:26:17] inside some of those meetings and he said the only thing he remembered about my application
[00:26:21] was that nobody wanted to touch it. And um, oh my gosh. So I went on, so I applied, you know,
[00:26:28] you know how the game is? You applied about six, seven, eight programs and you hope you can have one
[00:26:32] two. Yeah. So during that application cycle, I applied, I don't know, six, seven programs and, um,
[00:26:38] the only positive response I got was from the graduate theological union, the G2U and Berkeley.
[00:26:43] Okay. And they said we don't like you for the PhD at this moment, but we like you for this
[00:26:47] MA program that they designed to sort of be a feeder program. Okay. So they said we can't guarantee
[00:26:54] that you'll get in but like wink wink, you know, if you do well in this program, you've got
[00:26:58] a really good shot. So it just felt to me like either I sat out for a year and kind of did nothing.
[00:27:05] Yeah. Or go get another degree, um, and hopefully that makes me more marketable.
[00:27:12] So yeah. Did that. And then I applied to most of the same programs as before, different topic,
[00:27:18] completely different topic. Okay. All right. Like not even in the ball part of the same topic.
[00:27:23] Okay. All right. Uh, and got into fuller, uh, the university of St Andrews in Scotland and the G2U.
[00:27:30] And so I ended up in Scotland. So I did my PhD in Scotland for, um, that was, you know,
[00:27:36] I was there for two, three years and then came back and finished, um, finished writing from here.
[00:27:41] And then right around the time I got done, wow, writing and submitting my dissertation, uh, 2010,
[00:27:46] 2011, there was a job open at APU, um, full-time position in New Testament.
[00:27:51] For in a mine who had been adjuncting there for years, um, in the biblical studies department said,
[00:27:56] hey, you should apply. And I laughed it off to be honest with you. I said, there's no, no, no.
[00:28:02] No. Like it doesn't make any why it doesn't make any sense for me on, on a number of levels like my,
[00:28:07] at that point when I hit envision for myself was doing religious studies or biblical studies
[00:28:13] but in secular institutions. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So I felt like, I felt like, you know,
[00:28:19] grown up in the church, all of those experiences and having gone to, you know, public school,
[00:28:27] having gone to like I didn't exist in that private school bubble that a lot of a lot of people,
[00:28:32] I think sometimes in our, in our, in our fields, uh, exist in. Right. And at Occidental,
[00:28:38] I had wonderful professors, great people and I would see my colleagues, my classmates go to them
[00:28:43] for advice and it was just, it, it wasn't pastoral. Yeah. And I'm not saying pastoral in the sense of
[00:28:49] like, you know, go to church but just sort of. Okay. Like let me listen to what you're actually
[00:28:53] saying. Like let me kind of meet you where you are kind of pastoral. And so I felt like maybe
[00:29:00] having a more pastoral approach for students that we're going to be exploring religion might be helpful
[00:29:06] just as a way of saying like look, I've been there. I understand what you're going through. Yeah.
[00:29:10] Like let's talk through this right? Like in a, in a more um, for lack of better words caring.
[00:29:15] Okay. Kind of a question right? So APU was not in my plan like APU was not even really on my radar.
[00:29:23] I only knew of APU because I actually played them in 98 and we went out there, we drove all the way
[00:29:28] out to APU and just got wrecked like 63 to 10. Oh damn. Like wrecked wrecked like we should have
[00:29:36] just forfitted like that even got on the bus wrecked and um, my roommate's sister was a, uh,
[00:29:44] a student in APU. So we'd come out here every once in a while. Okay. So how to hurt? So anyway,
[00:29:48] I applied for the job. My friend said, well look, it's in Southern California. It's where you
[00:29:51] want to be. He goes, I think you'd be a good fit. You should apply. So I applied. Yeah. And I didn't get
[00:29:58] it. Um, I've heard different stories like I was in the top two, top three. You know, I'm sure you've
[00:30:02] heard lots of stories like that in your career. Oh come on. Right. You know, oh yeah, you were a
[00:30:06] finalist. You know, we really liked you. Right. Right. Um, and there's always a but and it's,
[00:30:11] it's, you know, maybe somebody's been here longer or somebody's flashier or they have a degree
[00:30:17] from a higher profile place. That was it. I almost ended up at Cal State Northridge man. That
[00:30:23] was and that was the conversation. I knew the, uh, I knew the Dean in the chair. And for whatever
[00:30:27] reason, I thought, well shit, this is right. This is this is in the exact same story. It was just
[00:30:33] like, you know, afterwards, they were just like, man, you were like the number two, but this
[00:30:37] other person, right? That that that butt is right in there. Right. And it was in, and so
[00:30:44] as I left the interview, because I even got an interview, I got an on campus interview. And for
[00:30:48] those who are in academia, I mean, you know, that's a big step. Um, you don't, you don't often get
[00:30:54] that far in the process. No part of it was I was local, which I think helped. But, um,
[00:31:00] I was sort of told why, as I got to the interview, I just, I just said, uh, to the person,
[00:31:06] you know, interviewing me. I said, Hey, if um, this doesn't work out, you need somebody to add
[00:31:09] jump. I said, I'm happy to add jump for you. And they said, okay, we'll keep that in my kind of
[00:31:14] thing. And you know, about a month later, I get the rejection. And then about another month later,
[00:31:18] they go, Hey, would you like to add jumped? And so I started adjuncting an APU and I think 2011. So
[00:31:23] okay. That's right. When I left, right. So you and I literally just like you were walking out
[00:31:29] the door and I was walking in the door. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is unfortunate. I know. I know our past,
[00:31:35] you know, again, you know, it's funny how things work. Like I pass just kind of kept missing
[00:31:39] each other until they finally crossed. I'm saying. So, uh, started out as an adjunct. I think adjuncted
[00:31:45] for a couple of years and then, um, APU, and I don't know a lot of other schools do this, but APU
[00:31:49] used to have these one year non-renewable contracts. Okay. So you get like a full time contract
[00:31:54] for a year with like all the benefits. And then every February, they come and pull the rug out from
[00:31:58] under you and just say, you know, it's not personal, but it's a one year contract. It expires. So your
[00:32:03] we're not renewing your contract. Right. Right. And then maybe at the end of the year, if there was
[00:32:08] need, they would come back and go, Hey, we want to offer you another one year. And like let's be
[00:32:12] honest, when you're an adjunct, you make what 26 grand a year? Maybe if you look right, if,
[00:32:20] if you're if you're lucky, right? I got paid $3,500 a class when I was teaching at APU back in
[00:32:26] that was back in that time. I don't know what it is now. But I got to say about the same. It's
[00:32:30] still about the same. So, so if you are in a position where you're just teaching everything that
[00:32:35] they can give you, right? Yep. And then, you know, if it in good years, whether there's a lot of work
[00:32:41] and there's a lot of students, you know, again, you can, you know, 20 grand, 26 grand or something.
[00:32:46] But don't know benefits, right? It's it's paid to play kind of thing. Yep. And so when they offer
[00:32:51] you a full time contract, that's, you know, roughly twice what you're making plus benefits. I mean,
[00:32:56] you got, you know, you got, you got to take it, right? Right. And you know, during all that process,
[00:33:01] right? Like applying to any and everything everywhere places I wouldn't think of applying to. But
[00:33:10] you know, you're like, Hey, I need work. I got to find a job. Places I applied to my wife lifting me
[00:33:15] like, Are you crazy? And I'm like, Yeah. And they're not going to hire me anyway. So
[00:33:21] right. I'll go ahead and throw an application now. They're not going to hire me. So
[00:33:28] went through that for about three years, and then there was an opening and have been full time
[00:33:33] long-term at APU, full professorship, I think is around the corner of things go well.
[00:33:40] Chair of the department now. And you know, kind of been writing and researching last year,
[00:33:46] you and I came on as co-chairs for critical approaches, religion and hip hop, which I'm really
[00:33:51] excited about in the midst of all of that two children. Yeah. My son, you know, are actually just
[00:33:58] turned four. I love it. I love it. This is birthday. The fourth. Oh, sorry, the third, the third.
[00:34:04] Yeah, that's my name, brother. That is awesome. Yes, he just turned four on. And then my daughter Naima
[00:34:16] will be, will be two in March. Okay. We're doing all that fun stuff. You know, chasing
[00:34:22] chasing kids around. We got one kid out of diapers. We got one still in diapers. So potty training
[00:34:26] this summer for my daughter is. Yeah. So well, let me ask you this, brother, because you know,
[00:34:32] I've had a lot of conversations in regards to just, you know, dealing with the politics. And I
[00:34:37] think that was one of the reasons I when I was presented to come back as I had transitioned
[00:34:42] off as chair for critical approaches. And I was like, all right, cool. I did my time. That was
[00:34:47] that to get wrote back in. And I was hesitant until I saw your name. And I was like, oh,
[00:34:55] well, shit, that's a no brainer than okay. I work with that brother, man.
[00:35:01] Yeah. No, man. So how have you is white male, cis hat kids teaching in a,
[00:35:07] I referred to my partner the other day, I was like, we'll be having this podcast with Justin.
[00:35:12] I said, I call him a doppelganger at an APU man. And have you navigated some of this time,
[00:35:20] man? Because I feel like we're in an interesting time. I miss what was her name? She unfortunately
[00:35:26] passed. Was it Cheryl? Yeah, Cheryl Crawford. Cheryl Crawford, man, we used to have interesting
[00:35:31] conversations just around a lot of different things, right? Like she was really pulling for me
[00:35:38] to try to get a job in Yacht department. And unfortunately, that never worked out. But I will say
[00:35:46] that what I appreciate it about Cheryl is her ability to just keep it real and to
[00:35:52] to talk in La Lengua franca, you know, to use my Spanish terminology. So how have you
[00:35:56] navigated some of those spaces and not just APU, but just in general, man? I'd be curious.
[00:36:03] Yeah, I think so I think part of it is self awareness honestly. And I think you come by self
[00:36:11] awareness, at least for me, you know, through hard work and making a lot of mistakes,
[00:36:20] you know, saying the wrong thing at points and getting corrected and taking that correction,
[00:36:24] doing the wrong thing at points and taking that correction. I think part of it in terms
[00:36:29] of navigating APU for me personally has been understanding where I'm at, okay? Right. So
[00:36:35] what I oftentimes will see is you're out of place and you go, well, let me back up. So what
[00:36:42] I'll tell students sometimes is I'll describe churches and relationships and I would put APU
[00:36:49] in that same category. Like if you walk into a church on Sunday morning and you go this place would
[00:36:53] be a great place to worship except for these six things I need to change. Yeah, in turn,
[00:36:57] ride around, get in your car and go home. Yeah. Right? It's not going to work for you. Same thing.
[00:37:01] Oh, I met this person's person is great. And they would be amazing. Right? If not for these six
[00:37:07] things that I want to change, all right, turn right around, you know, or maybe day for a little while
[00:37:10] have some fun, but then turn right like this ain't the one. Right. Right.
[00:37:14] And APU is kind of the same thing where you come into it and you go there's lots of good,
[00:37:18] there are good things happening here and the two things I will always highlight is I have great
[00:37:22] colleagues. Don't always agree with them. We're not always on this on the page about everything,
[00:37:26] but great colleagues are good to work with. And that goes from staff to professors.
[00:37:32] And I have some really, really good students. And I think one of the things has probably changed
[00:37:37] for the better or at least differently than when you left is as APU student body has changed.
[00:37:44] APU is now statistically no longer, you know, mostly white and evangelical in terms of the student body.
[00:37:49] Man, you were telling me about that. Yeah. What's it? Yeah. So the student body now, and I have
[00:37:53] it looked at the numbers in the last few months, but heading into the fall. I mean, we were looking at
[00:38:01] I think the largest demographic group on on campus are Latinx students.
[00:38:07] Okay. And they represented over 50% of the student population. Wow.
[00:38:12] White even white white students in general, I think now represent something like
[00:38:17] somewhere between 30 and 40% of the population like 30 and 35% of the population.
[00:38:21] Get out of here. No, seriously. So it's been and that has been a gradual shift.
[00:38:27] I want to say or like over the last five to seven years plus or minus. Okay.
[00:38:32] So with that changing then what I would say then is I have really wonderful students. We come
[00:38:40] together. We work. I meet them where they are. But you also learn to figure out what you can say
[00:38:45] and what you can't say, especially in a classroom setting. Right? Yeah. Some of the people like,
[00:38:50] yeah, you may be right, but you can still get fired. You can you can be 100%
[00:38:57] in what you are saying 100% accurate 100% true 100% correct.
[00:39:01] That will not prevent you from getting fired. And my question to you is, and this is part of
[00:39:06] the tyranny of academia. Yeah. And I use that word specifically tyranny. Okay.
[00:39:10] Part of the tyranny of academia is if you get fired from a job for whatever reason, right? I mean,
[00:39:17] for I mean outside of like, you know, you just doing terrible stuff. If you get fired for these
[00:39:23] kinds of like ideological reasons, the likelihood that you will find another job
[00:39:27] is really slim in general and the fact that the likelihood that you will find a job quickly,
[00:39:33] right? Basically non-existent. Right. So the game of academia in and of itself is insane.
[00:39:42] And you know this, right? You every year I was thinking about this this morning actually as I
[00:39:47] was getting in the car. I have I think about weird things at weird times a day, man. It
[00:39:52] I'm in the car like six o'clock in this morning. I'm moving the car around to put, you know,
[00:39:57] to be ready to put the kids in it. Yeah. And I'm thinking about the reality that, you know,
[00:40:01] almost every year you have something like 300, 400, 500 newly minted PhDs. Absolutely.
[00:40:07] Absolutely. That's and that's probably a conservative number. Right. Right. That's just that's
[00:40:11] just me kind of rounding down to like a manageable number, right? Right. And in my field,
[00:40:16] in the biblical studies, in a good year, no, let me refer in a great year. In a great year,
[00:40:22] there's like 20 jobs in the world, like 20 jobs in the world, not 20 jobs in Los Angeles,
[00:40:28] not 20 jobs in the country, 20 jobs in the world in a good year. Right. So now you've got 500
[00:40:33] people applying for 20 jobs, right? Plus all of us who've been in the game for a minute,
[00:40:39] right? You can go somewhere else or have a different opportunity.
[00:40:47] And we're in the pool too. So right. Right. So if you somehow because we did a we did a job search,
[00:40:54] we did a position search about three or four years ago. And I think we had like 200 some applications
[00:40:59] at one point. Damn. Yeah. It's about right. Right. And so you look at that reality and you go,
[00:41:05] hey, I got to I've got a pain gig in the field that I'm trained in that I worked all these years
[00:41:09] that I spent money on, right? Student debt, the whole deal. And you ready? You revving out the
[00:41:13] gate? You ready to go, man. Right. So then you come into a situation and my thing, my thing is
[00:41:20] don't be stupid. Don't be stupid. Okay. I get professors all the time, you know, adjuncts
[00:41:27] others that are in class and they have an agenda thing that they want to push in or agenda item,
[00:41:31] they want to push. And I'm like, Hey, you're not wrong. You're not wrong. Yeah. Push this point
[00:41:37] in the way that you're pushing it in a group of like 35 kids, right? Yeah. And you don't know
[00:41:44] which one of those kids is going to react negatively to this point. It's a minefield man. Right.
[00:41:49] It literally is, right? And here's the thing that's crazy, Dan. And you know this,
[00:41:53] you can teach the same class back to back. Right. Right. And you could say one thing word for
[00:42:01] word in class number one, no problem. You come into class number two, say the exact same thing
[00:42:07] inflection. It's on the PowerPoint, whatever. Yeah. And it explodes in that classroom, right? Because
[00:42:13] of the makeup of that group. Yep. So for me, what I'm trying to do is to work with students,
[00:42:19] I'm trying to work with faculty. I'll use the word be subversive in a way that allows me to
[00:42:29] honor, you know, where students are, where student experiences are to do the kind of work that I
[00:42:33] feel like is important to do, but also to do so in such a way that allows me to remain here because
[00:42:39] I've had students also say to me like, Dr Smith, you know how are you still here? How come you
[00:42:43] haven't left yet? And I'm like, bless your heart. You think I could actually go somewhere and get
[00:42:46] another job. But number two, what I remind students is I say if I leave, yeah, then my voice,
[00:42:53] my perspective goes with it. And there's no guarantee that the person that fills this spot
[00:42:57] brings the care and concern to this that I do. So for me, you can, you can work from within
[00:43:08] to create change or you can leave and sort of project back into that situation. Right. And the
[00:43:13] likelihood that you'll be able to create change from outside, I think, is less. I think just
[00:43:19] to be less, right? Because it's ease. It's a bit easier to tune out outside voices, but when people
[00:43:24] are working inside, you know, to change structures and that has to do with who we hire and how we
[00:43:29] hire and what kind of courses we teach and how we teach those courses and what we value, you know,
[00:43:35] within the department and so on. So that's been part of the way that I've tried to navigate it. And
[00:43:40] then also too, for me, honestly, man, it's just owning it like I'm a straight white man in America.
[00:43:47] Right? I'm trying to operate right. So to try to operate in the space and pretend
[00:43:54] like I don't have privilege or well, I'm not like those people or I'm not like this. That's just
[00:44:01] that's false. It doesn't matter if I'm like that or not. It doesn't matter if I have the same
[00:44:05] mentality of somebody else. What matters is when I walk into a room, here's what people see,
[00:44:13] right? This body is racialized too and it's racialized as a white man, right? So this is what
[00:44:19] people see and that works right in my favor more often than not where people look at me and go,
[00:44:24] oh, okay, he's to be trusted, he's to be respected, he's an authoritative voice, all of these things.
[00:44:29] So then I say, well, fine, if I'm to be trusted and respected and authoritative, let me use
[00:44:32] that trust respect and authority to push an agenda or to push to push ideas or to bring out ideas
[00:44:40] that benefit others, right? Yeah. That's say the best I can do as a white person in these
[00:44:47] contexts in academia is to create spaces where faculty of color are valued or to work to create
[00:44:54] spaces where faculty of color are valued where students are colored are valued to make sure those
[00:44:58] voices are heard to step out of the way. Yeah, a lot of people think, you know, the way you lead is
[00:45:03] from the fuck and not sitting back. Sitting back, right? Right. Help clean up at the end of the event.
[00:45:11] It doesn't have to be it's making sure things get on the calendar, it's making sure students are
[00:45:16] heard, making sure you're promoting stuff, your events and lecture tours and all these things,
[00:45:23] right? Like it's doing all of that work along with whatever you do. And personally, I think in terms
[00:45:30] of what your research interests are and those kinds of things. Yeah. No, that makes sense.
[00:45:35] And I'm glad you talked a little bit about the process in the academy and particularly the
[00:45:41] job cycle which we had talked about. And a lot of folks don't know this when people say, well,
[00:45:46] why don't you just leave? You know, it's just like, well, my job cycle starts in around August,
[00:45:52] September of any given year ends usually around the start of the following year January, February.
[00:45:59] If I get selected, I'll get an interview and then that's to start the following summer. So
[00:46:08] it's not just like going on monster.com and putting your resume in and two weeks, give you two
[00:46:14] weeks notice and you're out, right? Because in the other thing too, I think, you know, it's like leaving,
[00:46:19] I personally wouldn't want to leave in the middle of a semester because of the students, right?
[00:46:23] I wouldn't want to leave and put the students. I don't care about the university as much but
[00:46:28] the students in that situation where they have to finish out a class with somebody different
[00:46:33] and whatnot. And so it's these gates that you kind of have to meet to and it is. It's a game,
[00:46:40] man, it's a game and there's a sense of a lot of transients that happens within this and whatnot.
[00:46:49] I'll just say like you also get people who aren't in academia go, oh, you're smart.
[00:46:52] Like you can find a job and I'm like no, we're all smart. Yeah, right? Like you're
[00:46:57] you're in competition with a bunch of smart people. So being smart isn't the thing.
[00:47:03] You got a PhD or smart. I'm like pretty much everybody who comes out of a PhD program to smart
[00:47:08] for the most part, right? It's not that. It's it's the competition part. It's how many jobs are there
[00:47:13] and how many people, right? And we, you know, we're in a position academia is in a position to be like
[00:47:18] incredibly selective, right? Right. Exactly. Exactly. Incredibly selective. That's just it, man.
[00:47:27] So, you know, where do you find yourself, man? You know, theologically, man, what do you make of some
[00:47:32] of the nationalism, some of the encroachment of white nationalism? You know, how's that either come
[00:47:40] up in the classroom? How do you deal with that? You know, there's that and then, you know,
[00:47:48] and then just being in Southern California in general because that's a whole different environment.
[00:47:53] I don't think enough people who particularly people who aren't from California don't know. I mean,
[00:47:56] right? There's a there's a different field in Southern California and they're in the different parts,
[00:48:00] right? You go to Orange County. Yeah. Right now you're dealing with more kind of, you know,
[00:48:04] the the Republican side, the Ronald Reagan crowd and stuff. Man, so there's some interesting spaces
[00:48:10] living in Los Angeles or just these Southern California area that come with that environment.
[00:48:18] And the amount of white supremacy that exists, um, and, you know, in those environments as well,
[00:48:23] man. Yeah. And particularly being a white guy and one I'd be curious, you know,
[00:48:28] you seeologically what is what has gone on there. I don't know if that makes sense. No, it does.
[00:48:33] I mean, so let me let me start with California. California's an interesting state. I think
[00:48:38] people who don't live in California have this assumption about California, you know,
[00:48:43] we all wear flip flops and eat avocados and we go surfing and we practice yoga and we're all
[00:48:50] like spiritual people, you know, with crystals and, you know, we're all super hyper left leaning
[00:48:56] and, you know, we're just like weird nutty crazy people out here. And I'm like,
[00:49:03] there are some of those here. There are. There are. But what people don't really realize is that
[00:49:07] California is actually an incredibly conservative leaning state on the whole. And then they wind up
[00:49:13] having our really two pockets in California, San Francisco and the Los Angeles area,
[00:49:20] that skew democratic or skew, you know, more liberal. And that's also where the most population is.
[00:49:29] Right. Right. The LA area, like the broad LA area, I don't know what we're up to now.
[00:49:38] We might be knocking on 20 million in like the LA area, right? So greater, greater Los Angeles area.
[00:49:44] San Francisco Bay area is very similar. So you have those pockets, right? But then in the middle of
[00:49:50] the state, which is heavily agricultural, it's going to be incredibly conservative. Orange County
[00:49:54] historically has been incredibly conservative, like you said, almost like a like a red state.
[00:49:59] But it itself is actually changing. It's kind of more purple now. And a lot of that has to do with
[00:50:04] increasing populations of Latinx communities in Orange County. And then San Diego,
[00:50:12] because of its the military presence down in San Diego, Camp Pendleton and so forth, that also tends
[00:50:16] to be fairly conservative. So you have like these interesting weird pockets, right? And then you can
[00:50:20] even go if you wanted to cut that even more, like you're going to Los Angeles and you start looking
[00:50:24] at neighborhoods. So what people don't understand about LA too is LA is a city of neighborhoods.
[00:50:29] Unlike let's say New York where you have five burrows and then you know, you have sections within
[00:50:33] those burrows in LA, like literally it's a neighborhood. And those neighborhoods are constantly changing
[00:50:38] some more than others. Gentrification and these things affect the makeup of neighborhoods. So
[00:50:45] you look at parts of LA or the LA area that you now maybe traditionally associate with the Black
[00:50:53] community, African American community. Those were all white communities in the 60s.
[00:50:57] Inglewood, that was a white community in the 60s, Camp Pendleton. That was a white community in
[00:51:00] the 60s. You had black families move in, you had white fright, white people moved out.
[00:51:05] Now those demographics shifted. And so LA's demographics and neighborhood demographics are
[00:51:13] always shifting. So it's an interesting place to be at APU is also interesting, I think in terms
[00:51:22] of where the demographics are shifting, right? So you're shifting now more towards Latinx students,
[00:51:29] less evangelical students. So I think some of the white supremacy element that I think you
[00:51:36] would have seen that you've talked about your experience during the Obama administration and all
[00:51:43] of that, that has kind of faded a little bit so that I don't see it as much. But one of the things
[00:51:51] you know, I continue to work on with students when I teach Jesus, I'm like, listen, Jesus is talking
[00:51:55] about this radical alternative kingdom of God. He's not a Democrat, he's not a Republican,
[00:52:02] he's not a socialist, he's not driving around Galilee in a monster truck with American flag hanging
[00:52:07] out the bat. This is a first century Galilee and Jewish man who understands that he has been
[00:52:14] called to inaugurate the kingdom of God, but it's a kingdom not like other kingdoms. It is
[00:52:17] diametrically opposed, right? And so if we take what Jesus is saying seriously, then that has to
[00:52:22] affect our politics. And I'm not saying vote, blue, vote, red, vote whatever, but it's how are we
[00:52:30] looking at Jesus more holistically in a way than that says my understanding of Jesus has to line
[00:52:36] up with my politics. And so I teach Jesus in that way, right? And so I'll have students in class that
[00:52:42] are incredibly conservative and I'll have students in class that lean really liberal. And so it's a
[00:52:48] really interesting mix. And yeah, I lean more to the left, yes. Yeah. Some could say I lean far
[00:53:02] to the left. Yeah, not far to the left. But you know, that's all depending on where you stand,
[00:53:10] but what I try to do is not make it so much about that and make it more about okay, if we take
[00:53:16] what Jesus is saying seriously, what does that mean for us? Right. And that's always the challenge.
[00:53:20] And what I think has happened then and I've been thinking about this sort of unprompted because you
[00:53:26] and I've talked about this a little bit is where Christian higher education is right now. Yeah, yeah.
[00:53:31] With Sarah and post Trump era. And it's in a really, it feels like it's mirroring the polarization
[00:53:37] of the country, which is either you have Christian institutions of higher ed that are skewing now
[00:53:46] really, really, really hard to the right and really hard conservative. And those schools
[00:53:52] are thriving because financially thriving because there's a market for that. Yeah. Or you have
[00:54:00] schools that are drifting in the direction of being at least as some people see them sort of
[00:54:06] Christian in a monelly meaning yeah, you have a Christian heritage. But you're not,
[00:54:12] you're not sort of held captive if you will by a particular heritage. And then the
[00:54:16] the institution and they're thriving because they're able to navigate that secular space more effectively,
[00:54:22] right? You get students who come in and go hey, I can, I could go to and no disrespect to like
[00:54:27] a Notre Dame or something like I can go to Notre Dame and not be like a practicing Catholic and
[00:54:31] I can get along there. I'll be fine, right? Right. Or whatever, you know, like USC for one,
[00:54:37] I mean, right? Yeah, USC, right? USC started out methods. So I can go to USC and it's fine or
[00:54:41] or even Baylor, like Baylor's Baptist, but you got a lot of kids that go to Baylor and it's like,
[00:54:44] well, I'm not a practicing Baptist. Right. Right. Right. Right. And so again, and I'm not saying
[00:54:49] that Baylor is not confessional. I'm just saying, like there's ways that schools can navigate
[00:54:54] a local example like a pepperdine. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Pepperdine should be Christ. I grew up in the
[00:54:59] churches of Christ. So pepperdine is a school I'm familiar with. So you could go to pepperdine,
[00:55:04] right? Like SC and not be church of Christ at all. Go there get education, hang out in Malibu,
[00:55:09] you know, look at the ocean, get your degree and that's fine. And then the schools that are kind
[00:55:14] of more in the middle and I suspect that APU is kind of more in that middle space. I think where
[00:55:19] you are might be more in that middle space where yeah, right? Like you're trying to navigate what
[00:55:24] that means. Yeah. Those are the schools that are struggling financially because we're not
[00:55:29] secular enough, right? Right. Right to get to or when we start to pull in students that aren't
[00:55:36] particularly religious, they're still coming into a religious environment and there are those cultural
[00:55:41] clashes and those cultural issues, right? LGBTQ, so on and so forth issues, especially in Christian
[00:55:49] institutions of higher education. Yeah, okay. And so a lot of institutions that find themselves
[00:55:55] in the middle are sort of saying like we want students here but then we also are wrestling with
[00:56:01] them not fitting into sort of the traditional Christian ethos but we also don't necessarily want to go
[00:56:07] all the way to the far conservative side like a Liberty University. Yeah, I think any,
[00:56:13] you know, like no disrespect for people who go to Liberty, I mean you're there because that
[00:56:16] that meets the need that you have. Yeah, right? But like that's the market and it's like I'm not at
[00:56:21] Liberty for reasons, right? Like one, I don't they wouldn't want me but two, I would need more space
[00:56:28] right to operate to just be able to have dialogue agree disagree. So I think that's where higher education
[00:56:34] is one higher education in general is struggling and will be struggling. Yeah. And then number two
[00:56:39] schools again, Christian schools or religious schools of higher institutions, higher learning
[00:56:47] that operating that middle space are really going to be struggling to kind of carve out
[00:56:51] like well what makes you unique? Why would students come here? Right. And then also why would
[00:56:56] faculty come here? Like why would you, I can go somewhere else right and have no issues with
[00:57:03] what I say or do. I mean again within reason, right? I'm not encouraging your responsible behavior
[00:57:07] but within reason, you can kind of go to a lot of other places and potentially right.
[00:57:13] So as a faculty member like why would I want to come to any institutions? Exactly.
[00:57:17] Just before job. Right. Well, and then there's that and there's that. I think it's interesting because
[00:57:22] I think I mean, I'm glad we're talking this conversation because there's a lot of my listeners who
[00:57:27] are either in the process of doing a PhD finishing up a PhD or have a PhD and asking the question
[00:57:34] fuck do I go from now? You know, where do I go from here now? Like I got this degree. I've
[00:57:39] got this education because well two things going back to Liberty. I remember I interviewed for a
[00:57:45] part-time position at Liberty University and it was an online interview. It was set up with
[00:57:52] the it was a from mutual friend and they were like, oh you be great at Liberty. And it took me
[00:57:57] a second to realize like, the Liberty University, I said, okay, I interview whatever
[00:58:01] and about a quarter of the way through the interview. I was like, this shitting going nowhere. So
[00:58:07] I just kept it real with them and they yeah because they're talking yeah, they started asking
[00:58:11] if you could just pull the plug in it right? Right. Right. I think this shitting going nowhere man.
[00:58:18] But yeah, I mean, I think that's so the previous president of my current
[00:58:24] place of employment, I think he had the right idea. He saw a lot of this stuff coming
[00:58:30] in regards to us being kind of this center place and like for example, at my place and you know
[00:58:36] this, you know, you don't have to you don't have to well there's no covenants to sign anyway
[00:58:41] or creeds or whatever. But you don't have to be a Christian right? So it's in that sense I feel
[00:58:47] like in a lot of my classes I'm back in community college. You have some who are Christian,
[00:58:51] I'll get a Buddhist, I'll get a Sikh, I'll get an atheist like you know and there it's a nice
[00:58:56] peppering of that. But he saw it as a way of saying, okay, look, our seminary is struggling like
[00:59:03] y'all are barely like if it wasn't for the university, y'all would y'all's doors wouldn't be open
[00:59:08] right now. Right. Let's turn this into a school of divinity and let's look at this thing a different
[00:59:13] way. Yeah, let's look at this thing in a way of saying how do we think about religious studies
[00:59:19] broadly? Well, he pissed everybody off on that one man. That brother was out within a year man. So
[00:59:25] and that's the thing, right? It's the circling of the wagons that I feel like
[00:59:30] the old construct of folks who you know who just lacked that vision and right and then still want to
[00:59:36] wonder, well where are all the people? Why aren't they coming back to church?
[00:59:41] And also two Dan and you know this probably as well as anybody one of the one of the hidden semi-hidden
[00:59:47] elements of higher education or board of trustees. Oh, oh, right. So you have
[00:59:54] who may be aren't initiated or don't fully understand. For every institution of higher learning,
[00:59:59] you have a board of trustees and boards I think range in size from 20 some odd board members on
[01:00:05] on down. Yeah. Board of trustees will function in different ways in different institutions. Some
[01:00:11] are fairly healthy, some are not. And oftentimes what you end up with where the board of trustees are
[01:00:16] people who either have relationships with the president or relationships with the institution
[01:00:21] itself meaning their children have gone there or they themselves are alumni. Yeah. And what
[01:00:26] will sometimes happen in two is especially if they're alumni, my experience with a lot of trustee
[01:00:32] members is that they're frozen in time. So like oh, I went to Texas A&M 30 years ago. Right.
[01:00:41] And this was what my experience at Texas A&M was. Yeah. So as a board of trustees member,
[01:00:46] I want to recreate my experience for this generation of students. Right. Because that's what it'll work
[01:00:51] right. Right because nothing has changed in 30 years. Of course, right. It's time to stand still.
[01:00:57] And so would you end up with our those kinds of things? Are you get board of trustees members
[01:01:01] who have no idea how higher education works? Like are just completely ignorant of higher education
[01:01:06] in general? I mean down to what you already mentioned about hiring cycles. Yeah.
[01:01:10] I've heard of board of trustees members standing up before faculty and saying to faculty,
[01:01:14] well yeah, there's language in your contract that you don't understand or it's not clear.
[01:01:19] Well, go ahead and sign that contract anyway. And if you don't like it, you know,
[01:01:23] later on, well, you can just quit. You know, you can just quit in the middle of the year.
[01:01:27] And I'm going once again. Okay. So I quit in January because I'm unhappy. Right.
[01:01:33] Application cycle is closed, which means I've got to wait until August, September,
[01:01:38] October for jobs to come open. I apply for 20 jobs. Maybe I get one or two interviews.
[01:01:44] Maybe I get a job with that job doesn't, doesn't start until like you said, August,
[01:01:50] September of the following year. So now I'm out of work or no healthcare, no work, months at best.
[01:01:57] Right. And that's my best case in November. That's if you land on your feet, get a job right away,
[01:02:01] which is incredibly rare. But I've had board of trustees members just not even understand
[01:02:05] how hiring works. Like oh well, well, you just quit and like find another job. And I'm like this
[01:02:10] is not Starbucks. No, I can't just quit this location and then you know, go over to Pete's coffee
[01:02:16] or whatever. And yeah, you know, I can, I can use the barista. And then you'll get board of trustees
[01:02:22] that have like their own vision of what the university should be that may be different from where
[01:02:28] the student body is, maybe different from where the faculty currently is, different even from where
[01:02:33] the administrators are, different from where the president is. And so sometimes you may step into a
[01:02:39] situation where the president's on point and everything else is on point. But you have a board
[01:02:45] of trustees or even just some members of the board of trustees that could step in and really direct
[01:02:50] or redirect the whole thing. And that's something that so, you know, folks that are thinking about
[01:02:55] higher education, you know, looking at the health of the entire institution sort of the focus of
[01:03:01] the entire institution is really important because that the board of trustees thing was something
[01:03:05] I had no knowledge of right. Right. Right. I was like provost Dean. Yep.
[01:03:12] chick. All right. Am I good with y'all? We're good. Okay. Um, and then you start to realize, well
[01:03:18] wait a minute. You know, like there's these different channels where information is coming in
[01:03:23] and being filtered down and yeah, it's a far more complicated, you know, kind of thing
[01:03:28] to talk about. Man, it feels like you're talking about our right, our board of trustees man.
[01:03:33] What we going to say that I mean, you mean to cut y'all?
[01:03:35] Hold on. I was going to say like and so like that's, I don't want to say that's like the hidden factor.
[01:03:39] But um, I mean, your board of trustees is maybe that resonates there, but I mean,
[01:03:44] they're really public example of Seattle Pacific right now. Yeah. The auto Pacific is like really
[01:03:49] going through it because of this deep tension between their board, president, students, faculty,
[01:03:56] right. And you start looking at all that and you're going, okay, um, yeah, this is becoming an
[01:04:02] untenable situation. Sorry. I mean, no, no, no, I'm glad you brought that up because that's been
[01:04:06] going on for a while, man. You know, I'm sure you and I both know people, you know, who are there
[01:04:11] and I know that's been coming, that's been coming on for a while. Um, and then I also feel like,
[01:04:18] again, I'm loving this conversation around higher ed, particularly Christian higher and
[01:04:22] an institution like mine, you get a lot of folks who talk all this game of social justice and
[01:04:29] want to change. And what we have to do and they'll even quote some good scriptures that are
[01:04:36] most are likely proof texted and all this good game until it comes time to for something that
[01:04:44] they actually have to do. And what I mean by that is what happens then as a faculty body when
[01:04:50] you look around as a white person and you're just like, whoa, there are three black folks left. We
[01:04:56] don't we have we're an HTI institution right, Hispanically serving institution. We don't have anybody
[01:05:03] on staff that represents or anybody in the faculty, right? That represents that population.
[01:05:09] Right. So yeah, no, no, exactly what you're saying, right. So one of the things, one of the things
[01:05:17] that I do talk about one of the things I own is for me as a white man, I'm like, I'm on the wrong
[01:05:22] side of history here. And and here's what I mean by that. What I mean by that is when I am in these
[01:05:30] conversations and we're looking to make highs, I am advocating against myself, right? I'm advocating
[01:05:35] against my social location. What I'm saying is we don't need any other, we don't need more white
[01:05:41] men in my department. We're good. We have APU is a historically white institution.
[01:05:50] And there are a lot of historically white institutions that are now going through the process
[01:05:54] of trying to reverse that or at least challenge that by prioritizing diversity hiring, right?
[01:06:00] By prioritizing hiring faculty of color women of color men of color and so on.
[01:06:05] And but here's here's the hidden issue that people don't talk about with that, right?
[01:06:10] Right. And we'll get into some other stuff. I got my shoe.
[01:06:15] So then here's what happens and people have to start thinking about this too. So you have
[01:06:19] institutions of higher ed, whether they're Christian or not, but oftentimes happens in Christian
[01:06:24] higher ed where historically white institutions are seeking to do the right quote unquote,
[01:06:31] do the right thing, right? Let's hire more faculty of color. Those faculty end up being
[01:06:36] the new hires. If those institutions start to go through financial challenges, who are the
[01:06:42] hires? Which are the hires? What are the hires that are most susceptible to being let go when you
[01:06:47] start having to cut faculty? It is very often the newer hires, right? Either because of their
[01:06:53] contract cycles or seniority or all of these other things. So on the one hand, like you can do all
[01:06:58] of these quote unquote great things to bring in more faculty of color, but you better hope that
[01:07:03] you're in a really good financial position going forward. And what we've seen kind of pre-COVID
[01:07:08] and then in COVID and now coming out of COVID is that a lot of our institutions were in trouble
[01:07:13] before COVID. Yeah. COVID dang near roped the system, right? Right. Right. And merging from COVID,
[01:07:21] a lot of places are really struggling financially and the unintended consequence. And I was thinking
[01:07:26] about this again this morning. And I brought this up last year in meetings that I was in at APU
[01:07:31] as we were talking about making faculty cuts. I said, one of the unintended consequences of
[01:07:36] what is happening here is there will be a disproportionate number of faculty of color that are not
[01:07:41] renewed or let go if we do our non-renewals in the way that people are talking about doing it.
[01:07:47] And I got pushed back in a meeting. I had somebody say no, I don't think that's the case and I'm going
[01:07:52] okay, trust me when these numbers come out right? Right. Right. And especially. No again, you also
[01:07:59] have to think about this and Dan, you know this using the example you use. So let's say you have a
[01:08:02] department with only one or two faculty of color in it, right? And one or two of those people get
[01:08:08] let's go get let go. You could look at it and say well over the course of the whole of the faculty
[01:08:14] at any given institution, we only let you know 20 faculty of color go when we let 80 faculty
[01:08:20] other faculty go. Yeah. And I'm like yeah, but what about at the department level? You let the one
[01:08:25] faculty member of color go right or you had to now you have one. So it's you have to do the deeper
[01:08:31] dive into that, right? Or even changing the institutional identity or even changing the institutional
[01:08:37] approach. So you say right and this again is something that white white institutions historically
[01:08:42] white institutions do. This is something that white people oftentimes do. They'll use the language
[01:08:46] of well, you know, diversity is really literally like skin deep. We have black and brown people here.
[01:08:54] We're we're we're a we're a diverse place. Right. And I'm like okay, but do you recognize that
[01:09:00] people have different experiences? It's not just you look different from me. Right. But your
[01:09:05] experiences, not just the experiences that led you here. Right. But day to day experiences
[01:09:14] are different than mine. Right. And you right at institutional level recognize that account for that
[01:09:24] and be proactive in your programming in your student life and how you're supporting faculty of color
[01:09:31] in their publishing and their their research and how you're right. It's so it's the institutional
[01:09:37] stuff. It's not just going well, look we hired more people of color aren't we doing a good job?
[01:09:42] Right. Great first start. Thank you for finally recognizing 400 years later that there was
[01:09:48] something that needed to be rectified right. It's super now have we created lanes spaces for
[01:09:55] people to thrive in their in their careers? Are they being fully supported in their careers?
[01:09:59] Are they being given opportunities, you know, to do the things that will advance a career that
[01:10:03] ultimately helped them and help the university and more often than not know it's it's we got you
[01:10:07] in the door. We're glad you're here and it's the same thing with students of color, right? So
[01:10:12] you start to say like okay, APU is a Hispanic serving institution. We didn't
[01:10:18] so it's not as though seven or ten years ago the institution got together and said hey what we
[01:10:23] really want to do was we want to reach out to Latinx students and we really want to make it a
[01:10:28] priority to invest in Latinx students. It's all of a sudden you woke up one day
[01:10:35] and you looked around and you went hey our numbers say that we're a Hispanic serving institution.
[01:10:39] We've been designated that by the Department of Education. While you're while you're
[01:10:46] cutting the Spanish program, by the way while you're while you're cutting faculty in the Spanish program
[01:10:52] while there aren't like dedicated programs right. There's so far as I know there are no Chicano
[01:10:56] Chicana studies. Yeah. No next studies right. Right. It's there will be courses in different departments
[01:11:03] that you can take that you don't speak to those experiences but you know there's not like dedicated
[01:11:10] programs on that. So now you're going we'll look at what we've done. You know isn't it's great
[01:11:14] like we're a diverse place and I'm going yeah but it's not a welcoming place necessarily right. It's
[01:11:19] not a place that is set up to again help with the success, like the full success of students of color.
[01:11:27] And so some of that then is putting your pride aside as a white person and going it's not all okay.
[01:11:35] It's not all working. How do I help? How do I work? What do you need from me? Do you know do I need
[01:11:42] to be a voice in a meeting because you're saying the same thing that I'm saying and you're not being
[01:11:47] heard Dan right. Right. You're in that meeting and it's it's a weird place to be right because
[01:11:54] you don't want to talk over anybody else and you don't want to use Serp anybody else's space.
[01:11:58] But you find yourself in these instances where it's like there's faculty of color that are saying
[01:12:03] we need X and people are going uh-huh uh-huh and then you get like a white person and they're
[01:12:06] going to go you know we really need X and like X of course yes we we really need this right
[01:12:11] and and and you're going you look around the table and you're like you she literally just said that
[01:12:17] right a minute ago so it's also that kind of thing and I you know you know what I'm
[01:12:24] talking about I'm sure you've been in more than your fair share of conversations about what do we
[01:12:30] do and aren't we doing a good job and it's like no it's not enough and I think it's you know
[01:12:38] it's the the challenge is always change you know is institutional change and changing systems and
[01:12:42] I think when we when we start trying to tackle that in higher education I mean that's a that's a much
[01:12:48] slower agonizingly slow process. Yeah and that's where and but that's where work is.
[01:12:56] No and that's in that brother you said it I mean that's that is where the work is and I mean
[01:13:00] I think for me that's where I've gotten just just overly frustrated with the with the process of
[01:13:08] of that that churning it's I reckon it like the to the I'm a NASA space buff so I remember when
[01:13:17] they used to roll out the the shuttle from the in the bay right and that whole little tractor
[01:13:23] thing man it was just it just grinded rocks down and like and it just you could run faster than
[01:13:28] this thing man but that's the way I feel and also oftentimes I feel like because people are
[01:13:34] looking around like well what do you mean we don't have I mean I just we we just hired two Africans
[01:13:40] and I'm just like yeah yeah you still looking at the skin color thing it's just like and these cats
[01:13:47] no disrespect to them they are brilliant in their fields but they're not connected with the African
[01:13:53] American experience and the black experience within this and so students don't necessarily feel
[01:13:57] connected with that um let me because there's so much to say on that man you that's that's the
[01:14:06] that's the the soup and the hornet's nest all together that I feel like I'm swirling in right
[01:14:12] now man and and trying to navigate um with that how then do you see change um and then I and
[01:14:22] and that's a big question I get because I also want to ask you to about hip hop because I know
[01:14:26] to somebody who's listening to this and be like wait hi hi hi hi hi hi hi we're the hip hop
[01:14:31] come from why didn't y'all get to that so oh yeah I mean we can do two part we can do part
[01:14:37] part A part B we don't we probably gonna have to man um I got time today I got time um so do I um
[01:14:46] so change you know I think all right so I think change has to be multi-directional okay um so some
[01:14:54] of that change is as you have students who are coming in and are changing your student body
[01:14:59] demographically again ethnically culturally racially religiously socio economically and so forth
[01:15:06] they will start to drive some of that change in terms of expressing in various ways what they need
[01:15:13] or don't need okay um and so navigating to that space and saying okay let's really listen to
[01:15:20] the students right these are the people that are here they you know for lack of a better word these
[01:15:24] are the customers right they're paying money so finding some of that right they'll be driving those
[01:15:29] conversations um being careful in your hires right um so some of what you just pointed out so you
[01:15:36] can bring in somebody who's a person of color it doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't or
[01:15:43] that they will be on board with sort of what your ethos is within the department and I think again
[01:15:48] that's that it's that literal sort of skin deep approach of well look we have lots of you know black
[01:15:53] and brown people sprinkle around the university isn't this a wonderful thing right you can't hold
[01:15:57] yeah but are they all parroting you know kind of the same talking points or is there this space where
[01:16:04] people can say no this isn't working and here's what we need um I think change uh starts at the top
[01:16:11] I think we need to have more provosts of color I think we need to have more vice presidents at
[01:16:18] universities we need to have more presidents we need to have more women we need way more women of
[01:16:23] color um in all of these places and and again that doesn't it's not a magic bullet right it's not
[01:16:32] a super bullet where you hey we'll put we'll kind of plug in people in these spots and everything
[01:16:36] will be fixed but it your if if your administration is not representative of your faculty if your
[01:16:42] faculty is not representative of the student body then there's disconnect right it doesn't work
[01:16:48] because we're not going to be on the same page and we're not going to be you know uh thinking about
[01:16:52] again how do we help students of color thrive how do we help faculty of color thrive how do we help
[01:16:56] staff members of color thrive right let's not forget about our staff members right the people who
[01:17:02] do all of that extra work all that hard work that we don't want to do as professors you know I
[01:17:06] spend too much time getting my PhD to you know photocopy right exactly exactly exactly
[01:17:15] you got too many people in academia that never had a square job you have a lot of
[01:17:19] who came into academia and all they've ever done is working academia you gotta say that never
[01:17:24] punched a clock I worked union I worked in a grocery store exactly exactly bro I did janitorial work
[01:17:33] I uh that was not in my prebiography that we were talking about um I did deliveries for a hardware
[01:17:39] company see um you know whatever right which is a lot of people who just kind of went undergrad
[01:17:46] grad PhD and and there's that that sense of entitlement networks you know at all levels that's yeah
[01:17:54] but I mean I think again uh border trustees changes too um are your border trustees representative
[01:18:00] of the institution where it is now not where was 30 years ago um you know again valuing faculty
[01:18:08] of color um get giving people time to do research giving people time to publish giving people time
[01:18:13] to present supporting that financially because you and I both know me and that's what it comes
[01:18:17] down to do you have money to travel do you have money for a ar do you have money for sbl do you have
[01:18:23] money um you have course release you know are you teaching four classes and trying to write and
[01:18:28] research at the same time um right what's your what's your advising load right you're right yeah how
[01:18:35] many students are you advising um and then are we creating spaces on campus for faculty and students
[01:18:41] to share their work right like if you can't even get heard on your own campus brach how how are we
[01:18:49] expecting you to be heard elsewhere right so we have all of these experts right isn't that what
[01:18:53] higher education is about you gather all of these experts to your school right to teach in these
[01:18:59] programs and you they can't get time or space or venue um to share to you know to present their work
[01:19:09] to promote their work so many schools are terrible about self-promoting the people that they have
[01:19:15] until it's time to talk about diversity and then we get to you know try to you know professor
[01:19:20] ab and c and isn't it wonderful that we have faculty of color and dot it out and then it's like now
[01:19:24] go back to your office we don't want to see you again until it's time you know to talk about how
[01:19:28] wonderful we're doing um so i think i you know i don't know if if that's kind of where you were thinking but
[01:19:33] yes again when i'm talking like multi-front approaches to change oh brother i mean and that's just
[01:19:42] did i mean that's exactly exactly it i mean i think that what you're engaging in i mean one of my
[01:19:50] ideas was this like we should gut the border trustees and have invested either parents or people
[01:19:57] from the community uh in and around that community like for example where we're at i mean i think
[01:20:02] about Albany Park the north park in general a area of Chicago having people from that community
[01:20:08] invested in that border trustees to actually say this is what we think we should be going on when
[01:20:14] you talk about i have been at my institution now i'm working on my well february 12th uh i'll be
[01:20:23] i'll start on my or february 16th i'll start on my 12th year at my institutions i've only talked
[01:20:28] about my research once on campus once right um and i think about that and i'm just like god damn
[01:20:38] like you said if you can't even get the representation on there man whoo these are yeah so i mean
[01:20:45] that that's so i don't want to talk about it's and then also and i don't i don't know if this
[01:20:52] is going to sound right or not but it's also normalizing this so instead of it instead of it
[01:20:58] becoming like some weird special event you know um every every so often or hey let's put together a
[01:21:06] bunch of stuff for black history month right and then we don't talk about it again until february
[01:21:11] it's what does it look like to normalize um these expressions to normalize these presentations to
[01:21:17] normalize these opportunities from august to june or you know august to may not just well in honor
[01:21:23] of his panic heritage month we're going to you know have tacos on the lawn and it's like
[01:21:30] and one of our faculty you know one of our Latinx faculty will come and speak about blah blah blah
[01:21:34] and i'm like it guys do better um right it's it's right it's it's not it to me it's about not sort of
[01:21:42] pre-packaging all of this and going well we're only going to talk about this at this time of year
[01:21:46] it's saying no no no this is something we value all year long these are the faculty that are doing
[01:21:51] this work we want their voices to be heard i mean you know the ideal obviously being like hey i'm
[01:21:57] working on something can i get some of these ideas out in this community uh where i where i work
[01:22:02] before i take it to a rsbl or before i you know to pre-package before whatever and it's sort of
[01:22:09] like most of us now we're in this space of and i have to imagine this must be happening at a lot of
[01:22:13] institutions where we're all trying to cram our work into a long weekend in november
[01:22:22] so those of you who don't understand a rsbl meets every year the weekend before Thanksgiving thank
[01:22:29] you for that whoever did that because not as though that time of year it's very much oh yeah
[01:22:32] it's it's the lightest time of the year yeah it's easy just jump on a plane and go anywhere
[01:22:36] go south west i'll take care of you um right south west and spirit
[01:22:42] oh my god yes so so literally right and they'll talk about the regional meetings too but then we
[01:22:48] also kind of know that the regional meetings don't carry the same punch right right so right on
[01:22:53] putting something on my on my resume and it says you know i presented at the regional meeting like
[01:22:57] that's nice but the national meetings really are international meetings are kind of what we're looking
[01:23:01] at so now you you're having everybody really trying to cram all the stuff that they're trying to do
[01:23:06] into a long weekend at the end of november instead of saying here's all of these other opportunities
[01:23:12] that could be taken and i'm sure there's institutions that are doing this well but i think this
[01:23:16] has to be the standard not sort of the exception um to say we're giving we're giving students and
[01:23:22] faculty um ample opportunities to share their work present their work we're publicizing these
[01:23:28] things we're making it an important part of the academic life of the institution and it's not just
[01:23:34] yeah every once in a while we do something and isn't it wonderful that we did something for black
[01:23:37] history month right it's like you should do something for black history month always period that's
[01:23:42] given done now right right like you should be doing something for you know Asian-American Pacific
[01:23:49] Islander you know um history month period done right that that's just already planned in his
[01:23:54] panic heritage month all these different things right you know women's history month everything
[01:23:59] the now let's keep you know keep that same energy right right keep same energy year long not just
[01:24:05] oh we're done for the month and and we'll move on and we'll come back to this in a year so I don't
[01:24:09] know Dan I mean those kinds of things are kind of what I think about absolutely no i'm with that brother
[01:24:13] I am I am I am totally with that and that's where I keep coming back to you know um
[01:24:20] in regards to the support rather than just the talk of oh we care for our faculty it's just like
[01:24:25] nah let's let's put the money in and and even the process of getting reimbursed right I feel like
[01:24:30] man I had to jump through hoops to get reimbursed it's like whoa what about this receipt and this
[01:24:35] I'm like damn so now I gotta go through the questioning I gotta go through the 50 you know
[01:24:39] sand so anyways all that to say man I know our time is running now but how did you end up a hip hop
[01:24:45] head so um my parents are from west Texas my parents grew up around Abling
[01:24:54] and um that's what's up man so if you know that if you know that part of the world
[01:24:58] you know yeah I know it well yeah my parents moved out to Los Angeles in the late 60s my dad
[01:25:04] moved out for work uh things were kind of drying up out there and I did not really grow up in a
[01:25:09] musical household if that makes sense yeah like my parents my parents had records they had music
[01:25:15] my dad had eight tracks in his dots in station wagon and I remember being a kid sent him my dad's
[01:25:19] car and he'd play you know a lot of country music but kind of a lot of old school country music um
[01:25:26] and my mom was kind of more of a pop radio fan um but music honestly was just kind of in the car
[01:25:33] so if we were uh you know picking up groceries or doing all that stuff um so grew up in Los Angeles
[01:25:41] kind of started out just listening to pop music so when I was really young you know a lot of
[01:25:46] Durand Durand a lot of minute work yeah come on come on uh trying to think what else I used to
[01:25:52] Bob too uh you know still got a lot of love for Holland Oats and yeah whatever was you know
[01:25:57] whatever was Michael Jackson thriller when I was a kid and I mean it was huge yeah happens in everything um
[01:26:05] and then you know memories always kind of funny but the way I remember it the way I really
[01:26:11] remember it was I was laying on the floor in my bedroom and I was probably fourth or fifth grade
[01:26:17] and I had a load I had a radio just a load of you okay okay and I was just
[01:26:21] had it on the radio it's like you know one of those things like you would
[01:26:25] again this is probably aging myself quite a bit but you know in in in some schools you would do
[01:26:30] like a candy drive um like you sell candy and all those thing you'll go go door to door
[01:26:35] and I don't know if we still do that um I think see kids outside of supermarkets sometimes
[01:26:40] someone can't do anyway um and and so if you sold enough candy like you'd get prizes and so I
[01:26:44] think it was one of those like really crappy um uh like a like a take deck radio whatever so I'm
[01:26:50] laying on the floor and I'm just rolling I'm just literally rolling through um radio stations
[01:26:55] in LA and I go through all the FM stations nothing nothing's really hitting me you switched over
[01:27:00] to AM going through all the AM stations I get to the end of the AM dial 1580 K. Day
[01:27:04] was the only hip hop station in Los Angeles at this time yeah mid to late 80s yeah yeah
[01:27:13] it was the only all hip hop the only all rap stations so you would hear some rap songs on um
[01:27:20] on pop radio 1580 was the only one K. Day I stopped on I stopped on K. Day that was it man
[01:27:28] there was no going back I was done I don't know if you want to say I was home
[01:27:34] yeah um another memory that I had was we and again this is from a bag on air but my parents kind
[01:27:41] of had sort of like a semi-formal living room like there was a couch we weren't supposed to sit on
[01:27:45] I don't think anybody had those experience oh yeah all right so there was a love scene
[01:27:49] and he's too serious yeah for company yeah you can't steal numbers okay and next to it was my
[01:27:54] parents radio and they had like one of those big radios like big like stereo with the turntable
[01:27:59] uh-huh uh-huh yeah and my brother and I were sitting in the living room waiting for my mom uh to go
[01:28:05] we were getting ready to go to school one morning this is the same time frame and we were listening
[01:28:09] to the radio and paid him full came on it was that extended seven minute remits yes yeah
[01:28:17] yeah and I remember my brother and I were talking about we were talking about how long the song was
[01:28:21] because you know most rap songs in the mid 80s we're going to be sure like a couple of minutes like
[01:28:25] two three minutes right right right seven minutes and it just keeps going and I
[01:28:30] would vividly remember listening to paid and full that seven minute remix and it just blew my mind
[01:28:36] wow and so from that point forward it was it was you know my first tapes were you know cool
[01:28:42] moe D and salt and pepper and L.O. Cool J bad and uh big daddy Kane yeah long lived the
[01:28:48] Kane yeah um then a few years later uh you know uh day lost soul comes out with three feet high
[01:28:56] and rising I'm all over that I'm listening to um at one point they were playing the wakeup show
[01:29:01] from the Bay Area down on K-Day like on Saturday night so you listen to the wakeup show um
[01:29:07] do you have some great great mixes and mixing shows on K-Day so I'm listening to all of that
[01:29:12] um my friends and I you know L.A again public schools are kind of funny I lived in an neighborhood
[01:29:17] that was probably 80 or 90 percent white okay the schools that I went to um the student body was like
[01:29:24] 60 percent black um and so my colleagues and I are all listening to the same thing so the
[01:29:30] classmates and I are all listening to the same things and we're talking about these things
[01:29:34] and so I wanted to be educated about it so I'm listening and I'm watching and I'm reading
[01:29:39] I'm reading anything I can get my hands on is back in the day when you had to go to the encyclopedia
[01:29:43] for information so I'm yeah oh so late 80s early late 80s early 90s we're getting into you know
[01:29:51] a part time pushing back on a part time South Africa I'm going home I'm pulling the S
[01:29:56] encyclopedia off the shelf and I'm reading up everything I can on on South Africa you know who
[01:30:00] the president is and what's going on and what's the history and so I can be educated about these
[01:30:05] conversations and um around those times two so late 80s early 90s you know we're heading into the
[01:30:11] golden era of hip hop I'm starting to listen to you know 5 percent rap you know I'm listening to
[01:30:17] brand newbie and I'm listening to okay deep okay I'm listening to poor righteous teachers I'm
[01:30:25] listening to um gang star I'm listening to anybody and everybody that I can get my hands on I'm
[01:30:32] off I'll be I'm listening to the west coast off to I'm listening to ice cube in WA um the source became
[01:30:39] my Bible yeah yeah um so there were two things that I read well three things I guess that I read
[01:30:46] religiously I read the Bible I read the source and I read the sporting news so some of you may
[01:30:50] remember the sporting news or may not it was a it was an entire newspaper dedicated sports you
[01:30:56] get all the box scores you get all that stuff so I have one friend who bring the sporting news
[01:30:59] and then one of us would bring the source and we would read I'm seriously I'm like read the
[01:31:03] source like it was the Bible who's an unsigned height what's the you know what is the uh the hip
[01:31:10] hop quotable who's on the cover you know I mean mics they given the how many albums you know they
[01:31:15] and then argue about it right yeah three and a half miles you know um look at the singles and all
[01:31:21] of that stuff and then we would be sharing music back and forth you know I'm ever in junior high
[01:31:25] school I'm walking around during recess listening to slick Rick on my headphones uh listen into two short
[01:31:32] um yeah so honestly for me it was really an organic experience of landing landing on K-Day and never
[01:31:44] really leaving and I'll be honest man like four I would say probably from like 87 until about
[01:31:53] 2000 I didn't listen really to anything that wasn't hip hop um it wasn't really until file sharing
[01:32:03] started to come in in the early 2000s yeah then I started listening to other stuff because this
[01:32:07] is something I'll tell students too I see after remember when I was growing up you usually had
[01:32:12] money for one CD or one record or one tape that's it that's it but you had to make choices and
[01:32:19] fontate from little brother was talking about this one time on um on quest love supremus I think it
[01:32:24] was the the Q-tip episode he was like look you could you could take a flyer on Pearl Jam or you get
[01:32:31] Elmatic you had a choice what are you gonna get I'm not getting no Elmatic all day long like
[01:32:35] Pearl Jam might be great and people are loving it but I'm like I can't afford both records right
[01:32:39] right I'm going to stick in in in this space that that speaks and so for me at a very very young age
[01:32:48] um fourth grade fifth grade it became very apparent and I don't know how aware of it I was but
[01:32:54] it became pretty apparent to me and there were missteps along the way of course but um I was a guest
[01:33:01] I'm the guest in hip hop in the house of hip hop mmm I didn't I didn't build this house mmm
[01:33:06] um I didn't put the windows in I didn't I didn't put one stitch in the door mat none of this
[01:33:13] I'm I'm a guest and this music wasn't created for me it wasn't created by me it doesn't speak to
[01:33:21] you know it doesn't come out of my personal experience right like as as much as I want to talk
[01:33:26] about how hard it was being a white kid growing up in Los Angeles in the 80s it wasn't um
[01:33:33] you know but there was some there were there is truth in this art form in all of its forms right
[01:33:40] graffiti break dancing yeah DJing yeah I'm seeing right four pillars there is truth in all of this
[01:33:47] and that truth found me mmm and so for me what I have tried to do is to cultivate um this spirit
[01:33:56] of uh of being a good guest okay okay has it always worked um you know I haven't been perfect
[01:34:06] you know there there have been pictures of me uh not what you think it uh pictures of me in the
[01:34:12] late 80s with my red-black and green medallions on uh mostly my piece medallions but you know there
[01:34:19] was an African medallion that popped in there a little bit this before the the era of cultural
[01:34:22] appropriation I really have in that full language um but you know those moments of of of trying to
[01:34:29] understand and grow and learn um and then being corrected but then also um maintaining like being
[01:34:36] here like there was nothing worse really and you've seen this you grow up with kids who
[01:34:41] one summer were listening to like Bob Marley and like pop music and then the next summer they came
[01:34:46] or the next uh fall they came to school and like raider starter jackets right and you know
[01:34:52] khakis and these are like white kids from my neighborhood and I'm like what what did you guys do
[01:34:55] this summer right right what was there like an initiate was a club right like did you guys get
[01:35:03] kidnapped and like somebody dressed you and like dropped you off in front like what like what
[01:35:07] transpired in those two months then right you know kids that were certainly like kids that were
[01:35:11] surfing you know uh in the middle of the summer showed up talking about 40 ounces and
[01:35:16] and uh in w a and stuff and so and and those same those same guys are you know listening to something
[01:35:22] else now or are not really part of the culture so I think it's uh a desire to understand a
[01:35:27] desire to listen a desire to recognize that this isn't about me and it's not for me
[01:35:33] and so understanding sort of that guest relationship um the guest relationship that I have
[01:35:40] to it and really honoring that yeah it has been a man I love this brother um and I want to explore
[01:35:46] that more I don't want to keep you I know this you know the time is is there but I appreciate
[01:35:51] you sharing that and talking this has been a really rich conversation and the thing I love about these
[01:35:57] conversations is that I don't really necessarily even have a direction other than to ask the one
[01:36:01] question at the beginning and I love that we really got into higher because I think there's a
[01:36:04] conversation that not a lot of us have uh in these spaces at least as I've been going to AAR
[01:36:10] and talking with PhD candidates people who want to get into the PhD program it's like what do I expect
[01:36:15] I know I wish I would have had this kind heard this conversation right 18 years ago um in regards to
[01:36:23] okay what what can I expect uh in this field oh can I say the one one more thing yeah go for it we go
[01:36:29] so those of you who are listening that are PhD candidates um or you're finishing up and you've
[01:36:36] been told this let you know let me put this to rest what I was told and what I've been told for
[01:36:42] the last ten years or 12 years is that in the next few years there's going to be a lot of retirements
[01:36:49] and there's going to be a lot of jobs opening up yes yes I've been told that for over a decade
[01:36:56] that was probably not happening so for those of you who are holding out hope for this huge wave
[01:37:01] of retirements right right i would love to be more positive and say yes of course you know it's
[01:37:08] on the way my honest response would be it probably isn't either because people aren't retiring or when
[01:37:15] they do retire not all of those positions get refilled so you could look at places and go oh there's
[01:37:20] five people here that are retirement age well they may only fill two of those positions right um or
[01:37:26] they might close the program I mean you never know so so for those of you sorry we stuck this at the end
[01:37:33] those of you who are just kind of waiting for this wave of retirements exhale because um I don't
[01:37:39] I don't know that that reality is coming um in the way that it's been sort of talked about exactly
[01:37:46] exactly exactly man and I yeah there's so much done pack with that I mean I probably should do a
[01:37:52] a special on on just the the the higher ed uh process and whatnot but I was told the same thing too
[01:38:00] and that was wow that's going to be 20 years this year's 2023 I remember right around 2003
[01:38:07] I was being told oh man you you you getting into higher this is perfect times going to be
[01:38:11] retirement and if you think of your wave and you just me you're gonna have your pick right no oh lord
[01:38:18] oh brother well listen man working folks find you let's say somebody's listening and they're like
[01:38:23] hey man we need to bring this brother out we got a position for him right now at this spot
[01:38:29] you can find me honestly one place you can find me at jm smith at apu.edu okay
[01:38:37] do not exist in the in in social media you you won't find me on tiktok you won't find me on
[01:38:42] Instagram you won't find that yeah um my mental health cannot cannot support uh social media yep
[01:38:51] I figured out about five six years ago that it was better for me as a husband and a father
[01:38:57] and just as a person to not be in that sphere so you can always find me at apu.edu
[01:39:05] and uh you know hey push come to shove I guess you could always reach out for tan
[01:39:14] um I'm not hard to find but I'm not easy to find either I'm with that I like that I like that a lot
[01:39:20] I'm trying to get a little bit more like that myself man all this social media stuff well
[01:39:25] that's for another podcast I'll tell you what we need to do on that we can talk about that yes
[01:39:29] yes absolutely man um thank you so much Justin appreciate you man and the work that you're doing
[01:39:35] I've loved it I love it I can't wait to do this again
[01:39:40] hey everyone I'm Nate from the full mutuality podcast I wanted to take a moment to say thank you
[01:39:46] for tuning into this show we're so grateful that you've decided to spend your time with us
[01:39:51] seriously Dan, Gail, Jessica, Kathleen, Scott and the rest of us here at the Dauntless Media
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[01:40:00] I'd also like to invite you even further into the conversation right now there are some great
[01:40:05] discussions happening over in the Dauntless Media Collective Discord server if you're interested
[01:40:10] in chatting with other folks who are deconstructing and decolonizing the oppressive traditions that
[01:40:14] they came from please feel free to hop on into the server if you don't know what discord is
[01:40:20] it's a place where communities can gather online for chatting on a wide variety of topics in our
[01:40:25] discord server we have channels devoted to general deconstruction conversations some meme sharing
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