National cuts to public health research funding and the rise of anti-immigrant policies would make you think that a top public health institute, such as Rollins School of Public Health, wouldn’t kick out their first-generation Latina doctoral student- one whose research examines the impacts of anti-immigrant policies on mixed-status youth. Yet, here I am, facing imminent dismissal from my program.
Latinos are the fastest-growing ethnic group in the nation, yet fewer than 1% of individuals with doctorate degrees are Latina women. This number comes as no surprise to me, given the barriers and sacrifices I’ve experienced navigating graduate school.
I grew up in rural Texas, where my mom still works as a house cleaner and my dad as a maintenance worker at a gravel pit. My entire family is from Mexico, and I’m the only privileged person in my family to have been born in the US. Growing up, my brother struggled in school as a young brown boy who primarily spoke Spanish and was quickly dismissed by his teachers as a lost cause- he now cleans bathrooms at a rest stop.
From an early age, I was fortunate enough to excel in school. I’ve always loved reading and writing, and despite both of my parents having only a middle school education, they always emphasized the importance of education to me. One of my fondest childhood memories is of my mom taking me to summer reading programs at the public library after a day of cleaning houses together.
Despite my love for learning, it felt selfish to pursue higher education where I’d have the luxury of reading and writing for a below-livable wage rather than financially supporting my parents. However, .. as is the case with many children of immigrants, I saw education as a way for me (and my family) to eventually escape the cycle of poverty. Optimistically and naively, I also envisioned it as a space to challenge the very systems that created these cycles.
I was accepted into Emory University as a Centennial Fellow in the doctoral program in public health. My acceptance letter said I would “contribute to the Graduate School’s richly diverse student body,” and I did precisely that. I mentored more than 30 women of color, meeting with them to help with their graduate school applications and advising them on how to navigate academic spheres. I also participated in more than a dozen DEI committees and interview teams for various university-wide initiatives.
Given the university’s previously strong stance on DEI, both in terms of the student body and scholarship, I envisioned academia would be a place to challenge the status quo. While there have always been attacks on diversity in higher education —and now more than ever, with the current administration —I expected the institution where I entrusted my academic journey to remain steadfast in its purported mission. However, I quickly learned they were more interested in my compliance. When I challenged norms in my research and writing, I was told my sentences were “too politically sensitive.” This led to a senior faculty member abruptly ending all communication with me and the removal of a first-author manuscript, which had been previously accepted. When I challenged Emory to divest from Israel and Cop City, I was tear-gassed multiple times and witnessed numerous colleagues thrown to the ground and arrested.
In my first academic year, I was repeatedly told by my professors that my class grades (all 95s) in three main courses were too low and indicated I was likely to fail my comprehensive exams. This amplified my impostor syndrome and negatively impacted my mental health to the point where I was getting physically sick- a common occurrence for women of color in academia. Despite doubts, fears, and many tears, I managed to “provisionally” pass all sections of the exam. However, this was not good enough for my department “per their handbook.” They made me retake the entire exam. In this retake, one professor did not pass me on one section despite another professor passing me on the same section.
I’m now being kicked out of my program because I “do not meet the program’s academic standards to be a rigorous researcher,” a claim that is hard to digest, given my multiple presentations at national conferences, numerous published academic papers, and having my research recently cited in a leading public health journal.
At all stages of academia, historically marginalized students are pushed out by various institutional mechanisms that only uphold the white supremacist values of the institution. As seen in the case of Umaymah Mohammad, a Palestinian Emory student suspended for her Palestinian activism based on being “unprofessional,” and Lorgia Garcia Peña, an Afro-Latina professor at Harvard who was denied tenure despite meeting every criterion.
When I was told, “You may get a doctoral degree, it just might not be from Emory,” by the Dean of the Laney Graduate School, it highlighted how disposable the marginalized student is. How dare you tell me this while benefiting from my DEI labor for the past five years?
Embarking on this initial doctoral program journey has already led to so much sacrifice for me and my family, financial debt, and deep emotional pain. To say I can just start over somewhere else does not account for the sacrifices we’ve made to get here.
In my letter of intent that got me accepted into the program, I wrote: “The higher I get in academia, the fewer people who look like me, and much fewer research topics surrounding my own identity are to be found. …I want to become the professor I wished I had in my academic journey that understands the layered complexities of being a Latina in academia.” Now more than ever, there is a need for public health researchers to be valued rather than discarded- especially ones like me who specialize in the impact of immigration-related policies on the mental health of Latino youth.
I want to tell my younger self, “Mija, you are enough. You were always enough.”
And to Emory, I did not fail. You have failed me.
Yesnely Anacari Flores is an immigrant rights advocate, public health scholar, and Public Voices fellow of the OpEd Project with the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health and Every Page Foundation.
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