00:00:00F.A.: Hi, hello! My name is Fatima al-Bedany. I am currently a sociology and women's and gender studies major here at University of Michigan-Dearborn. I am a current member of Women in Learning and Leadership plus, WILL+, and served as the president and treasurer. I am here with Dr. Francine Banner, a professor of sociology at University of Michigan-Dearborn and the director of WILL from 2017 to 2020. I'm interviewing her for the University of Michigan Inclusive History Project as part of the Women's and Gender Studies oral history archive.
00:00:33F.A.: When we interviewed Dr. Banner last year, our audio cut out at the end, and we lost a few questions. She graciously agreed to let us interview her again to wrap things up. Thank you so much for the opportunity to do this follow-up interview today. When the first interview cut off, Dr. Brainer had asked, "Is there support you felt like you needed but didn't get?" You were talking about having staff support and how much you appreciated the dedicated admin who served the program when you were director. Is there anything else that you'd like to say about this? How [did] having someone else share that position with you help?
00:01:07F.B.: I'm not sure where the interview would've cut out, but in terms of having administrative support, Sandy [Frolich] was our most recent administrative staff member that helped with WILL, but prior to that, we had had master's level students who were assistants in the Women's and Gender Studies department, and I believe other full-time Women's and Gender Studies department assistants and admins, both students and full-time staff, along the way. That was very important because I think for WILL to have the type of cohesive and powerful experience for students, there need to be resources to do things like arrange programming, or invite speakers, or order books to have a book club, or get T-shirts or graduation cords, things for people to get behind in terms of a feeling of cohesiveness and spirit.
00:02:12F.B.: All of those things not only take time, but also take a particular skill set that administrative staff bring because they know how to navigate the university. And they have great ideas in terms of a type of food to order that might be good, or how to unlock a door to make sure you have a meeting space. All of those - where to store materials, how to use a button maker. I have some skills, but those are not all my skills. I had trouble with the button maker. Having help, just logistically, seems like it would be something small, but in fact the ways people contribute when they're staff are very large, for all of these types of logistical and resource needs.
00:02:59F.B.: The other thing in terms of resources that I can't remember - I apologize, I didn't look back and read my interview yet - I can't remember whether I mentioned or not, is the fact that, in general, on a lot of college campuses today, and particularly public regional campuses like our own, faculty are stretched pretty thin. At the time, we were stretched more thin in terms of our teaching expectations. We had a very heavy teaching load. But also, because we honestly don't do a lot of new faculty hiring, we have a pretty small faculty trying to make the experience positive for a large number of students and to keep the university running. We're asked to be on a lot of different committees at the same time. We have committees that decide what your curriculum looks like, or we have committees that just review the student evaluations that students would do. We have committees that review policies for the university, and all of these have to have faculty service on them.
00:04:12F.B.: Very frankly, the way that WILL was appreciated by the university in terms of faculty service was that a lot of the impression of other faculty was that WILL was something like what you would call a pet project or a passion project. For instance, I also did a lot of work around prisons. People would often say, well, Francine's really interested in women's and gender studies. She's really interested in working with incarcerated people. But those are passion projects. Then she also has to serve on these other, what we would call, standing university committees, so the committee that does the curriculum for the university, the IRB [Institutional Review Board] which reviews research, various other types of administrative jobs that keep things functioning in the discipline, setting up faculty meetings.
00:05:11F.B.: My experience, and I believe that of other directors, was often that we weren't excused from any other work in order to put our energy into WILL. It was often treated by other faculty members as something extra. I often think that's true of work with gender, work with LGBTQ+ projects, work with incarcerated people. Around the social justice spectrum, I feel like there's a tendency of institutions to look at that as a passion project and that that should not be the core of what would, for example, get you considered for promotion. In order to be considered for promotion, I was told, "Well, you need to do all of these things, but also you need to be on a number of these standing committees. You need to do the core work of the university." The characterization of WILL+ as not the core of the university was something that I really noticed also during my time. That's not administrative, but it's another way of talking about resources, I think.
00:06:18F.A.: What advice would you give to a director of WILL today? I had a little sub-note on that, because you were talking in the original interview about how you were thinking about your leadership philosophy. I think that you kind of got into it here, because I think the way that you lead yourself, the way you live your own life could be a way to lead others. At least that's what my dad says. [Laughter] How has your leadership philosophy evolved and changed? Because to me, now, it seems like the change is what you lean into. How has it changed and evolved? Last year, you said you weren't sure. I wonder if now you have an idea.
00:07:06F.B.: Well, it's funny. I'm doing a project where we're asking interviewees that same question. I've maybe thought about it more because I've been asking other people. I don't know that it's changed radically, but I think I'm more transparent about my own uncertainties, indecisions, and imperfections, in general, in leadership. I think the paradox is, in some ways, the more senior that you get or the older you get or the more experience you have, the more, sometimes, you're willing to show the things you don't know. I'm maybe, perhaps, more open to share where I don't know what's going on. I'm by no means modeling perfection in my life, but I am always trying to go back to my values and goals and core more often.
00:08:17F.B.: Maybe trusting in that is something that's grown over time. My advice to directors would be - and I think most people do this - is to share about WILL as much as possible. Make everything about WILL as open and transparent to your peers in the campus as possible because there are really great things going on, and I think shout about WILL+ from the rooftops is some advice. You were talking about that yourself. Making sure that our work collectively as students and faculty is very visible.
00:08:59F.A.: Yes. We have the coolest alumni ever. I don't know. I haven't taken the classes, but the classes seem so cool too. Now, you were talking about something earlier that actually was one of the questions I had and that I wanted to add is: What are some core values that have guided your work, including your work with WILL?
00:09:27F.B.: I think definitely equity and equality, and promoting that, is a core goal of WILL and myself. That can be through volunteer work that we would do. It can be through attendance at marches. It can be through letters to administration on campus. Events like Take Back the Night. Making visible, for me, gender-based violence, but other issues around feminism, around rights in various ways, is very important. That could be coalitions with other organizations like Pride, or it may be the student government. I think I had mentioned visibility and transparency. I think that's really important.
00:10:44F.B.: I think with that - I think inclusion, and inclusion can be complicated. I might have said this in my earlier interview, but I think people approach WILL from very different places. Our student body is extremely diverse in all sorts of ways. The way that one student might approach questions of gender justice, for example, might be different for a different student. People don't leave their personality and values at the door just because they come in. We may have people from different religions. We may have people with different disability statuses and not. We may have trans people and people that are cisgender that are trying to have conversations.
00:11:36F.B.: WILL - you know, one Sunday two-hour meeting isn't going to completely bridge that gap. I think what we have in WILL, and we generally have had, is very open. People come open to dialogue. People come with a general core commitment to equity and equality, even though they might not know what that's specifically going to look like. I think the value of listening is really important, too, and empathetic listening, I would say, and trying to bring that to the fore.
00:12:06F.A.: I think that's like - a two, three-hour meeting might not fix everything, but it's a good place to start, I think. I think looking at other people and saying, "This is my community. How do we make this work somehow?" Or I think that's one of the things from WILL that was helpful for me. It's like, "Okay, we're here. We're feminists trying to do feminism. Let's do feminism together. Let's talk about how to do feminism."
00:12:40F.A.: What do you hope changes, if anything, for future directors? For future directors in your position.
00:12:49F.B.: Well, I think resources is super important. Those are both financial and human. I feel like it's always been a challenge to get the administrative support for WILL that the organization really needs to thrive. When I was director, some of how we did that was apply for outside grants. Dr. Martin and I got a $10,000 grant from Ann Arbor, and that was how we were able to do some really excellent programming. This was at a time when WILL was better funded. I would really like to see this organization valued more strongly by actually putting resources behind it if that were possible. I think that's my main comment.
00:14:00F.A.: What do you hope stays the same, if anything, for future directors?
00:14:06F.B.: I didn't know what to expect from WILL, and it was an incredibly unique experience for students on campus to come together across a diversity of perspectives, and to have a dedicated time that was provided for them to come together and to sort things out largely on their own. The director's role, I believe, is more like a facilitator of student interests. As a faculty member, we might bring our research interests or bring the types of service tasks we're doing to the organization, but it's the students' decision about what to pursue and how to pursue it. I always felt, and I think most directors feel, that their role is amplifying that student voice.
00:15:05F.B.: I think it's unique to have something that is academic-based, scholarly, and also task-based, subject-based and then, also, is bringing in this leadership training piece that is teaching students, hopefully, to learn to - like you mentioned, I think, sending emails, learning to do things like draft an email to a congressperson on their own. I was part of WILL during the Women's March protest, and then I was part of WILL at the start of COVID, and my colleague Dr. Ania Müller took over as the Black Lives Matter movement was starting.
00:15:51F.B.: You know, a space to both have those conversations about what are the intersections of feminism and, for example, the MeToo movement or Black Lives Matter or political campaigns in general? Then what are we going to do about it? What are we comfortable doing? What types of social justice action are going to be most effective? What is the organization doing? What are individuals doing? How does this intersect with other coalitions? If we were to talk about Gaza protests, if we were to talk about the war in Ukraine - there's all sorts of overlap. Faculty injustice, pay equity. There's a thousand social justice issues, so thinking about how to bring those into the organization. How do we reflect the organization's values in these types of coalitions? What if we disagree? Then the ability to come out of that, it's pretty cool.
00:16:46F.A.: How do you see Women's and Gender Studies and the WILL program fitting into the larger picture of your career and life?
00:16:53F.B.: My professional career really started out practicing law, and corporate law at that. I had studied English. I had gone to a women's college, and I had always written about literature and social justice from feminist perspectives. I practiced corporate law, and then I got a degree in justice studies, which was human rights oriented. I had studied women in my dissertation, but I was not a Women's and Gender Studies faculty member. My first job was in political science, actually, and then my next job was teaching criminal law. I always did so from a feminist-centered lens, and I was always writing about different issues concerning women.
00:17:49F.B.: But I did not come to UM-Dearborn into a Women's and Gender Studies department. When I came to interview, one of the first people I interviewed was Dr. - or I interviewed with - was Dr. Suzanne Bergeron. She looked at my resume and said, "Oh my gosh, you're a Women's and Gender Studies person." I honestly was so grateful that that happened, and from that day, before I even got offered the job, felt this affinity. Then when WILL directorship opened up, it was a wonderful natural extension of that piece of myself that was always there. Then, for me, I love teaching, and getting to take the classes I was teaching in these areas, like violence against women and family violence and even other criminal justice classes, which I would teach with significant gendered content, and being able to merge that with working directly with this smaller group of students was just super cool.
00:18:55F.A.: I came up - I have another question. It'll be my final question. If you could have your ultimate dreams of how the world is, for women to exist safely and to do whatever and everything's chill, what would it look like? How would the days be like?
00:19:17F.B.: [Laughter] Wow. Are you asking everyone this question? This is crazy. I'm gonna softball this answer and dodge it because I think that you can't - from our individual perspective, we can't know what it's like to be a woman, a person, in a vastly different circumstance from ourselves. You asked me what I've learned across my life. I think what I've learned across my whole life is how much I don't know. I can't say, "Oh my gosh, is there one perfect way to be a woman in the world?" No, right?
00:20:13F.B.: You know, I do think that - I'm a lawyer, right? I still have a law license, and so I'm going to default to that and say at least legal protections. Workplace equity would be a great place to start. The United States had an equal rights amendment to the Constitution that almost passed, and there's an argument that it kind of did pass. A law student wrote a paper that says, "Actually, this did pass. It wasn't formalized." I think living in a society where we would pass an equal rights amendment would be a good start because no one should be opposed to that. I think when we start to see people opposed to the idea of equal rights, that signals a huge problem. I think for women, that would be an excellent start. Then, like you said, then we have a giant WILL-like meeting about it where we get the passage of that, and then we come together, and we fight about what the heck that means because that's going be different for even you and I right now on this call, I bet.
00:21:31F.B.: I always tell my classes, it's like, "Okay, we come in. Do we all agree on this high-level thing?" Sure. "Let's go down a level. Do we agree?" Okay. "Down another level. Uh-oh, we're losing some people." The more micro we get to anything, including equality or what perfection of a day looks like, we're not going to agree. I think if we agree on equality as a principle, on human respect as a principle, we could start, but we can't even get there, right?
00:22:03F.A.: Right. Well, it's a wish. It's supposed to be - you're supposed to be hopeful here. [Laughter]
00:22:06F.B.: My wish is formal equity, and then we can fight for what substantive equity means later on.
