Professor Watchlist

Cynthia Henderson is a Professor of Acting in the School of Music, Theater, and Dance, and Chair of the Department of Theater and Dance Performance at Ithaca College. She’s also the founder of Performing Arts for Social Change — a theater, music, and dance program with a mission to “raise awareness and educate by giving a voice to important societal issues that are often overlooked.”

On one project — “An Exploration of Race, Privilege and the Learning Environment” — Henderson’s performing arts program fostered discussions at Ithaca High School after a 2018 student “Hairspray” finale. The project description says, 

“[A] very diverse group of people…came together in the chorus room…Through the genre of theatre, this group acted out, wrote, spoke, listened, and explored difficult truths about broken trust, racial bias, privilege, profiling, micro-aggressions and institutional racism.”

Spectrum News 1 featured Henderson in an article titled “Ithaca College Promoting African American Professor Becomes Historic.”  The subtitle of the article says, “First African American Promoted to Full Professor,” and the reporter claimed the college “has been educating students for almost 130 years, but it’s taken until 2020 for an African American person to become a full professor there.”

Henderson recalled a moment within her 20-year career at Ithaca, stating,

“[In the] 2020-2021 academic year, I received a phone call [from] a male voice saying, ‘We don’t need N-word, B-word, people like you teaching at our college.’ There weren’t very many African Americans. I think you can count them on one hand. Through the years, I’ve dealt with a lot of bias.”

Ithaca’s Definitions and Types of Appointments, as well as its page for Ranked Academic Faculty, do not show an approved designation for the appointment of a “full professor.”

In January 2021, Henderson signed the “Letter from BIPOC faculty to Faculty Council, Nov. 19, 2020.” BIPOC is an acronym for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. In response to issues with the college’s Senior Leadership Team, the letter states,

“We write as a group of BIPOC faculty at Ithaca College who have no communal affiliation other than our shared experiences at this predominantly white institution. We do not claim to speak for all BIPOC faculty.”

“As BIPOC faculty, we are called to speak in response to long-standing inequities at Ithaca College. Only in recent years has the college made progress in hiring BIPOC faculty. As a result, in this time of uncertainty, the majority of BIPOC faculty are untenured.”

“If you wish to retain us, talk to us, not about us; listen to us and think about the ways you contribute to an environment where racialized bodies are constantly under attack…We offer this statement because we are part of this community and want to foster a space where everyone feels welcome to engage in dialogue.”

 

Published – November 10, 2022