Letter To My Colleagues: Leaving the Burning House and Plantation

Dear Colleagues,

I write this letter not as a triumphant exit, but as a caution, as a lament, and as a call to faculty, especially Black scholars in predominantly white institutions (PWIs). What I share comes from a place of love, weariness, hope, and painful clarity.

Like me, I know you showed up full of promise. Earned your degrees. Got hired. Perhaps you were celebrated at first. You were told that things like “we are lucky to have you” and “you are a superstar”. In my case I was also told “always remember that they need you more than you need them”. So, you were not totally naïve about the academy. Yet, you believed in the possibility that you could build community, mentor students, open doors for future generations, and possibly transform these institutions.

I know you quickly discover that possibility comes with a price. You may see and experience subtle or overt hostility. You may be the “only.” The one people expect to produce, represent, smile through discomfort, do “diversity service,” yet remain invisible when it counts. You may be asked to mentor, represent, carry burdens that are not yours alone.

You may ask yourself: Is this worth it? Am I expected to burn so others can be warmed?

I asked myself those same questions.

In writing “I’m Scared that I Have Mentored My People into a Burning House,” I tried to warn younger faculty: the house may be integrated, but it’s still aflame and too many comfortable white colleagues refuse to douse the flames.

In leaving my own position, discussed in “A Scholar’s Difficult Decision,” I tried to show what it looks like to walk out alive not broken, not bitter, but determined to live.

What I Want You to Know — Unapologetically Clearly, Honestly

1. Your calling and your health are not optional.
I know the narrative: “We must stay and suffer because who else will do the work? Our students, colleagues, and institutions are depending on us.” But I learned, as I hope you will too, that suffering under racism, isolation, tokenization, emotional and professional exploitation is not noble. It is harmful. There is no divine mandate requiring your body, mind, or spirit to be collateral damage in someone else’s virtue narrative.

2. You are more than institutional metrics.
Your worth is not measured by how many committees you serve on or by how many times you smile through microaggressions, or by how many “diversity events” you endure. Your voice, your scholarship, your dignity, your vision for your life’s calling is what matters. And they are not for sale. Values alignment is more important than external validation based on metrics that don’t advance the people that you serve and your calling. 

3. Mentorship matters.
Yes, mentor students. Yes, support junior scholars. Yes, continue to build networks. But guard your boundaries. Do not let others use “your mentorship” as a shield while they or the institution remains comfortable in their complacency. Do not let your generosity be weaponized and burn out. Even in mentoring relationships be clear on expectations. Reciprocity is the lifeblood of any mutually beneficial relationship.  

4. Sometimes leaving is not defeat, it is deliverance.
If the system forces you to choose between your family, your mental health, your sense of self: choose self-preservation. I left to reclaim my dignity, to protect my soul, and to envision a different kind of contribution. What looked like an exit was an entrance to clarity, purpose, peace.

A Charge to Scholars of Color

• Evaluate your labor carefully. Ask yourself: Does this institution value me or just what I can do for its appearance?
• Build community, not just with sympathetic white colleagues, but with other Black scholars, with mentors inside and outside the institution, with people who see you and value you wholly.
• Create alternative spaces of flourishing: community-based programs, writing, activism, networks, collaborative work that does not depend on institutional permission.
• Prioritize your well-being: mental, emotional, spiritual, physical. Resist the temptation to prove your worth through exhaustion.
• Remember that your legacy does not begin or end with a tenure line, a P&T committee, or a whitewashed CV. Your legacy is in the lives you impact, the truths you speak, the integrity you keep, the vision you hold for yourself and your people.

Finally

I don’t write this to scare you. I write this because I care deeply. I write this because I don’t want to see another bright, Scholar of Color’s mind extinguished by the fires of institutional neglect, tokenization, or racial fatigue.

But I also write this with hope. Hope that you will thrive. Hope that you will shape new structures, new visions, new institutions. Sovereign organizations and initiatives that do not demand our bodies as sacrifice.

If you stay, stay with eyes open. If you leave, leave with your dignity intact. If you mentor, teach, build, do it for love, not for acceptance.

I stand with you, believe in you, and pray for you.

Your Collogues Committed to Our Liberation and Sovereignty,

Sydney Freeman, Jr.

Dr. Sydney Freeman, Jr. President and Chief Research Scientist of Dr. Freeman, LLC. Dr. Freeman was the first Black (American Descendant of Slaves) man promoted to the rank of full professor at the University of Idaho. He is a prolific author with nearly 100 publications to his credit and has lectured and presented at institutions such as Harvard University, Oxford University (UK), Jerusalem College of Technology (Israel), RMIT University Vietnam, Saigon, the University of Bucharest (Romania) and at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. He is nationally and internationally recognized for his scholarship in multiple areas including Education, History, Black studies, and Religion.