I'm a tenured professor at Ohio State University. I have taught at the college level for more than 15 years — more than five as graduate student instructor, seven as a tenure-track professor, and three with tenure.

When I read about professors being afraid of their own students and changing what they teach in response to that fear, I'm struck by two things. First, I understand why they're afraid. After my decade and a half in the classroom, I can confidently add to the chorus suggesting that universities increasingly treat students like consumers. As administrators seem more concerned with enrollment dollars than students' learning, instructors receive a clear message: "The customer is always right."

But here's the other thing: I don't have the luxury of simply changing my syllabus to make my students more comfortable. You see, I'm also black and a woman. There aren't a lot of other people like me — women of color hold just 7.5 percent of full-time faculty positions nationwide. My very presence makes some of my students uncomfortable because I do not fit any picture society has given them of an expert. My students, after all, have grown up bombarded with the message that people who belong in authority — especially authority based on intellectual accomplishments and expertise —are men, usually white men.

I challenge my students simply by existing. And this has made me realize that avoiding controversial topics is the worst way for my colleagues and me to react to this insecure, fear-inducing moment in academia. Professors should not cower. If we believe educators should not simply bestow credentials but should create an informed citizenry, then that sort of cowardice in professors is a dereliction of duty.

How professors should approach controversial topics

My students' discomfort with me is especially clear when I teach "general" courses — courses that are not explicitly about people of color. It is not uncommon for students to accuse me of diminishing the quality of their education when I teach classes like this. For example, when I taught an honors writing class, I included two — just two! — reading assignments by nonwhite authors. At the end of the term, a significant percentage of student evaluations complained that the class was skewed because it unjustifiably prioritized African-American authors.

All of my students, regardless of the identity categories they embraced, had been taught their entire lives that real literature is written by white people. Naturally, they felt they were being cheated by this strange professor's "agenda." When your presence generates anxiety that students often cannot admit they have — even to themselves — then you don't have the luxury of simply changing course material to avoid pushback.

What my experience has taught me must become every instructor's priority — that is, if we are in the profession because we want to develop engaged citizens. I have learned to teach students to notice how they are being groomed to join a "docile and contingent workforce" whenever they are not encouraged to think in ways that feel like a challenge. I couldn't do this if I were busy cowering to avoid complaints. Besides, I want my students to be passionately engaged and to feel empowered about speaking up both inside and outside of my classroom. The real question, then, is: how can professors broach controversial topics in a way that does not lend itself to complaints that are grounded more in emotion than in intellectual inquiry? The solution is simple, but implementing it requires courage and tenacity: professors need to directly discuss power and power differentials, no matter the subject area.

All of my students had been taught that real literature is written by white people

After all, power has everything to do with how every discipline developed. The idea that our class veered away from real literature whenever nonwhite authors appeared on the syllabus was not some outlandish accusation my students cooked up. It very much aligned with their experiences in high school and in most college classes, and it certainly aligns with the American media landscape. (A similar tension exists in STEM fields. In the sciences, teamwork is crucial for progress in the lab. And although teamwork is treated as a neutral idea, conceptions of it are inevitably shaped by the fact that men comprise the majority in most labs. Proactively discussing power differentials would empower researchers to be self-reflective enough — and intellectually honest and rigorous enough — to notice their own unstated ideas about who is easy to work with and good at what they do.)

It is worth asking, Who can most afford to teach in ways that are least likely to inspire controversy? Those who are not immediately hurt by dominant ideas. And what's the most dominant idea of them all? That the white, male, heterosexual perspective is neutral, but all other perspectives are biased and must be treated with skepticism.

I am invested in helping my students ask, Why are 90 percent of those in authority here white? I want them to notice that race isn't a factor only when the person in question is black or brown. For every white person in a position, whiteness helped make him or her an appealing candidate. That these people fit the description of what all Americans are taught to see as "qualified" helped them appear to be qualified, even if their credentials were lackluster. (As long as a candidate is white, lackluster credentials can become evidence of potential.) Indeed, their whiteness likely put them on the radar in the fist place because they were more likely to be in networks recognized and respected by the (mostly white) people making decisions. I ask my students, "Have you ever noticed how, even if standards are changed to accommodate someone, Americans never worry about standards being lowered unless the person getting the opportunity isn't white?" Wouldn't it be powerful if all of my colleagues were doing the same?