Professor Watchlist

Ann E. Blankenship Knox is an Associate Professor and Program Coordinator of Educational Administration Program School of Education and faculty member of Department of Leadership and Higher Education at the University of the Redlands. Blankenship Knox identifies herself as a “white, queer woman in the Deep South.”

Identity Politics 

According to Blankenship Knox’s peer-reviewed article, White, queer and female: using intersectionality as a tool for teaching social justice in the Deep South, written for Whiteness and Education, Blankenship Knox states that as a “white scholar,” she seeks to displace the whiteness in her teaching in the same paper.

In the abstract, Blankenship Knox notes that her strategies for teaching social justice include asking her students to “reflect on their own intersecting identities.” According to Blankenship Knox, this allows them to create an “understanding” with other students and implement actions that “disrupt” oppressive systems.

 

Blankenship Knox has also written articles for the Journal of Faculty Development. In the abstract of her paper, Rewarding Collegiality: The Use of Collegiality as a Factor in Faculty Evaluation and Employment Decisions, Blankenship Knox addresses how “collegiality” can be measured in faculty evaluations. In the paper, she argues that collegiality, or how well colleagues work with other faculty members, should be one of the “key functional areas,” including research, teaching, and service at the university, considered in the decision to grant or withhold tenure.

Blankenship Knox further addresses her other fields of study, including school closures for religious holidays, in an interview with the university publication, the Bulldog Blog. In the article, Blankenship Knox takes issue with schools that close on holidays, like Good Friday, arguing that the “data doesn’t bear out” the need for schools to close to accommodate religious students.  Blankenship Knox asks, “Isn’t that just intensifying the impression that the government supports a Christian-centric attitude?” 

Blankenship Knox further researches the legal implications regarding religious expression in public schools in the Campbell Law Review. Writing in the conclusion of Volume 42 of the Winter 2020 issue of the Campbell Law Review, titled “When Speech is Your Stock and Trade: What Kennedy v. Bremerton School District Reveals about the Future of Employee Speech and Religion Jurisprudence,”  Blankenship Knox alleges that the appointments of Supreme Court Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, appointed by President Trump in 2017 and 2018, respectively, will potentially result in Supreme Court decisions allowing prayer in public schools, stating that the “longstanding separation of church and state philosophy that could be overturned with the appointments of Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.” In, When Speech is Your Stock and Trade, Blackenship Knox states that the nominations of Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh “set the stage” for the reversal of precedent in regards to how schools have balanced the Establishment Clause of the Constitution with the free exercise of religion.

The Professor Watchlist team reached out to Blankenship Knox for comment but has not received a reply by the time of publication.

 

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Updated – Spring 2021