I don’t know how to be a good mentor right now and I’m mad about it.
Almost as soon as I completed my PhD I was put into mentor roles even though I was in a professional place where I still needed mentoring myself. Because my path to a PhD and to bioethics was unusual on one hand, yet traditional by other standards, early on students would email me asking for career advice. My old professors would connect me with their current students so I could offer my perspective on their career choices. This was only somewhat due to how I navigated professional bioethics and philosophy and largely because of how I navigated bioethics and philosophy as one of the few Black women in the profession. Most of the students who sought me out were people underrepresented in bioethics and philosophy based on their race, ethnicity, gender, class, or sexual identity. But even people from very represented groups in philosophy sought me out. I continue to do formal and informal mentoring. I can have anywhere from 3-10 virtual conversations a month with students from universities all over the US who want career advice or who have never met a Black bioethicist or a bioethicist who cares about the social issues that I research. I also do formal mentoring through The Hastings Center’s Sadler Scholars for the past few years. I try to give my time freely because I benefitted from some mentoring, and in many ways, I want to give students mentoring that I didn’t have when I was a student or early career scholar.
But at this moment in time, I am struggling to be a good mentor. I am struggling to find words of encouragement. I am struggling to be a source of hope for the next generation of bioethicists because I myself am struggling. What do you tell students about going to grad school, getting a job, conducting research, and being a good teacher themselves when there is so much uncertainty about the future of the country, academia, science, and health care? What do I say to students when I am also navigating this uncertainty?
With students’ visas being inexplicably revoked, federal grants being suspended or drastically reduced, and universities like Columbia University seeing some of their federal grants and contracts totaling up to $400 million suspended, students are understandably worried about their future in academia. For instance, The National Postdoctoral Association released a survey of almost 300 post docs revealing that more than half have already been impacted by new governmental policies as of February 2025. Most are worried about funding cuts and their impact on their research and job security.
And more changes are coming. The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) will likely see more large cuts, which will terminate humanities grants for many organizations and universities. This will undoubtedly end funding for current and future research and spark hiring freezes at all levels of academia. Cuts to federal funding will impact academic life at all kinds of institutions in many obvious and less obvious ways. And the effects will be long-lasting, even after this presidential term.
Students who are about to graduate with professional degrees may not have many academic jobs open for application because of these political changes. Students needing funds to complete research so they can finish degrees will not be able to complete work they’ve worked very hard on and will face uncertainty. Our international students who have come to the US to study and research will have to leave and return to their home country with their work unfinished.
And I don’t know what to say to these students. Stark positivity seems shallow and they see through it.
Lately, the concerns of students who have reached out to me for advice have drastically changed. Whereas it used to be the typical angst that naturally comes with decisions about what school to attend, what book should I read for this project, how do I write a cover letter, how do I get published, how do I navigate the profession as a person with a marginalized identity, etc., the concerns have changed. They are more personal, existential, and heartbreaking. A transgender student told me they no longer felt comfortable in their department, given some of the discriminatory rhetoric now freely flowing in staff meetings, and asked if they should find a new graduate program or just tough it out. Another student questioned whether his research on Black men would continue to be supported at his university given his state’s new anti-DEI laws and asked me what he should do next. Another student had her research collecting the stories of Black women who lost their babies after birth due to medical malpractice suspended based on her state’s anti-DEI laws and asked me if she should start a new line of research or uproot her family and find a university that would support her work (if that is even possible to find). A first-generation Southeast Asian student just wanted to talk about her fears of not finding a job given the changes in academic funding and not being able to support her soon-to-be-retired parents.
I’ve also seen other changes in student requests for conversations with me. Many don’t want advice, they just want to talk about what is going on in the country. They just want someone to listen. But they are scared and I’m mad for them. But I don’t know what to say because I’m mad for myself, my colleagues, and everyone who is also navigating this new academia.
I’m trying to navigate my own career during these political changes and hold on to the parts of academia that I care the most about and mentoring is one of them. But I’m angry that mentoring is becoming so difficult for me because I just don’t have the comforting words I once had. I could once start a call with a student and see the defeat on their faces, the uncertainty about their future in their tense shoulders as they stumbled over words just trying to articulate their worries. And by the end of the call, I could visibly see the changes in their demeanor. I could see the calmed nerves as I assured them that everything they felt was normal. Now, nothing is normal. I don’t know how to offer them assurance when I am unsure of everything.
I don’t have the answers. Maybe that will come to me later. For now, the pillars of my mentorship will remain the same: be honest, be real, be vulnerable, and remind them that no one knows them or their situation better than they do, so take all advice with a grain of salt, even my own. For now, this will have to do as I navigate these changes and feelings along with them.
Keisha Ray, PhD is an Associate Professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, McGovern Medical School.