Navigating Academic Identity: Autoethnography of Otherness and Embarrassment Among First-Generation College Students

A Personal Introduction: My First Academic Steps

“Know from where you come, and where you are going, and before whom you are destined to give an account and reckoning”; this well-known maxim is found in Chapter 3 of Pirkei Avot (lit. “Chapters of the Fathers”), a compilation of the ethical teachings from Rabbinic Jewish tradition. Ironically, I find this teaching, which connects past, present and future, and requires self-recognition and acceptance of a figure of authority, as reflecting my own experience of concealment and shame as a First-Generation College Student (FGCS).

To be a FGCS is somewhat similar to being in the closet. I have not always felt comfortable telling my classmates that my parents did not finish high school, while they proudly talked about their doctor dad, relocation to Harvard University as children or a senior role their parents play in the private sector. As they reminisced and recounted life experiences, I wondered whether to reveal that for me “home” means Tirat Carmel, a small town in the northern periphery of Israel, or just settle for “I am from the North.”

This evasion demonstrates an ethnic melancholy (Shamur 2019), rooted in the experiences of Israeli Mizrahi ¹ men and women who live in the geographic periphery or are associated with the socio-cultural periphery. Sometimes, I really feel strong negative emotions, especially feelings of otherness, shame, and self-negation. Haybi-Barak and Shoshana (2021) suggest viewing these phenomenological experiences as a unique expression of a cleft habitus. I am not entirely sure how aware I was that these moments extend beyond my ethnic background. However, I now understand that embracing a meritocratic identity (one that is free from ethnic consciousness) is considered more favorable than an ascriptive identity (Shoshana 2016, 487).

In addition, the experience of embarrassment and concealment was not limited only to campus life, in my dynamics with peers and teachers, but was also present around my family’s table. It was not always pleasant for me to share with my parents the information that I learned in class, which included a variety of sociological insights that could challenge their existential perceptions and prompt them to rethink their own lives.

My father, Yakov, was born in Morocco, the fifth of nine children, and immigrated to Israel in the 1960s. His social adaptation in the country was very difficult. He did not receive equal conditions similar to his sabra friends, and was tracked for an occupation that was far from offering any possibility of intellectual growth. My mother, Ilana, was born in Israel, but her parents were not; my grandmother was born in Morocco, and my grandfather was born in Iraq. Like my dad, she grew up in a big family, struggled under harsh socio-economic conditions and poor means. My parents had been neighbors. The story of the neighborhood actually encapsulates the story of Mizrahi Aliyah (immigration to Israel), which was characterized by inequality, economic injustice, and incurable damage to the immigrants’ original Middle-Eastern culture. They, like my younger brother and some of my cousins, have never left Tirat Carmel, ² did not break the sacred glass ceiling and struggled to survive economically their entire life.

Yiftachel and Tzfadia (2004, 204) argue that the settlement of Mizrahim in peripheral towns resulted in the development of a “trapped identity.” Several significant factors influenced Mizrahi identities in these towns, including discriminatory state policies, partial inclusion into the Zionist nation, ongoing Jewish-Arab tensions, deepening socioeconomic stratification, and the decline of the welfare state. Unfortunately, my dear parents became victims of these detrimental policies.

More than once, instead of sharing my academic experiences with my parents, I preferred to remain quiet and not even try. I wondered why I should share with them information that might be interpreted as irrelevant or disconnected from their daily life. I was afraid to belittle their beliefs, or challenge the obvious. “What is the point of presenting them with sociological theories of oppression, governance, discrimination and inequality? No, they experienced it themselves! Why pain them, remind them of hard and forgotten days? Why make them feel inferior to me?” I was often conscious of the phrase that my father used to say, “The cucumber stood up and beat the gardener!” (an idiom meaning the student has become the master).

I decided to let go of the power-knowledge paradigm (le savoir-pouvoir), that may explain to them Foucault’s vision, before and after the Sabbath meal. To be the first son, cousin, or grandson who entered the gate to campus, who did not only watch the gray university building on Carmel Mount in the distance, but was the only one from the family “tribe” who managed to study there, was not just a cause for pride, but a burden of concealment.

Between Research Objective and the “Objectivity” of the Researcher

In this article, I expose my pains and confessions and analyze unforgotten moments of academic alienation, otherness, and a sense of non-belonging. Because educational institutions influence processes of concern to anthropologists—including the production of differentially valued identities, the circulation and transformation of cultural models (Wortham 2008, 37), using auto-ethnographic writing helps me to tie my personal view to the broader theoretical macro level in my undertaking to explore constructions and dynamics of alienation among FGCSs. I consider FGCSs as important social agents for understanding the impacts of inequality, social hierarchies and different cultural processes and tendencies.

Following Sedgwick (2008), who claims that shame removal presents queer people with an opportunity for resistance, I argue that the repeated confession that is experienced by FGCSs may produce a fertile discourse in academia. The avoidance of revelation, and the concealment that shaped the relationship between me and my classmates or with my family members, reflects a liminal process: a polar reality moving between shame and pride, from moments of revelation of transgression to moments of declaration, a phase of twilight, a series of contradictions and built-in contrasts.

My reflexive autoethnographic analysis is based on my participation in a FGCS workshop (2017–2018), when I was a doctoral student at Ben Gurion University. During the sessions and workshops, I was exposed to narratives and stories that told me of the similarity between me and the other fellows, mostly Mizrahi. As a scholar who belongs to an excluded ethnic group that has not been equally represented in the Israeli academy, I found that I am not alone, but also, that there are conflicts and cracks in the attempt to establish a homogenic definition of FGCS.

The researcher’s position during fieldwork is more than a rational decision; it is a context that constructs the researcher’s identity, as I discussed in my previous works (Ben-Lulu 2021, 2022). Autoethnography, as a form of qualitative analysis, facilitates and legitimates the combination of fieldwork and identity work (Coffey 1999, 1). Such work should be ethnographic in its methodological orientation, cultural in its interpretive orientation, and autobiographical in its content orientation (Chang 2007). When researchers carry out autoethnography, they retrospectively and selectively write about revelations that stem from, or are made possible by, being part of a culture and/or by possessing a particular cultural identity; this writing reflects upon their positionality in the field. However, in addition to sharing their own experiences and thoughts, auto-ethnographers are often required by social science publishing conventions to show how their personal document is not a private diary, but a micro finding, which illuminates macro-social issues and makes a significant scientific contribution. I believe, thus, that auto-ethnographic writing may shed light on the macro level, revealing conflicts, hierarchies, and different types of FGCS experiences and perceptions.

My personal family story, like that of many other Israeli Mizrahi families, serves as evidence of the education system’s failure in Israel, particularly in neglecting the periphery and the Mizrahi population for many years. Numerous studies have already explored the link between ethnicity and higher education in Israel. Cohen and Leon (2008, 55) highlight the second significant factor in the emergence of the new Mizrahi middle class, which is the transformation in Israel’s higher education landscape, often guided by Mizrahi leaders, including members of Knesset, mayors, heads of local councils, or educators.

Identity is a crucial area for consideration in contemporary educational analysis, especially within the anthropology of education (Hoffman 1998). Anthropologists play a vital role in uncovering processes of inequality and discrimination based on cultural and ethnic grounds within both formal and informal education systems (Levinson and Pollock 2011). However, the research on FGCSs within the Israeli academia, still remains relatively immature, possibly due to the fact that only a minority of academics are themselves FGCSs. I hope that this discussion will significantly contribute to the existing body of research and offer valuable insights into this overlooked issue in the local academic sphere. Moreover, I firmly believe that this study will not only shed light on the mentioned issues but also lead to more comprehensive conclusions in the broader research concerning populations that confront discrimination and institutional exclusion. Saitta (2006) reminds us that “we need to demonstrate that the university is an institution that, like every other human institution, is embedded in society and subject to the ebb and flow of cultural forces and generational change” (2).

Previous research examined the intersection between education and ethnicity or race, and discussed mutual experience, solidarity, and double marginality as a response to the whiteness of academic sphere (Birani and Lehmann 2013; Cohen and Leon 2008, Oakes 2005), and the power of same status. In contrast, the current study shows that the FGCS is not an essential category, but rather a fluid and hybrid construction, which is framed by various variables, some of which are ironically identified as hegemonic. I suggest that there is no pure single experience or one absolute narrative to produce a sense of solidarity or monolithic unification among the FGCSs. An inquiry into this particular category, thus, may reveal the struggle of different social groups for recognition, capital, and power.

Thus, in this study I support Levinson’s suggestion (2005) that “anthropologists of education to address questions of political order and to bring democracy and citizenship toward the center of our concerns. Just as anthropology has much to contribute to the challenges of citizenship education around the world, a reinvigorated cross-cultural comparison can enrich our working theories of democracy and enliven our contributions to the democratization of education” (329).

In the context of this discussion, according to Spiegler and Bednarek (2013), research on first-generation students (FGS) primarily revolves around key aspects such as their pre-college characteristics, mobility factors, decisions regarding institutions, degrees, and subjects, as well as their experiences at university and academic outcomes. Summarizing the current state of research on these subjects, they highlight two issues: (1) the international lack of comparability in FGS’ data, stemming from variations in how FGS are defined and studied; and (2) the tendency to portray the challenges faced by FGS as individual rather than structural problems.

Indeed, an autoethnographic inquiry inherently illuminates the inherent tension between the personal and the social, navigating the delicate balance between the micro and the macro perspectives. Inevitably, the analysis of the category is intricately interwoven with local experiences, culminating in an analytical examination of specific variables within the context of Israel. This category, although universal in nature, manifests diverse expressions and intersections in different geographical locales. For instance, in Israel, the category of ethnicity assumes a central role in local identity politics, serving as a focal point for discussions on inequality, exclusion, and even shame. This unique emphasis on ethnicity shapes the narrative surrounding the category. In contrast, in other regions like North America, the discourse surrounding the category shifts, with race taking center stage and giving rise to distinct intersectional discussions. The comparative exploration of these varied perspectives enhances our understanding of the dynamic and nuanced nature of this universal category. In the following section, I will delve further into this topic.

Literature Review: The Blindness of Academia in Recognizing FGCSs

In recent years, the discussion about the FGCS has been gaining momentum, and its contribution extends beyond the study of higher education to encompass a deeper understanding of complex processes of inequality and identity politics. The diverse experiences of FGCSs challenge the notion of universality that underpins the academic experience and the production of knowledge. Building on Mignolo’s (2000) proposition of recognizing particularity and decolonizing academic data through border thinking, the experiences of FGCSs, viewed from a personal, submissive, and wounded perspective, shed light on the injustices inherent in white knowledge and expose the politics behind Western and Eurocentric knowledge. Consequently, the knowledge generated through these experiences breaks down the taxonomies and typologies that have historically labeled individuals and groups as undeveloped and inferior. To transcend the limitations of Western knowledge and practices, it becomes essential to embrace “colonial difference” and acknowledge the specific signs that the universal narrative has historically condemned and obscured.

According to Engle (2007, 25), while access to higher education has expanded dramatically in recent years, students whose parents did not go to college remain at a distinct disadvantage. FGCSs, most of whom come from low-income and minority backgrounds, face a number of challenges—from poor academic preparation to inadequate finances to a lack of support from family members—that make it more difficult for them not only to get into college but also to get through it. FGCSs face a number of unique challenges in college. These obstacles may have a disparate effect on educational outcomes such as academic achievement (Strayhorn 2007, 1278). For example, Ishitani (2003) found that FGS were less likely to complete their four-year academic programs in a timely manner. Marvell’s (2022) study traces a continuity of familiar refrains of inequality from undergraduate to postgraduate study among FGCSs. It illustrates how these may be reformulations, rather than replications. Therefore, their integration into the system is important, because they can deviate or feel that they do not belong in the academic system.

Thus, Aruguete (2017) conclude that universities should continue to develop and test programs that bolster academic skills while simultaneously improving the social environment for FGS. Tyler E. Holmes (2008), who examines developments in higher education system in Egypt, suggests that more resources should be devoted toward higher education with a particular emphasis on workforce development and Egypt should seek the help of donor agencies and experts to advise and reform the system (175). On the contrary, Spiegler and Bednarek (2013) advocate for structural changes, proposing the enhancement of organizational transparency within higher education institutions instead of exclusively relying on specialized support programs for first-generation students (FGS).

The evolving social conditions that foster educational mobility are deeply embedded in multi-generational family dynamics. Not only do these conditions shape the experiences of FGCSs, but they also have the potential to create biographical and social dislocation (London 1989, 144). This experience is inseparable from a range of organizational, social, and economic variables, which, contingent on the culture and location, mold the nature of individuals’ emotional responses. Therefore, it is not impossible that the shared status will even make these students feel more comfortable with it, without the need to justify and explain the emotional complexity that the academic experience requires of them (Pratt et al. 2019). The fact that they come from a lack of living space, or a lack of socio-economic or ethnic opening data compared to their recipients, requires them to be persistent, determined to justify their existence both to themselves and to the system (Mihok 2005).

Furthermore, previous studies have shed light on the neo-Marxist developments in higher education institutions, focusing on macro changes, individualization, and the impact on the global education system through the examination of diverse higher education institutions. Universities are just one site where neo-liberal ideas and practices are displacing the norms and models of good government established by the post-war, welfare state (Shore and Wright 1998, 558). In this discussion, I propose to approach the subject from an opposing perspective—from the bottom up, through my own student voice, and to draw inferences about the function, structure, and production of academic knowledge. Unlike previous studies that made predictions about the success of FGCSs (Strayhorn 2007, Naumann et al. 2003), in this description the analysis is on the essence of the emotional experience, in deciphering the sense of belonging/otherness, and on the subjectivization processes that this category constructs, particularly in intersection with ethnic identity.

If so, how are these experiences relevant in the socio-cultural reality of higher education in Israel, which is still known as an institution whose gates are not open to all? In a reality where there is social polarization and inequality between different social groups? And how do the stories of the FGCSs shed light on institutional failures and trends of discrimination based on ethnic and class backgrounds?

According to Scutt and Hobson (2013, 17), “as higher education research is largely practiced by those immersed within the university, the questions we ask, and the stories we tell, over time co-create the university itself.” New data based on FGSCs’ personal experiences and narrative is also presented in a new pioneer volume (Gigi, Nagar-Ron, and Razi 2021) under the title “Diversifying the Ivory Tower: FGCS’s Writings.” It is the first book in Hebrew that brings the voices of the first generation to academic education in Israel. The collection includes forty four texts by male and female writers who were the first in their family to enter the Ivory Tower and diversify it. The authors, who constitute an ethnic, national, class, religious and gender mosaic of Israeli society, describe their complex encounter with academia, which is experienced as alienated and foreign but at the same time opens a window for a critical understanding of the social and personal experience. In the introduction, the editors’ comment: “If we had any doubts when we set out about the very validity of this category, certainly in the context of multi-status Israeli society, ethnic, national and cultural groups, then the essays we received clearly revealed that even if it is an unfamiliar category, and its affiliates do not necessarily identify themselves as such, this group of people share common characteristics.” (Gigi et al. 2021, 11). In this manner, following Wijngaarden and Idahosa (2020), academic knowledge evolves into the outcome of a multicultural creative dialog. This amalgamation merges a critical and reflexive perspective, imbuing new narratives with the potential to challenge established conventions within the realm of higher education.

Israeli Universities have been experiencing significant cuts in government financing, accompanied since the 1980s by rising entry threshold requirements, which have serious implications for the population living in the social and geographic periphery. At the same time, we see a growing network of public and private colleges grant recognized academic degrees and offer populations outside the major cities a broader exposure to the world and culture of higher education. Cohen and Leon (2008, 56) argue that this momentum has led to the creation of new centers of knowledge, which give residents of the periphery access to academic education and, perhaps more significantly, make them aware of the importance of higher education as the key to social mobility in the modern era. Following Cohen and Leon, I suggest FGCSs are dominant players in this trend.

Ayalon (2008) compares the social profiles of college (michlala) and university students and examines the reasons for diversity in students’ institutional choice. Underprivileged students were shown usually to prefer colleges to universities, for several reasons. Residents of the geographic periphery prefer regional colleges due to their location, but socially underprivileged residents of the geographic center take better advantage of these colleges. Mizrahim prefer teacher-training and private colleges due to their practical orientation. Class differences in institutional choice mainly stem from differences in academic ability.

Moreover, Ayalon and Yogev (2005) argue that the advantage of non-Mizrahi versus Mizrahi Jewish students in university versus college enrolment is statistically significant in all fields, except the arts and architecture. Residents of the periphery enroll in colleges more than universities in comparison with residents of the center, particularly when they major in education and the arts. In addition, Haisraeli (2021) explores how first generation Mizrahi college students from Israel’s periphery describe the significance of the categories of ethnicity and periphery on their path to academe. His findings indicate clearly that the ethnic-Mizrahi discourse has been replaced by a class-periphery discourse. They also show that the main agent of the students’ acquisition of quality pre-academic education and higher education was not school but rather the parents.

Furthermore, the impact of double marginality, that is, ethnic identity and intellectual status, influence the involvement of FGCSs in the academic sphere. Kurman, Eshel, and Sbeit (2005) found that social adjustment of both Arab and Ethiopian Israeli students was contingent on acculturation attitudes supporting participation with the majority. The perceived attitude of the majority made an additional contribution to the psychological adjustment of both groups.

All of these studies, which help to dispel the academic blindness surrounding this crucial issue, support the perspective of the French sociologist, Eribon (2018), who mentions that entry into an intellectual milieu when the individual carries a reduced class habitus always involves paying a mental price. Even if disengagement from past habits and family norms is complete—they have never really been erased. Like Eribon, I felt that my personal journey was accompanied by a critical analysis of my class hierarchy and social mobility. Eribon encourages me to clarify what determines my identity as a researcher, my personal and political choices, and what builds my place in academia. In the following sections, I will delve into this topic in detail and share my personal experiences related to these issues.

Autoethnographic Vignettes

When the Academic Category Collapses: The Ethnic Demon Comes Out

Various researchers examine how particular activities for excluded groups provide security and can create a safe space. For example, this concept is reflected in queer studies on the question of how to create a safe gender space for LGBTQ+ people that allows them to share narratives of similar life experiences based on sexual/gender otherness (Hartal 2018). However, there is no such thing as pure safe space, and it is repeatedly revealed as containing a replicator and reproducing various power struggles. ⁵ Following Foucault (1986), I consider this space as heterotopic space, as Foucault explains heterotopia has the power to put in one place, one against the other, several actual spaces, several locations that are themselves opposed to each other. Meanwhile the role of those heterotopias is to “create another space, another actual space, which will be as perfect, meticulous and organized as our space is lacking order, poorly constructed and messy” (24.)

As the fellowship went on, I found how the workshop could sometimes turn into a hostile, or even dangerous, heterotopic space for some of the participants. For instance, one remarkable session redefined the group symbolic boundaries. A well-known Mizrahi female activist and scholar was invited to talk with us. She opened her talk with an anecdote. The first thing that she does when she goes into a classroom, she said, is to count the female students, as a feminist scholar, and then continue to count the Mizrahi female students in the room. Some of the fellows tried to understand why she does it, and she poignantly replied: “That’s my way to repair histories of exclusion and discrimination toward these identities – first to be aware- it’s not transparent.”

Indeed, there were often cracks in the experience of common oppression, for example when the Mizrahi fellows sought to separate the periphery from the kibbutzim. ⁶ Some fellows felt how the workshop became a hostile space for them, an arena shrouded in angry and rebellious energy. It did not surprise me at all that they were not Mizrahi FGCSs. Since the issue of ethnic oppression came from the “blacks” (Mizrahi) in the group, the “whites” (Ashkenazi) felt as outsiders; they were not part of the ethnic issue, this was not their struggle narrative. To me they seem like “White Panthers.” When I talked with one of them, Avi (28), several months later, he said:

Now, in retrospective view, it felt to me like a support group for Mizrahim under the slogan “achlu li shatu li” (literally: they ate my food and drank my drink, a colloquial expression reflecting a series of complaints and unfounded excuses) who were constantly busy presenting themselves as victims. It made me tired; I would come back from there frustrated and have to apologize for my Ashkenazi identity. It is not only the Mizrahi Jewish communities that have suffered discrimination and inequality in this country. . .

As response to this crisis, Efrat Ben-Shushan Gazit, the facilitator of the workshop, organized an open conversation in the next session and explained the workshop’s potential goals and complicated challenges. She mentioned that acts of resistance, such as Avi’s decision to leave the workshop, invite us to re-think about the complexity of FGCS as an essential and inclusive category:

“I was surprised, but I wasn’t surprised either. I felt we lost. Because it collapsed, it didn’t hold. The idea of togetherness and solidarity that we insist on creating here every time eventually succumbs to identity politics in Israel. Instead of understanding that we are all FGCSs in the same boat, and working under hegemonic powers and pressures, we adopted the hegemonic oppressive attitude, and lost. But it’s also proof that this status is more than the story of Moroccan families from the periphery of Israel, it also may be your classmate who lives in the center of Tel Aviv.” (2017)

Her words demonstrate Avi’s provocative act as an example of how the first generation is trapped in the paradox of escape both from the hegemonic system and from the marginalized group. Thus, I understood how much the ethnic identity was found to be critical to the success of the unification of the struggle, to the establishment of a common sense of marginalization and solidarity among FGCSs. The ethnic narrative won over the common academic status of being an FGCS and any similar socio-economic background or professional obstacles. Then, I encountered diverse experiences of coming out of the closet of the first generation; I realized that there is no one closet and no one FG experience. The queer paradigm of intersectionality, according to which the oppressed groups of all countries are united into a common struggle, collapsed when I saw how the ethnic discourse became a divisive factor between the fellows, rather than providing support. The fellowship, thus, demonstrates that any group that has experienced oppression and exclusion—may in turn become oppressive and exclusive.

An intertwining of ethnicity, status, and education is clearly directed at the intersectionality theory that deals with the intersections of multiple identities and positionalities—a body of knowledge that grew out of black women’s experiences and political opposition to silence and invisibility related to their racial and defined location (Phoenix 2016). However, despite the trend of examining certain intersections of life experience, Tsalach (2022) offers both methodically and politically, an emphasis on a broader experience of otherness that can be found under the heading of Mizrahi, a title that is sometimes blurred in the particular experience being examined. Following on from this claim, I do believe that such a move is not a matter of narrowing the scope but rather of widening it.

As Wildhagen (2015) warns, “first generation students” may also replicate the oppressive mechanism: serve only as a social category for measuring achievement, leadership and integration, becoming a tool of public relations for the academic establishment. She believes that in order for the “first generation” to have as wide an impact as possible and to maintain its relative flexibility, it is necessary to continue to produce critical knowledge about academia. As I described, the conflicts that came up in the workshop seem to reveal that institutional practices that use the concept must be constantly pursued, even those that seek to provide a safe space for FGCSs, and pay attention to the self-definition of those who fall under the category and their different life experiences and narratives. Along with recognizing the importance of the FGCS, one must be careful to note that their uniqueness might obscure both the power relations in society and structural hierarchies that produce different configurations of exclusion and discrimination toward them. As Razack (1998) reminds us, it is important to examine who are the Others, who are the saviors and who are the saved, and what we must do to disrupt these historical relations of power.

Discussion

This autoethnographic description shows, the category of FGCS also invites us to think not only about race or class, as previous studies have done, but also about ethnicity as a catalyst for exclusion from the academic system. Coming out of the academic closet challenges the FGCS’s liminal position between both worlds, illustrating that one must be cautious not to take a fundamental—essentialist—approach when examining the status of the first generation in higher education. As Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995, 62) warn, “to reject a paradigm that attempts to be everything to everyone and consequently becomes nothing for anyone, allowing the status quo to prevail.”

The notion of FGCS, as proposed for instance by Efrat Ben-Shushan Gazit, challenges the conventional victim narrative associated with this category. This includes the very existence of workshops that liberate it from being perceived as a group held captive by the constraints of a rigid academic hierarchy or constrained by intellectual genealogical family attributions. FGCSs are not solely victims of institutional discrimination and inequality; they emerge as social agents of change, wielding the capacity to shape a new discourse surrounding this category. This discourse unfolds a phenomenology marked by singular pride, a sense of belonging, and the achievement of pioneering success.

This conclusion raises the question to what extent the members of this category will succeed in producing a political act (Kayyal and Safi 2020, 501), by blurring ethnic differences and focusing on the goal itself—educational equality. Behar reminds us that although many consider scholarship and activism complementary, where producers of scholarly texts and community activists blend together (as has often been the case in the Mizrahi democratic struggle), this overlap is subject to the tension inherent in the contrasting logics that underlie efforts to progressively change sociopolitical contexts on the one hand and to produce texts on the other (2008, 89).

Whether a shared political-class consciousness will be created for the first generation, one that will generate public activity on campus and beyond, and whether, in the end, the recognition of this status has been found to contribute to the establishment of emotional experiences of belonging and academic responsibility. Gretzky and Lerner (2021) analyzed academic narratives of Israeli students and showed consumerist–emotional therapeutic duality in the ways they make sense of their encounter with the university. They argue that “students evaluate how their professors meet their emotional, therapeutic, and consumer needs and perceive the knowledge they acquire as providing them with both pragmatic skills and emotional experience” (205). Following their conclusion, I shall assume that empowering the FGCS in the academic sphere challenges the culture of “academic capitalism” and creates new understanding on intellectual privilege and authority.

These insights of mine were revealed in a short period of time, reflecting the reality of real-life experiences and anchoring the theory firmly in the field. In June of last year (2021), I was invited by one of the fellowship participants, who initiated and organized a FGCS fellowship herself at Ben Gurion University (Israel). It was another opportunity to be there in the position of the deliverer of knowledge, who explains how to apply for scholarships, how to deal with the feelings after the doctorate is already in my hand, after I have already “won.”. It was an opportunity for a reflexive examination of the experience I had, and an opportunity to meet again similar and different experiences from my own.

Several months later, I broadcasted a program dealing with the first generation on the Israeli public radio station Galei Tzahal. The moment of going on air, and even the moments before it, caused me great difficulty, embarrassment, fear of overexposure, and even shame as I was about to voice my intimate story in one of the most popular radio stations. To my great surprise, at the end of the program I was flooded with many posts on Facebook, from senior doctors to beginner students, who also came out of their first-generation closet.

There were those who asked for my approval to recognize their first-generation academic status, “So, what do you say, Elazar, am I included in the definition?” There were others who had never heard of this category, and the program prompted them to rethink of themselves and their self-definition. The anthropologist who tells his story on the radio, in a station that for years has been painted in one voice and one color, has the power to produce a discourse on the muted subject, to encourage self-reflection in himself and in others.

In conclusion, from a personal perspective, I strongly believe that being a first-generation academic requires a significant amount of compassion. In fact, it is absolutely essential. Without compassion, I don’t think it would be possible to thrive in academia, an environment that is often seen as threatening and alienating. I feel compassion toward my parents and family members who may never fully comprehend my academic pursuits or read my papers; compassion for lecturers who may never truly understand the depth of sensitivity and complexity of my identity narrative; compassion for colleagues and classmates who may have had different starting points in their academic journeys; and most importantly, compassion for myself.