Documenting a black professor’s account of his own professional experience, Stewart’s study describes what it feels like to be a non-white academic in one of the “big three” disciplines in the humanities — English, history, and philosophy. Challenging the notion that today’s Canadian universities have successfully addressed the issues of diversity, You Must Be a Basketball Player warns that if professors of color cannot see academia as a liberal bastion, it can only be even more forbidding for students of color. Demonstrating how integration policies are manipulated when it comes to hiring visible minorities in the university, this reference highlights aspects such as merit that are commonly used to deny employment. Positing that institutions should deliver on their stated policies instead of hiding behind formalities, Stewart’s account of white academic privilege, homogeneity, cowardice, and hypocrisy will surprise those inside and outside of the academy.

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