Lisa Bowleg, PhD, MA, Founder and CEO, The Intersectionality Training Institute

September 1, 2026

“June, July, and August.”  These, my friend Craig (a teacher) once joked, were the three best things about being a professor.

Come to think of it, it may now be just two things: June and July.  Many U.S. universities are already back in full swing.  At the gym last week, I greeted a professor buddy.  “When’s school start?” I asked.  His smile faded, he dropped his head forlornly and replied, “Monday.”  “Hey, when does your semester start?” I asked another gym buddy. “Today! I’m so depressed,” she answered.

Yes, the back-to-school-blues are in full effect, friends.  But mercifully, not for me.  Now don’t hate.  Too late?  Yeah, I know. I have professor friends aplenty.  My not-yet-retired friends have not been taciturn about their envy about my retirement.

I am now Professor Emeritus, having retired from my position as professor of applied social psychology at the George Washington University (GW) at the end of December 2025.

Except for full year sabbaticals in 2017 and 2024, this fall marks the first time in 42 years that I have not been expected to appear on a university campus as either student or faculty.

Oh, it is GLORIOUS!!!  No more 3-hour door to door commute from my home in Philadelphia to GW’s Foggy Bottom campus.  Having commuted on Amtrak for well over a decade, I can affirm that lengthy commutes are not for the faint of heart. That last semester of commuting to GW twice weekly to teach an undergraduate course damn near killed me!

And PTL, no more faculty meetings! I detested monthly faculty meetings at every university with the same intensity.  Most of the meetings occupied time on my calendar (and irrecoverable hours of my life) that could have been better served by a summary email.  Without exception, I would have always preferred to have been writing a manuscript or grant proposal, analyzing data, or having a root canal.

Other than the commute and faculty meetings, there was much to love about being a professor.  I loved the flexibility, but never forgot a lesson from a full professor when I was an assistant professor: “In academia, you get to choose which 100 hours per week you work.”  I also loved that I was paid to think, research, and write whatever I deemed to be important and interesting.

Now granted, because I am a Black woman in the U.S., the job also included microaggressions. “You’re a professor?” a skeptical library staffer once queried; or the many times that undergraduates thought nothing of addressing me by first name rather than by title upon first meeting.

And discrimination.  At one gig, I learned that my 9-month salary was roughly 24% less than a white male colleague’s, despite the fact that I was the only professor in the department with a National Institutes of Health-funded R01 grant.  When I advocated for equitable remedy, the dean explained as if it were the most natural thing in the world that I had come in at a lower salary, and of course, there was just nothing that could be done about it.

Said dean also developed amnesia about a conversation we had had the summer before when I explained that I could not serve on the APT (Appointments, Promotion and Tenure) committee because of my intention to seek promotion to full professor the following year.  When I revisited the conversation, I received a cool, “Promotion to full?  We don’t think it’s time yet.”

Well, I thought it was time and strutted out of that department with two new R01 grants. Turns out GW my new employer, shared my assessment that it was time that I be promoted to full professor.

Nevertheless, this week I have found myself reflecting on my life as a professor a lot. It’s as if I’ve been in the academy so long that my body clock is auto set on “start of the semester” mode.

There’s just something about the official start of the academic calendar.  The fall semester has commenced, and my biorhythm is saying, “What no syllabus to complete?”  “No Amtrak trains to book?” “No calendar entries for department or program meetings?”  I’m no longer of it, but still very much in it.

It feels a lot like the Hotel California: “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”  Indeed, I am still advising my last doctoral student, the wonderful Myla Lyons, MA who will graduate with her doctorate in 2028.

Myla Lyons, PhDc & Prof Lisa Bowleg

I’m also still working as an associate editor at the American Journal of Public Health, albeit as Associate Editor Emeritus.  I’m collaborating with a thoughtful and brilliant group of scholars on an important supplement on anti-racism and decoloniality.  The supplement’s going to be fire!   I’m also still collaborating on several grants as a co-investigator and as a coauthor on several manuscripts.   See what I mean?

But don’t get me wrong.  I am supremely happy to be retired.   “Semi-retired,” is what my husband corrects, whenever he hears me describe myself as retired.  Okay, I’m happily semi-tired and loving my entrepreneurial journey with ITI.

Intersectionality engages difficult and painful topics such as oppression, stigma, discrimination and social inequality, but ITI’s ever growing community of people passionate about intersectionality, equity and social justice is such a source of joy.  It’s one of the many reasons I often describe my ITI-related work as joyful.  There can be joy in struggle. I choose joy.

ITI has enriched my life with  more new friendships, collaborations, and conversations with bountiful community of interesting, whip-smart, innovative multidisciplinary doctoral students, faculty members at all career ranks, researchers, physicians, nurses, community activists, policymakers and practitioners.

Through our monthly virtual salons, I’ve met people from India, Croatia, China and the UK; people who stay up well beyond their bedtimes to participate in conversations about intersectionality.

I’ve had the delight of people who have traveled from all over the U.S. and as far away as Canada, Malaysia, Singapore and the UK (Sheffield, London and Wales) to attend our annual in-person Intersectionality Summer Intensive.

You know what else is thrilling? ITI has organically established partnerships with members of past ISI cohorts to either develop content for ITI or retain their intellectual property and deliver trainings on novel, innovative and important developments in intersectionality research that you’re just not likely to find anywhere else.

Among the past ISI cohort members earning rave reviews for their in-person and virtual facilitation of intersectionality trainings are:

Therefore, to all my retirement-envy haters out there (y’all know who you are and I love you), I hope it will bring a modicum of comfort to know that this retired professor is not lying around reading books for pleasure, walking to mid-morning yoga classes, and getting routine 90-minute massages as I had fantasized I’d be doing on those Amtrak rides of yore.

I’m still very much in the grind of the life of an entrepreneurial professor, albeit one without the classroom teaching, faculty meetings, 6-hour daily intercity commute, and oh yeah… the steady monthly paycheck.