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In the 1990s, at the age of 38, Salome Raheim started on a path to become a tenured professor at the University of Iowa. She quickly learned that to achieve her goal, it was best to keep quiet about her interest in various forms of energy healing.
“My mentors made it clear that spirituality was not a legitimate topic for academic exploration,” she recalls. “I didn’t want anything to jeopardize my employment. I had two children to feed.” As the only African-American faculty member on the tenure track in the School of Social Work, Raheim felt she had to be careful about anything that could threaten her professional credibility.
Though…