In 2018, 24% of first-time graduate school enrollments were members of minoritized populations, while attrition rates continue to signal a blocked pathway to doctoral degree and assistant professorship attainment. How We Got Here: The Role of Critical Mentoring and Social Justice Praxis. Essays in Honor of George W. Noblit is a collective effort of scholars of education to deploy critical mentoring and social justice praxis to disrupt this pattern of institutional failure. Critical mentoring rejects meritocratic discourses that deny the politicized, racialized, gendered, and ableist spaces of higher education. Social justice praxis centers the knowledge and struggle of doctoral students with multiple intersectional identities as interdisciplinary bodies of praxis. These positionings speak back to institutional -isms with the aim of broadening the participation of folx conventionally held in the margins of academia. This volume is presented as a definitive collection that holistically honors nearly 40 years of critical mentoring and social justice praxis with George W. Noblit, which each contributor has carried into their own work. Contributors are: Silvia Cristina Bettez, Heather Bower, Ashley S. Boyd, Mary Kay Delaney, Josh Diem, Deborah Eaker-Rich, Courtney George, Beth Hatt, Sherick Hughes, Rhonda Jeffries, Michael E. Jennings, Alison LaGarry, Monica McKinney, Jason Mendez, Hillary Parkhouse, Summer Melody Pennell, Marta Sanchez, M. Billye Sankofa Waters, Amy Senta, Amy Swain, and Luis Urrieta, Jr.