Trauma, Violence, and Healing: Diversity Plans as Crisis Management, a Reconceptualization

• In Event: 30.043 - Living in Neoliberal Times: Complicating Notions of Progress in Higher Education

Abstract

Considering higher education’s present struggles with difference, this paper argues that a shift in the way diversity is understood and addressed is required to move toward a more equitable future. We argue that diversity issues and incidents should be reconceptualized as crises, in acknowledgement of their real and symbolic violence. As such, crisis management literature provides a useful lens to critically analyze both anomalous and systemic injustice, while proactively re-centering justice within higher education.

Authors

• Siduri J. Haslerig, The University of Oklahoma

• Kirsten T. Edwards, University of Oklahoma