Burned Through: Diversity Workers and the Contradictions of Institutional Transformation

• In Event: 66.042 - Organizational Administration, Faculty, and Institutional Change

Abstract

This paper ethnographically examines the experiences of mid-level administrators and student affairs staff engaged in diversity work. These individuals were tasked with providing support services to minoritized students, staff, and faculty and trainings to majoritarian students, staff, and faculty, services they provided at great personal and emotional cost to themselves. As the campus attempted to transform itself into a more diverse and inclusive institution in response to a crisis on campus, these diversity workers were marginalized in the reform process and largely excluded from decision-making. Using social movement theory, this paper analyzes how attempts to transform a campus into a more inclusive and diverse institution failed to address raced relations between minoritized diversity workers and majoritarian campus members.

Author

• Kirk Anderson, Dickinson College