Imagined Futures for Higher Education: Transforming Our Racialized Organizations Toward Racial Justice

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

We are again in a historical time of change prompted by racial social movements, specifically the Black Lives Matter movement, where higher education leaders are returning to conversations about equity. Although many leaders and institutions are committed to racial diversity and equity, structurally institutions remain largely unchanged. Central to this symposium is the possibility of racially just transformative change of higher education (Patton & Haynes, 2018; Stewart, 2018). This symposia is a conversation with higher education scholars reflecting on and imagining how to transform our institutions, as racialized organizations (Ray, 2019), to be racially just. If we don’t seize this opportune time to examine the prevailing racism of our universities, we fail to alter the white supremacist core of our institutions.

Sub Unit

• Division J - Postsecondary Education / Division J - Section 3: Organization, Management, and Leadership

Chair

• Deborah E. Southern, University of California - Los Angeles

Papers

• Is It All for Naught? Inadequate Changes on Campus Without Equity-Minded Governance and Decision-Making - Raquel M. Rall, University of California - Riverside

• The Keys to Endurance: An Investigation of the Institutional Factors Relating to the Persistence of Historically Black Colleges and Universities - Tolani Britton, University of California - Berkeley

• Reckoning With Ongoing Indigenous Extraction, Exploitation, Neglect, and Paternalism - Theresa J. Stewart-Ambo, University of California - Los Angeles

• Interrogating Whiteness in Organizational Policies and Practice - Deborah E. Southern, University of California - Los Angeles

Discussant

• Megan Trinh, University of California - Los Angeles