Compromises and Contradictions: Responding to Rape on College Campuses in the Neoliberal State

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

Abstract

This conceptual paper explores the ways in which higher education has become an instrument of the state in advancing state goals for addressing violence against women and how bureaucracies to enforce these state goals have coopted the time and resources of higher education practitioners. This cooptation has meant that the broader feminist goal of ending patriarchal norms that make rape possible has largely disappeared from the discourse. The author’s positionality as a student affairs practitioner provides a rare perspective in the literature and aims to develop new ways of conceptualizing higher education’s approach to rape that will lend insight to the work of both scholars and practitioners who share the goal of making college campuses rape-free.

Author

• Julie Ann White, Onondaga Community College