Neoliberalizing Diversity In Liberal Arts College Life

As neoliberalism has expanded from corporations to higher education, the notion of “diversity” is increasingly seen as the contribution of individuals to an organization. By focusing on one liberal arts college, author Bonnie Urciuoli shows how schools market themselves as “diverse” communities to which all members contribute. She explores how students of color are recruited, how their lives are institutionally organized, and how they provide the faces, numbers, and stories that represent schools as diverse. In doing so, she finds that unlike students’ routine experiences of racism or other social differences, neoliberal diversity is mainly about improving schools’ images.

The Spanish Language in the United States addresses the rootedness of Spanish in the United States, its racialization, and Spanish speakers’ resistance against racialization. This novel approach challenges the "foreigner" status of Spanish and shows that racialization victims do not take their oppression meekly. It traces the rootedness of Spanish since the 1500s, when the Spanish empire began the settlement of the new land, till today, when 39 million U.S. Latinos speak Spanish at home. Authors show how whites categorize Spanish speaking in ways that denigrate the non-standard language habits of Spanish speakers—including in schools—highlighting ways of overcoming racism.

Humboldt Revisited offers a fresh perspective on the contemporary discourse surrounding reform of European universities. Arguing that contemporary reform derives its basis from pre-constructed truths about the so-called ‘Humboldt-university,’ this monograph traces the historical descent of these truths to the American reception of Humboldt's ideas from the mid-19th century up until the 1960s. Drawing from a rich selection of historical sources, this volume offers an alternative to conventional explanations of the forces behind the ongoing reform of European universities. It also challenges the conventional historical narrative on the Humboldt University, providing new insight into the American reception of the German ideas.

Early career researchers (ECRs) in education bring unique histories of professional practice and development into academic research communities. Women Becoming Practitioner Researchers explores autoethnographies of twelve women who were, or still are, schoolteachers in the process of becoming researchers. Using autoethnography to disrupt the established systems that distance researchers from their research, the chapters in this volume are curated to apply theory to this important transition. This theory as method approach provides a foundation for understanding as the authors’ weave threads of identities and experiences into their roles as practitioner researchers.

The movement of policy is a core feature of contemporary education reform. Many different concepts, including policy transfer, borrowing and lending, travelling, diffusion and mobility, have been deployed to study how and why policy moves across jurisdictions, scales of governance, policy sectors or organisations. However, the underlying theoretical perspectives and the foundational assumptions of different approaches to policy movement remain insufficiently discussed. To address this gap, this book places front and center questions of theory, ontology, epistemology and method related to policy movement. It explores a wide diversity of approaches to help understand the policy movement phenomena, providing a useful guide on global studies in education, as well as insights into the future of this dynamic area of work.

"This study recognized diversity, equity, and inclusion (CERSE, n.d.; Crutcher, 2018; Equity Literacy Institute, n.d.; U.S. Department of Education, 2016) efforts as essential for small liberal arts college survival. Using a single six-college consortium as the case, interviews of students, administrators, and faculty indicated readiness to take on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in terms of knowledge and awareness support, financial support, and human resources. In answering the question, in what ways might consortia member-colleges be situated to make change in diversity, equity, and inclusion, the intention was to ultimately support meaningful change within the sustainability-minded consortium studied. Relative to this case, the sustainability field is often seen as disproportionately composed of middle and upper class White academics with a primary focus on ecological rather than social factors of sustainability (McNamara, 2008; Taylor, 2018). Enrollment demographics illustrating predominantly White and middle-class faculty and students, challenge all six institutions within the consortium to cultivate racial and socioeconomic diversity as well as other diverse identifiers among students, faculty, and staff. Attention to diversity in higher education and specifically for small liberal arts colleges comes at a critical time. Studies have shown that students of color will soon become a majority of the student body on most college campuses (Eagan et al., 2016; Musu-Gillette et al., 2016; Vespa, Armstrong, & Medina, 2018) yet, the racial and ethnic diversity of students at small liberal arts colleges remained lower than that of national universities (US News and World Report, 2018). As birth rates dropped by nearly 13 percent with the Great Recession spanning late 2007 to mid 2009, the number of youth preparing for college is in decline (Grawe, 2018; Gray, 2019). Thus the net enrollment at small liberal arts colleges is of concern (Espinosa, Turk, Taylor, & Chessman, 2019; Grawe, 2018). Strategic colleges struggling to stay afloat will be broadening their reach to students of color, particularly Latinx students, in their efforts to recruit and retain. As a qualitative study, this project was designed to describe and interpret how mission-driven college consortia, and their member stakeholders, approach initiatives such as those aimed at DEI. This case study, where a particular college consortium was explored in-depth, served as an appropriate methodology. Methods employed included participant observation, focus group interviews, surveys, and document analysis. Among other findings, data revealed that the colleges may be poised to redefine sustainability in higher education in ways that support recruitment and retention of students and faculty of color. Though consistent with consortia college missions, barriers exist. Directives from leadership to faculty and students in the form of strategic diversity plans would benefit the stakeholders’ confidence and competence in achieving DEI. Diversity initiatives might also be advanced more effectively and efficiently if the institutions’ embodiment of sustainability studies was more inclusive of DEI principles and social justice perspectives. Working together as a consortium would could potentially provide needed support for such challenges."--leaf iv, v.

A sequel to the insightful Race and Class Matters at an Elite College that examines the challenges of diversity from freshman orientation to graduation

Entrepreneurial Cosplay takes a comprehensive and insightful look at the business of cosplay, exploring the ways that artists and fans engage in entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial practices to gain personal and professional success. Centered around the concept of entrepreneurship and the newly emerging concept of intrapreneurship – using entrepreneurial principles to enhance or further an existing concept, organization or product – the book showcases the ways in which cosplayers create new ideas, new ways of working and new ways of doing things, exploiting their knowledge to create new opportunities. By analyzing the numerous motivations driving cosplay behavior (self-expression, external recognition and financial gain), this volume provides a unique view of current cosplay practice and its relationship to economic activity. Offering important insight into this emerging area, this book will be of interest to scholars seeking to learn how entrepreneurial and economic models may be used to understand the emerging field of cosplay studies, as well as students and scholars working in the fields of Entrepreneurship, Business, Fan Studies, Visual Art Studies and Gender Studies.

Diversity has been a focus of higher education policy, law, and scholarship for decades, continually expanding to include not only race, ethnicity and gender, but also socioeconomic status, sexual and political orientation, and more. However, existing collections still tend to focus on a narrow definition of diversity in education, or in relation to singular topics like access to higher education, financial aid, and affirmative action. By contrast, Diversity in American Higher Education captures in one volume the wide range of critical issues that comprise the current discourse on diversity on the college campus in its broadest sense. This edited collection explores: legal perspectives on diversity and affirmative action higher education's relationship to the deeper roots of K-12 equity and access policy, politics, and practice's effects on students, faculty, and staff. Bringing together the leading experts on diversity in higher education scholarship, Diversity in American Higher Education redefines the agenda for diversity as we know it today.