Interrogating the Histories and Futures of “Diversity”

Abstract

On October 16 and 17, 2017, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, we brought together scholars from around the world to collectively investigate the concept, history, and administration of the global discourse and practice of "diversity." In particular, we were interested in how the US Supreme Court decisions in Regents of University of California v. Bakke and Grutter v. Bollinger had ultimately led public universities in the United States to shift away from the original intent of affirmative action, which worked to redress historical inequality, and toward the concept of "diversity." 1 We were struck by the ways that university-led diversity initiatives have shaped our everyday lives and by the extent to which we have been called to manage them.It is not, we argued, that diversity is new -it was already there, as a form of "integration," at least since the 1970s (see Dresch 1995) -but that affirmative action and other legal forms of broader social redress are in many places either no longer in effect or in rapid decline. We were interested in scrutinizing how, as a consequence of this shift, inclusion has come to be theorized through diversity as an approach that systematically denies access to minoritized populations (including indigenous people, in nation-states and in the world more generally), regardless of actual demographic status. While the number of minoritized populations in the United States is moving toward the status of becoming a demographic majority, the logic of diversity assumes that they will remain in the minority at key sites

Queering School Leadership Preparation Curricula for Gender Justice in Public Schooling

“…Difference in our institutional diversity models is pathological (Jordan, 1995; Puar, 2017). Social justice work seeks to redress historical inequality (Partridge & Chin, 2019). However, a transformative queer curriculum must center and educate students on the realities of their lived experiences.…”

“…Often, school district leadership say that they want bold and visionary leaders that could lead in socially just ways, make tough calls to ensure that students are put first regardless of backlash from parents, politicians, and special interest group in an existing system that is unfair and oppressive (Starr, 2018). It is important that educational organizational arrangements and commitments to social justice work are interrogated under this current anti-intellectual and authoritarian moment (Partridge & Chin, 2019). A crucial part of changing and queering social frames for building an inclusive school community where no one is silenced and devalued is possible requires school leaders and administrators be trained to talk to and listen to children and their families who are gender and sexuality diverse (Butler-Wall et al, 2016).…”

Can there be a Godly ethnography? Islamic anthropology, epistemic decolonization, and the ethnographic stance

“…This unwillingness to spell out substantive alternatives may be an attribute of secular criticism as a “reading that is open to reflection on its own presuppositions,” and nothing beyond that (Warner, 2005, 35). Similarly, while anthropology's encounter with difference aims to reveal the power‐laden contingencies of naturalized categories to open up alternative ways of apprehending and intervening in the world, the exact changes in the world that are desired are left unspecified beyond the aim that they facilitate the now familiar—if increasingly interrogated (Partridge and Chin, 2019)—institutional tripartite of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Of course, diversity, equity, and inclusion are substantive moral imperatives, ends in their own right, but they are so amorally: they don't rule on whose difference is good or better, merely that all should be equally included. Like the ethnographic stance, our decolonizing horizons are transformative because they restlessly refuse judgment.…”

A Pirouette with the Twist of a Wheelchair: Embodied Translation and the Creation of Kinesthetic Commensurability

“…On the macro level, embodied translation functions as a social phenomenon residing in the gray space between Othering and normalization, contributing to a more general discussion of not only disability accommodation but also broader policies of diversity, inclusion, social integration, and multiculturalism (see Habermas 2011, 15; Partridge and Chin 2019, 198; Turner 2004, 413). By emphasizing the kinesthetic core of movement rather than its visuality or the way it is executed, translation practices in integrated dance serve as a broader opportunity to acknowledge the diversity of bodies present while maintaining a kinesthetic collective .…”

“…In a political and cultural area in which difference is commonly dealt with through separation, deportation, and segregation, and in which discourses of multiculturalism and diversity are criticized as frameworks that may sustain inequality (Partridge and Chin 2019, 198; Turner 2004, 413), the idea of kinesthetic commensurability and the cultural potential of incorporating alterity within the social order are important. Through melding ability and disability and making bodily difference translatable, embodied translation exposes the fact that categories such as ability and disability, and dance and disability, were never binaries to begin with.…”