A critical race theory analysis of transnational student activism, social media counter-stories, and the hegemonic logics of diversity work in higher education

Abstract

This article employs critical race theory (CRT) to explore what student activist counter-narratives reveal about the logics of institutional diversity work and the ways this work reinforces racist configurations of power and exclusion in higher education. In 2014, student activism erupted in a series of critical incidents on university campuses around the world. As a form of counter-narrative, social media content generated by movements employing hashtags like #RhodesMustFall and #itooamharvard, drew attention to the discrepancy between institutional conceptions of inclusion evidenced in diversity policies and practices, and student experiences of persistent exclusion. A corpus of 2500 social media posts, representing Must Fall and I, Too, Am campaigns at three universities, was analyzed and emergent themes utilized to interrogate the hegemonic logics of higher education diversity work. Findings include: (1) compression in diversity discourse, (2) the paradox of diversity as capital, and (3) bureaucratic institutional responses to student activism.

Keywords:

• Transnational student activism
• social media
• hegemony
• diversity
• higher education
• critical race theory (CRT)
• counter-story

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was by reported the author.

Notes

1 Using the term minoritized connotes exclusion as a social process, as opposed to the term minority, which implies that numerical differences are a product of underrepresentation or demography. South Africa, with a majority Black population (80.9%), exemplifies the impacts of minoritization in higher education (Black students comprised 32% post-secondary students in 1990, 60% in 1998) (Anderson, 2019; CIA Factbook, n.d.; Harper, 2012; Jansen, 2014).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rebecca Robertson

Rebecca Robertson is a faculty member in the Department of Anthropology at Humboldt State University (HSU) and serves as the Director of HSU’s Ethnographic Research Lab. She is an applied anthropologist whose research addresses issues of equity and inclusion in organizational cultures, with a specific focus on understanding and interrupting the reproduction of inequality. Currently, her research combines social network analysis with ethnographic methods to explore the role that student activism plays in catalyzing change in higher education. She is particularly interested in how student activists use social media as a tool of resistance, for example, by deploying hashtags to organize across institutional and national contexts. Rebecca is now studying student activist mobilization and tactical flexibility within the context of the COVID-19 crisis in higher education.