“It’s Not Enough to Just Insert a Few People of Color:” An Intersectional Analysis of Failed Leadership in Netflix’s The Chair Series

Abstract

Leadership roles in higher education are still held predominately by white male leaders while women of color, especially, struggle to be recognized, hired, and/or appointed as leaders. In popular culture, though there have been films and television series that focus on student life on campus, there have been few representations of life as a leader in higher education. A new six-episode Netflix series, The Chair, about the first woman of color department chair at a liberal arts college examines issues of sexism and racism but doesn’t allow for a harsh enough critique of the insidious ways the institution continues to repress women, especially women of color. I engage in an intersectional analysis of the series’ representations of a department chair and argue that, while masquerading as a transformative representation, the series actually reifies the ideology of the academy (namely white supremacy and heteropatriarchy) and illustrates the ways progressive change is resisted by institutional powerbrokers holding upper-level managerial roles in the college.