Building a Race-Conscious University One Administrator at a Time

Roger Berkowitz

Jonathan Kay reports on the meeting last week of Universities Canada, a conference of academic administrators in Canada. There was, Kay writes, barely a mention of Covid, virtual education, or the financial crisis facing many Canadian universities. Instead, the entire meeting was dedicated to various questions of how universities can pursue social justice. After describing some of these initiatives, Kay explores the “centerpiece” of the meeting, a report titled Building a Race-Conscious Institution: A Guide and Toolkit for University Leaders Enacting Anti-Racist Organizational Change. As one can glean from the title, this is a jargon-laden document reminiscent of corporate human resources teams rather than a university dedicated to the life of the mind. Kay writes:

The report’s main theme is that university leaders must decisively reject the idea of “colour-blindness” (which the author asserts should properly be termed “colour evasion”) in favour of becoming “race-conscious individuals” who “explicitly reflect on their ethno-racial identity and group membership.” The author also exhorts university presidents to “actively examine their personally mediated racial biases, consider their individual experiences with respect to racism, and acknowledge their relative race-related marginalization or privilege in the larger society.” To persist in colour evasion, the author warns, is to erect “discursive barriers to antiracist organizational change.”

And colour evasion is just one of 10 listed “dominant ideologies and pervasive narratives [that] undermine efforts to counteract racism.” Among the other “barriers” listed by the author are “equal opportunity,” “tradition,” and “tolerance.” The report also contains tangents on “white fragility,” “allyship,” and the “ethics of care” prescribed by “critical feminist and antiracist scholars”—as well as instructions regarding the use of certain words and phrases. For instance: “Representation gaps among students, scholars, and staff in higher education are not ‘achievement’ gaps, but rather ‘opportunity’ gaps.”...