Abstract
Central to this study is the possibility of racially just transformative change. However, institutional change models that do not disrupt whiteness within organizations may ultimately fail to alter racist structures and, in not addressing whiteness, prohibit racially just transformative change. In this critical comparative case study of three graduate schools and nine graduate programs across three institutions, I examined how graduate schools, programs, and leaders planned and implemented equity initiatives. Data reveal that racially just transformative change was largely tempered through organizational constraints and drawbacks in programs’ approach to equity-related changes that were often nonperformative, including practices that reproduced whiteness.
Institutional change efforts that were formed using the Master’s Tools ultimately serve the interests of the Master’s House (Lorde, 2007) by making sure that that the race equity workers on their campus remain occupied with the Master’s concerns (e.g., white innocence and white fragility) in the name of institutional change. (p. 6)
However, moving from the margins as a space of resistance (hooks, 1989) and beyond diversity discourse prevalent in our institutions (Chang, 2002), racially just transformative change challenges traditional practices and encompasses racial “equity and justice in institutional structures, processes, and practices” (Stewart, 2018, p. 1) that alter the institution. Furthermore, institutional change models that do not disrupt whiteness within organizations may ultimately fail to alter racist structures, and in not addressing whiteness, prohibit racially just transformative change (Chang, 2002; Ferguson, 2012, 2014; hooks, 1989; Patton & Haynes, 2018; Rojas, 2010; Stewart, 2018).
We in higher education are again in a historical time of potential institutional change prompted by the resurgence of national attention on long-standing historical racial social justice movements, specifically the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020, where institutions and leaders returned to conversations about diversity and equity 2 in response (Biondi, 2011; Kelley, 2015; Morgan & Davis, 2019; Southern, 2025; Tichavakunda, 2021). As we have seen historically and today, racial justice movements have tense and often violent interactions with higher education institutions, but they also exercise the power to pressure institutions to change (Cole, 2018; Morgan & Davis, 2019; Rojas, 2010). For example, in his study of the Black Power movement, Rojas (2010) describes how institutions responded to demands with the creation of Black Studies departments but established them at the margins of the university. However, historically, renewed social movements to advance social justice in higher education are often met with backlash (Berrey, 2015; Cole, 2018; Patel, 2015), which we are currently enduring in U.S. higher education with deliberate federal restrictions to institutional autonomy, research funding, and the Department of Education with particular scrutiny over values of diversity and equity (Inside Higher Education, 2025).
Within institutions, graduate education in particular is a space of academic socialization, and therefore also an important space of possible change or resistance to consider as graduate students are trained to be future leaders of the academy, including normative practices, perspectives, and culture (Posselt, 2016, 2020; Walker et al., 2008). Thus, graduate education is an important area of higher education to examine potential transformative change and its challenges within institutions, and offers insight into the opportunities for and constraints on change. For example, in graduate education specifically, but relevant to higher education broadly, leaders can potentially address historically excluded and marginalized representation in higher education via who they admit and hire in an attempt to advance racial diversity and equity (Posselt, 2016, 2020). Furthermore, as a site of socialization, graduate programs have the potential to cultivate a space of support so that historically excluded and racially marginalized colleagues and graduate students can thrive (Posselt, 2016, 2020). However, we know from literature on higher education leaders that without proper conditions and support to carry out racialized change work, they often implement changes that are not transformative or sustainable (Felix et al., 2024; LePeau et al., 2024; Liera, 2020, 2023). Thus, understanding the conditions of racialized change work in graduate education specifically offers insight into longstanding organizational norms and the potential to leverage a site of academic socialization to support transformative change.
To understand how graduate education, as the academy’s site of socialization and reproduction (Posselt, 2016, 2020; Walker et al., 2008), could potentially facilitate or obstruct institutional transformation toward racial justice, I examined how graduate schools, programs, and leaders planned and implemented equity initiatives through a comparative case study. I focus on equity work as a window into whiteness embedded in organizations, and how whiteness might be grappled with by graduate leaders as they plan and implement equity initiatives, practices, and policies. In this study, I addressed three research questions: (a) In what ways do organizational structures constrain transformative change as graduate leaders work to pursue racial equity? (b) How is whiteness manifesting in equity planning and initiatives in the graduate school and programs? and (c) How do leaders exercise their agency within their organization as they plan and implement equity? Keeping in mind the goal of racially just transformative change, the data reveal that organizational change was largely obstructed. I find that this obstruction occurred through three standard organizational processes that tend to impede change of any sort, and through drawbacks in programs’ approach to equity-related changes specifically. The latter includes isolating equity work and mechanisms that reproduce whiteness. In this paper, I present findings from the graduate schools and three graduate programs across science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), humanities, and social science at Ponderosa Pine, Red Cedar, and Western Juniper Universities.
Review of Literature
Equity often includes diversity plans or initiatives, but these can be nonperformative (Ahmed, 2006; i.e., symbols or representations of activity that replace action) and may even evade accountability for whiteness and racial injustice within the spaces they are trying to change (Ahmed, 2006, 2012; Patel, 2015, 2018; Southern, 2025; Squire et al., 2019; Tuck & Yang, 2018). The nascent research literature on graduate education equity efforts shows that, on the one hand, leadership and graduate-level initiatives that are attuned to race and structural inequities can advance racial equity (Griffin & Muñiz, 2011; Posselt, 2018, 2020; Posselt et al., 2017). However, some diversity efforts protect whiteness (Ahmed, 2012; Bondi, 2012; J. Harris & Linder, 2018; Slay et al., 2019). There is a need to examine how graduate programs and leaders engage in this work—and whether or not that work interrogates or upholds whiteness. Graduate education, as a space of academic socialization (Posselt, 2016, 2020; Walker et al., 2008), in particular, is well-positioned to potentially introduce transformative change to the academy. To the extent that equity work is increasingly guided by planning and reporting processes, empirical research also stands to clarify participants’ experiences of diversity and equity implementation, including organizational constraints.
The Pervasiveness of Whiteness in Higher Education
Understanding how white supremacy, a violent socio-historical racialized system that empowers white race and white eurocentric domination (C. Harris, 1993; Mills, 1997), operates is a core component of comprehending how racial injustice is pervasive in higher education (Ahmed, 2006; Bensimon, 2018; Cabrera et al., 2016). A manifestation of white supremacy is whiteness, and whiteness is both structural and socially constructed to privilege white people (C. Harris, 1993; Mills, 1997). In her theory of whiteness as property, C. Harris (1993) demonstrates how whiteness is privileged throughout U.S. law, institutions, and society stemming from historical legacies of white supremacy, slavery, and colonialism which benefits white people, like the right to exclude on the basis of race, and over time white people expect the privileges of whiteness as a form of racial comfort. Furthermore, in institutions like education, Bonilla-Silva (2018) offers a theory of race-evasive racism 3 that details the historical origins of whiteness in the United States and connects white people’s contemporary racial ideology and belief in meritocracy to the racialized social system of white supremacy. Here, like C. Harris’ (1993) theory, race-evasive racism works to conceal racialized oppression while simultaneously maintaining white supremacy, including in education (Bonilla-Silva, 2018; C. Harris, 1993; Mueller, 2020; Ray & Purifoy, 2019).
In higher education, we see the persistence of whiteness through university faculty who are majority white and male, and implicitly and explicitly preserve eurocentric epistemology and patriarchy within the academy (Alexander, 2005; Bhambra et al., 2018). We also see the persistence of whiteness through university initiatives that introduce some change to the institution in response to racial social justice movements, like the creation of a Black Studies, Ethnic Studies, or Gender Studies department, but isolate the influence of that change to the margins of the institution (hooks, 1989) and fail to transform its racist legacies and structures (Biondi, 2011; Cole, 2018; Ferguson, 2012, 2014; Kelley, 2015; Rojas, 2010). Education policy is another area where white supremacy is supported by white decision-makers, perhaps unintentionally but not accidental (Gillborn, 2005, 2019). For instance, education reforms largely benefit white students and schools and are rarely concerned with racial equity (Gillborn, 2005, 2019). Higher education and white supremacy are historically connected and remain intertwined, and thus, whiteness within higher education must not be omitted from examinations of persistent racial inequities (Bonilla-Silva, 2018; Foste & Tevis, 2022; C. Harris, 1993; Mills, 1997; Wilder, 2013).
New Institutionalism and Recent Literature on Racialized Organizations
Facilitating change in longstanding organizations, much less examining and dismantling white supremacy are no small tasks. Institutions are socially constructed and, therefore, can ostensibly be reconstructed (Powell & DiMaggio, 1991; Ray, 2019). To frame my examination of graduate education organizations, I take a new institutionalist view of organizations, which recognizes potential sources of both constraints against change as well as initiations of change (Powell & DiMaggio, 1991). Recently, critical education scholars like McCambly and Colyvas (2022) and Southern (2024c) have bridged organizational theory with newer, critical theories of organizations like Ray’s (2019) theory of racialized organizations and Wooten’s (2019) conceptualization of race, organizations, and the organizing process. For example, in the context of postsecondary grantmaking, McCambly and Colyvas (2022) define racialized change work and consider how organizations can take purposive action to dismantle inequitable arrangements and build new equitable ones. Similarly, in her systematic review of higher education literature on whiteness, Southern (2024c) identifies a need for more research on whiteness in organizations and offers a conceptual framework to examine how white supremacy as a hegemonic power is supported or resisted across ideology, organizational mechanisms, and individuals within institutions.
In this study, I examine how organizational structures like resources, status, and routines are leveraged by agents to shape, facilitate, or resist change, and consider implications for whiteness within the institution and potential for racially just transformation in graduate education. In new institutionalism, organizational status and reputation are driving motivations for resource allocation and decision-making (Powell & DiMaggio, 1991). For example, in graduate education, faculty elected to remove their Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) requirement from their program admissions when they learned that their peers had removed it, citing a concern that requiring the exam would negatively impact their reputation rather than concerns over equity (Southern, 2025). Routines are practices and processes that contribute to the organization’s structure, are often tied to the allocation of resources, and are enacted by individuals (Feldman & Pentland, 2003; Pentland & Feldman, 2005). For example, in graduate education, faculty revise graduate admissions routines when they adopt holistic review, like creating an evaluation rubric (Posselt et al., 2023). Similar to Ray’s (2019) and Bensimon’s (2018) definition, agency in new institutionalism is individuals’ position within the organization where they interpret and carry out routines via schemas and connection to resources (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998; Sewell, 1992). For example, in graduate education, during admissions, faculty individually interpret information about a prospective student as they use an evaluation rubric to make admissions decisions (Posselt et al., 2023). However, racialized organizations often separate commitments to equity from policies or practices that might reinforce racial inequities, and seemingly objective rules may be enforced in ways that racially discriminate (Ray, 2019). This separation allows organizations to “maintain legitimacy and appear neutral or even progressive while doing little to intervene in pervasive patterns of racial inequality” (Ray, 2019, p. 42). For example, in graduate education, an admissions evaluation rubric may not reflect a commitment to equity, but could instead privilege preferences that reflect faculty biases (Posselt et al., 2023). Finally, and importantly, recent literature on race in new institutionalism and organizations argues U.S. organizations are racialized and embedded in a larger social system, which is also racialized, like white supremacy (Ray, 2019; Rojas, 2019; Smith, 2019; Wooten, 2019).
Social Movements and the Potential for Change
Recent national events and racial social justice movements have reinvigorated an environment where issues around racial inequity are inescapable (Biondi, 2011; Cole, 2018; Kelley, 2015; Morgan & Davis, 2019), even for white privileged graduate education leaders who could otherwise live distanced from racial and social oppression, violence, and bias. Therefore, racial social justice movements like BLM, protests of anti-Asian violence amidst COVID-19, and national graduate student strikes for equity between 2020 and 2022 brought new, often privileged individuals, to the conversation about diversity and equity in higher education. Subsequent calls for change within higher education, including graduate education, rang loudly, making it difficult for privileged leaders to avoid realities of racism without active ignorance or resistance. Thus, in response to national and local demands for action regarding racial equity, universities, including the three institutions in this study, called upon their schools, departments, and leaders to design diversity and equity statements and initiatives (Briscoe et al., 2022; Cole & Harper, 2017; Hypolite & Stewart, 2021). In turn, many leaders of equity planning and implementation on behalf of their graduate program or school in this study, like many higher education leaders across the United States, were new to equity and therefore underprepared to imagine and lead racially just transformative change within their organizations (Tuck & Yang, 2018).
Nonperformance of Institutions
Critical research on diversity initiatives suggests that rather than taking responsibility for and remediating racial inequalities on campus, institutions tend to be nonperformative—symbolically adopt equity in ways that merely espouse commitments to diversity and inclusion (Ahmed, 2012; Berrey, 2015; Biondi, 2011; byrd, 2022; Ferguson, 2012; Hoffman & Mitchell, 2016; Kelley, 2015; Southern, 2025; Tichavakunda, 2021). Developing diversity goals rewards the organization legitimacy without requiring the institution or leadership to address racialized realities and inequities across campus (Berrey, 2015; byrd, 2022; Cole & Harper, 2017; Hoffman & Mitchell, 2016). For example, in her phenomenological study of diversity practices in higher education, Ahmed (2012) draws on interviews with diversity practitioners to argue diversity is deployed via leaders in higher education as an institutional practice only insomuch as it aligns with pre-existing institutional values and norms. Similarly, in her comparative case study of two universities, Warikoo (2016) argues institutions enter a “diversity bargain” where diversity is supported only as far as it benefits white students and the institution’s reputation. Importantly, in her collective case study of three institutions, byrd (2022) argues institutional habitus, in particular organizational social status, interacts with diversity practice to influence how the campus supports or mitigates racial equity.
Planning for equity can also be misunderstood as practicing equity. Organizations with an equity plan are generally perceived as doing diversity and equity work, and writing a “good” equity policy is misunderstood as being effective at practicing equity (Ahmed, 2006; Cole & Harper, 2017; Iverson, 2007; Warikoo, 2016). In graduate education research, equity initiatives in recruitment and admissions without integral faculty support or congruence with procedure are a barrier to change and often fall short of a program’s diversity goals, sometimes leaving diversity as a secondary rather than primary concern (Glasener et al., 2019; Griffin & Muñiz, 2011; Griffin et al., 2012; Posselt, 2016). Additionally, equity initiatives in graduate student support like faculty mentoring and racial climate require leaders and programs to consider students’ racialized experiences in order to understand how the academy needs to change to serve students (Griffin et al., 2012), rather than merely espousing a commitment to diversity and inclusion (J. Harris & Linder, 2018; Slay et al., 2019).
Higher education institutions frame diversity and equity statements as action items in themselves and may be the extent of the institution’s equity work (Ahmed, 2006, 2012; Hoffman & Mitchell, 2016). Recent research on equity efforts in graduate education focus on how organizational practices and routines may sustain inequities or lead to change within programs (Posselt, 2016, 2020; Posselt et al., 2017), and the possibilities of equity-minded organizational transformation (Bensimon et al., 2016; Dowd & Bensimon, 2015; Dowd & Liera, 2018; Patton & Haynes, 2018; Stewart, 2018).
Nonperformance of Leaders
Research indicates a tendency among some institutional leaders to implement diversity initiatives as nonperformative and “nothing more than a performance of political correctness, rather than a deeply conscious effort to shift the campus climate and address injustices” (Patton et al., 2019, p. 189). Through this nonperformance by leadership, various higher education institutions and units therein appear to actively pursue equity—and indeed, their members may think that they are doing so—but initiatives are not designed to alter the racialized status quo of the school which privileges whiteness (Cole & Harper, 2017; Patton et al., 2019; Southern, 2025; Squire et al., 2019). For example, in their queer phenomenological study of institutional statements regarding undocumented individuals, Squire et al. (2019) found that statements were used to subdue activism and demands for change rather than taking tangible action to address students’ safety and well-being.
Organizational position of leaders and their ability to leverage their position also shape the scope of their agency, influencing the likelihood of leaders potentially acting in nonperformative ways (Felix, 2021; Felix et al., 2024; Ray, 2019; Wingfield & Alston, 2013). For instance, in his study of organizational change in community colleges, Felix (2021) describes how Latinx practitioners were able to leverage their position within the college and recent equity plan to intentionally support Latinx transfer students. However, in another example, in her study of equity planning in graduate education, Southern (2025) describes how faculty on a diversity committee responded to student demands for anti-racism in a graduate program’s curriculum by merely identifying diverse literature to update syllabi, rather than leading more transformative organizational change like a department review of racism or standards of whiteness within their curriculum.
Finally, leaders supported nonperformative change when they used unspecified and uncritical language to address diversity and equity (Ahmed, 2012; Mueller, 2020; Southern, 2025), rather than critical language like equity-mindedness (Bensimon, 2018; Liera, 2020). For example, recent literature on leaders’ racialized frames and emotions like Southern’s (2025) study on graduate programs argues leaders’ language was nonperformative when it centered white racial comfort, including when leaders translated their equity-mindedness to uncritical language. However, recent literature on leaders’ advocacy for organizational change using equity-mindedness like Liera’s (2020) study on faculty hiring argues agents can leverage their equity-mindedness to interpret practices and introduce new rules to advance racial equity.
These works highlight how individuals and institutions are unknowingly and often unintentionally complicit in white supremacy by simply continuing work as-is within their organizational position and critical awareness because higher education norms and ideology perpetuate the inequitable racialized status quo, which prizes whiteness. Herein lies the importance and tension around agency: individual leaders have the potential to work against whiteness within everyday practices and organizational norms, so long as they are aware of whiteness and white supremacy and how to leverage their organizational position. In the following section, I discuss my framework to examine whiteness as a constraint on racial justice in organizations.
Conceptual Framework: Whiteness as Property in Racialized Organizations
To orient my examination of how whiteness manifests in organizational mechanisms and structures in graduate education organizations, I use Ray’s (2019) theory of racialized organizations to frame the focus of my analysis of whiteness within organizations specifically, and I ground my analysis of whiteness with C. Harris’ (1993) theory of whiteness as property to reflect the persistence of whiteness as a socio-historical racialized power structure which encompasses, but also expands beyond, organizations. 4 C. Harris’ (1993) theory of whiteness as property situates white individuals and their racial privilege within a larger social structure of racialized power that permeates institutions like education, which speaks to how whiteness functions within Ray’s (2019) concept of racialized agency and organizations. In particular with regard to how whiteness holds privilege and property functions within institutions, C. Harris (1993) describes how law historically protects and establishes precedent to position whiteness as an exclusive status and reputation, which is demonstrated in education through legal cases like Plessy v. Ferguson (which upheld racial segregation in schools) and challenged in education through legal cases like Brown v. Board of Education (which ruled racial segregation was unconstitutional). Today, the legitimation of whiteness as an empowered, subordinating, and privileged social status persists, even though legal challenges in education like Affirmative Action (C. Harris, 1993). C. Harris’ (1993) theory of whiteness as property grounds my broader conceptualization of how whiteness persists and functions across and between individual agents and social structures, in particular via my focused use of Ray’s (2019) theory of racialized organizations to examine how whiteness is embedded and manifests in graduate education organizations.
Within his theory of racialized organizations, Ray (2019) draws from C. Harris’ (1993) theory of whiteness as property to describe two key concepts: whiteness as a credential and the expansion of white agency. Whiteness as a credential helps organizations appear racially neutral in principle, when in reality the organization is embedded in the property interests of whiteness like the protection of white leaders’ power and an unequal distribution of resources (Ray & Purifoy, 2019). For example, the property interests of whiteness within the racialized organization manifest via white racial domination of positional power and sense of ownership over jobs, particularly when the status of whiteness feels threatened by policies like affirmative action or promotion of racially marginalized colleagues (C. Harris, 1993; Ray, 2019; Ray & Purifoy, 2019). Ray (2019) also expands upon C. Harris’ (1993) theory of whiteness as property by examining institutions specifically and argues organizations are racialized in their unequal shaping of one’s agency, unequal distribution of resources, variance between rules and practice, and benefits of whiteness bestowed to white agents (Ray & Purifoy, 2019). For example, the credential of whiteness within the racialized organization expands white agency, just as whiteness expands white racial access and advantage broadly in U.S. society (C. Harris, 1993; Ray, 2019). Here, individual agents are directly connected to both their proximity to whiteness as a socio-historical power structure (C. Harris, 1993) and position within the racialized organization (Ray, 2019), situating agents as navigators and drivers of organizational processes within racialized organizations. As leaders work within their racialized organization, they navigate their own agency and its interaction and potential tension with the broader social power structure of whiteness as property (C. Harris, 1993; Ray, 2019; Ray & Purifoy, 2019). Together, I use Ray’s (2019) concepts of whiteness as a credential and the expansion of white agency, grounded in C. Harris’ (1993) theory of whiteness as property as a persistent socio-historical power structure, in racialized organizations to identify empirical examples of whiteness, in particular how whiteness is privileged and structures higher education organizations. Specifically, I apply these theories to graduate organizations as sites of academic socialization, and therefore as possible sites of organizational reproduction or transformation as leaders navigate whiteness as credential and property and attempt to leverage their agency to advance equity (C. Harris, 1993; Ray, 2019).
Critical Comparative Case Study
To reflect the interdisciplinary approach of my inquiry, I used bricolage (Kincheloe, 2001, 2005) to intertwine theoretical understandings and methodological practices from different paradigms in my research design. By practicing bricolage (Kincheloe, 2005), I was able to conceptualize the core issue I aimed to address through my research without being confined to a singular paradigm or discipline. In this interdisciplinary study, I used a critical lens to design a comparative case study (Yin, 2018) informed by critical theories of race from law (C. Harris, 1993), sociology (Ray, 2019), and education (Leonardo, 2003) to identify and examine whiteness as a form of racialized power evidenced in qualitative data. In my inquiry, I sought to answer three questions: (a) In what ways do organizational structures constrain transformative change as graduate leaders work to pursue racial equity? (b) How is whiteness manifesting in equity planning and initiatives in the graduate school and programs? and (c) How do leaders exercise their agency within their organization as they plan and implement equity?
Comparative case study methodology of multiple cases (Yin, 2018) guided my collection of data and allowed me to examine each graduate school and program individually as a case bounded by its institution, graduate education mission, commitment to racial equity, and specific historical time. Comparative case study methodology (Yin, 2018) then allowed me to compare multiple cases within their shared institution and across peer institutions to further notice patterns, and convergence and divergence of experiences with equity planning and implementation. As a lens to guide my critical approach to research, I drew from critical hermeneutics to interrogate whiteness (Leonardo, 2003) to sharpen my awareness of whiteness and sensitize my focus on racialized systems of power within the organizations I examined. Critical hermeneutics to interrogate whiteness, as a specific application of critical hermeneutics, allows researchers to critique whiteness within historical and contemporary grand narratives, ideology, and assumptions present in participant data (Leonardo, 2003). As a white woman examining whiteness, critical hermeneutics to interrogate whiteness (Leonardo, 2003) hones my perception and reflexivity of whiteness throughout the research process.
Data Collection
The corpus of my data consisted of 58 observation hours, 69 one-hour participant interviews, and over 100 documents from 80 participants across the three institutions collected from January 2021 to July 2021. Documented plans for diversity and equity, public-facing equity statements, and graduate education policies recorded the intentions and espoused commitments of the graduate schools and programs as organizations. Observations of spaces like department diversity committee meetings, graduate school administrator and staff meetings, and equity-focused workshops offered insight into the inner workings and activities of the graduate schools and programs as organizations. Finally, interviews communicated leaders’ interpretation of equity and their racial frames spanning from equity-minded to race-evasive, motivation to advance equity in their graduate school or program, and experience navigating their organization and role as they attempted to plan and carry out equity initiatives.
All three institutions are large, public, research institutions that are historically white serving. I purposefully targeted research universities with substantial graduate schools that carry out work across academic schools and programs, including graduate admissions, education, and student support. I targeted graduate schools with an espoused commitment to racial equity that was demonstrated through activities like graduate student support groups, graduate diversity officers, or reconsideration of admissions requirements such as the GRE. After I recruited graduate schools to participate in the study, I used snowball sampling to identify and recruit participation from graduate programs at each institution that were actively working with their graduate school to plan and implement equity initiatives regardless of their discipline or field in order to learn about organizational constraints on transformative change that were prevalent across the institution rather than discipline-specific. Therefore, the findings and discussion presented in this paper do not examine or describe disciplinary differences relevant to diversity and equity, but instead focus on the graduate program and graduate school as organizations with particular attention to constraints, agency, and potential change. All graduate schools and programs espoused commitment to racial equity, albeit with ambivalence and variations in depth and specificity, and often grouped it with additional diversity and equity goals, which again is a divergence from my definition of equity as a potential transformative racial justice (Patel, 2018; Tuck & Yang, 2018; Table 1).
Data Sources by Case
Note. DEI = diversity, equity, and inclusion; PPU = Ponderosa Pine University; RCU = Red Cedar University; STEM = science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; WJU = Western Juniper University.
Participants and Race
Participants in this study were purposefully sampled as leaders of equity planning and implementation within each graduate school and graduate program, specifically deans, associate deans, program chairs, admissions committee chairs, and diversity officers (Creswell, 2007). Each case self-identified their equity leaders; these leaders were individuals who took up work and roles overseeing diversity and equity planning and initiatives for graduate education. From purposefully sampled participants, I used snowball sampling to recruit additional participants engaged with equity implementation within either the graduate programs or schools (Creswell, 2007). For example, department chairs or diversity officers directed me toward members of program diversity committees, graduate school staff, and graduate students.
As I discuss racialization and whiteness in graduate organizations, it is important to also consider the racial identities of leaders who position themselves to plan and advance equity. In Table 2, I summarize participant’s pseudonyms, racial identity, and gender identity. Race and gender identities were self-identified by participants. An asterisk (*) represents new to equity, which I describe as formally engaged with diversity and equity in roughly the prior 3 years from 2021, often becoming aware or deciding to engage in equity because of national and local events. Participants spoke about four significant social and legal contexts that demanded organizational change toward equity: the BLM racial justice social movement, a series of graduate student worker strikes around the United States, COVID-19, and anti-Asian violence. The BLM racial social justice movement resurfaced large-scale social awareness of racism and state-sanctioned violence against Black people (Biondi, 2011; Kelley, 2015; Morgan & Davis, 2019). The movement was visible on social media, national news, and through local and student protests (Morgan & Davis, 2019). The graduate student strike drew national attention to the high cost of living and low pay for graduate students at universities, often with inequitable and unhealthy work expectations. The COVID-19 pandemic drew attention to socioeconomic, racial, and gender inequities across the nation. Anti-Asian violence connected to COVID’s origins in China that resurged into national awareness was also highlighted on campuses through racialized incidents and student protests. Although the study design did not sample by participant racial identity or racial frame, the majority of participants identified as white and expressed being new to equity, further complicating how unprepared they were to imagine and lead transformative racial justice within the institutions. Finally, for additional organizational context, I include a list of each program’s diversity and equity foci and participants’ roles within graduate education:
Participating Programs’ Equity Areas of Focus, and Participant Identities
Note. Listed items are general area(s) of diversity and equity focus for each case during data collection. Participants self-identified their racial and gender identities when they signed up for interviews or in committee meetings during observations. W = woman; M = man; NB = non-binary; PPU = Ponderosa Pine University; RCU = Red Cedar University; STEM = science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; WJU = Western Juniper University.
Represents new to equity.
While the conceptual focus of this research is the possibilities for racial justice within organizations structured by whiteness as leaders attempt to carry out change (Tuck & Yang, 2018), most participants did not have a transformative justice lens but defined equity as representation and equality for many marginalized social identities, including race (Patel, 2018). Thus, there is a tension between how I conceptualize and discuss equity with an aim to center racial justice and disrupt whiteness as a researcher and writer, and how participants approach equity as an amalgamation of definitions and goals (McCambly & Colyvas, 2022; Patel, 2018). Although the graduate schools and programs espoused a commitment to racial equity in plans or websites, leaders varied in their awareness and pursuit of racial justice. However, whiteness is entrenched within the organization (Ahmed, 2012; Ferguson, 2012, 2014; Foste & Tevis, 2022; Ray, 2019), and institutions are not transforming toward racial justice (Patton & Haynes, 2018; Stewart, 2018; Tuck & Yang, 2018). Therefore, empirically, we need to understand how leaders are doing equity work and what is obstructing racially just transformative change.
Data collection protocols included interview questions and observation prompts informed by theories in the conceptual framework. For example, some of the pertinent interview questions were about identifying inequity and change within the organization, drawing from Ray’s (2019) theory of racialized organizations: what are the most pressing equity issues your program is addressing currently? And, what do you think fuels/drives possible change within the graduate program? In another example, in the observation protocol, I sensitized my awareness of expressions of racialized power dynamics drawing from C. Harris’ (1993) theory of whiteness as property: what terms and language do leaders use to discuss equity? And, how do leaders work together? Lastly, in the document protocol, I drew from Ray (2019) to identify the planned aspects of equity within the organization to then compare with data on implementation from observations and interviews: how do graduate schools and programs define equity? And, what equity initiatives do graduate schools and programs plan to carry out? I ensured trustworthiness of my findings by practicing triangulation of data sources, which included documents, observations, and interviews (Saldaña, 2013; Yin, 2018). I also engaged in member debriefing by sharing findings with graduate education leaders in research institutions outside of the study to see if they resonated with their experience in graduate education.
Data Analysis
To guide my data analysis, I used the constant comparative method by Charmaz (2014), which is adapted from grounded theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1994), which allowed me to keep concepts from my framework analytically in mind as I analyzed data. I used critical hermeneutics of whiteness (Leonardo, 2003) and my conceptual framework to create sensitizing concepts to intentionally interrogate whiteness within the cases. For example, I combined critical hermeneutics of whiteness (Leonardo, 2003) and C. Harris’ (1993) concepts of racial status and exclusion to look for whiteness-informed interpretations of the university, equity, and history across organizational equity plans and leaders. I also paired Ray’s (2019) concept of whiteness as a credential and critical hermeneutics of whiteness (Leonardo, 2003) to see how leaders and plans framed responsibility for equity within the organization. Finally, using Ray’s (2019) argument of unequal distribution of resources with critical hermeneutics of whiteness (Leonardo, 2003), I identified where whiteness in organizational structures constrained leaders’ attempts to plan and implement equity initiatives.
In my organization of data analysis, I bounded cases (Yin, 2018) by their institution site consisting of the graduate school and three graduate programs. I organized the data by sites in order to keep the cases together so I could more easily notice patterns within the institution site and across cases within the site. Practicing three rounds of analysis, I narrowed patterns and themes to findings (Charmaz, 2014; Saldaña, 2013). In round one of analysis, I engaged in open-coding where patterns emerged to create a new code to understand the data (Charmaz, 2014; Saldaña, 2013). Then, I used an analytic protocol that reflected theoretical concepts to practice line-by-line deductive coding (Charmaz, 2014; Saldaña, 2013). For example, I developed equity framing to represent how participants understood and defined equity, and incentives to engage equity to represent in/formal expectations from the university, school, or program to address equity. Next, I engaged in axial coding to see how codes related to one another (Charmaz, 2014; Saldaña, 2013; Yin, 2018). Examples of preliminary themes were agency as a driver of change and new to equity. Finally, I practiced selective coding to see how the codes related to the generation of understanding regarding the operation of whiteness and equity efforts in graduate education organizations (Charmaz, 2014; Saldaña, 2013; Yin, 2018). Based on my analysis, I identified findings where I saw active engagement across the majority of cases and memoed about each finding with incorporations of theory and my interpretations (Charmaz, 2014; Saldaña, 2013; Yin, 2018). For this paper, I focus on similarities of experiences with organizational constraints and manifestations of whiteness across the multiple cases to offer a broad understanding of how whiteness functions across multiple graduate organizations to prohibit transformative change and identify opportunities to potentially leverage change, particularly within the context of graduate education as a site of academic socialization within higher education.
Findings: Organizational Constraints on Racially Just Transformational Change
In my findings, I first discuss how racially just transformative change in graduate education is constrained broadly by existing organizational structures. Next, I discuss how leaders and programs themselves temper racially just transformative change by isolating equity work and using unspecified language. Then, I discuss the constraints of standard organizational resources necessary for any change to occur: time and financial resources. These findings are also empirical manifestations of whiteness because the organizational structures are rooted in whiteness, which I analytically connect throughout my findings, leading up to the “Discussion: Whiteness as Nonperformative and Constraint on Racially Just Transformative Change” section. Finally, in my “Discussion: Whiteness as Nonperformative and Constraint on Racially Just Transformative Change” section, I consider how whiteness works to temper racially just transformative change via the ease of nonperformativity, limiting the scope and possibility for racially just transformative change. Most participants at the program level expressed feeling unsupported by their program and/or institution, however, all graduate programs shared how their graduate schools were a source of support. Therefore, findings speak to program and institution limitations generally unless specified otherwise, which the graduate schools also endured.
Organizational Structure as Barriers
Leaders’ agency is necessary but not sufficient for racially just transformative change because it is limited by what the organization is providing to support equity efforts. Furthermore, institutions that do not shift structures to actively address racism support institutional whiteness that is pervasive stemming from histories of slavery and whiteness as property. At Ponderosa Pine University (PPU), like many institutions, the organizational structure of how to propose official equity changes to a graduate program or school can pose a challenge. For example, Assistant Dean William described how he has heard criticisms of the new structure and expectations for equity initiatives from program leaders: [PPU leadership] is coming up against a fair amount of resistance . . . And it is disheartening to hear some of the criticisms that have come out and some of the, frankly, unfortunate comments that I’ve heard about this—“this just strikes me as a waste of time, why are we doing this, we’re already an inclusive campus, what more do they want us to do?” But, if you look at the demographics of the campus you realize there’s a lot farther that we could go in attaining that goal. (white assistant dean)
You can feel the frustration in William’s comments as he described that even with new leadership and structure for equity at PPU, program leaders and faculty expressed feeling burdened by change and complained about institutional expectations. Portraying organizational structure for equity as cumbersome or confusing, leaders framed institutional attempts at support as a restraint and rationalized inaction. In this example, faculty tempered transformative racial justice by resisting structural change by focusing on flaws over potential.
A lack of organizational structure to support equity is also a challenge to implementing racially just transformative change. As chair of the Red Cedar University (RCU) humanities program, Olivia described how she did not feel she had support structures from the institution to lead equity: Honestly, I don’t feel especially supported. I do feel as though institutional values align with departmental values, and so in that regard, I feel as though the university certainly supports the work that we want to try to do and so that feels very comfortable. But by and large there don’t seem to be a lot of explicit support structures for chairs trying to deal with these situations or a lot of guidance. (white department chair)
Although RCU espoused equity values that aligned with the department, the institution did not offer structural support that Olivia felt adequately helped her navigate barriers to change in the humanities program. Here, there was not sufficient structural support, and thus merely espoused values remained. Without support structures to facilitate equity, espoused values risk supporting whiteness, becoming nonperformative, and restraining racially just transformative change.
Challenges With Structural Inaction
Another challenge to implementing racially just transformative change is a lack of action from university entities that exist to support equity. Noting the reactionary nature of equity to national social and legal contexts, George in the RCU natural science program described a concerning pattern within the academy: A concern of mine is basically how this is all going to be balanced, because I think that if these sorts of efforts have peaked up and died out a lot in the history of academia, very few of them are sustaining, and that’s partly why we’re still doing such a bad job. (Asian faculty, new to equity)
George explained how the coming and leaving of equity commitments and actions were an ongoing issue in the academy and natural science program. Here, unsustained reactionary equity initiatives in response to recent social and legal contexts emerged as a form of nonperformative change, which ultimately supports the perpetuation of whiteness. Also, the Western Juniper University (WJU) STEM program diversity committee chair, Anna, shared how the university process of guiding equity strategic plans was not actually practiced, and the program’s plan was not reviewed by WJU’s diversity leadership as intended: The biggest thing that has been frustrating is we went through this whole process of revising our strategic plan, and then the campus division of equity and inclusion like basically wouldn’t even look at it . . . officially in the process after you generate a new one your dean is supposed to meet with the head of equity and inclusion . . . and talk about it and get feedback on it, and the campus kind of blesses it—Or tells you not to do certain things, and that’s I think really important. It’s not just a rubber stamped meeting because you want to know do they support you . . . And so that never happened, and I pushed for it, and two of the faculty equity advisors pushed for it, and they really just ghosted us. (white diversity committee chair, new to equity)
In this example, Anna sought guidance from WJU’s diversity leadership on the STEM program’s equity plan but did not find support among university leadership, even though an organizational structure and process for equity planning had been established.
Even with new leadership for equity at PPU, Oscar, a PPU Graduate School Director, explained how more dedication was needed at the institutional level, particularly if departments were expected to be involved: If they’re hearing it from [PPU leadership] then it makes the message a whole lot easier. The mission, the culture. But it has to be genuine . . . over the years there’s been a lot of lip service, things on paper in terms of diversity and equity but there’s not that support. (Black & Latinx graduate school director of admissions)
Here, Oscar described how PPU’s written commitment to equity was insufficient for organizational change because it lacked action through support. Organizational structure around tenure and promotion also constrained how racially just transformative change could possibly flourish at PPU. In a move to acknowledge equity contributions in tenure and promotion cases, PPU has a component in promotion cases where faculty can share their formal involvement with equity at PPU. However, the equity contribution section was labeled “optional” and faculty who chose not to engage in equity were not penalized. By documenting one’s equity contributions as an optional part of the tenure review process, PPU allowed faculty to disengage without consequence—a missed opportunity for faculty accountability for equity. However, if another area like teaching or research were similarly labeled as optional, the institution would likely find faculty who opted out as shirking their responsibilities. In this example, faculty equity involvement was given some optional recognition within the organization, but it did not change or challenge the racialized structure of the institution nor its pervasive whiteness. Isolating equity work within the organization was another way racially just transformative change was tempered in this study.
Isolating Equity Work to a Role or Committee
Isolating equity work tempers racially just transformative change by limiting who is pursuing equity goals and excessively diverting leaders’ energy to building colleague buy-in within the racialized organization. Within the racialized organization, isolating equity planning and implementation to a role or committee often mirrors the inequitable racialized agency and tasks of the organizations, which further supports whiteness as a privilege and credential within the institution. Marginalizing equity to a role or committee also risks being nonperformative, a symbol of institutional commitment in response to social and legal contexts like the BLM movement without interrupting institutional whiteness. All graduate program cases isolated (i.e., marginalized, delegated) equity work to a role or committee, sometimes at the suggestion or request of the institution (i.e., Diversity Officer roles) and often putting graduate students in a role of carrying significant burdens of the work. In the graduate schools, equity was isolated to a few overburdened individuals, which graduate school leaders Luis, Oscar, and William at PPU would like to remedy by adding more professional roles to share in equity labor. Explaining current equity roles within the PPU graduate school, Oscar stated, We’re lacking people power . . . We try to help [one another] as much as we can but it’s always lacking, so we need at least one or two full-time employees . . . if we had that we would pretty much be awesome in terms of our approach and what we can do. (Black and Latinx director of admissions)
William added how the PPU graduate school needs more professional roles to support equity because it is currently isolated to one role: “the lack of bodies to be doing this work. I mean, Luis is essentially a shop of one” (white assistant dean). Explaining that while he and his team try their best, Luis described how equity initiatives could be even stronger with adequate staff: “I wish I had more staff members, because there’s many things that need to be done, and I’m having to farm out things to departments” (Black and Asian director of diversity programs). Expert central programming and staff, Luis believed, would free up pressures on departments. To minimize the risk of burnout and expand involvement in equity, graduate school leaders desired more staff roles. However, organizational constraints made it difficult for the graduate school to expand their leadership over equity.
Isolating equity work within a role or committee has trade-offs. It may be more efficient to form a committee because the members share some interest and commitment to designing and pursuing equity goals, and leaders can get through ideas and designs of a plan fairly quickly. Alternatively, if the graduate school or graduate program prioritized full involvement of faculty and leaders to work through equity and the creation of a plan together, the graduate program or school may still experience resistance to participation or fail to meet institutional expectations. Thus, how to coordinate equity work is one of the structural issues of organizational change that cases in this study regularly faced, particularly the tension in programs between balancing the work of the committee and relaying those efforts to the full faculty.
Challenges of Relying on Equity Work Volunteerism
Isolating equity work also occurred when participation in initiatives was reduced to a recommendation or volunteerism, which often led to workshops attended by leaders who were already involved with equity. For example, Alice, the chair of the PPU social science program, described the lack of attendance at workshops as a problem, especially for incentivizing involvement: The people who do show up are the people who are already on board and not the people who need it—who need to really rethink how they do things. They don’t want to rethink how they do things, right? If there’s no reward for enticing those people in, it sounds very crass, you’re only going to get the people who are willing to fling themselves on the fire for no compensation, and that’s not enough to really make institutional change. (white department chair, new to equity)
Similarly, Marilla, faculty in the humanities program, shared how PPU’s diversity workshops were voluntary for faculty, which made it difficult to make changes across her humanities program because there wasn’t an assurance that her colleagues would also attend: Our DEI office is very good at organizing a bunch of diversity stuff, and I think it falls repeatedly on people who are already on the train, and I think it is really easy to opt out, and it goes back to structure . . . Are other members of my department going to be there, so that when you turn around after that training and say “you know what, I think we need to do this differently,” they were at least there at the meeting . . . if you aren’t mandating it or you’re not getting people on the same page, then it doesn’t actually make sense for me, as somebody who cares, to go to that training because I’m not going to be able to use it. (white faculty, new to equity)
Although PPU offered educational workshops as a resource, the possibility of the workshops to have an impact across campus was constrained by limited faculty time, capacity, and motivation. Racially just transformative change was also constrained by unspecified language used by organizations and leaders to describe or frame equity.
Unspecified Language
One graduate school and eight graduate programs used unspecified language—both by not defining key terms and not using critical terms—when setting goals, describing initiatives, and framing purpose in advancing equity. Acronyms like “DEI” are problematic because it groups three separate values together as one, rather than distinctive issues. Similarly, the RCU humanities program commonly used terms like “URM” (under-represented minorities) and “broad spectrum of social identities” without further definition within documents. Unspecified language limited the scope and use of terms and made it difficult for leaders and colleagues to have a shared understanding about the meaning of “DEI” within their program, which reflected a lack of learning infrastructure across the institution and was a barrier to transformative change. Unspecified language tempers racially just transformative change by diverting attention away from critical conversations about systemic racial inequities—which the BLM movement as a social and legal context at the time demanded—toward terms that are assumed to be comfortable because they center whiteness, particularly for audiences that are not engaging with equity. In using unspecified language, graduate programs and schools also risked sliding into race-evasiveness, which further perpetuates whiteness, including leaders who at times expressed equity-mindedness and intended to be race-conscious.
Using unspecified language in documents and conversations is a missed opportunity to delve deeper into rationales and motivations regarding what equity issues the graduate school or program are grappling with and why engaging racial justice is important. Particularly for programs and leaders who are new to thinking about equity, documents from the graduate school may be a first point of contact and consideration for leaders to think about program practices and equity; how it communicates these issues is critical. For example, in a PPU graduate school document designed to guide graduate programs’ equity efforts, the graduate school used unspecified language. Diversity and motivation to support it were framed as “people from different backgrounds and with varied lived experiences bring different perspectives that enrich academic dialogue. Excluding those perspectives reduces academic potential and diminishes scholarship.” While generalized language could be an attempt by the graduate school to be inclusive of multiple social identities and groups that have been historically excluded from graduate education, without explicitly including this lens, the document reads as vague and underspecified. For instance, which identities and communities have been historically and are currently excluded, and why should programs intervene to address these systemic inequities?
Challenges With Language Confusion
Michael, faculty in the WJU STEM program, described how undefined language caused confusion among faculty and was a barrier to comprehending equity practices: I think part of my struggle sometimes is how do we slow things down at a time when these needs are often so immediate . . . to be like, what are we trying to do here? . . . it’s okay that we have different conceptualizations of what it means to promote equity, but if we’re talking about decolonializing [a course] and no one knows what that means, let’s start with a working definition. I think that’s also the source of the challenge, is that these concepts are sometimes pretty fuzzy. (Other race, graduate diversity officer)
Getting caught-up on unpacked or undefined terms that were used in workshops, like “decolonizing,” was a barrier to delving into the purpose of the discussion. For leaders who were relatively new to learning about equity, like Michael, new concepts were fuzzy or confusing.
One example of terms that sparked confusion or tension was white supremacy. In the WJU social science program, department chair Albert explained why he chooses not to use the term white supremacy directly as an equity leader because it may interfere with buy-in: I don’t throw out white supremacy in the way that other people use it more casually . . . as the leader of the department I kind of feel like it’s my role to try to get as many people as possible on board, and using language that’s a little more moderate I think is the main tool actually to do that. (white department chair, new to equity)
Prioritizing colleague comfort and buy-in, Albert opted to use “a little more moderate” language rather than explicit concepts like white supremacy. Although prominent social and legal contexts like the BLM movement brought concepts like racism and white supremacy to the forefront of conversations about race in the United States, leaders working toward equity often chose not to discuss white supremacy directly, and instead used unspecified language.
Sometimes debates and misunderstandings about language play out in real time. For example, unspecified language in the PPU humanities program diversity statement was scrutinized in a faculty meeting. Faculty member Hannah explained, “[The statement] was talking about the dismantling of kind of power structures, I think was in the phrase. People were quibbling with the wording choice” (white faculty, new to equity). Again, unspecified language—both by not defining key terms and not using critical terms—limits the scope of critical language that could be used to directly discuss issues relevant to racial equity like white supremacy, ultimately supporting whiteness within the institution. Unspecified language also leaves interpretation up to listeners and readers, which can cause confusion and misalignment in program goals and values. A gap in institutional learning infrastructure and leaders’ critical shared understanding about the historical context and importance of racial justice in graduate education, which continues through the unspecified language in “DEI” planning and implementation, is a persistent barrier to pursuing racially just transformative change because it redirects awareness away from critical consciousness and whiteness. Instead, language used to describe, frame, and motivate equity is often nonperformative, and in doing so, perpetuates whiteness. Another form of organizational constraint on racially just transformative change is leaders’ limited time to dedicate to developing and facilitating equity.
Limited Time
Recalling their various responsibilities as administrators, faculty, staff, and graduate students, leaders identified time constraints as a significant challenge to equity planning and implementation. When organizations do not allocate protected time to advance racial justice, equity work is limited and often nonperformative, allowing institutional whiteness to persist. Learning is a significant element of working toward equity in many institutions, but the time that it requires can be a challenge. At PPU, which offered a series of workshops, participants spoke about the time needed for attendance as being uncompensated and conflicting with other responsibilities. Describing organizational constraints on learning about equity, Marilla, a faculty member in the humanities program, shared how PPU’s workshops did not offer support to allow faculty to join the workshops, such as by covering or moving their teaching schedule so they could attend: “The whole university received the opportunity to attend eleven hours’ worth of workshops, all voluntary, including this one big day at this outsourced DEI company—who’s teaching my class while you want me to go to training?” (white faculty, new to equity). The lack of structural support and learning infrastructure made it difficult for faculty to attend educational opportunities like equity workshops within the university, making it all the more difficult to feel equipped to navigate social and legal contexts surrounding equity for their programs like the BLM movement and graduate student protests. Relatedly, the chair of a PPU social science department, Alice, tiredly explained how labor for equity was uncompensated, which was a challenge because the work was added on top of faculty’s expected tasks like teaching or research: This is unpaid and uncompensated labor. There is no course release, there is no additional stipend. There is no compensation whatsoever for doing it. It’s just added on top of our other tasks . . . you’ve got multiple agencies asking you for these products so that they can show that they’ve been doing something, but you’re the one who is producing them, and it’s on top of your other work, and you’re not being compensated. (white department chair, new to equity)
Alice’s comments reflect the pressures of “producing” for the university and funding agencies on top of previous tasks without being compensated with time, such as a course release. It is often difficult for leaders to juggle all the demands on their capacity including equity-related labor, which is often viewed as auxiliary to, rather than integral to, the faculty role.
Describing how limited time to work on equity posed a challenge, faculty member George expressed how he felt drained by his equity leadership in the RCU natural science program: I think serving on the diversity committee does count as service to the department, however that is counted towards your promotion but it’s sort of ambiguous, and I think most of the time these sorts of initiatives are considered to be extra, on top of the billion responsibilities we already have, and so that’s not ideal. Another challenge is just finding the time and energy, particularly when I feel like a lot of these issues—they don’t just hit away at your mental time, but they’re emotionally draining and end up oftentimes taking a lot more—like you take a lot of this stuff home with you and so that’s also a challenge. (Asian faculty, new to equity)
Although George regularly dedicated a portion of his time and capacity towards the natural science program diversity committee, his work on the committee was not balanced by a reduction of tasks elsewhere within the organization. Adding equity labor on top of faculty responsibilities without formal time adjustments caused George to feel drained. If faculty are tasked to carry out equity but are not meaningfully supported by the institution in terms of time and demands required to do so, then the work is likely to be deprioritized because it requires too much of a career risk or trade-off for faculty.
Reflecting on how she would feel adequately supported in her leadership of the PPU humanities program diversity committee and role as the diversity officer, Phoebe shared how she needs the organization to allocate protected time: I need something concrete that gives me space to do the work. And the way that it would matter to me would be relief from something else—so it’s very mathematically clear to me. If you want me to do this, you’ve got to relieve me from something else. I think the university, not just our department, needs to really think that through. (white diversity committee chair, new to equity)
Without “relief from something else,” Phoebe was limited in time to dedicate to equity labor. Finally, Charles shared the challenge of leading equity work in the WJU natural science program as an assistant professor. Colleagues advised Charles not to dedicate too much time to equity, although they appreciated his work: “You really shouldn’t be doing it, but you’re doing a great job” (white diversity committee chair, new to equity). Unprotected time restrained how actively leaders like Charles could plan and pursue equity.
If faculty are tasked to carry out equity but are not meaningfully supported by the institution in terms of time and alleviating some labor demands of their capacity, then equity work is likely to be deprioritized because it requires too much burden and career risk or trade-off, especially for faculty concerned with tenure and promotion. Limited time to design and pursue equity tempered possibilities for racially just transformative change because leaders felt burdened by the demands on top of their other responsibilities, inadvertently permitting whiteness to persist in the racialized organization even amidst diversity and equity initiatives. Along with feeling constraints of time, leaders also identified limited financial resources as a barrier to advancing equity.
Limited Financial Resources
Limited financial resources were another constraint on racially just transformative change. Although leaders planned equity initiatives, they identified insufficient ongoing funding to support their programming as a constraint. Funding for equity that is temporary or fluctuating is a form of nonperformative change that supports whiteness within the organization because resource structures remain unaltered. For organized efforts at change to be sustainable, and for change to be racially just and transformative amidst ongoing social and legal contexts, permanent and stable funding structures are required. For example, faculty member Elias shared how the PPU natural science program diversity committee’s work could use more financial support from the institution, stating, [PPU is] telling us to do all these things, but they’re not rewarding this work with much or any extra money . . . It does feel like it’s time to say, “every department gets $10,000,” and there aren’t that many departments, “you can do whatever you want with it towards DEI goals.” That would be real support. (white diversity committee chair, new to equity)
As the natural science program moved out of planning and into implementing initiatives, Elias described the diversity committee’s need for funds to put toward their goals. Similarly, reflecting on challenges as an equity leader in the RCU natural science program, faculty member Betsy expressed how there are not enough resources for the work that needs to get done: “You definitely end up feeling like there’s always a lot to do and there’s not many resources for doing it” (white diversity committee chair). Here, Betsy described equity work as endless and resources as lacking. Adding to the sentiment, George, who is also a faculty in the RCU natural science program, shared how equity is under resourced: “The biggest resource that’s lacking is money, and that’s across the board for everything, but in particular trying to get substantial amounts of money for programmatic efforts to support these initiatives” (Asian faculty, new to equity). While the RCU natural science program diversity committee created programming, George described how funding for those initiatives was difficult to secure.
Oscar, William, and Luis all explained how the PPU graduate school was limited by financial resources, and while they led equity under financial restraints, they described how funds for additional programming would strengthen the graduate school and its ability to support graduate programs. Furthermore, director of diversity programs Luis offered a metaphor from an equity learning activity to illustrate his argument about the impact of resources on the scope of change: I make do. It’s basically the mobile experiment where in equity exercises you have bags full of different items. Some are really cool paper origami, and some are really cheap things like a rubber bands or a twist ties, and everyone gets a hanger, and you tell them make the best mobiles you can make. And some people can make some really beautiful stuff because they’re given all these beautiful resources, and then others are just scrap. And they have to produce. But the funny thing is that they all produce—it’s just a little bit more difficult for those to produce with the fewer resources, so I still produce. (Black & Asian director of diversity programs)
Graduate school leaders like Luis, Oscar, and William pursuing equity are making use of what they have rather than flourishing with what they need—which tempers the possibilities of racially just transformative change. Graduate school director of admissions Oscar summarized, “We can be revolutionary in terms of our ideas and the way that we go about diversity, equity, and inclusion . . . the only thing really stopping us is getting that buy-in from the top and the funding” (Black & Latinx director of admissions). Oscar believed that graduate school leaders could pursue “revolutionary” change if only they had the resources.
Unstable financial resources were also a barrier to equity implementation in the WJU natural science program. WJU natural science program diversity committee chair, Charles, explained how limited financial resources constrained ongoing equity programming, which “should have been baked into budgets already . . . there are a lot of programs that get set up, they run for a while, they might be supported on soft money, and then they go away. And the institution doesn’t commit to it” (white diversity committee chair, new to equity). Referring to unstable financial resources as “soft money,” Charles described how the natural science program struggled to keep equity programming due to a lack of financial institutional commitment.
While it is often difficult to carry out any organizational change in higher education, equity work in particular is limited by existing racialized organizational structures in part because they are historically designed to serve white privileged men, which racially just transformative change directly challenges. Thus, in addition to constraints that are typical in organizational change like limited resources and ambiguity, leaders working toward equity also navigated structures of racialized power and oppression within the organization that privilege whiteness like isolating equity and limiting time to design and implement change. In the following “Discussion: Whiteness as Nonperformative and Constraint on Racially Just Transformative Change” section, I elaborate on the nonperformative functions of whiteness and its constraint on racially just transformative change.
Discussion: Whiteness as Nonperformative and Constraint on Racially Just Transformative Change
Drawing from theories of whiteness and the racialized organizations (C. Harris, 1993; Ray, 2019), this study offers insight into how pervasive whiteness within institutions constrains transformative change in graduate programs and schools via common organizational mechanisms and structures, even as graduate leaders responded to racial social justice movements like BLM and worked to plan and implement equity initiatives. C. Harris’ (1993) theory of whiteness as property contextualizes how whiteness persists as a socio-historical power structure and functions across and between individual agents and organizational structures, in particular through Ray’s (2019) theory of racialized organizations to illuminate how whiteness is embedded and manifests via the credential of whiteness and expansion of white agency in graduate education organizations. Based on this multiple comparative case study, I argue whiteness worked to distract leaders away from systems of racialized inequity, dull language so it lost meaning and power, limit organizational resources toward change, and isolate equity work to individuals who became overburdened. In doing so, the property interests of whiteness as a credential tempered racially just transformative change within graduate education. I argue that across the cases, most change facilitated by leaders as they navigated social and legal contexts like the BLM movement and graduate student protests was focused on quick and marginal updates rather than re-thinking how programs and policies could fundamentally change to center racial justice, which resonates with literature on nonperformative institutional initiatives (Ahmed, 2012; Patel, 2015; Patton & Haynes, 2018) and ambivalence about equity (Patel, 2018; Tuck & Yang, 2018). Also, the cases reveal how equity labor and leadership were marginalized to a role or small committee rather than expecting everyone in the organization to be responsible, which also reflects literature on nonperformative diversity initiatives (Ahmed, 2012; Berrey, 2015) and marginalizing equity changes within the institution (Ferguson, 2012; hooks, 1989; Rojas, 2010). However, we know from literature that if change is to happen within a graduate school or graduate program, the work needs to extend beyond a committee or role at some point for buy-in or implementation (Posselt, 2020). Although most leaders in this study worked hard to lead equity and address issues they were aware of within their program, they were also learning how to do this work at all; many program leaders were not yet equipped to imagine racially just transformative organizations because they were new to thinking about equity within their programs and schools, adding to literature on limitations to institutional change and organizational learning infrastructure (Bensimon, 2018; Felix et al., 2024; Griffin et al, 2019; Liera, 2020, 2023) and ambivalence about equity (Patel, 2018; Tuck & Yang, 2018). Thus, based on this study, I argue nonperformative changes had a welcoming ease to leaders seeking to take actions toward equity in response to institutional demands and social contexts without taking an inordinate amount of capacity, time, and resources, contributing to literature on nonperformative initiatives and challenges to institutional transformation, and our understanding of how whiteness as a credential frames the institution as pursuing equity without grappling with whiteness (Ahmed, 2006, 2012; Chang, 2002; Patton & Haynes, 2018; Ray, 2019; Ray & Purifoy, 2019; Southern, 2025; Tuck & Yang, 2018).
As we see in the literature and in this study, although organizations claim to strive for racial equity in principle, the institutions, schools, and programs are embedded in the persistent socio-historical power structure of whiteness as property where institutional structures, resources, status, and power that privilege whiteness remain unaltered, and therefore continue to perpetuate the property interests and credential of whiteness even amidst leaders’ attempts to navigate social and legal contexts to plan and implement equity (Bensimon, 2018; Ferguson, 2012, 2014; Foste & Tevis, 2022; C. Harris, 1993; Ray, 2019; Ray & Purifoy, 2019; Rojas, 2010; Southern, 2024c). For example, institutional calls for diversity and equity initiatives were influenced by institutional status and prestige, including how many resources the organization allocated like time, finances, and autonomy to potentially advance equity across the cases (byrd, 2022; Powell & DiMaggio, 1991). Returning to literature on institutional change, Bensimon (2018) and Ray (2019) in particular point to the potential of agents, in this case graduate leaders, to alter practices and drive organizational change. However, graduate leaders in this study shared how they experienced constraints within their organization as they worked toward equity, which ultimately restrained the scope of change they felt they could carry-out from their organizational position, contributing to current literature on institutional change and our understanding of agency in social, legal, and organizational contexts (byrd, 2022; Felix et al., 2024; Liera, 2020, 2023; Ray, 2019; Southern, 2024a; Wingfield & Alston, 2013). Importantly, many graduate leaders in this study did not express a racial frame of equity-mindedness or interrogate racial injustice or whiteness within their programs and practices (Bensimon, 2018; Felix et al., 2024; Liera, 2020, 2023; Patel, 2018), but rather described equity with unspecified language—not defining key terms or using critical terms—which allowed whiteness to persist unexamined, adding to literature on race-evasive discourse (Iverson, 2007; McCambly & Colyvas, 2022; Mueller, 2020) and ambivalent equity discourse (Patel, 2018; Tuck & Yang, 2018), and our theoretical understanding of how whiteness functions as a credential and shapes white agency in the organization (Ray, 2019; Ray & Purifoy, 2019).
In this study, whiteness manifested via nonperformative diversity values and practices, like not allocating institutional time or resources, or marginalizing equity work to a few people, which allowed the persistence of whiteness (Ahmed, 2012; Bensimon, 2018; Berrey, 2015; byrd, 2022; Ferguson, 2014; Patton et al., 2019; Ray & Purifoy, 2019; Southern, 2024a; Warikoo, 2016) and thus kept the property interests and credential of whiteness intact, building on literature on nonperformative diversity initiatives (Ahmed, 2012; Berrey, 2015; Squire et al., 2019) and whiteness in education (Ferguson, 2012, 2014; Gillborn, 2005, 2019; C. Harris, 1993; Patel, 2015, 2018; Patton & Haynes, 2018; Ray, 2019; Stewart, 2018). Importantly, in this study whiteness also manifested when organizations and graduate leaders did not respond to unjust systems like racism and white supremacy within their pursuit of equity, for example by not altering existing institutional structures, processes, and routines, contributing to current literature on whiteness in education organizations and institutional change (Bonilla-Silva, 2018; Ferguson, 2012, 2014; Patton & Haynes, 2018; Ray, 2019; Ray & Purifoy, 2019; Rojas, 2010; Stewart, 2018; Wingfield & Alston, 2013) and ambivalence of equity in education (Patel, 2018; Tuck & Yang, 2018), and theory on whiteness as a credential (Ray, 2019; Ray & Purifoy, 2019). Finally, in this study, whiteness manifested as nonperformative language, like equity framing, statements, and plans, which distracted from critical examinations of racial injustice and whiteness, and the organization’s or person’s culpability, adding to the literature on race-evasive discourse (Bonilla-Silva, 2018; Chang, 2002; McCambly & Colyvas, 2022; Mueller, 2020), nonperformative institutional initiatives (Berrey, 2015; byrd, 2022; Cole & Harper, 2017; Hoffman & Mitchell, 2016; Iverson, 2007; Southern, 2024b), and ambivalence of equity in education (Patel, 2018; Tuck & Yang, 2018), and the theoretical conceptualization of whiteness as a credential and its influence on agency (Ray, 2019; Ray & Purifoy, 2019).
Based on this study, I argue whiteness manifesting through nonperformative change has implications for missed opportunities to advance change that is equity-minded (Bensimon, 2018) and transformative of racially unjust structures and cultures (Chang, 2002; Patton & Haynes, 2018; Stewart, 2018; Tuck & Yang, 2018). For instance, many programs and graduate leaders in this study reacted to social and legal contexts like the racial social justice movement BLM by merely planning initiatives and writing diversity statements, reflecting literature on nonperformative institutional responses to social movements (Biondi, 2011; Kelley, 2015; Morgan & Davis, 2019) and demands for diversity (Ahmed, 2012; Berrey, 2015; Cole & Harper, 2017) which fail to transform the institution (Ferguson, 2012; Rojas, 2010). In this study, graduate leaders and their initiatives regarding diversity and equity were already engaging in the work of bringing new ideas, concepts, and perspectives to graduate education to rethink practices and assumptions about diversity, equity, and inclusion. However, largely in graduate school and graduate program documents, meetings I observed, and most of the interviews I conducted, the content of discussions were often lacking in language that reflected critical consciousness, depth, or radical imagining of how to change the graduate school or graduate programs, contributing to current literature on ambivalent equity in education (Patel, 2018; Tuck & Yang, 2018) and challenges to institutional transformation (Bonilla-Silva, 2018; Chang, 2002; Ferguson, 2012, 2014; Mueller, 2020). Therefore, we see how larger socio-historical power structures like whiteness persist via language and, in part, limit how agents perceive and navigate important social and legal contexts surrounding equity planning and implementation for their program within their organization (C. Harris, 1993; Ray, 2019; Ray & Purifoy, 2019). This study on equity in graduate education and organizational change builds upon literature on nonperformative initiatives, diversity discourse, and institutional change, and extends these bodies of literature to consider how pervasive whiteness within the racialized organization contributes to ongoing challenges with institutional transformation toward racial justice. Broadly, this study offers further theoretical insight into how whiteness is an ongoing socio-historical power structure that reasserts itself and its power as a credential within institutions by occupying common organizational structures and reframing terms that could support racial justice and freedom, like diversity and equity, to control and constrain the impact the initiatives and terms could potentially offer if they were pursued with the goal of institutional transformation (Ahmed, 2012; C. Harris, 1993; Patel, 2018; Ray, 2019; Southern, 2024c; Tuck & Yang, 2018; Wingfield & Alston, 2013). Instead, whiteness as a credential worked to maintain persistent organizational power via resource, time, and status constraints, and via agency to distract graduate leaders with the ambivalence of terms like diversity and equity instead of mobilizing to transform their programs.
Call to Action for Programs and Leaders for Structural Change
As we consider implications for change and a call to action to higher education leaders to imagine and carry out transformative racially just change (Kelley, 2015; Patton & Haynes, 2018; Tuck & Yang, 2018), we must ask: how can higher education institutions be a space for racially just transformative change? Furthermore, what do leaders need to unlearn, critically learn, imagine, and create to invest in transforming their institutions and support structural changes to their organizations? And finally, how will we mobilize our leaders to proactively guard against social and political attacks that strategically divide and censure justice-oriented work? As we saw in this study, leaders’ capacity to pursue racial equity and justice was often constrained by their organization, and so leaders must work to shift their organizational structures in order to protect the cultivation of racial justice and change. However, transformative change relies on equity-minded leaders who are prepared to imagine racially just changes and futures for their programs, schools, and institutions, and are willing to communicate their vision to colleagues and administrators (Bensimon et al., 2018; Patton & Haynes, 2018; Tuck & Yang, 2018). In particular, graduate education as a space of ongoing academic socialization is well-positioned within the institution to introduce and carry out organizational change (Posselt, 2016, 2020; Walker et al., 2008). Therefore, based on this research from graduate programs and leaders, I offer three guiding suggestions on how leaders in higher education broadly can leverage their positions within the organization to shift institutional structures to be more supportive of, and avoid tempering or constraining, racially just transformative change in common organizational processes. 5
To facilitate change and reduce burnout, I suggest faculty leaders’ racial equity and justice service for a program or school should be compensated in protected time and formal recognition in ways that are built into existing organizational structures (Culpepper et al., 2022; Jones & Kee, 2021; Misra et al., 2023). For example, faculty promotion cases should have a required section on contributions to equity and justice that is equally weighted with other recognized forms of service (Culpepper et al., 2022; Misra et al., 2023). Faculty leaders who take on a designated role for their department, such as a diversity officer, could be compensated with protected time by alleviating a percentage of their job responsibilities elsewhere to match the demands of their role, for example in teaching load or research expectations for promotion (Jones & Kee, 2021; Misra et al., 2023). One resource for information and practical guidance on how to support faculty labor is The Faculty Workload and Rewards Project funded by the National Science Foundation ADVANCE program.
To develop and sustain diversity and equity initiatives, I suggest the institution allocate regular and ongoing funding to the graduate school and programs so leaders can budget for programming and support (Bilimoria & Singer, 2019; Chicas-Mosier et al., 2023). Where institutions frame their budgets as tight, I suggest an audit or evaluation of their financial resource allocation from an equity-minded expert to facilitate the reallocation of resources to match the institution’s equity values (Chicas-Mosier et al., 2023). In the short term, I also suggest institutions connect leaders to internal experts with successful grant writing experience to secure external funding resources to support equity initiatives (Bilimoria & Singer, 2019). One example of university collaboration with an external grant resource is the Institutions Developing Excellence in Academic Leadership (IDEAL) project funded by the National Science Foundation ADVANCE program.
Finally, to facilitate education around the importance of racial equity and justice, I suggest institutions offer regular and ongoing trainings and opportunities for leaders to develop critical race-consciousness and equity-mindedness (Bilimoria & Singer, 2019; Corte & Amrein-Beardsley, 2024). Here, the institution would provide the tools and guidance on how to be equity-minded and critical of whiteness so leaders can develop awareness of these as skills. Furthermore, these educational opportunities should be offered in a variety of formats and times to accommodate leaders’ demanding schedules. If the institution already offers trainings during orientation or onboarding, I suggest building equity and justice into existing trainings and adding trainings explicitly on noticing and disrupting racism within the institution (Kim et al., 2023). One example of an institution offering guidance is the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Anti-Racism, and Accessibility (IDEAA) Tools provided by the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges (2025), including the Open for Antiracism Program (OFAR), which offers training on anti-racist pedagogies and teaching (Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources, 2025).
Higher and graduate education leaders pursuing diversity and equity within their schools and programs are doing so within the bounds of existing organizational practice, policies, and structures that are historically established to privilege whiteness (Ahmed, 2012; Bonilla-Silva, 2018; Cabrera et al., 2016; Evans & Moore, 2015; Ferguson, 2012; 2014; C. Harris, 1993; Ray & Purifoy, 2019; Wilder, 2013). Leaders are often also new to designing organizational change that intentionally centers racial justice and is transformative (Chang, 2002; hooks, 1989; Patel, 2018; Patton & Haynes, 2018; Stewart, 2018; Tuck & Yang, 2018). Thus, it is imperative that leaders and practitioners learn how to notice and disrupt whiteness within their organizations.
If we don’t seize this opportune time to examine the prevailing whiteness of our organizations, we run the risk of repeating violent past mistakes by opting for nonperformative change and refusing to alter the white supremacist core of our institutions (Ahmed, 2012; Berrey, 2015; Ferguson, 2012, 2014; Moore, 2020; Patel, 2015; Rojas, 2010; Southern, 2024c). This study offers some cautionary tales around prioritizing racialized emotions in planning and implementing equity and subsequent consequences that may not be at the forefront of leaders’ minds as they lead. We also learn from leaders how the ease of nonperformative changes and underspecified language derail efforts toward diversity and equity goals. This study also situates leaders’ equity work within programs, schools, and institutions that knowingly or unknowingly impose organizational constraints on change. Overall, and importantly, this critical comparative case study offers further evidence as to why institutional leaders and practitioners must consider the roles of whiteness and how racially just transformative organizational change is easily tempered as they design and implement equity.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
Author
DEBORAH E. SOUTHERN, PhD, is a University of California Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on power and inequity in higher education organizations and on social justice transformation.