Preaching to the Choir: University Diversity Committees as Affective Communities

Abstract

This paper asks, what significance do diversity committee meetings have for how diversity workers experience, make sense of, and navigate the challenges of diversity work at a large, public research university? Drawing on a sixteen‐month ethnography of diversity policy and practice, I analyze the practice of “preaching to the choir” among committee members and explore the different affective attachments that form between diversity workers, their works, and the objects of diversity interventions.