Race, Structural Violence, and the Neoliberal University: The Challenges of Inhabitation

Abstract

This article connects the existence of structural violence to neoliberalism, by which we mean the economic and social philosophy that imposes free-market fundamentalism on all human interactions. We argue that U.S. institutions of higher education reflect and reproduce racism and other forms of structural violence pervasive across society, requiring scholars to explicitly confront the effects of neoliberalism on college and university campuses. For scholars who study social inequalities, it is pertinent to “inhabit” their work by directly addressing these hierarchies beyond their research and teaching, or even their civic engagement outside academe. We focus on the university as a site of institutional racism, though we conclude that achieving access and equity for historically underrepresented racial minority students, staff, faculty, and administrators must be tied to democratizing higher education by fighting neoliberal policies, practices, and logics.