Ventriloquizing Institutional Ethos: Social Issues Management, Internal Public Relations, and the Institutionalization of Neoliberalism and Whiteness in U.S. Universities’ Diversity Discourse

Abstract

ABSTRACT The way organizations communicate about socio-political issues, such as racism and diversity, has become increasingly visible following the racial reckoning of 2020. This study examines the diversity discourse presented in the strategic plans from 37 of universities that comprise three major academic conferences (BIG10, Southeastern Conference (SEC), and PAC-12) in order to understand how they crafted an ethos that serves as the foundation these institutions use when later communicating about socio-political issues. To do so, we draw on social issues management, neoliberalism, whiteness, and ventriloquism to underscore the complexity of crafting an organizational ethos that features a stated commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. We argue that these organizations’ ethos were simultaneously ventriloquized by larger socio-political discourses while also ventriloquizing diversity in ways that made their discourse about diversity speak in ways that forwarded neoliberal and whiteness ideologies that operated to maintain the status quo.