A timely investigation of why diversity alone is insufficient in
higher education and how universities can use reparative actions to
become anti-racist institutions.
As institutions increasingly reckon with histories entangled with
slavery and Indigenous dispossession, diversity, equity, and inclusion
(DEI) efforts occupy a central role in the strategy and resources of
higher education. Yet reparation is rarely offered as a viable strategy
for institutional transformation. In Reparative Universities, Ariana
González Stokas undertakes a critical and decolonial analysis of DEI
work, linking contemporary practices of diversity to longer colonial
histories. González Stokas argues that diversity is an insufficient
concept for efforts concerned with anti-oppression, anti-racism, equity,
and decolonization. Given its historical ties to colonialism, can higher
education foster reconciliation and healing?
Reparation is offered as a pathway toward untangling higher education
from its colonial roots. González Stokas develops the term "epistemic
reparation" to describe a mode of social-historical accountability that
can already be seen at work in historical examples, as well as current
events in the United States, South Africa, and Canada. Recent legal
decisions by Georgetown University and the Princeton Theological
seminary to enact economic recompense for buying and selling human
beings are evidence of attempts to redress higher education's violent
histories and the colonial structures they reproduce every day on
college campuses.
Engaging with a broad range of theories from decolonial philosophy to
organizational psychology, González Stokas offers a pathway--guided by
reparative activities--for institutional workers frustrated by what
often feels, as Sara Ahmed describes, like "banging one's head against a
brick wall." Reparative Universities offers insight into why DEI
efforts have been disconnected from past injustices and why unsettling
diversity and engaging meaningful repair are critical for the future of
higher education.
