Educational gag orders as white property of interest: reinscribing higher education's ethos in radical tradition

• Date: 03 January 2024
• Pages: 481-494
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-11-2022-0330
• Published date: 03 January 2024
• Author: Cydney Y. Caradonna

Educational gag orders as white

property of interest: reinscribing

higher education’s ethos

in radical tradition

Cydney Y. Caradonna

Department of Education, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

Abstract

Purpose –It is critical for those who are engaged in the work of resisting the movement of academically

restrictive policy to understand that it is a deliberate act on the part of conservatives to outlaw critical race

theory (CRT) specifically, because it is a theoretical mechanism for discrediting the rhetorical foundations of

their policy movement. The knee-jerk institutional courses of action to now defund initiatives and curriculum

related equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) represent what has always been a deeply rooted investment in

white supremacy on the part of the institutions (Baldwin, 2021; Patel, 2021; Squire, 2021).

Design/methodology/approach –The author explores and defines the CRT tenets of interest convergence

(Bell, 1980) and whiteness as property (Harris, 1993) in relation to EI (Fricker, 2007; Dotson, 2011) as

frameworksfor examiningthree EGOsin the region where these policies have become most dominant. All three

are critical tools of analysis for understanding the stake the White conservative political elite have in EGOs,

and the magnitude of EI these policies represent, and stand endorse in their rhetoric. Definitions of EI often rely

on the work of Amanda Fricker’s (2013) text on the subject, but this paper is invested in the expansions of this

theorization for speaking to the nature of the injustice that EGOs represent as a matter of historical trend, with

grave implications for futures marked by continued oppression. Whiteness as property and interest

convergence are points for explicating the dialectic and material aspects of issues of race and equity in this

country; namely, how knowledge processes inherent to higher education sound even more alarms as EGOs

become commonplace for college campuses.

Findings –To support the arguments laid out, the author provides a historical review of the settler-colonial

foundations of higher education as an american institution. This is meant to provide contour to the image of

postsecondary education that exists today. In accordance with this paper’s allegiance to CRT, many of the texts

would be considered revisionist history (Delgado and Stefancic, 2023), which stray from dominant narratives of

american comfort and speak more accurately to the experiences of minoritized populations. The author then

applies the same analysis to the sociopolitical contexts of EGOs, and to policy language itself. Each section is

closed with an explanation of its connection to tenets of CRT and EI so as to providea thread to follow into the

subsequent discussion section.

Research limitations/implications –In the first presentation of the early writings of this work, the

author was lucky enough to be in community with Barbara Applebaum at the annual meeting for the

American Educational Studies Association and engage in discourse surrounding EI and CRT applications

to EGOs. In conversations surrounding the will in the willful ignorance that is exemplified in the movement

of EGOs, the author had shared with Dr Applebaum the early thinking on how that will was the same force

that brought together converging interests, which have continually forecasted interest divergence. This is

commonly referred to as “political backlash.”The author had said something along the lines of: “if we follow

the interest convergence, we can get in front of the subsequent political moves to turn the clocks on what

wasoncecelebratesprogress.”This conversation planted the seed for what is the thesis of this paper.

Interest convergence and divergence happen at the will of white populations because of the american truth

of whiteness as property. In the context of higher education, this means that because educational pursuit

has largely been white property, it has served as an arena for white populations to converge and diverge

their interests with those of the minoritized. For example, the policies that drained federal funding for

higher education in the 1970s were passed on the tails of a Civil Rights Movement that shook the very

foundation of this country and expanded access to postsecondary education for racially minoritized groups

(Berret, 2015).

Originality/value –Ensuring that this social construction is a matter of status quo has largely been the work

of postsecondary institutions,and EGOs represent the most recent attempt at epistemically imposed inferiority.

Explicit attention to the fact of higher education’s complicity and overall investment in the socialization of

oppression is necessary to engage in transformative practice that resists anachronism. If higher education

researchers and practitioners do not recognize the stake in both the presence and resistance to EGOs, there

Higher

education’s

ethos in radical

tradition

481

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/2040-7149.htm

Received 2 December 2022

Revised 29 August 2023

26 September 2023

Accepted 4 November 2023

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion:

An International Journal

Vol. 43 No. 3, 2024

pp. 481-494

© Emerald Publishing Limited

2040-7149

DOI 10.1108/EDI-11-2022-0330