liberal arts

As neoliberalism has expanded from corporations to higher education, the notion of ＂diversity＂ is increasingly seen as the contribution of individuals to an organization. By focusing on one liberal arts college, author Bonnie Urciuoli shows how schools market themselves as ＂diverse＂ communities to which all members contribute. She explores how students of color are recruited, how their lives are institutionally organized, and how they provide the faces, numbers, and stories that represent schools as diverse. In doing so, she finds that unlike students’ routine experiences of racism or other social differences, neoliberal diversity is mainly about improving schools’ images.

Bonnie Urciuoli is Leonard C. Ferguson Professor of Anthropology Emerita at Hamilton College. She has published extensively on linguistic and cultural anthropology, specializing in public discourses on race, class, and language, particularly the discursive construction of diversity in U.S. higher education. Most recently, she is the author of The Experience of Neoliberal Education (2018, Berghahn Books).