Abstract
While there has been an emphasis within the Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) literature on decentralizing university governance to allow for antiracist decision-making, there has been less focus on the lack of inclusive representation within faculty governance, particularly for historically excluded groups. Guided by testimonio as methodology and examples from our lived experiences within one small Catholic HSI, we offered five tenets of a decolonized faculty governance structure that democratizes faculty participation in decision-making at HSIs.
Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) are defined strictly by their enrollment of 25% or more Latinx undergraduate students, with little guidance from the federal government about the structural ways that colleges and universities should function to fully educate, empower, serve, and graduate Latinx students (a concept known as “servingness;” G. A. Garcia, Núñez, et al., 2019). G. A. Garcia (2018) called on all HSIs, whether 2-year or 4-year, public, or private; large or small, to decolonize their organizational structures in order to move towards servingness. The decolonizing HSIs framework has nine dimensions, including governance, which is the fundamental way that decision making is conducted within postsecondary settings. G. A. Garcia (2018) argued that governance should be decentralized to allow for antiracist and anti-oppressive decision-making and the deconstruction of policies that reinforce white normative values; however, she did not account for the various aspects of governance such as faculty governance, or the way that faculty participate in campus decision-making.
Research suggests that faculty governance remains a coveted institutional value, even though it is sometimes only symbolic or ceremonial (Minor, 2004). Scholarship on faculty governance, however, is disconnected from social justice frameworks and rarely analyzes how faculty senates can either contribute to or inhibit efforts towards greater equity and justice for minoritized students (Schoorman & Acker-Hocevar, 2010). With the steady rise in the number of HSIs in the United States and a growing demand to understand servingness as an organizational phenomenon, HSIs need a practical faculty governance approach that accounts for the racialized nature of decision making in HSIs and that redistributes power and resources within the institution. Guided by decolonial theory, testimonio as methodology, and examples from our lived experiences within one small private Catholic HSI, we propose a decolonized faculty governance approach that democratizes faculty decision-making at HSIs and centers equity and justice.
Literature Review
Governance was historically in the hands of an external board that provided checks and balances for the president (Kezar & Dizon, 2020). The idea of shared governance evolved in the early 19th century as Harvard faculty became increasingly dissatisfied with the decision-making model that gave sole authority to the board and president and was later adopted by most institutions to include faculty (Jones, 2012). Faculty governance has been a part of the history of most institutions, giving faculty a significant role in academic and personnel decisions, and can take many forms ranging from faculty senates to committees and task forces (Beaudry & Crockford, 2015; Hearn & McLendon, 2012).
Faculty continue to value the idea of shared governance, which provides them access to decision making alongside administrators and governing boards; although research suggests that there are limits to the functionality and power that faculty are granted through governance (Kezar & Dizon, 2020). Based on his extensive research with faculty senates specifically, Minor (2004) proposed four types of faculty senates including (1) functional senates that effectively make decisions about curriculum, tenure and promotion, and faculty work conditions and (2) influential senates that move beyond the decision making of functional senates to initiate institutional improvement and elevate strategic and budget priorities. Minor (2004) also found that there are less effective faculty senates including (3) ceremonial senates that mostly complete mundane tasks like developing the academic calendar, and (4) subverted senates that are often undermined by administrators and other forms of faculty participation. The reality is that much of faculty governance has been undermined in contemporary times with power inequities between faculty and administrators becoming more pronounced (Kezar & Dizon, 2020).
There are growing concerns about the historical lack of inclusive representation within faculty governance based on various demographics such as race, rank, or academic discipline (Brown & Miller, 1998). Achieving representation in faculty governance structures poses greater challenges when the campus itself lacks adequate representation of faculty of color. At HSIs, this is especially problematic as the population of faculty of color is sorely inadequate in comparison to the student population (Vargas et al., 2019). Vargas et al. (2019) found that at Title V funded HSIs, the Latinx student to Latinx faculty ratio was 146:1 compared to white student to white faculty ratio of 10:1 at the same institutions. With a lack of faculty of color who represent the lived experiences of the student demographic at HSIs, shared governance has limited ability to move the campus toward a more equity-oriented approach, thus reinforcing white supremacy within organizational structures. Along with calls to increase faculty of color at HSIs (Vargas et al., 2019) a decolonized faculty governance approach is an essential move towards servingness since increasing faculty of color without increasing their decision-making power will likely be for naught.
Decolonization as a Conceptual Framework
The push to decolonize educational spaces and practices in the present-day United States has been growing as scholars become more aware of the ways that education is grounded in values of settler colonialism, which intentionally erases the epistemologies and ontologies of Indigenous communities while seeking to “Americanize” them (de los Ríos, 2013). Postsecondary education in the United States is a colonial project, with colleges and universities founded alongside the thirteen colonies, funded by the slave trade, and built by slave labor of Africans and Native Americans (Wilder, 2013). The colonial colleges also created colonial mission schools, intentionally separating Native American students from their families with the goal of “Christianizing” and “civilizing” them (Wright, 1991).
The remnants of the colonial project remain intact and are constantly recreated, even within HSIs and other institutions seemingly committed to equity and justice. Some of the most elite colleges and universities in the present-day United States are directly connected to the removal of Native Americans from their land and the monetizing of that land to fund the establishment of colleges, leaving a lasting legacy of colleges and universities as the crux of the colonial project (la paperson, 2017). The knowledge production, decision making, and delivery of education within postsecondary institutions are directly connected to the settler colonial project, with college and university leaders and educators reinforcing the colonizing machine, even if unconsciously (la paperson, 2017). The result of higher education as a colonial project is seen in the de-valuing of ethnic studies, the lack of representation of people of color among faculty, administration, and decision-making structures, teaching practices that lack cultural responsiveness and center white and western ways of knowing, inequitable outcomes for students of color, the racialization of Latinx students, and knowledge production that marginalizes or ignores the lived experiences of people of color (G. A. Garcia, 2018; G. A. Garcia & Natividad, 2018; la paperson, 2017). Coloniality is present in all institutional structures within higher education (G. A. Garcia, 2018).
The call to decolonize colleges and universities must acknowledge that decolonization is not a metaphor for equity and social justice, as decolonization is directly connected to the land that settlers continue to occupy and would require a reconciliation of the removal of Indigenous people from the land and accountability for the broken treaties that have elevated capitalism and neoliberalism within the modern university (Tuck & Yang, 2012). With this acknowledgement, we draw on Quijano’s (2007) theorizing of the coloniality of power, which is the system of domination that was set in place with the colonization of the Americas and much of the world today. The coloniality of power elevates European domination and white supremacy, which is reinforced in formal institutions in society from law and politics to education. We use coloniality of power as a lens to understand how day to day institutional practices and decision- making reflect systemic racism, further reproducing inequities and sustaining exclusion (Ray, 2019).
Testimonio as Methodology
The use of lived experiences in research and the development of testimonio is grounded in the work of the Latina Feminist Group (2001) as a means to analyze and write about personal stories in the context of institutionalized violence in higher education. Testimonio is a way to elevate stories that demonstrate that our everyday experiences are the basis for theorizing and constructing politically grounded praxis to address inequities and oppression (Anzaldúa, 1987; Latina Feminist Group, 2001). Testimonios were first used in Latin America to connect the personal stories of persecution to the larger context of oppression that led to the violence (Delgado Bernal et al., 2012). The intention of testimonio in this context was (and continues to be) a tool for consciousness raising and social change as individual stories become part of the collective experience of oppression. The use of testimonio within the context of research evolved as existing methods of data collection did not capture the multiple realities of those who have historically been excluded from higher education or the sense of urgency to make changes (Hurtado, 2003). We use testimonio as the foundation for analysis about faculty governance.
Research Context
Data for this testimonio come from our lived experiences at Morado Catholic University (MCU; a pseudonym), a small, private 4-year institution classified as a master’s granting university. It is traditionally Catholic, founded as a women’s college that became co-educational and in 2011 became an HSI due to the rapidly changing demographics of the undergraduate population. The undergraduate FTE in fall 2020 was 61% Hispanic/Latinx, 24% white, and 5% Black. Like other HSIs, there are significant disparities between racial-ethnic composition of faculty compared to students. Faculty data for fall 2020 show that only 9% identified as Hispanic/Latinx and 9% as Black, while 68% identified as white. Furthermore, MCU has yet to deal with its colonial past such as the role of missionary efforts in the destruction of Indigenous culture or the benefitting from stolen land (Hall, 1992).
Since 2011, MCU has been awarded three federal HSI grants and has an active Title V director engaging the campus in conversations about servingness, racial justice, decoloniality, and whiteness. Most of these conversations are focused on redefining the curriculum and training faculty to be culturally responsive and antiracist, with virtually no conversations at the administrative or systemic level about how to make decisions and govern for justice and equity. Beyond our own lived experiences within MCU, our testimonios are grounded in a variety of data sources such as minutes from senate committee meetings available to all MCU faculty, our own observations and conversations with faculty, and written testimonies from Latinx faculty who have resigned due to the hostile climate and untenable situation on campus. Moreover, data evolved from the second author’s 18-month research practice partnership with MCU which includes qualitative interviews, survey data, and observations.
This project evolved through various conversations between Author 1 and 3 regarding our own testimonio or lived experiences. We framed these conversations in the context of decolonizing HSIs as proposed by Author 2. We invited Author 2 to this conversation because of her extensive knowledge of decolonizing models, HSIs, and her long-term engagement with MCU. The authors met multiple times via Zoom, taking notes and memoing our understanding of the dynamics of power, white supremacy, and coloniality of power until a consensus was reached about how we understand how it applies to faculty governance at MCU. Triangulation was accomplished through multiple data sources, theoretical alignment, and an intersection of our three distinct positionalities, leading to interdisciplinary triangulation that enhanced the rigor of our methodological approach (Padgett, 2017).
Our Positionalities
Author 1 is a Mexican American tenured professor at MCU whose research focuses on Latinx youth and educational equity. Her experience has been that of being a racially minoritized professor in an HSI that continues to function like a predominately white institution invested in keeping white people “comfortable,” and limiting “difficult” conversations about racialization of Latinxs. This has meant frequent experiences of tokenism and microaggressions.
Author 2 is a Mexican American granddaughter of immigrants and self-identified Chicana who does equity and justice research in higher education. She is a tenured professor who studies the process of colleges and universities becoming HSIs committed to acknowledging the history and lived experiences of students of color. She calls on institutions to move beyond compositional diversity and pseudo-inclusion and towards racial justice. She engaged with MCU for 18 months as part of a research practice partnership about their HSI organizational identity.
Author 3 is a white heterosexual cis-male administrator at MCU whose research focuses on criminological theory and the institutional (specifically criminal justice and higher education) experiences of minoritized groups. As an administrator, he has experienced colonizing decision making at the institution as both an actor and observer, including observing the phenomenon of becoming an HSI but operating with white normative standards, structures, and practices.
Governance at MCU
The institutional governance structure at MCU consists of the Faculty Senate, the Collegium, the President and their Cabinet, the Board of Trustees, and for some issues what is called the Corporate Board (made up of the religious community that founded the institution). Specifically for faculty governance, in 2017 the University moved from what was known as the “Academic Council,” a decision-making body chaired by the University President in which all full-time faculty participated, to the current structure of the Faculty Senate and Collegium. In theory, the governing body of the faculty is the Collegium, which includes all full-time faculty as voting members. The larger body of faculty (the Collegium) is represented through the Faculty Senate and is the “center for dialog” between faculty and administration (Faculty Handbook). The Faculty Senate has more power as it is composed of 12 elected faculty representatives from each of the four Colleges and six elected Executive Council members.
The Collegium is further represented through university committees. All full-time faculty are eligible to serve on committees and are elected by the larger body of faculty. The faculty senators serve as chairs of the committees, giving them another layer of power. For those full-time faculty not on the Senate or elected to a committee, the main avenue for participation in governance is Collegium meetings, occurring twice a semester. Each standing committee conducts its business and reports votes/decisions to the Faculty Senate, who then also holds a vote and provides decisions to the Collegium. The Collegium then votes on governance issues that have passed in the Senate. A passing vote in the Collegium consists of a simple majority of members present, except for Faculty Handbook content, which requires a two-thirds majority. This vote is then carried to the Board of Trustees for final review and approval.
There is no formal oversight of faculty governance. The Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (ODEI), led by a Chief Diversity Officer (CDO), includes “[s]upporting faculty governance that promotes a climate for diversity, equity and inclusion. . .” (ODEI website, para 13). However, this has not been a focus of DEI work at MCU. According to Minor (2004), the Faculty Senate and Collegium are influential and seemingly “fair” or “democratic.” Next, we highlight how faculty governance at MCU is actually race-neutral, centers whiteness, privileges colonial approaches, and is exclusionary.
Representation and Participation in Faculty Governance
One of the key signs of inequitable governance is the consolidation of power and authority by social identity or campus role (Kezar & Posselt, 2020). This is a major challenge we have witnessed at MCU, as formal structures for faculty governance lack representation by gender and race, which also intersects with discipline. Nursing, education, and social work, for example, are areas that have some of the highest representation of women faculty; however, they are perceived within the university organizational culture as lacking “rigor” or “validity.” Consequently, faculty voices from these areas are devalued with explicit claims of disciplinary hubris, ignoring the implicit devaluing of programs because they are dominated by women.
At MCU, faculty governance at the Collegium level is dominated by faculty from the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS), while faculty from the Colleges that house women dominated fields are less represented. This is due, in part, to the history of the CAS as the original and largest college within the university, and the power dynamics resulting from the intersection of gender, race, and discipline. The CAS has a much larger percentage of male faculty (46% men) compared to Health Sciences (19% men) (which houses Nursing and Nutrition) and Applied Social Sciences (32% men) (which houses Social Work and Education). The racial representation adds another layer of complexity as the number of faculty of color across all colleges is extremely low and does not necessarily intersect with gender. Nursing and Nutrition are woman dominated occupations, but have the lowest representation of faculty of color, while Applied Social Sciences has the highest representation of faculty of color, but much lower number of faculty overall than CAS (Table 1).
Faculty Demographics by Race and Gender.
Source: Fall 2020 Full-Time Faculty Demographics by Academic Unit. Office of Institutional Effectiveness.
Hispanic is used when reporting MCU data. MCU uses Hispanic for reporting ethnic/racial data, and this does include faculty of Spanish origin, which the term Latinx would not include.
Regardless of college, faculty of color at MCU are not well represented within faculty governance. At the time of this publication, all six members of the Senate Executive Council are white (100%), and 10 of the 12 faculty senators are white (90%). Of the remaining two, one is Asian and one is Arab American. There are no Black or Latinx faculty senators. Due to the lack of representation of faculty of color and the ways positionality shapes perspectives, a governance model ruled by a small, elected Senate and a simple majority of the faculty without critical reflection marginalizes both faculty and students with minoritized identities, whose needs may not be centered in decisions made by a largely white faculty who do not share their experiences.
An additional factor impacting the representation of faculty of color in governance relates to rank, tenure, and invisible labor. While MCU has made efforts to increase the compositional diversity of the faculty, this is a more recent practice. Therefore, the majority of senior faculty are white, while faculty of color are mostly untenured. Furthermore, Jimenez et al. (2019) note that faculty of color have additional burdens of the invisible labor they provide, ranging from unassigned advising of students of color to being tasked with work around DEI. This latter form of labor often results from tokenism, and the toll of tokenism inhibits participation in faculty governance in two ways. First, when one is doing this additional work, there may not be enough time or energy for attending a committee or senate meeting. Second, faculty of color may seek to avoid the inevitable tokenism that will occur in governance processes and committee participation. For self-preservation, some faculty of color avoid situations where they will be called to speak for their race or recommend DEI solutions (Niemann, 2016).
Given these limits to faculty of color participation and influence, the historical model of faculty governance perpetuates the privileging of white [male] voices. When the first author was elected to the faculty review and tenure committee which requires members be tenured, it was composed of mostly older, white male colleagues. Overtime, the gender and racial composition of this committee has shifted, with an increased number of white women, as well as two women of color (one Asian, and the first author who is Latina); however, representation of faculty of color continues to be a challenge. If either of the two women of color were to step down, there would be no other faculty of color in their respective departments who have tenure that could step into this role. Even more problematic, if these women of color faculty move into administrative, primarily non-teaching roles, they lose their vote in Collegium, and faculty governance loses an important perspective from an already small number of stakeholders.
Furthermore, faculty governance in higher education has long had a status division between faculty and staff, with faculty maintaining a disproportionate portion of power and authority despite staff being a rightful stakeholder in academic affairs given their contributions to student enrollment, persistence, and success. Some staff at MCU also serve as adjunct or part-time faculty with little to no representation in faculty governance (Kezar & Dizon, 2020). At HSIs, it is common to have more staff of color than faculty of color, yet their voices are not heard within the formal structures of governance. At MCU, Latinxs make up 18% of staff compared to only 9% of faculty and African Americans make up 9.8% of staff compared to only 7% of faculty. Staff participate in governance through Staff Council; however, leadership within the Staff Council is also composed of mostly white men and women. Many staff also believe that the Staff Council is not valued by their supervisors, and therefore, do not want to invest time in the process. Staff voice is necessary in academic governance given the important role they play for students of color. According to a campus survey, staff report higher percentages of either witnessing discrimination (32%) and assisting students with discrimination (54%) compared to faculty (15% and 30%). Thus, staff potentially have additional insight into the needs of students of color and could inform decisions made in academic affairs.
Collegiality, White Fragility, and Racial Microaggressions
A major challenge to decolonizing faculty governance is white fragility, which includes the defensive reactions white people have to even a minimum amount of racial stress (DiAngelo, 2011). In contexts where there are built-in power dynamics, such as governance structures, the likelihood for white fragility being triggered is increased. At MCU, this effect is compounded by the stated value of “relationship-centered” collegiality. MCU is a mission-driven institution that organizes around an institutional culture of compassion for others, paired with a commitment to the pursuit and support of truth. In more common campus community uses, this expectation for compassion is articulated as a focus on being “relationship-centered” in all aspects from teaching and advising to managing and governing the institution. The commitment to relationships extends general understandings of collegiality, aspiring to recognize each member of the university community. However, a reliance on relationships amplifies the representation issue, as people of color often do not have access to relationship networks, and in the case of governance, people gravitate towards or vote for people who think or look like them.
Furthermore, in the spirit of collegiality, or more specifically in the spirit of not being perceived as disruptive by confronting whiteness, faculty of color at MCU often suppress their own racialized experiences to protect the racial feelings of white colleagues. This placating of white voices perpetuates their privilege, preventing meaningful conversations about race and racism and preventing a truly democratized form of governance. The power dynamics of these relationships, and particularly their racialized nature, is unacknowledged in most situations, creating a hostile environment for people of color. For example, when the first author joined the faculty review and tenure committee, she asked when the anti-bias training would occur, assuming this had been in place and institutionalized as part of the committee process. The response from one white male colleague was a literal pat on the hand while saying, “you’ll be fine.” These types of daily microaggressions, racial battle fatigue, and disproportionate amount of invisible labor and service that faculty of color face must also be acknowledged.
Even when faculty of color have the rank and tenure to serve on committees, they may make strategic choices to step back from investing in processes that may feel tokenizing and frustrating, with little return. On some committees, speaking up can feel particularly risky for faculty of color, and can have implications for psychological and physical health. As eloquently described by Michal Slocum (2020), battle fatigue is the result of the microaggressions themselves and the constant challenging of racism in daily faculty life. At MCU, all three authors have witnessed or heard stories of Black and Latinx faculty who have either left the institution or who disengage in order to survive. One Latinx colleague who left MCU described their efforts to interrupt white supremacy and systemic racism as equivalent to trying to put their hand up to stop a freight train approaching at full speed. This faculty member explained that they had to leave because they refused to “stay in their lane” which faculty of color are basically told to do if they spark white fragile responses in their attempt to challenge racism or whiteness.
The use of “collegiality” to protect white fragility and enable racial microaggressions is also observed during hiring processes of upper-level administrators, as the Senate chooses who will represent the faculty during the hiring process. The first author was a part of a group of faculty selected to meet with prospective candidates for an administrative role. This group had no real power, as it had no vote in the process, and instead felt like symbolic, tokenized representation. During the process, it appeared that a particular white candidate was favored. When faculty questioned the suitability of this candidate due to their lack of knowledge about racialized experiences of faculty of color and limited knowledge of experiences and needs of Black and Latinx students combined with their noticeable discomfort in conversations about race, some of the white faculty became defensive and protective of this white candidate. It was obvious that white faculty favored this candidate and were dismissive of the concerns raised by the sole faculty of color and one critically conscious white faculty. As an HSI, MCU should have carefully considered the suitability of candidates to lead the institution from a culturally responsive, anti-racist framework; however, even in the context of hiring, white fragility in the search process protects candidates who do not have the necessary skills or knowledge to effectively lead an institution grappling with the need to address systemic racial inequities.
A final example is seen in the university’s adoption of a Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation model that has dominated all community conversations around race. This model intentionally asks those from minoritized racial groups to put their experiences on display for the benefit of dominant white groups, and intentionally prioritizes white stakeholders, focusing on the comfort of that group. Deriving from Marx’s discussion of ideology, Luckacs’ (1971 [1920]) “false consciousness” defines a state of subjective thinking that does not correspond with objective reality. With that definition, this commitment to being relationship-centered establishes a false community consciousness in that it calls on community members to ignore oppressive structural realities and dismiss biased interactional experiences for the sake of not disrupting relationships and understandings of “kindness” that maintains white supremacy. This weaponizing of collegiality creates a community where dissent is labeled as “unkind” and “uncaring,” and one that specifically views race-consciousness as combative, and race-neutrality as compassionate.
Coloniality of Power Within Faculty Governance
The coloniality of power in faculty governance is enabled by the autonomy faculty seek in shared governance without critical reflection. The challenge then is the lack of accountability when the faculty elected to serve all faculty rely on colonizing, race-neutral structures and processes in their governance. Perhaps one of the most egregious instances of inequities in faculty governance that result from the coloniality of power can be seen in the response to the Spanish language faculty’s proposal to make a change in the core foreign language requirement. The MCU faculty who sought the change(s) were all women of color, specifically Latina, and were proposing data-driven recommendations that would better serve students and the University as a whole. The Spanish department proposal described a model that has been adopted by other institutions that goes beyond a traditional foreign language model and best meets the needs of Heritage language speakers who comprise the majority of MCU’s undergraduate enrollment. The Spanish department proposal had tremendous merit and was student centered in its approach, following the data on student trends by subgroup. The Latinx students were testing out of the requirement, missing out on an opportunity to reinforce their identity, gain confidence in their heritage language, and develop professional language skills, while African American students were disproportionately burdened by needing eight credits to meet the requirement.
There was strong opposition to the changes, even though the curriculum committee itself, who reviewed the proposal, described the Spanish model as focused on “growth and exposure” while the French/Italian model focused on “proficiency.” The faculty who opposed the changes were predominantly white and self-admittedly operating not in the interest of students, but in the interest of enrollment numbers for their impacted programs (a neoliberal response which is often at odds with equity and justice). While on the surface, faculty governance makes claims that outcomes from processes are a result of a democratic process, the contextual details provide a picture of a colonizing structure limiting the voice and experience of faculty of color. The faculty seeking change pursued the formal structures and processes for change yet were not in the conversations that occurred at different stages. Conversely, the faculty from the foreign language department who opposed the proposal were represented both on the curriculum committee and on the Senate, and another had close relationships to members of the Senate. The issue of representation and the relationship-centered culture of MCU harmed minoritized faculty.
Because of this conflict of interest, one of the Spanish department faculty asked that the opposing member from her department recuse themselves from the curriculum committee that would be voting on this proposal. The response from the Senate was they were not interested in removing a committee member from the opportunity to weigh in on a proposal because they are elected to represent the larger body of faculty rather than their own interests. Again, highlighting the connections between “collegiality” and white fragility, a white, male senate leader warned the Spanish language faculty that he “would not tolerate inappropriate behavior” signaling to them that their challenges to the “democratic process” and governance were already perceived as disruptive and threatening. Other governance procedures, rooted in western discourse in management, also blocked the proposal from going to a vote by the Senate or the Collegium. The Spanish faculty were asked to meet procedural requirements that were impossible due to the opposition to the proposal from within their department (French and Italian), and the Executive Council claimed that they were taking on an administrative issue rather than a Senate issue by allowing a proposal that did not have full faculty support within the foreign languages department to move forward. The white colonial form of governance that touts race-neutrality as necessity provided a platform for white and male privilege manifested in the entitlement to be heard and the expectation to be right above all else. This process devalued and delegitimized the grassroots voices pushing for change.
The way that faculty governance handled this case also negates the racialized reality at MCU. The Spanish department has faced systemic inequities and institutional racism. They have the majority of enrollment in the foreign languages department, but inadequate staffing, resources, or control over program goals. The current faculty governance structure is an example of coloniality of power which resulted in subjugating minoritized faculty, inhibiting their ability to fully serve students. Moreover, a critical consciousness was missing in how faculty governance approached this proposal. This outcome may have been different if the leaders in faculty governance evaluated this proposal through a lens of racial equity and Latinx servingness. Instead, this decision making shows hostility towards Spanish heritage students and undermines the institution’s reality as an HSI.
An additional complication in this example, and others, is the lack of accountability for faculty governance, and the inability for an administrator to intervene on behalf of a faculty member within the realm of faculty governance. Faculty not wanting to be disruptive or confrontational turn to upper administration to use the authority of their titles to intervene yet receive inconsequential support in the name of respecting the autonomy in shared governance. At MCU, faculty who have concerns about faculty governance and who would normally go to a Department Chair or Dean with a complaint or concern are told “you need to talk to your senators,” but the senators may be the problem as shown in the Spanish curriculum example. For tenured and tenure-track faculty, who make up the majority of faculty governance positions, there are few to no consequences for personal contributions to oppressive interactions and absolutely no responsibility for the overall oppressive structure of faculty governance. Most faculty governance structures, including that at MCU, lack an internal review and accountability process. A faculty senate who sees itself as policing upper administration but does not police itself and/or is not accountable to internal or any external stakeholders, creates a self-inflicted challenge to decolonizing faculty governance.
Proposing a Decolonized Faculty Governance Approach
The purpose of the study was to first provide examples from our lived experiences within one small private Catholic HSI that show how faculty governance is exclusionary and hostile as a result of race-neutral and outdated colonial approaches to decision-making. Based on these examples and guided by decolonial theory, the second purpose was to propose a decolonized faculty governance approach that can be used in practice by faculty, administrators, and decision-makers at HSIs. We acknowledge that the coloniality of power is present in postsecondary institutions, reinforcing white dominance in all institutional practices and decision- making (la paperson, 2017). We also acknowledge that the coloniality of power cannot be fully disrupted in colleges and universities until it is dismantled as a system. As practitioners committed to equity and justice, we believe in disruption, even if it doesn’t fully dismantle systemic oppression. Here we provide practical solutions for decision-makers at HSIs who are also committed to disruption and progress.
We propose a new approach to governance that centers people of color, addresses larger systems of oppression, including white supremacy and coloniality of power, focuses on the development of critical consciousness, and reflects democratic participation that centers the needs of students. Central to the work of decolonizing faculty governance is attention to the nuanced and complex ways in which power dynamics are enacted through governance policies, procedures, and structures. A decolonized framework for faculty governance in HSIs can begin to address some of the challenges of faculty governance, intentionally widening the circle of participation, and supporting individual and institutional accountability, reflexivity, and transformative discourse (G. A. Garcia, 2018; Kezar & Posselt, 2020). Drawing on the challenges presented, we offer five tenets of a decolonized faculty governance approach.
Implications for Practice
By highlighting the challenges within faculty governance at MCU, a clear picture emerges of how colonial governance structures impede equity and justice within HSIs. The MCU case demonstrates that increasing faculty of color in HSIs is not enough to move towards servingness. If an HSI increases the number of faculty of color, this could have dramatic effects on serving students of color, yet within a racialized organization, changing the composition of the members does not guarantee inclusiveness within the decision-making processes, as people of color are often not empowered to make decisions within these organizations (Ray, 2019). To fully develop a Latinx-serving identity, the governance structures must be dismantled and recreated in order to provide a critically reflexive structure that ensures servingness. A decolonized approach to faculty governance would move shared governance towards more inclusive compositional representation and hold white faculty accountable for their own level of critical consciousness, centering student needs, and being an ally in the process of becoming a Latinx-serving institution. For HSIs seeking to serve Latinx and other minoritized students, changing the approach to faculty governance must be a part of that process.
A decolonized faculty governance process shall be social justice oriented, equity-minded, and race-conscious, meaning that race, ethnicity, and other minoritized identities must become a permanent part of all conversations, deliberations, and decisions. It shall also be critically reflexive, asking those in positions of power to consider both the social context that impacts their students as well as their own positionality as racialized individuals whose own cultural lens shapes their ways of knowing. Moreover, the process should center minoritized perspectives, consensus building, and bottom-up representation, essentially flipping the standard governance approach upside down. Intentional efforts shall be made to ensure that historically excluded voices are centered and equitably represented in decision making. Addressing power dynamics within faculty governance is a necessary component of decolonizing HSIs. If faculty have the courage to implement the recommendations provided, faculty governance has the potential to serve as a tool for critically conscious, equity-minded practices that empower minoritized people within the organization.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Funding for this project was partially supported by Spencer Foundation grant #202100066.
