On (not) being the master’s tools: five years of ‘Changing University Cultures’

Abstract

This paper reflects on the first five years of the Changing University Cultures (CHUCL) collective, which conducted equality and diversity projects in four English universities between 2015 and 2020. We explore how CHUCL has been used in the service of institutional polishing (Ahmed, S. 2012. On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Duke University Press, 143) and airbrushing (Phipps, A. 2020b. “Reckoning Up: Sexual Harassment and Violence in the Neoliberal University.” Gender & Education 32 (2), 230–233), how our reports have become non-performatives (Ahmed, S. 2012. On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Duke University Press, 90), and how our findings have been weaponised in the service of institutional interests. We are two of three white middle-class women who constitute the CHUCL collective; we situate this retrospective within critical reflections on our positionality and an abolitionist theorisation of the institution. We conclude that we have often been the master’s tools, and while we join the work of imagining alternatives, we must build capacity for survival within the master’s house.