Preface to Responses: Dynamism, Not Just Diversity

Abstract

Remaking institutions of higher education so that women succeed and lead is an example of the kind of aspiration that requires new thinking as well as motivation and hard work. Generated by the innovative scholarship of Susan Sturm, the articles in this collection offer intellectual resources for the requisite new thinking. Lack of diversity emerges as a valid point of critique, but, as the authors in this response issue demonstrate, the presence of diversity is not alone the solution. There is power for newcomers who become institutional players, but bringing people in without changing the institution can both reproduce and legitimate new forms of marginalization.

We are most struck that these essays about rethinking organizational change to achieve gender equity converge around Sturm's metaphor of citizenship rather than equal treatment or opportunity. Real change, the authors indicate, is more likely to come and stick through participation by many people. Hence, the authors consider how change works through networks of people, not through the actions of one individual, and through alteration of ongoing operations, rather than the introduction of different actors playing the same roles. In this brief introduction, we seek to specify the dynamism within this new conception of citizenship. And yet, as several of the Workshop participants acknowledge, even when citizenship is tethered to durable motors for institutional change, the slipping back into familiar ways of thinking remains a real risk.