Sarah A.
Lacy and Ashton Rome
(RE)POLITICIZING THE ANTHROPOLOGIST IN THE AGE OF
NEOLIBERALISM AND #BLACKLIVESMATTER
Abstract
In the larger context of overwhelming student loans
and the decline of tenure, universities are now com-
monly dealing with racial protests. Beyond con-
tributing service to what Sara Ahmed describes as
the “non-performativity” of diversity statements,
scholars are expected to follow the precedent set by
university administration, which is usually one of
silence and denial punctuated by vociferous apology
through targeted resignations post-incident.
Although race has long been a dominant research
theme, anthropologists are rarely asked by adminis-
tration to facilitate debate on the role of the aca-
demic setting in creating social and political change.
This article explores the responses of universities
coupled with the purposeful exclusion of anthropolo-
gists and other social scientists from administrative
committees and policy decisions. Assuming Louis
Althusser’s theory of the ideological state apparatus,
we examine the ways university bureaucracies have
propagated neoliberal ideas and strategies for
achieving racial equality and how the strategies uti-
lized by the university are dictated by its funding
needs. Specific examples draw from the experiences
and observations of the authors—an assistant profes-
sor of anthropology and a community organizer–
graduate student—juxtaposing the responses of two
local university administrations to protests in Fergu-
son, as well as detailing nonproductive attempts of
these campus communities to engage structural
racism and the Ferguson community. [Ferguson,
new black freedom movement, non-performativity,
activist anthropology]
Contemporary global academia, which is largely
built on the American university model, is a sys-
tem that functions in part to propagate the ideolo-
gies of neoliberalism and racism in support of
capitalism, which should be recognized as both an
economic and social system. There is active debate
of the disparities between what universities are
Transforming Anthropology, Vol. 25, Number 2, pp. 171–184, ISSN 1051-0559, electronic ISSN 1548-7466. © 2017 by the American
Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.
DOI: 10.1111/traa.12115.
ideally portrayed as representing (e.g., free speech
and the exchange and debate of controversial
ideas) and what they actually are (e.g., institutions
in support of the military–industrial–academic
complex [Giroux 2007; Gonzalez 2014] and funded
by corporations and billionaires1). Edited volumes
such as The Imperial University attest to this
(Chatterjee and Maira 2014); however, these
assessments are often restricted to a relatively
small, politically radical cadre of academics and
activists organizing on university campuses. The
openly disseminated critiques rarely go so far as to
call to dismantle this system of academia in service
of capitalism. It is more common to make conces-
sionary demands, such as advocating for the role
of a university education as a path into the middle
class, which is only “ideal” within a capitalist soci-
ety, and does not engage why the university serves
a privileged few.
The deliberation over these reforms, no matter
how watered down, rarely escapes its academic
echo chamber. Right-wing media continues to
attack the straw man of the allegedly widespread
liberal forces undergirding American academia
(see Kimball 1990). In many ways, the university
is an “Anti-Politics Machine,” as according to Fer-
guson (1990). He argues that institutions such as
the University “depoliticize(s) everything it
touches, everywhere whisking political realities out
of sight, all the while performing, almost unno-
ticed, its own preeminently political operation”
(ibid.: xv). How do politically unorganized aca-
demics affect change as these titanic forces redefine
the role of the professoriate and the goals of edu-
cation in general?
This is a question that cannot be easily
answered, even after decades of attempts other
than to suggest that like-minded academics find
a way to organize. Within the history of strug-
gles under capitalism, anthropologists have been
present to provide new concepts and help shape
the ideas and vision of those movements from
Zora Neale Hurston, Ashley Montague, Ruth
171
Benedict, and even Frederick Engels to David
Graeber. Social movements, such as the Civil
Rights Movement and Black Lives Matter, have
also presented challenges to anthropology and
academia more generally. The acknowledgment
of the role of “activist anthropologist” is in
counter distinction to the field’s origins, which
are deeply rooted in giving legitimacy to the
concept of race and racial differences to justify
apartheid, imperialism, and exploitation of peas-
ants and the working class (Baker 1998). The
field now focuses on covering the variance of
humanity rather than defining the mean but still
struggles to break from its troubled history (Cas-
pari 2003). This context could make an anthro-
pology department a rich pool for an
administrator building a “diversity” committee or
looking for administrative appointments for stu-
dent-focused positions. However, in our experi-
ence, this has not been the case.
With the growth in the new Black Freedom
Movement, which began in August 2014, after the
murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri,
protests have expanded both on and off university
campuses to draw attention to the treatment of
people of color by law enforcement, systemic
racism, and the role of institutions like higher edu-
cation in supporting them. University administra-
tors scramble to respond when their student body
is the site of the most recent unrest as seen at the
University of Missouri-Columbia, Yale University,
and Claremont-McKenna College to name but a
few. Inevitably, someone is forced to resign, a
diversity committee is formed, a new administrator
tasked with diversity in their title is hired, and
media attention turns elsewhere.
We want to explore what influences the for-
mulaic response of universities as a system that
propagates ideologies of racism and neoliberalism.
Anthropologists and other scholars of race and
economics critical of these systems are generally
excluded from these “solutions,” which is under-
stood using Sara Ahmed’s concept of “non-perfor-
mativity” (Ahmed 2006). To contextualize our
analysis, we present a comparative study of the
responses of administrations at both Washington
University in St. Louis and the University of Mis-
souri-St. Louis to protests in Ferguson. Though
there may be many meaningful pathways an acti-
vist scholar could attempt to pursue within the
political minefield of a university responding to
racial protests, there are a number we have wit-
nessed that are deeply problematic as they priori-
tize the self or the institution over the
172 TRANSFORMING ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 25(2)
communities in crises. We hope to present them as
a warning.
UNIVERSITY AS NEOLIBERAL
INSTITUTION
Neoliberalism, as David Harvey argues, is a “class
project,” which seeks to reverse the economic
gains of the working-class internationally after
World War II, characterized as the “Golden Age
of Capitalism” (Harvey 2007). Neoliberalism
includes an ideological fetishization of free mar-
kets and “the corporation,” the elimination of bar-
riers to free trade, and the ability for the capitalist
class to exploit workers domestically and interna-
tionally. It also includes a shifting of the State
budget away from social services and grants,
which increased powers of punitive state institu-
tions, like the police and prisons, to handle the
effects of mass unemployment and inequality that
have resulted from neoliberal economic policies.
Within the historical transition to neoliberalism,
institutions that popular groups have historically
fought for and used as vehicles for social change,
like trade unions and workers’ parties, were
actively weakened and marginalized or co-opted to
allow for power to be concentrated in interna-
tional commercial banks and corporations and the
political parties they control. Though the global
economic collapse of 2007-08 presented the possi-
bility for an indictment of neoliberal politics, it
remains the dominant framework for university
administrations pursuing corporate models of gov-
ernance (Giroux 2007; Lorenz 2012).
In the neoliberal university, faculty are more
precariously positioned than ever; the vast major-
ity of instructors are not on the tenure track (over
70%).2 As the percentage of university employees
(i.e., support staff and administrators) who are
working outside the classroom continues to rise,
classrooms are more likely to be staffed by contin-
gent or non-tenure track instructors (ibid.).
Administrative responsibilities are removed from
faculty members and handed over to generously
compensated administrators, which enables pillars
of the university system—tenure and shared gover-
nance—to crumble. This faculty exploitation is
coupled with the increase in online courses, which
are routinely highly automated while charging the
same or higher tuition, which is student exploita-
tion (Noble 1998). Adjunct and online instructors
are treated as unskilled labor and poorly compen-
sated; students are charged additional convenience
fees on top of regular tuition, are less likely to
pass,3 and only 4% of registered students, on
average, actually complete the course if it is a
MOOC (massively open online course; Perna et al.
2013). Student outcomes are clearly not the prior-
ity in a system where the majority do not finish
the course, and few get any individualized atten-
tion from the instructor. The struggle of adjunct
instructors for more stable employment conditions
and the concurrent rise in university faculty union-
ization attempts are, therefore, ultimately a fight
against neoliberalism.
State legislatures have continued to divest
from the role of educating their constituents at
public universities after the budget tightening of
the financial crisis of 2007/8. In 2014, all but three
states spent less per-student enrolled in a public
university than their 2008 levels, and two states
(Arizona and Louisiana) have decreased per-stu-
dent spending by more than 40%.4 Eleven states
spend more on their prison systems than their
university systems.5 When officials elected to state-
wide office prioritize repeated tax cuts for the
wealthiest in U.S. society over ensuring access to
higher education for the majority, higher educa-
tion allocations dwindle. This divestment is exem-
plified in Wisconsin, where, in 2015, Governor
Scott Walker gave a $250 million budget reduction
to the University of Wisconsin system with one
hand, and $250 million to build a new sports sta-
dium with the other.6 Neoliberal policies at the
state level force reductions in per-student spending
for public universities, which is one of the best
predictors of student success (Newfield 2008).
As states cut the budget to higher education
each fiscal year and tuition inevitably goes up, stu-
dents incur greater levels of debt. This generation’s
huge student-loan burdens are credited with their
lower home-ownership rates, lower birth rates, and
decreased expected lifetime earnings, which will
affect their ability to retire (Rothstein and Rouse
2011). Those with student loan debt delay starting
families or forgo it all together,7 and this demo-
graphic impact will be felt for generations to
come.
Greater student debt from tuition is further
paired with credit card companies on campus
offering cheap swag in exchange for opening an
account, and campuses signing exclusivity agree-
ments with specific banks. These agreements are
intended to force students to bank with the specific
agent for convenience and avoiding ATM fees, but
it also forces staff to bank with these institutions if
they want their pay in a timely manner.8 Students
are trapped into a debt cycle as soon as they are
old enough to sign credit card application forms.
These colluding forces—multinational banks,
corporate lobbyists controlling state legislatures,
and the increasing privatization of universities—
are heavily invested in the maintenance of the sta-
tus quo and have many tactics for squashing dis-
sent. Is it any surprise that greater divestment of
states from higher education is concurrent with
the increasing militarization of campus police
(Godrej 2014)? The image of the University of
California-Davis campus police officer pepper
spraying students in the eyes as they peacefully sat
with their arms locked during an Occupy protest
spread internationally. The officer received more in
Worker’s Compensation for his pain and suffering
after the incident than the students individually
received from a settlement for their unlawful
assault.9 UC-Davis chancellor Linda Katehi’s
attempt to expunge that image from the Web only
served to increase the furor directed toward her10
and eventually resulted in her being placed on
administrative leave.11 The UC Davis student pro-
testors had previously targeted the U.S. Bank
branch on campus; the brutality directed toward
them is no coincidence considering the relationship
between universities and banks (Godrej 2014). The
University of Missouri-St. Louis purchased SWAT
style uniforms for their campus police before the
unrest in Ferguson, not in response to it, as milita-
rization has become the norm for campus security.
The increasing precarity of the professoriate,
rising levels of student debt, and direct attacks on
dissent in the neoliberal university are not evenly
felt among the populous. People of color are pre-
dominately shouldering the burden of both the
history of scholarly institutions and their current
neoliberal policies. Neoliberalism is inherently
racist as racism serves to maintain capitalism by
dividing working-class people; ergo our analysis
must be more intersectional.
UNIVERSITY AS RACIST INSTITUTION
“You can’t have capitalism without racism”—
Malcolm X
Universities actively reproduce racial inequal-
ity at home and abroad. Inequities within the aca-
deme are produced during graduate school
admissions, graduate school attrition, tenure-track
assistant professor hiring, and promotion decisions
for tenure and full professor status. This mirrors
the “leaky pipeline” metaphor often used to
describe the loss of women at every level in the
STEM professions, though we see that racism and
sexism interact and amplify each other in univer-
sity graduate admissions and hiring (e.g., Milkman
173
et al. 2015; Turner et al. 2011). Faculty of color
and women are given higher service loads (Baez
2000)—exasperated by the fact that Black faculty
are more likely to have a joint appointment requir-
ing service to two different departments12—and
their research is considered less rigorous when
compared to White, male colleagues (Thompson
and Louque 2005). When students of color arrive
on campus, they see few faculty who look like
them—less than 7% of all university faculty are
Black (Ryu 2009).
In the United States, 12.3% of people are
Black (U.S. Census Bureau), but there is a
decreasing trend of college attainment: 16% of
high school graduates, 14% of those enrolled in
college of any kind in the 18- to 24-year-old demo-
graphic, and 9% of those holding a bachelor’s
degree in the 25- to 29-year-old range are Black.13
U.S. education professionals may be able to claim
that some Black students arrive at the college
gates, but not predominately at 4-year universities,
and they are suffering from higher attrition rates
(Ross et al. 2012). Students who attend some col-
lege and don’t graduate are more likely to be in
default on their student loan debt, and Black stu-
dents take out more debt to attend college than
their White peers (Goldrick-Rab et al. 2014). This
debt follows these students, putting downward
pressure on their lifetime earning potential.
Many Black and other racial minority students
are attending college with the promise that their
degree will be their ticket to a middle-class exis-
tence and that politically it is a part of an (effec-
tive) program for racial equality. But they are
entering an institution where the educators and
administration are more predominately White than
our broader society is. They are taking on more
student loan debt than their White peers, are less
likely to graduate, and will earn less (Emmons and
Noeth 2015). Despite being celebrated as enlight-
ened institutions, universities are failing their
students of color just as the intersecting institu-
tions of banking, policing, and local government
fail them. As Robin D.G. Kelley describes in his
discussion of the relationship between Black
students and their universities: “Black students
(are seeking) love from an institution incapable of
loving them” (Kelley 2016).
American universities reproduce racism inter-
nationally as well. Divestment campaigns by stu-
dents reveal how the investment of university
endowments support dictatorial governments (e.g.,
Saudi Arabia’s royal family), genocide and occu-
pations (e.g., via the Israel Boycott, Divest, and
174 TRANSFORMING ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 25(2)
Sanction [BDS] movement), and imperialism (e.g.,
military manufacturers). The response from the
individual university is often to ignore students.14
In the case of larger movements such as Israel
BDS, politicians and the media vilify the students,
rather than the students’ intended target. Gover-
nor Andrew Cuomo proclaimed that he refuses to
allow groups and companies that support the
Israel BDS campaign to do business with the state
government of New York.15 Policies like this
further incentivize universities to dismiss their stu-
dents’ concerns.
Though student protests to take down the
statues and change the eponymous building names
of known segregationists, Klan members, and
slave holders are becoming more common (such as
at Princeton, Georgetown, and others), decrying
the racist histories of universities only serves to
whitewash their contemporary racism. Universities’
hiring practices, admission and retention practices,
and endowment investments all produce and main-
tain racial inequality both on and off-campus. This
is only a superficial summary of the ways universi-
ties construct racism.
UNIVERSITY AS IDEOLOGICAL STATE
APPARATUS (ISA)
Hegemony, according to Gramsci (1971), is the
idea that power serves the dominant group by
convincing the subordinate groups that its rule
serves not only the dominant group’s interests but
also those of the subordinate group. State power
is maintained through both coercion and consen-
sus. This means that as much as hegemony
contains coercive power, or domination through
force, through institutions like the police and mili-
tary, hegemony also assumes soft or ideological
power, which is diffused throughout civil society.
Althusser (1971), advancing Marx’s Base-Super-
structure relations of hegemony and Lenin’s the-
ory of imperialism, analyzes how ideologies
operate in capitalist society and the institutions,
which he calls “apparatuses,” that enable their
operation and sustainability. For Althusser, the
sustainability of the capitalist mode of production
is based not just on the maintenance of legal and
political conditions and the reproduction of the
next generation of workers but also on the repro-
duction of capitalist ideology. This is the role of
the university as an Ideological State Apparatus
(ISA).
The repressive state apparatus (RSA) is used
by the ruling classes to physically repress threats
to capitalist society and class structures. Myriad
ISAs seek to maintain the ideological hegemony of
the ruling class. Using Marx’s conclusion that the
capitalist mode of production cannot survive
unless its social conditions are reproduced (Marx
1867), Althusser defines state ideological appara-
tuses such as schools, organized religion, and
media as institutions that work less by power and
politics and more by ideology, by inculcating peo-
ple in specific ways of imagining, thinking about,
and thus understanding their places within and
relationships to the societies in which they live
(Althusser 1971).16
The university plays a key role in the repro-
duction of capitalist ideology. They train current
and future workers to accept consumption as ade-
quate compensation for the exploitation of their
labor (Althusser 1971; Wolff 2004). David Harvey
(2007) describes how it is essential for the hege-
mony of neoliberal ideology that neoliberal advo-
cates exercise positions of influence in educational
institutions and also in think tanks, policy groups,
and key international institutions. Universities
define and generate research “knowledge” and
disseminate it directly not only to students but
also the general public by placing experts on tele-
vision programs and, in some cases, appointing
them to state positions. If universities were simply
neutral institutions of learning, corporations like
Monsanto would not donate money to educational
institutions like Washington University.17
Universities are also tied within the web of
capitalist accumulation, which further constrains
how they will define “problems.” For example,
Washington University produces gentrification by
giving employees down-payment subsidies to pur-
chase homes in targeted areas neighboring the
campus, so that the demographic make-up of the
neighborhood will change and “crime” will
decrease.18 Their solution to crime, which is per-
ceived as scaring away tuition paying students, is
to fund a program to displace working-class resi-
dents with the university’s own assumedly more
desirable employees. Universities, like many corpo-
rations, use their relationships with elected officials
to gain public subsidies for real estate development
(e.g., tax abatements, tax incremental financing
[TIFs]), under the guise that their investment will
further attract other private interests to these his-
torically underdeveloped sections of cities: a
neoliberal approach to urban development. The
effect is that working-class people are now physi-
cally, in addition to economically, displaced. Just
as we can speculate that Monsanto’s donations to
Washington University will threaten faculty
research critical of Monsanto, we can question
universities’ ability to effectively study and recom-
mend policy related to issues of systemic racism if
they both reproduce and benefit from systemic
racism.
HOW UNIVERSITIES RESPOND TO RACIAL
CRISES
In our more interconnected world with the wide-
spread use of video recordings and social media,
racism on and off campus has become much more
visible. The new Black Freedom Movement—
known colloquially as Black Lives Matter (though
that is a specific organization)—has both grown
out of this greater availability of information on
instances of overt racism and amplified it (Taylor
2016). Now, when University of Oklahoma Sigma
Alpha Epsilon fraternity members are recorded
singing a racist song, it travels globally instanta-
neously. The severe backlash forces the adminis-
tration to do something quickly to save face.19
Administrative responses have become standard-
ized and ritualized, as the attention to these scan-
dals becomes more common.
University administrations are already pep-
pered with technocrats with words like “diversity”
and “equity” in their titles who generate unen-
forceable “inclusion statements” or host brunches
and photo ops for the “Committee on Campus
Diversity.” What forces push for these six-figure
salaried officials? As Sarah Ahmed concludes, the
acts of being on these committees or holding these
titles are designed to explicitly not perform their
stated function—hence her coining of the term
“non-performativity”—but rather the performance
itself is the only end (Ahmed 2006). Despite the
existence of these titled officials and committees,
students do not feel safer or more welcome on
campus. They may even feel more betrayed,
because unlike other systems of oppression, this
one was explicitly sold as anti-racist and a force
for economic and social equalization (Kelley
2016).
Students’ resentment may amplify to outrage
after a triggering event and manifest as an erup-
tion of racial protests at campuses across the Uni-
ted States: urban and rural; public and private.
The chancellor or more likely the “Vice Dean of
Affirmative Action and Title IX” is forced to issue
an apology or even resign—a sacrifice to appease
the blunt frustration of students and the commu-
nity. Once a replacement administrator, new inclu-
sion committee, or center for multiculturalism is
named in a press release to much fanfare, students
175
often tire, and the campus returns to “normal.”
The systemic issues on campus have not actually
changed.
The existence of these administrative positions
is not merely as an insurance policy or scapegoat
for when incidents invariably occur; their existence
also allows other administrators to relinquish any
responsibility to achieving diversity in campus
composition (Hamer and Lang 2015). It is a mon-
umental task to place on one individual to fight
the products of centuries of systemic racism on
their campus. The positions are usually held by
one of the few people of color in higher adminis-
tration, and their calendars are packed addressing
the needs of the student body, faculty, staff, and
administration. That they are often the first to go
during a scandal suggests that diversity is not an
actual priority of the system.
The special committees and taskforces called
after a “racial incident” are a unique feature. The
“chief diversity officer” or the like is usually a per-
manent fixture and can assume long-term goals.
The selection process, ultimate composition, and
the mission of these committees are generally
short-term performances of individuals moderately
invested in giving lip service to addressing large sys-
temic issues. ISAs teach us how to define ourselves
in relation to one another and in this sense produce
“race” and racial identity. Therefore, the educa-
tional institution as an ISA will use Identity Politics
when responding to racist incidents. Avoiding the
critique of Identity Politics that the Right uses for
advocating for “colorblind” policies, which merely
maintain White hegemony, we adhere to the view
that Identity Politics is often used as a form of
box-checking that creates a ruling class that
appears “diverse” without actually improving the
material conditions of the working class. The uni-
versity will name a task force that is inevitably
described as “diverse” based on Identity Politics
because it contains young and old, student and
administrator, and White and Black. But these
“diverse” members are members of the ISA and
invested in its continued existence.
Considering that the task forces has a limited
lifespan and its constituents are formulated to
merely appear diverse, we can reasonably expect
their recommendations to non-perform anti-racism
through calls for more Black professors with no
real resources to make that happen or a new diver-
sity center sponsored by a corporate backer. They
may address issues of prejudice, or hostile atti-
tudes, while avoiding dealing with actual racism,
which is a system of power (Andersen and Hill
176 TRANSFORMING ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 25(2)
Collins 2007). This is not to say no diversity task-
force has ever produced progressive recommenda-
tions or subversive documents. Members invested
in revolutionary change can network within the
taskforce and circulate these documents to build
soft power or “insubordinate spaces” (Harney and
Moten 2013; Tomlinson and Lipsitz 2013). How-
ever, the larger administration calls for the task-
force as a solution in and of itself. This suggests
that the recommendations, goals, and diversity
metrics produced by the taskforce are not intended
to be implemented in the event that they cost sub-
stantial amounts of money or require any struc-
tural changes.
WHERE ARE THE ANTHROPOLOGISTS?
Professional anthropologists are well suited to be
a part of discussions on the impacts of systemic
racism via the nature of the discipline as well as
the social legitimacy that their education brings
them. Disciplines with a radical history of scholar-
ship (e.g., critical race theorists, ethnic studies, and
gender studies interdisciplinary programs) are
often housed within anthropology and sociology
departments at many universities, adding to the
potential dynamic for a complex analysis (Fergu-
son 2012). If “we” anthropologists can identify
and analyze the problems, we can also formulate
solutions—notwithstanding that anthropologists
are as much a product of the neoliberal university
as any other academic. Wolff (2004) points out
that opposed to RSAs, ISAs are more “contested
terrain” where capitalists’ agendas can be more
easily opposed, and therefore, that there should be
more space for social scientists to challenge this
ideological hegemony.
So why are anthropologists or other scholars of
human diversity so rarely chairing these diversity
task forces? The answer is addressed above and
two-fold: the goal of the task force is maintaining
the status quo and subterfuging dissent, and shared
faculty governance has been eroded by neoliberal
policies. It is the former point that likely keeps
many anthropologists quiet. With the institution of
tenure under attack and many faculty members
employed in precarious situations (adjunct or lim-
ited term appointments), it may seem to be too dan-
gerous to take a personal stance. There is the
implicit threat of unemployment if one becomes too
vocal. Despite the ideology of “academic free
speech,” few anthropologists are “speaking truth to
power.”
The examples of the media persecution and
the subsequent tenure denial of the anthropologist
Nicholas de Genova or the withdrawal of employ-
ment to Steven Salaita confirm that this fear is
grounded in reality (de Genova 2014; Hamer and
Lang 2015).20 Hamer and Lang (2015) suggest that
this increasing precarity creates a situation where
it is safer to fight for racial justice off campus than
on. After the recent protests against racist inci-
dents on the University of Missouri-Columbia
campus, for example, Professor Melissa Click lost
her job just before her tenure decision when her
attempts to stand up for students of color protest-
ing on campus was turned into a five-second video
clip pilloried on conservative media outlets (dis-
cussed further below).
It is not just professors whose research
addresses issues of race who are being excluded
from diversity initiatives but faculty in general.
This denial is hinted at earlier in the discussion of
faculty precarity and the waning of the institution
of tenure as administrative tasks are delegated
away from faculty members. They have quite liter-
ally been excluded from the operations of their
own institution. The recommendations for com-
mittee composition focus on recruiting additional
community stakeholders, such as alumni, because
there is the assumption that faculty do not need to
be explicitly stated as invited (e.g., Leon and Wil-
liams 2016). The results are diversity statements
that frame people of color as outsiders to aca-
demic institutions and therefore do little to aid in
their acceptance (Iverson 2012).
The lack of anthropological perspectives on
these taskforces is explained by their actual func-
tion in maintaining the dominant ideas of the uni-
versity during a “sensitive” period of unrest.
“Diversity” taskforces and the like that are often
formed in the wake of student protests are perfect
examples of “non-performativity”: there is admit-
tance of a problem (structural racism) with no
expectation of actually providing a solution as the
only real solutions would require a revolutionary
rethinking of the purpose and structure of higher
education (Ahmed 2006). The admittance is con-
sidered sufficient by the institution and therefore
does not actually perform anti-racism. This is
analogous to the so-called White ally shrugging
and stating, “everyone’s a little bit racist.” They
expect that by evenly sharing the blame and even
accepting some themselves, they have portrayed
themselves as more enlightened than most. Struc-
tural racism stands unchanged—no action was
taken. The statement was really about the
“speaker,” not the oppressed. The exclusion of
potentially critical voices is just one way that non-
performativity is acted out in the construction of
these task forces.
We would question whether or not contribut-
ing to this non-performativity is worth the effort if
theoreticians of race do not intend to be subver-
sive or use the experience to highlight administra-
tive hypocrisy (e.g., Moten and Harney 2013;
Tomlinson and Lipsitz 2013). Exclusion of particu-
lar individuals is likely an admission that they
could not be counted on to parrot the administra-
tion’s directives. Even those who may not initially
recognize the true purposes of diversity taskforces
and their ilk will become quickly disillusioned with
the process. Actionable items and methods for
accountability are avoided—feel-good effusive lan-
guage abounds. Some of these initially naive mem-
bers may be burned by these experiences and
avoid this form of academic service in the future,
but perhaps a few will be radicalized by the experi-
ence.
CASE STUDY: HIGHER EDUCATION IN
FERGUSON
The analysis presented above comes from our own
experiences interacting with the university adminis-
tration at both an urban, satellite campus of a
public land grant university system (University of
Missouri-St. Louis, UMSL) and an elite, urban
private university with one of the wealthiest stu-
dent bodies in the country.21 UMSL is the most
diverse campus in the University of Missouri sys-
tem, and one of the most diverse in the state.22 Its
students also come from the poorest families in
the UM system—median family income is under
$50,000 compared to over $100,000 at the flagship
campus in Columbia, MO (UMSL Chancellor’s
2015 State of the College: Arts & Science address).
It is predominately a commuter campus with few
dormitories, and the average student is twenty-
seven years old.22 The only ethnic studies program
available is a one-year-old Latinx minor in the his-
tory department, though an ethnicity and migra-
tion studies certificate has been developed for the
anthropology department. Considering the student
body and community make-up, this is a severely
underserved need.
In contrast to UMSL’s environment is Wash-
ington University that has the lowest number of
students who qualify for Pell grants of any U.S.
university (i.e., only 6% of students are deemed by
FAFSA as having financial need for federal tuition
grants).23 The campus is overwhelmingly White
and Asian (7.61% of undergrad students are Afri-
can American21), so it hardly reflects the region’s
177
demographics of 18% Black (the city itself is 47%
Black as of 2015 [U.S. Census]). Washington
University follows the lead of other universities
trying to inflate their racialized minority percent-
ages by including all international students
(Hamer and Lang 2015). Over 90% of undergrads
are from out-of-state—3/4th of all alumni live out-
side the region21. The Greater St. Louis area pours
assets in the form of tax incentives, land grants,
and non-profit status into a private university
whose students do not stick around to pay that
largesse back.
Considering Washington University’s large
endowment ($6.8 billion) and lack of reliance on a
fiscally conservative state legislature for funding
appropriations, one might expect faculty there to
feel safer to speak out. However, due to the lack
of faculty involvement off campus, it may be that
most feel little to no connection to either the Fer-
guson protests after the murder of unarmed
Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson,
or the student protests at Mizzou after multiple
instances of harassment and discrimination toward
Black students. A meeting of anthropology faculty
was convened to discuss whether a response to
events in Ferguson was necessary, and the only
actionable outcome was greater publicity for one
faculty member’s new book on race. Either
tenured status at a wealthy private university did
not feel like enough safety, or they did not see the
link between their discipline and Black oppression.
The African and African American Studies pro-
gram was recently “upgraded” to a full depart-
ment in late 2016, supporting the assertion above
that these faculty members were previously housed
in other departments that may not reward racial
justice scholarship and were saddling with doubled
service loads.
Washington University’s administration saw
the media attention on Ferguson as an opportunity
to sell themselves. Just as Tulane University remade
itself as a destination for social-justice-minded
students after Hurricane Katrina, Washington
University took this opportunity to celebrate its
“contributions” to racial equality in a media blitz of
press releases and faculty interviews. The Office of
Public Affairs tried to advertise that the campus is
just “down the street” from Ferguson to validate
their administration weighing in on race issues in
national publications, but they are miles from Fer-
guson. UMSL borders it. As Washington Univer-
sity faculty credentials were being shopped around
by the public relations office to news outlets as
potential interviewees, pundits, or editorialists,
178 TRANSFORMING ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 25(2)
employees and student writers were told explicitly
that they could not describe Michael Brown’s kill-
ing as “murder” in any university-affiliated docu-
ment or publication—lest they offend a donor.24
They certainly do not want to offend the political
establishment as Washington University has been
hosting presidential debates nearly every election
over the last two decades where candidates from
both parties vying to be head of empire debate
neoliberal policies.
Contrasted against the private university,
which has no qualms about explicitly serving the
very wealthy and yet feels entitled to speak about
racial and economic injustice in Ferguson as a
way to attract both media attention and social-
justice-minded White students to St Louis (i.e.,
disaster tourism), there is the underfunded public
university, the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
This institution is actually tasked with educating
students from the St Louis area including many
from Ferguson, but it has remained silent on
structural racism. The UM system is in the process
of being publicly divested, the state cuts its alloca-
tion every year, tuition fees are increasing, and
instead of speaking up and representing the stu-
dents it is explicitly tasked to serve, it attempts to
distance itself from Ferguson. The university’s
large neon sign that faces the community of Fer-
guson was turned off during nights of protests just
in case it could be seen in the distant background
of photographs. On the university’s “About” page,
Ferguson was removed from the list of surround-
ing municipalities even though there is a lunch-
time shuttle for faculty, staff, and students to
downtown Ferguson, as it is the nearest commer-
cial district. There is a link on the homepage
about “Safety” that is clearly a response to paren-
tal concerns about the riots and protests, but Fer-
guson is not directly named. The Association of
Black Collegians chapter on campus was explicitly
told that they could not do a service project paint-
ing boarded up windows post-looting as represen-
tatives of the UMSL community. All of the
administration’s decisions appear to be dictated by
fear of lost revenue either in the form of budget
cuts from the state or student enrollment decreases
and lost tuition.
Unfortunately, both cuts and enrollment drops
still happened in 2014 and 2015, after which Fer-
guson could finally be named—but only as the
“Ferguson Effect” scaring away would-be stu-
dents.25 The “Ferguson Effect” became coded
racial language to explain any outcome unfavor-
able to the White ruling elite (Pyrooz et al. 2016).
Now the effects of neoliberal policies at the univer-
sity are being blamed on the boogieman of Black
criminality. This was the one outlet UMSL saw
for publicity from Ferguson, and faculty from the
Criminology and Criminal Justice program
appeared in multiple media outlets describing the
so-called Ferguson Effect.26
The responses of these two universities admin-
istrations may superficially seem counterintuitive:
the wealthy White private university celebrating its
proximity and relevance to Ferguson, while the
racially diverse public university creates a palpable
silence. But from the perspective of financial
motives, we see that Washington University can
leverage Ferguson for grant monies and publicity,
and UMSL sees it as a financial loss on multiple
fronts. UMSL could potentially use the same
strategy as Washington University, but it does not
have the public relations acumen, and there is a
highly conservative Board of Curators and state
legislature holding the purse strings. Their fears
were further realized the following school year
when racial protests began at the flagship campus
in Columbia.
Racial Protests at Mizzou
UMSL’s general attitude of silence continued
when their sister campus in Columbia, Missouri—
the anchor campus for the system—was rocked by
multiple protests against the pervasive climate of
racial discrimination. A student group calling
themselves Concerned Students 1950—in reference
to the first year the university admitted Black stu-
dents—had multiple actions on campus decrying
the racism and fear they experienced on campus,
but they were repeatedly dismissed by higher
administration. Once a hunger strike by one of the
leaders of the group began and the university’s
football team threatened to not play as a show of
solidarity, national media attention came to the
campus and both the chancellor and system presi-
dent were forced to resign.27 In response to pro-
tests being “allowed” to occur—as opposed to
there being a race problem in the first place—the
higher education and budget committees at the
state legislature decided to punish the UM system
with repeated threats of further budget cuts
(Huguelet and Sirtori-Cortina 2016).
Because UMSL is considerably more racially
diverse than Mizzou (compare 14% to 8.2% Black
students),28 it could reasonably claim some legiti-
macy for any administrative recommendations
delivered in private meetings among colleagues. If
these meetings have been occurring, nothing has
come from them publicly. The UM system has
made many proclamations about future directions
(see Taskforce below). They appointed a Black
interim system president after the White one
resigned and now hired a permanent replacement
who is Asian American. They created a new posi-
tion for chief diversity officer for the system and
required each campus to have one as well. But
each act has exemplified Ahmed’s (2006) “non-per-
formativity” as none of these individuals have
been given the financial or administrative resources
to affect change. All of these hires were approved
by the Board of Curators, which was initially com-
posed of five White members during the protests,
and with subsequent damage control, is now seven
White members and one Black woman. They are
all attorneys and all alumni of the flagship campus
in Columbia.
At the University of Missouri system level, a
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion taskforce was
formed by the new interim system president in
early 2016. Out of the twenty original taskforce
members from the four campuses named, only one
member was a professor and one was a student—
and that student was “to-be-announced” when the
taskforce was publicized. The rest of the members
of the committee were administrators already
tasked with diversity-related initiatives, such as
Title IX. Only two members come from University
of Missouri-St. Louis, the most ethnically diverse
campus in the system. What message does this
send about the expected outcomes of this taskforce
when the members are overwhelmingly those who
were already tasked with creating a more inclusive
environment on campus before the protests? What
message is conveyed about shared faculty gover-
nance when there is only one faculty voice repre-
senting only one campus in a four campus system?
What message is received by the student body
when only one yet-to-be-named, that is, token,
student voice will be included? It is certainly not a
message about a desire for change and that mes-
sage was clearly received by students.29 In
response to student and faculty frustration, the
system called for a larger taskforce composed of
more professors and campus staff members.
One of the results of the administration’s han-
dling of these incidents is that faculty are more
afraid to be visually in support of their students,
especially their students of color, when these stu-
dents speak out. The vilification of Professor
Melissa Click for months in right-wing media, the
silencing of voices defending her, and her firing by
the Board of Curators—completely outside the
179
official review pathways for personnel decisions—
reinforces the implicit assumption that, within the
wider institutional structure of the university, fac-
ulty are located toward the bottom of the pyra-
mid. They cannot reflect poorly on their employer
and expect to maintain their employment—the
precedent of the Supreme Court Case Garcetti v.
Ceballos ensures that (Squires 2015). Academic
free speech, though it is more often about protect-
ing institutions than individuals (de Genova 2014),
is being flagrantly disregarded in Professor Click’s
case. De Genova was denied tenure under other
pretenses years after his media storm died down
by using subversion and social forms of punish-
ment (de Genova 2014); Click was outright fired
before her tenure review process was completed by
a body who does not have the power to do so,
according to the by laws of the university. She is
now being represented by the AAUP on academic
free-speech grounds (Wilson 2016).
Students are punished differently than faculty
for speaking out because they are treated, in many
cases, as customers. They are punished in subtler
ways, such as members of Concerned Students
1950 reporting being unable to gain admission to
graduate school programs. They have received the
implicit message: If you want to be a member of
the academic elite, never critique it. Considering
the vast underrepresentation of minorities in the
professoriate, it is clear then that there are forces
keeping out those who may vocally point out their
lack of racial peers. If they are lucky enough to be
one of the token few, they are expected to remain
silent about it and be co-opted for photoshoots or
diversity taskforces. This Ideological State Appa-
ratus messaging is reflected in academic hiring:
tenure-track positions are so scarce that the few
who secure one should be afraid to speak up on
behalf of their adjunct peers lest they be forced to
join them.
CONCLUSIONS AND OBSERVATIONS
Returning to the question this piece centers on but
does not answer—is there something we can do?—
it becomes clear that faculty must contend with
many obstacles to action. Our administrations,
bolstered by the threat of media persecution,
intimidate us into anxious paralysis or jaded pas-
sivity. Our own social–political class of other aca-
demics share news stories on social media of job
offers being withdrawn or tenure cases denied,
maintaining the pervasive sense that our liveli-
hoods are in perpetual jeopardy. The commitment
to social justice and education, the ideals that
180 TRANSFORMING ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 25(2)
brought so many of us into studying and teaching
in arts and sciences generally, but anthropology in
particular, becomes a liability rather than a
strength. It is often placed aside as the product of
youthful idealism. This is an unfortunate disservice
to our students and our communities.
Our research leads us to question the extent to
which scholars limit themselves to only studying
social movements. Do we have the moral responsi-
bility to stand with the disenfranchised? We
believe so but especially when they provide mate-
rial for our work. Charles Hale (2008:2) describes
how junior faculty are often warned to stay away
from scholarship that serves social justice aims
because it is considered somehow less rigorous and
may put promotion prospects at risk. He argues
though that the opposite is true, and academic
research in the service of political aims and social
justice can be interdisciplinarily complex. Hale
does not state whether that methodological com-
plexity could actually assist in securing tenure;
therefore, the jeopardy remains. The other option
is to participate in the “undercommons” by using
the structures and resources of the university to
furtively educate and be educated by others via
non-hierarchical independent study groups (Moten
and Harney 2013).
Universities have regularly been sites for resis-
tance against neoliberal reforms and the resultant
inequality, and it is important that anthropologists
not separate themselves from it. Since 2014, the
new Black Freedom Movement has forced the
nation to again deal with the question of systemic
racism and showing the power that social move-
ments have to affect consciousness and force con-
cessions within our society. Anthropologists can
engage in ongoing struggles against neoliberalism
and systemic racism not just to add “bodies” at
demonstrations but also to play a role as intellec-
tuals within them helping to broaden their ideolog-
ical scope and provide historical and cross-cultural
perspectives. This can be done through open
teach-ins, facilitating and participating in commu-
nity discussions and debates, and writing scholarly
and popular articles. The history of working-class
struggles in general is rich with parallels that can
be summoned for participants to learn from the
successes and mistakes of past movements. This is
a part of the decolonial anthropology we should
all strive toward (Harrson 1991).
It may be easier to point out examples of what
we should not do with our time that is not being
spent serving on diversity taskforces. We have
heard colleagues cheerfully describe giving race
sensitivity training to police officers. We question
the extent to which such engagements depoliticize
the role of the anthropologist; how can one be a
neutral actor while giving legitimacy to institutions
that oppress? We have seen colleagues approach
community groups in Ferguson to get them to
attach their names to a grant application, but the
colleague disappears as soon as the grant is sub-
mitted. As referenced above, we have seen col-
leagues mine crime statistics—without
contextualizing how those are generated and what
they represent—to justify a Ferguson Effect.
Our research questions should be framed in
ways that explicitly challenge White supremacy
when that is relevant. Washington University is
giving grants to its own students and faculty to do
some work—any work—that intersects even triv-
ially with “Ferguson.” There is no requirement to
“engage stakeholders” or mandate to include the
community in any meaningful way. This is merely
a program for Washington University to keep
funds internally while proclaiming to be doing a
service for Ferguson. Scholars from across the
country are also guilty of writing books on
Ferguson without any investment in improving
material conditions in the community. If anthro-
pologists see themselves as “mak(ing) the world
safe for human differences” (Ruth Benedict), we
argue this kind of work is not doing that. Capi-
talism and racism are not endangered by these
kinds of showmanship; in fact, they are sup-
ported by them.
In the post-Global recession world, applied
anthropology can find its purpose in public or
activist anthropology, even what has been termed
as “militant ethnography.” People are repeatedly
challenging the institutions they most directly
associate with their suffering—for example, the
police, banks—and that consciousness is develop-
ing into an understanding that the entire system
has and continues to benefit from their disenfran-
chisement. Anthropologists may see this as a ripe
time to do ethnography of activism, but they are
not neutral actors in their own societies and are
most often working in service of one of the pil-
lars of the military–industrial–academic complex.
We can perform anthropology that is dangerous
to these systems of oppression though—exclusion
from diversity taskforces is tacit acknowledge of
such. As both Ferguson (2012) and Kelley (2016)
describe it, though we are in the university, we
do not need to be of the university.
The “neoliberal university” has no interest in
performing anti-racism (Chatterjee and Maira
2014; Hamer and Lang 2015), and therefore, the
effect of these task forces, chief diversity officers
and the like, is to soothe dissent, whereas campus
police are simultaneously increasingly militarized
in case the soft approach fails (Godrej 2014).
Universities’ public responses to open expressions
of racism are dictated by whether they see a poten-
tial for their endowments to be further enriched,
that is, Washington University versus the Univer-
sity of Missouri-St. Louis. However, both universi-
ties did not want their employees using Michael
Brown’s murder as grounds to advocate for system
change. If Ferguson could not make the university
money, it was ignored; if it could lose the university
money, it was denounced. The institutions and poli-
cies that trap people of color in poverty in Fergu-
son and elsewhere go unchallenged. In the way that
the Democratic Party has been described as the
graveyard of social movements as they are co-opted
and defanged (Selfa 2012), the “University” adopts
language from protests in Ferguson and then
mutates it into something self-serving. The univer-
sity’s on-campus response can be described as
“non-performativity,” but its responses orchestrated
in higher administrative offices are to actively sup-
port these systems of oppression as the university is
itself an Ideological State Apparatus.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank the members of our campuses communi-
ties who shared relevant details about the deci-
sions, policies, and outcomes of the university
administrations pre- and post-Ferguson, to which
we would not normally have been privy. The com-
munity of lovers and fighters in Ferguson and the
larger St Louis region have kept us focused on
revolutionary change. We also thank the Trans-
forming Anthropology editors, Kalfani Ture and
Anthony Gualtieri, Prof. Claire Class for helpful
insight and citations, and our two particularly
thoughtful and critical anonymous reviewers for
helping to improve this manuscript.
Sarah A. Lacy1 and Ashton Rome2 1California
State University Dominguez Hills; 2Socialist
Alternative-St. Louis
NOTES
1. See Peter Schmidt, “Big gifts and low pro-
files help conservative centers spread to cam-
puses.” Chronicle of Higher Education. Feb 6,
181
2015. Accessed July 23, 2016. http://chronicle.com/
article/Big-GiftsLow-Profiles/151701/
2. See AAUP, “Background Facts on Contin-
gent Faculty.” Accessed June 14, 2016. American
Association of University Professors. https://www.
aaup.org/issues/contingency/background-facts
3. Jill Barshay. “Five studies find online
courses are not working well at community col-
leges.” The Hechinger Report. April 27, 2015.
Accessed June 23, 2016. http://hechingerreport.
org/five-studies-find-online-courses-are-not-work
ing-at-community-colleges/
4. Lauren Camera. “States are slacking on
higher ed spending,” US News and World Report.
January 7, 2016. Accessed June 22, 2016. http://
www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016/01/07/states-
spending-less-on-higher-education-today-than-bef
ore-recession
5. American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
“Public research universities: Changes in state
funding.” The Lincoln Project: Excellence and
Access in Public Higher Education. 2015. Accessed
July 23, 2016. https://www.amacad.org/multimed
ia/pdfs/publications/researchpapersmonographs/
PublicResearchUniv_ChangesInStateFunding.pdf
6. Steven Salzburg. “Scott Walker takes $250
million from U. Wisconsin, gives $250M to bil-
lionaire sports team owners.” Forbes. Aug 14,
2015. Accessed July 23, 2016. http://www.forbes.c
om/sites/stevensalzberg/2015/08/14/scott-walker-ta
kes-250-million-from-u-wisconsin-gives-250m-to-bil
lionaire-sports-team-owners/#6db7d4b05a09
7. Dora Gicheva. “Does the student-loan bur-
den weigh into the decision to start a family.”
University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Accessed May 28, 2016. http://www.uncg.edu/bae/
people/gicheva/Student_loans_marriageMarch11.
pdf (2011)
8. At Washington University in St. Louis, one
of us (SAL) was instructed to bank with Bank of
America (the exclusive campus bank) or they would
have to wait an extra day to receive their monthly
direct deposit salary as it would only clear to an
account instantly with the preferred bank.
9. Joe Garofoli. “UC Davis pepper-spray offi-
cer awarded $38,000.” SFGate.com, October 23,
2013. Accessed April 15, 2016. http://www.sfgate.c
om/politics/joegarofoli/article/UC-Davis-pepper-
spray-officer-awarded-38-000-4920773.php
10. Sacramento Bee. “Read UC Davis’ con-
tracts to repair online image.” The Sacramento
Bee, April 13, 2016. Accessed June 23, 2016.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article
71674767.html
182 TRANSFORMING ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 25(2)
11. Thomas Fuller. “University of California,
Davis, chancellor is removed from post.” The New
York Times, April 28, 2016. Accessed June 16,
2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/29/us/uc-
davis-chancellor-accused-of-violations-is-removed-
from-post.html
12. Stacey Patton, “How joint appointments
stall the careers of ethnic-studies professors.” Vitae.
May 2, 2015. Accessed June 16, 2016. https://chroni
clevitae.com/news/994-how-joint-appointments-sta
ll-the-careers-of-ethnic-studies-professors
13. Jens Manuel Krogstad and Richard Fry.
“More Hispanics, Blacks enrolling in college, but
lag in bachelor’s degrees.” Pew Research Fact Tank.
April 14, 2014. Accessed May 28, 2016. http://www.
pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/04/24/more-hispa
nics-blacks-enrolling-in-college-but-lag-in-bachelors
-degrees/
14. Washington University had a strong rela-
tionship with Peabody Coal for many years before
they eventually acquiesced to student demands
and severed it just before Peabody filed for bank-
ruptcy protection.
15. Jesse McKinley. “Cuomo to halt state busi-
ness with groups that back boycott of Israel.” New
York Times. June 5, 2016. Accessed June 15, 2016.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/06/nyregion/cuo
mo-new-york-israel-boycott-bds-movement.html
16. The increasing militarization of our college
campuses may also suggest a convergence of the
ISA and the RSA.
17. Monsanto is an agricultural biotechnology
company famous for designing genetically modi-
fied food crops (GMOs) and suing farmers for
copyright infringement when they have plants con-
taining Monsanto’s patented RoundupÒ gene
growing in their fields—whether they planted them
there via seed savings or they blew in from neigh-
boring fields. It is headquartered in St. Louis. The
corporation’s close relationship with Washington
University has been a common target of student
of protest.
18. In the middle of a budget crisis, the
University of Missouri-St. Louis purchased an
adjoining golf course, assumedly to maintain an
air of affluence along one border of the campus. It
is not only private universities that are concerned
with promoting gentrification.
19. Justin Moyer. “University of Oklahoma
fraternity closed after racist chant.” The Washing-
ton Post. March 9, 2015. Accessed June 16, 2015.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-
mix/wp/2015/03/09/university-of-oklahoma-frate
rnity-suspended-after-racist-chant/
 20. Scott Jaschik. “Out of a job: U. of Illinois
apparently revokes job offer to controversial scho-
lar.” Insider Higher Ed, August 6, 2014. Accessed
May 23, 2016. https://www.insidehighered.com/ne
ws/2014/08/06/u-illinois-apparently-revokes-job-
offer-controversial-scholar
21. Washington University. “University
Facts.” Washington University in St. Louis official
website. February 23, 2016. Accessed May 1, 2016.
https://wustl.edu/about/university-facts/
22. UMSL Student profile 2015. Accessed
June 23, 2016. https://www.umsl.edu/services/aca
demic/assets/PDFs/Studentpercent20Profile perce
nt20FS2015.pdf
23. Stephen Burd. “Which college will replace
Wash U. as the least socioeconomically diverse in
the country?” The Hechinger Report. April 27, 2015.
Accessed June 23, 2016. http://hechingerreport.org/
which-college-will-replace-wash-u-as-the-least-socio
economically-diverse-in-the-country/
24. Saint Louis University (SLU) had multiple
threats from alumni to pull donations after they
announced they would build a statue to commem-
orate Occupy SLU, a student-led week long pro-
test in solidarity with Ferguson.
25. The “Ferguson Effect” was a term coined
to describe police reticence to go after alleged crimi-
nals out of fear of being persecuted, as Darren Wil-
son was after he shot Michael Brown (e.g., Pyrooz
et al. 2016). The term has been repurposed though
in St. Louis to blame any negative outcome on the
protests in Ferguson including UMSL’s chancellor
using it to explain an enrollment decrease or the
chief of Police using it to explain a crime wave that
began five months before the protests. See also,
Koran Addo, “UMSL says Ferguson unrest par-
tially to blame for financial woes.” St. Louis Post
Dispatch. December 10, 2014. http://www.stltoday.c
om/news/local/education/umsl-says-ferguson-unrest-
partially-to-blame-for-financial-woes/article_edbded
35-c460-5fab-a6e8-e62a2079590a.html
26. Kelly Moffitt. “What’s driving up homicides
in the U.S.? UMSL’s Rick Rosenfeld revisits the
‘Ferguson Effect.’” St Louis Public Radio. June 15,
2016. Accessed June 15, 2016. http://news.stlpublic
radio.org/post/what-s-driving-homicides-us-umsl-s-
rick-rosenfeld-revisits-ferguson-effect#stream/0
27. Emma Vandelinder, “Racial climate at
MU: A timeline of incidents this fall.” The Colum-
bia Missourian. November 6, 2015. Accessed
December 27, 2016. http://www.columbiamissouria
n.com/news/higher_education/racial-climate-at-mu-
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