A matter of time: differential enactments of institutional time in diversity policy documents

Abstract

Abstract As structural inequalities within universities persist, universities increasingly develop diversity policies. Much diversity research focuses on the gap between universities’ commitments and actual practices. This paper takes a different approach by scrutinizing how diversity documents enact politics of time that results in their selective non-performativity. We demonstrate how diversity documents at a Dutch university compose diversity as a problem of time for which the near future is crucial. It legitimizes action in the here-and-now to realize the diverse future, while simultaneously delegitimizes it by envisioning diversity as a problem that resolves itself in time. Along such urgent, yet inevitable progress, a competition between gender and ethnic diversity emerges. As the documents engage in a white politics of time, change for white women becomes realizable in concrete, time-bound actions. In contrast, people of color appear to lag behind and have yet to arrive in a time where progress could be achieved.