The irony of an ‘international faculty’

Abstract

Using the autoethnographic case study method, this article examines how my positionality as a foreign-born faculty member intersects with the institutional rhetoric of diversity and inclusion present in many predominantly White institutions. My vignettes show that foreign-born faculty, although contributing to the representation of diversity numbers, are positioned as knowledge providers in the discussions about the ‘global’, the ‘cultural’ and sometimes the ‘racial’, thus, ironically reinforce the embedded White institutional culture. This article argues that foreign-born faculty members could make use of their cultural positions to unpack the classed and racial culture on campus and to cultivate students’ anthropological sensibility. In other words, foreign-born faculty are in a unique position of recognising the limitations of the current diversity and inclusion rhetoric in predominantly White institutions (PWI), but also, they have the potential of decentring the White, middle-class cultural norms. This article concludes with some pedagogical implications.