Creating Equitable Opportunities: The Thoughts of Two Administrator Rhetoricians

Abstract:In this article, the authors draw on their personal experiences as mid-career administrators and scholars of color to consider both the structures that limit, and opportunities for equity and social justice in, academic institutions. Although the primary logics that shape academic institutions serve to marginalize certain types of scholars and scholarship, they argue that institutions also contain gaps and contradictions where resistance is possible and from which alternative structures can be built. They identify and define three critical practices—storytelling, structural transformation, and allyship—that administrators can use to create a more equitable academy. The authors discuss why they believe it is important to invest in administrative and professional association service, where they have witnessed the gaps that make transformation possible, and how they have implemented critical administrative praxes.