On the Joys of Administration: Or Race, Failure, and the Neoliberal Academy

Australian academic institutions have typically resisted oêcial aêrmative action, and
have made the clear decision not to institutionalise what is often called ‘diversity
hiring’. This has led to a displacement of issues of race and ethnicity onto the
international student body. In other words, the visibility of ‘race’ in the academy has all but been completely erased, transmuted onto the student body as a ‘problem’ of international students. While student diversity is hypervisible in marketing brochures, reéecting a rapidly changing student population, the culture amongst academic staç has been much slower to change. For more than six years after my hire in 2010, I was the only non-white, full-time female academic in my School.