Disrupting Whiteness in Leadership Education: Implications for Practice

Disrupting Whiteness in Leadership Education: Implications for Practice 

Lauren Irwin

Ph.D. Student, Higher Education & Student Affairs, University of Iowa

@Lauren_Irwin22; lauren-irwin@uiowa.edu 

Note: The Commission for Student Involvement’s Research Grant funded this study.

Colleges and universities pride themselves on their commitment to developing leaders and student leadership development programs provide one way for universities to fulfill this mission (Dugan & Komives, 2007; Komives, 2011). Many student leadership programs and models purport that all students are leaders or claim to facilitate leadership development for all students. However, Dugan (2011), reminds us that this is a dangerous myth, representing “an incredibly privileged perspective that neglects a broader recognition of systems of social oppression that operate in society” (p. 82).

In order to more fully address oppressive systems, leadership scholarship has increasingly centered critical and justice-oriented approaches (Barnes, 2018; Beatty et al., Accepted; Chunoo et al., 2019; Dugan, 2017). This work seeks to facilitate more inclusive student leadership development. However, racism represents one particularly violent form of oppression that requires significant attention in leadership education and beyond. Thus, inclusive leadership education efforts are incomplete without attention to racialization, or the production of racial meaning (Omi & Winant, 1994), because U.S. society and higher education institutions are structured by whiteness (Patton, 2016). Research shows that peoples’ leadership prototypes, or unconsciously held beliefs about leaders, often reproduce stereotypes of white people as leaders, across contexts (Ospina & Foldy, 2009; Rosette et al. 2008). Thus, co-curricular leadership education programs must critically consider and contend with how racialization processes (re)produce whiteness as a criterion for leadership legitimacy. 

My work focuses on how leadership educators disrupt and/or perpetuate racial inequities. Particularly, it is important to name that white women are overrepresented as leadership educators (Jenkins & Owen, 2016). Leadership educators, who structure and facilitate leadership education programs, do not exist outside structures of domination, like white supremacy. Meaning, their experiences within leadership education are also shaped by (and challenge and/or contribute to) these same racialized notions of leadership that often reproduce white people as leaders. Thus, there is an urgent need to uncover and interrogate racialized legitimation processes in leadership education. 

I recently completed a qualitative study of 13 leadership educators from nine leadership programs across the U.S. to better understand how racialization shapes leadership educators’ work. Of the 13 leadership educators I interviewed, two identified as white men, two identified as Women of Color – one of whom had a disability, and nine identified as white women – three of whom were queer or lesbian identified. You can see a snapshot of the study’s findings here. In short, white people served as powerful gatekeepers to leadership legitimacy, shaping access to leadership knowledge and professional experiences. Leadership educators’ social identities also shaped their perceived legitimacy. Particularly, both Women of Color in my study recounted experiences of tokenization, anti-Blackness, and delegitimation in their roles, despite their extensive professional experiences and expertise. Thus, leadership educators both contend with and often reproduce racial inequities in their work. In what follows, I use this study’s findings to detail several implications for leadership education practice.  

Implications for Practice 

Disrupting whiteness requires significant work – especially for white leadership educators and leadership educators at white serving institutions. Further, my findings show that whiteness infiltrates leadership education through the content of leadership education programs, program demographics, and paths to leadership educator roles. Thus, I first offer several reflection questions for leadership educators in terms of demographics, knowledge, and messaging. This is only a brief list of reflective questions, you can visit this post for more reflection resources and prompts. As you engage with the following questions, make note of what identities, experiences, and/or ways of thinking are privileged or overrepresented. 

Demographics

• Who is the ‘face’ of leadership education in your program/on your campus? (e.g., who staffs or teaches leadership?)

• What do these demographics communicate to students about who is (or can be) a leader? 

Knowledge

• What leadership theories, models, and tools do you use?

  • Who authored these tools, theories, or models?

  • Where or how do these tools, theories, or models explicitly name, consider, or engage oppressive systems, like racism? 

• Consider your own professional trajectory. Who have been important mentors, supervisors, or role models for your leadership learning? What are their identities? 

• Who do you mentor and validate as a leader? Do these people share identities or experiences with you? Do their values align with yours? How did you decide to mentor them? 

Messaging and Program Design

• How does your organization/institution market leadership? What messages are communicated about leadership?

• How does your organization/institution define leadership? What assumptions are embedded in this definition? 

• How are systems of domination (e.g., racism, sexism, colonialism, etc.) engaged in your offerings? 

• What is your role in shaping leadership education? Do you have power in hiring processes? In curriculum design? In marketing? 

While the above questions can be a useful tool for reflection – individually and with colleagues – I offer additional recommendations for more equitable practice in student leadership education. 

Representation in Leadership Education

While many leadership educators in my study, including white leadership educators, were increasingly aware of race and racism in their work, the work of addressing racism in practice often fell back on People of Color. One Woman of Color participant mentioned being specifically tapped by the campus leadership education office to increase the diversity of their staff. While having diverse representation among students and staff is important, tokenization can make People of Color responsible for social justice work without the appropriate support, recognition, and compensation. In addition to revisiting hiring and selection protocols for leadership education staff and students, it is important to consider how our assumptions of leadership experience and expertise may center or favor whiteness. For example, most studies of exemplary leadership programs center formal leadership education programs and leadership programs at white serving institutions – thus, notions of ‘best practices’ likely center the work of white people. How can your benchmarking of best practices center HBCUs or leadership efforts in LGBTQ+ student organizations, in women and gender centers, and in other identity-based spaces? 

The goal is to expand notions of leadership legitimacy, not assimilate People of Color and people with other minoritized identities into dominant notions of leadership. Thus, are there ways for leadership education programs to partner with offices and organizations that center social justice? For example, can your leadership education program partner with the multicultural center? Can student affairs organizations and divisions consider creative approaches responsibility for leadership education, where a number of staff, from across campus, have flexible work assignments and responsibilities so that they can formally support leadership programs? In short, rather than tapping People of Color to do additional, uncompensated labor, can experts in racial and social justice work from across campus can be supported and compensated for their support of leadership education with flex time, honorariums, dual reporting structures, or leave time? Further, I encourage leadership programs to explicitly recruit and affirm staff and student leaders with experience in organizing, activism, and/or identity-based organizations. However, efforts to expand the perspectives, identities, and experiences represented in leadership education spaces must be accompanied by changes in practice. 

Changes in Theory and Practice

In my study, many leadership educators recognized that the tools and theories they used did not address or consider power and identity. While many leadership educators discussed strategies to integrate critical theories and perspectives, at the end of the day, tools that privileged whiteness remained at the center of most leadership education programs. I encourage leadership educators to continue to deconstruct and reconstruct existing leadership theories and tools. However, I also urge leadership educators to replace tools with models and perspectives that explicitly center identity, power, and social justice. The SALT model offers one such example. 

While several leadership educators in my study were drawn to the SALT model, they did not use it in practice because they felt that the model was too social justice coded for some students and/or that the model did not provide sufficient practical implications. Translating theory to practice is challenging. So, I offer several options to more fully center power and social justice: 

• Center contemporary leadership and organizing efforts. A number of leader-full movements have received increased recognition in response to more visible police violence and racial injustice. I encourage leadership education programs to center the work and leadership of organizations like Critical Resistance, the Movement for Black Lives, BYP100, and local organizations that are led by People of Color and are actively supporting justice efforts. 

• Utilize historical leaders, like Ella Baker, and contemporary leaders, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as models for leadership for social change and justice. Whenever possible, center Black women and queer and trans Women of Color in these efforts. However, rather than elevating particular figures as heroic, help students analyze their experiences and efforts through models, like the SALT model, and through their own values and perspectives. Further, collaborate with university librarians or historians to identify staff, faculty, students, and community members on your campus and in your community who were involved in important campus movements like establishing an Ethnic or Gender Studies department, supporting survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, organizing mutual aid, coordinating a student food pantry, and more. By centering real people, who worked to disrupt systems of domination, students can refine their leadership skills and strategies while also seeing more diverse representations of leaders. 

• Create a regular leadership work group, where staff and off-campus members convene to invest in leadership development, review and revise existing leadership models and curricula, and collectively outline efforts for student leadership development. Involvement in these groups not only allows more people to build familiarity and expertise with leadership education programs but develops a more collective and community-oriented approach to leadership development, this both prevents silo-ing and ensures that more voices and experiences are included in the process of constructing student leadership education. 

Leadership educators play important roles in validating students as leaders and shaping leadership development for college students. Thus, leadership educators face an enormous responsibility to live up to their charge: to ensure that all students are supported and affirmed in their leadership development. However, leadership education programs continue to privilege whiteness and white people in a number of ways. Whiteness persists as a significant barrier to equity in leadership education. While it is essential that white people continue to engage in significant and sustained (un)learning around whiteness, I have also offered a number of considerations and suggestions for leadership educators to help notions of who and what represents leadership on their campuses. 

References and Suggested Reading

• Arminio, J. L., Carter, S., Jones, S. E., Kruger, K., Lucas, N., Washington, J., Young, N. & Scott, A. (2000). Leadership experiences of students ofColor. NASPA Journal, 37(3), 496-510. 
• Barnes, A. C. (2018). Learning by design: Reflections for facilitators in critical leadership education. Concepts and Connections: Critical Perspectives in Leadership Education, 22(2), 13-15. https://nclp.umd.edu/portals/5/Documents/Vol%2022/Vol%2022%20Iss%202.pdf
• Beatty, C., Irwin, L. N., Owen, J., Tapia-Fuselier, N., Cohen-Durr, E., Hassell-Goodman, S., Guthrie, K., Rocco, M., & Yamanaka, A. (Accepted). National Leadership Education Research Agenda 2020-2024 Priority 5: Social Identity. Journal of Leadership Studies.  
• Beatty, C. & Tillapaugh, D. (2017). Masculinity, leadership, and liberatory pedagogy: Supporting men through leadership development and education. In D. Tillapaugh & P. Haber-Curran (Eds.), New Directions for Student Leadership, No. 154 (pp. 47-58). Wiley.
• Chunoo, V. S., Beatty, C. C., & Gruver, M. D. (2019). Leadership educator as social justice educator. New Directions for Student Leadership, No. 164 (pp. 87-103). Wiley.  
• Dugan, J. P. (2011). Pervasive myths in leadership development. Journal of Leadership Studies, 5(2), 79-84.
• Dugan, J.  P. (2017). Leadership theory: Cultivating critical perspectives. John Wiley & Sons.
• Dugan, J. P., Komives, S. R. (2007). Developing leadership capacity in college students: Findings from a national study. A Report from the Multi-Institutional Study of Leadership. College Park, MD: National Clearinghouse for Leadership Programs.  
• Guthrie, K. L., Bertrand Jones, T., Osteen, L., & Hu, S. (2013). Cultivating Leader Identity and Capacity in Students from Diverse Backgrounds. ASHE Higher Education Report, 39:4. John Wiley & Sons, Inc
• Jenkins, D. M., & Owen, J. E. (2016). Who teaches leadership? A comparative analysis of faculty and student affairs leadership educators and implications for leadership learning. Journal of Leadership Education, 15(2), 98-113.
• Komives, S. R. (2011). Advancing leadership education. In, S. R. Komives, J. P. Dugan, J. E. Owen, C. Slack, & W. Wagner (Eds.), The handbook for student leadership development (2nd ed) (pp. 1-34). National Clearinghouse for Leadership Programs.
• Liu, H., & Baker, C. (2016). White knights: Leadership as the heroicisation of whiteness. Leadership, 12(4), 420-448.
• Mahoney, A. D. (2016). Culturally responsive integrative learning environments: A critical displacement approach. In K. L. Guthrie, T. Bertrand Jones, & L. Osteen (Eds.), New Directions for Student Leadership, No. 152 (pp. 47-59). Wiley
• Museus, S., Lee, N., Calhoun, K., Sánchez-Parkinson, L., & Ting, M. (2017). The social action, leadership, and transformation (SALT) model. National Center for Institutional Diversity and National Institute for Transformation and Equity. https://lsa. umich. edu/content/dam/ncid-assets/nciddocuments/Museus% 20et% 20al, 20.
• Omi, M. & Winant, H. (1994). Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. Routledge. 
• Ospina, S., Foldy, E. G., El Hadidy, W., Dodge, J., Hofmann-Pinilla, A., & Su, C. (2012). Social change leadership as relational leadership. In M. Uhl-Bien & S. M. Ospina (Eds.), Advancing relational leadership research: A dialogue among perspectives (pp. 255-302). Information Age Publishing. 
• Ospina, S., & Foldy, E. (2009). A critical review of race and ethnicity in the leadership literature: Surfacing context, power and the collective dimensions of leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 20(6), 876-896.
• Owen, J. E. (2020). We are the leaders we’ve been waiting for: Women and leadership development in college. Stylus. 
• Patton, L. D. (2016). Disrupting postsecondary prose: Toward a critical race theory of higher education. Urban Education, 51(3), 315-342.
• Pendakur, V. & Furr, S. C. (2016). Critical leadership pedagogy: Engaging power, identity, and culture in leadership education for college students of color. In K.L. Guthrie & L. Osteen (Eds.), New Directions for Higher Education, No. 174 (pp. 45- 55). Wiley.
• Rosette, A. S., Leonardelli, G. J., & Phillips, K. W. (2008). The White standard: racial bias in leader categorization. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(4), 758-777.
• Tapia-Fuselier, N., & Irwin, L. (2019). Strengths so white: Interrogating StrengthsQuest education through a critical whiteness lens. Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs, 5(1), 30-44. https://ecommons.luc.edu/jcshesa/vol5/iss1/4/

About the Author

As a white, queer, middle-class, able-bodied, cisgender woman, my multiple privileged identities empowered me in my educational pursuits. My positive educational experiences led me to a student affairs career before pursuing a Ph.D. in higher education and student affairs. However, a significant part of my journey has focused on understanding how whiteness structures society, including the education process. Through this exploration, I developed a lifelong commitment to reflection, learning, dialogue, and action. Disrupting whiteness is at the center of my teaching, service, and scholarship. 

Specifically, my own leadership education experience brings me to this work. As a white woman and former leadership educator, I am both deeply familiar with the work of leadership education and also benefit from and reproduce whiteness in leadership education. However, I come to this work with a desire to facilitate more equitable and just leadership education. My knowledge, identities, and experiences inform my epistemological commitments, research projects, and scholarship. I recognize that pursuing equity and social justice in leadership education practice is a challenging and inherently unfinished process. In pursuing this work as a practitioner, I was often left with more questions than answers. These questions motivated me to return to graduate school and engage in this work from a place of humility and with a desire to be a critical partner with others on their journeys towards justice.