“They Bring Standards of Academic Excellence Down” A Critical Analysis of Responses by Social Media Users to Targeted Hiring of Black and Women Faculty Members in South African and Canadian Universities

Abstract

Calls to hire more diverse faculty members in South African and Canadian universities have long standing histories. The pace of implementation of proposals to appoint more Black and women faculty members was slow. It was partly pressures from the #RhodesMustFall student movement in South Africa (2015) and renewed calls to address anti-Black racism in Canada post the murder of George Floyd in the United States (2020) that prompted post-secondary institutions in these countries to take concrete action towards instituting campus wide transformations to address questions of equity, diversity, and inclusion. Informed by the Othering theory and using thematic analysis, this paper critically examines social media users’ rebuttals to the hiring of more Black and women faculty members at universities in South Africa and Canada. This paper argues that the racist and sexist framing of Black and women faculty as the inferior ‘other’ potentially has negative consequences on the mental health of the aforementioned groups. This article also challenges ahistorical analyses that neglect critical examinations of racist and sexist systemic barriers that women and Black faculty contend with when applying for academic positions. Further, this paper exposes the limitations of the logic that assumes that merit-based hiring is necessarily inimical to sustaining standards of academic excellence.