The Contradiction of Institutional Diversity in the Design Student Body

The United States of America has pioneered initiatives, policies, and pedagogies to diversify its higher education student bodies. In design education, for instance, students are taught to self-represent their cultures and those of their ancestors instead of representing others. Like many activities touched by neoliberal multiculturalism, however, this institutionalization of diversity does not fundamentally alter the historical negative differentiation between student and faculty, White and non-White, or male and female bodies. Following Sarah Ahmed, this autoethnographic militant design research reconceptualizes institutional diversity as a contradiction that can be felt and critically worked by a design student body through collective, not just individual, self-representation.