"I'll Just Say It's Been a Racist Process": The Power Dynamics Within and Outside Diversity Requirement Classrooms at a Minority-Serving Institution

U.S. higher educational institutions have increasingly implemented diversity requirements; however, institutional power dynamics during the implementation process and in a classroom after the implementation should be more highlighted. This study aims to understand the implementation of a diversity requirement during the implementation process and faculty and student experiences within required diversity courses at Portland State University (PSU) by analyzing one-on-one semi-structured interviews. PSU is a minority-serving educational institution that implemented a diversity requirement, the Race and Ethnic Studies Requirement (RESR), in Fall 2022. These data are analyzed through Critical Race Theory (CRT) lenses--introducing Okun's (2021) white supremacy culture in an institution. This study aims to answer three research questions: 1) How do the RESR faculty committee members describe the experiences of the RESR implementation process at PSU? 2) How do faculty members describe the experience of teaching RESR-designated courses at PSU? 3) What are students' experiences of taking RESR-designated courses at PSU? The findings of this study indicate a lack of institutional support for the RESR committee members during the implementation process and for faculty members after the implementation. During the implementation process, the institution and the decision-making bodies within the university operated in ways that reflected a variety of characteristics of white supremacy culture, which generated challenges for the RESR committee members, particularly individual faculty of color. Within the RESR classroom, although faculty and students mostly enjoy enriched classroom discussions and learnings due to the increased student diversity after the RESR, faculty of color reported feeling much more vulnerable to student resistance, and a lack of institutional support for the RESR program created further challenges, which suggests the institution's WSC attitudes remains after the implementation. By focusing on structural forces and institutional dynamics within and outside required diversity classrooms, this study highlights the need for institutional support to create diversity requirements without exploiting faculty of color and provides recommendations for the sustainability of diversity requirements more broadly.