Academic time theft: stealing time, producing racialized inclusion in Dutch academia

Purpose This paper examines how universities reproduce ethnic-racial inequality through the temporal organization of academic life. Drawing on critical race theory and decolonial scholarship on chronopolitics and white time, it introduces the concept of academic time theft to theorize how universities extract, fragment and defer the time of academics of colour through racialized institutional processes. The study asks how Dutch universities enact racialized temporal regimes of inclusion and belonging. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on a qualitative organizational study conducted across two Dutch universities. Fifteen in-depth interviews with academics of colour were analysed through reflexive thematic analysis informed by critical race theory and decolonial thought. Counter-storytelling was employed to foreground lived experiences and examine how institutional temporalities reproduce racialized hierarchies within academic careers. Findings The analysis identifies three mechanisms of academic time theft. First, prolonged uncertainty operates through racialized precariousness that keeps academics of colour in a condition of academic probation through insecure contracts and housing precarity. Second, ongoing disruption emerges through everyday racism that fragments attention, diverts emotional and intellectual labour, and interrupts academic continuity. Third, recursive evaluation operates through the continual resetting of inclusion and promotion criteria, producing perpetual states of “not yet” recognition and deferred academic futures. Together, these mechanisms sustain racialized temporal regimes in which academics of colour are positioned as perpetually “almost there” while white institutional time remains uninterrupted. Research limitations/implications The study focuses on two Dutch universities and primarily reflects the experiences of women of colour. Future research could further examine how academics of colour collectively resist institutional temporal regimes and generate alternative temporalities of care, relationality and refusal within academia. Practical implications The findings demonstrate that academic inequality is not only spatially or materially organized but also temporally structured. Universities should therefore treat temporality as an equity issue by addressing how evaluation systems, precarious employment and institutional practices unevenly distribute uninterrupted academic time and delay recognition for academics of colour. Originality/value By theorizing academic time theft, this paper contributes to critical organization studies and higher education scholarship by showing how universities sustain racial inequality through the temporal regulation of academic progression, belonging and recognition.