New Book: Higher Education Administration for Social Justice and Equity
A new book, edited by the Pullias Center’s Adrianna Kezar and Julie Posselt, empowers all administrators in higher education to engage in their work with a clear commitment to justice, sensitivity to power and privilege, and capacity to facilitate equitable outcomes. Grounding administration for social justice as a matter of daily work, Higher Education Administration for Social Justice and Equity: Critical Perspectives for Leadership translates abstract concepts and theory into the work of hiring, socialization, budgeting, and decision-making.
Contributed chapters by renowned scholars and current practitioners examine the way higher education administration is organized, and will help readers both question existing structures and practices, and consider new and different ways of organizing campuses based on equity and social justice. The book offers up insight across four areas; Setting and Shifting Priorities, Human Resources, Accountability and Data, and Culture and Structure. Rich with case studies and pedagogical tools, this book connects theory to practice, and is an invaluable resource for current and aspiring administrators.
“The idea for this book was sparked due to Julie Posselt and I being unable to find a textbook that was the right fit for an administration course at we teach at USC Rossier School of Education,” shares Adrianna Kezar, Dean’s Professor for Higher Education Leadership at USC and Director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education. “There are no textbooks – really no books on administration – from a social justice and equity perspective. We were really conscious to choose contributors who shared our vision of administration from this equity perspective.”
“Adrianna and I felt this was a major gap in the literature and one we were well-positioned to fill, as we both conduct research on administration and leadership from an equity perspective,” notes Julie Posselt, Pullias Center faculty member, Associate Professor of Education at USC and Research Director of the Inclusive Graduate Education Network. “The result is a book with a capacious view of equity that includes and foregrounds race but also considers gender, class, sexual orientation, ability, and all the many identity aspects that have been marginalized by systems of power in our society.”
Featuring a foreword by Robert Stemberg and contributions by a host of scholars, Higher Education Administration for Social Justice and Equity is published by Routledge, a Taylor & Francis Group, and is available now.