ABSTRACT
Across the world, calls for greater equity in the halls of academia, the museum gallery, and library are loud and clear. They demand more “diversity,” and “inclusion,” or that the University should be “globalized” or “decolonized.” Why, then, if everyone agrees that business as usual is no longer acceptable—and that a wider range of voices need to be heard—is progress so slow?
The story of inequality in the classroom is the story of inequality in the museum and the library. The institutional supply chain that connects them, or what Peggy Levitt call the inequality pipeline, places barriers to entry for artists, writers, and thinkers who live outside the traditional centers of cultural and intellectual power at every step of the way. It is only when institutional interests converge that ideas and culture from outside the West flow more easily to it. But that flow is inherently limited. As soon as it is strong enough to fundamentally challenge business as usual, the gate closes. The University, no matter how decolonized or diverse it claims to be, becomes part of the problem, rather than the solution, changing the system only so much so that it stays in place.
