From threatening protestors to cutting diversity office funding on college campuses, one contemporary brand of policymaking has overtly sought to undermine social justice efforts in higher education. Current popular policymaking theories, however, are inadequate to understand this phenomenon, as they under-theorize the role of racialized power in policymaking – e.g., the racialized network of policy elites and their core beliefs. In this chapter, we endeavored to bring together existing theory, research, and contemporary policymaking examples to offer a framework of racialized policymaking that explicitly describes the lack of progress for racial equity in higher education. We first frame policymaking in higher education as an unremitting contest between the maintenance or change of the racial status quo. We enumerate specific policy strategies – through either inaction or sanctions – that status quo policymakers use to stymie racial justice projects in higher education, and close with potential future directions for higher education policy research.
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