Exploring Structures and Agency Within Neoliberal Homonormative American Public Higher Education

Abstract

Student activism continues to rise across the United States, particularly as states expand legislation targeting queer and trans people. Public higher education institutions hinder student activism through different structures, including bureaucratic and physical. Public higher education has grown increasingly neoliberal as state funding continues to decrease, leading to institutions relying on private monies to conduct their services. Neoliberalism, as an economic, political, and social framework, leads to depoliticization through privatization. Further, physical architecture designed through brutalist aesthetics works alongside neoliberalism by curtailing student activist efforts through its physical design. The authors offer insights to public higher education and its relationship with neoliberalism as well as one institution's brutalist design. They conclude by highlighting steps administrators can take and consider in supporting student activist efforts.