Universities play a key role in the ‘meritocratic myth’. In our contribution to this BERA Blog special issue, we consider how disability and social class challenge the persistent regulative and normative ‘centre’ of the academy, that works to marginalise those deemed outside its parameters. Our recent study focused on class-based disablism, theorised as significant intersectional oppression. To explore this, we interviewed 40 disabled academics, and 15 people involved with academic recruitment, as well as performing a text-based analysis of academic job advertisements.

We found that the intersectional barriers experienced by working-class academics have significant implications on epistemic diversity. As one senior Human Resources (HR) participant remarked, few institutions virtue signal at the same level as universities, yet their policies and commitments to equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) are ‘light years’ behind industry. Dolmage’s book on academic ableism exposes universities’ ‘racist, ableist, eugenicist roots’ (Dolmage, 2017, p. 4). For Titchkosky, disability in the academy is seen as ‘a problem in need of a solution’ (2011, p. 70), as institutions increasingly rely on the ‘unencumbered academic’ (Campbell, 2000, p. 212). Wilde’s (2014) ongoing autoethnography shows how the social-class positioning of disabled academics is an obvious barrier to entry and progress through the academy. These themes were used as key starting points for our study.

‘Few institutions virtue signal at the same level as universities, yet their policies and commitments to equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) are “light years” behind industry.’

Titchkosky’s (2011) observations were clear in the responses of our participants (interviewees with differing class identifications), the conversations with academic and professional services staff involved in recruitment or EDI, and the range of job advertisements and job specifications that we analysed. Universities tend to see inclusion and impairment needs of students as ‘special’ and extra to the supposed ‘normal subject of education’. We found that disabled working-class academics were treated as burdens, with expressed needs often sidelined, questioned or used against them – while disablist cultures and processes remained unseen or ignored by those who create them. These range from expectations of geographical mobility and cultures of overwork, to inequalities in research funding. Precarious and short-term contracts were particularly onerous for our participants, as one person pointed out: ‘When you’re an academic from a working-class background and you’re disabled – you don’t have that safety net.’

Disabled academics often became dismayed at these deficit-led experiences, within work environments, study and recruitment. Many people spoke of their desperation in response to recruitment norms, with widespread complaints about positions being cemented before (long, arduous) selection processes. Significantly, these issues often emerged as wicked problems in our conversations with recruiters.

Many were aware of the search for ‘stars’ in a highly competitive field, where there are few secure academic positions, and with job offers often based on nepotism and assumptions of a good fit with what is already there, rather than seeing working-class applicants as a valuable addition. In our sample of 208 jobs, 160 were short term, with only 23 entry-level lecturing posts – the holy grail for all but the senior academics we spoke to.

Despair around these situations and the unwillingness of universities to see the barriers they erect were deeply entwined in disabled people’s experiences of academic precarity. This was compounded by the reductive silo approach taken by most universities. When one axis of inequality is compounded by another, such as class and disability, many people must choose their battle. As one participant explained: ‘I feel I should be grateful enough that they have let me in as a working-class person without asking for reasonable adjustments.’

The exclusion of working-class disabled people has severe implications on the knowledge that is generated, produced and taught in universities; this is clearly true for all potential academics deemed as ‘others’ (racialised, gendered, classed and sexualised), creating a range of epistemological gaps across all disciplines. As debates about decolonisation have shown, not only can this lead to ‘domination’ or ‘epistemic authority’ if not ‘epistemicide’ (Gopal, 2021, p. 893), but also to a partial and biased knowledge base. Conversely, real inclusion of working-class disabled academics would improve all university missions, not least in valuing students – the lifeblood of our academic lives and aspirations.

If we are truly committed to diversity and academic knowledge within academia, the normative centre should and must not hold.

References

Campbell, F. K. (2020). The violence of technicism: Ableism as humiliation and degrading treatment. In N. Brown & J. Leigh (Eds.). Ableism in academia: Theorising experiences of disabilities and chronic illnesses in higher education (pp. 202–224). UCL Press.

Dolmage, J. T. (2017). Academic ableism: Disability and higher education. University of Michigan Press.

Gopal, P. (2021). On decolonisation and the university. Textual Practice, 35(6), 873–899. https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2021.1929561

Titchkosky, T. (2011). The question of access: Disability, space, meaning. University of Toronto Press

Wilde, A. (2014). Disability and the normative trajectory of sociological careers. Frontier Stream Plenary Paper at British Sociological Association Annual Conference, University of Leeds, April 2014.