Abstract

In this study, I investigate how the rhetoric used in university responses to anti-Asian violence maintained institutional status quos to protect whiteness in higher education. Using whiteness as futurity as a theoretical framework, I employed document analysis to analyze 54 statements in response to the tragic mass shooting in Atlanta in March of 2021 from university presidents of institutions from the Association of American Universities. The findings illuminate how presential rhetoric deployed a malleable history, urgency in the present, and an imagined equitable future. Further, the statements analyzed in this study implicated the three components of whiteness of futurity: whiteness as aspiration, whiteness as investment, and whiteness as malleable. Implications for research and practice are discussed.