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This chapter reviews the argument focusing on accommodation and conflict among three logics of practice influencing the development of contemporary universities. The first is the intellectual logic of disciplinary advance and education in the disciplines. The second is a market logic that encourages administrators and faculty members to pursue new sources of revenue wherever they can find them, so long as they can be justified on academic grounds. The third is a social inclusion logic that seeks to incorporate members of disadvantaged groups into the campus culture. The chapter shows how the book has been an investigation of the ways that colleges and universities have woven together these competing but ultimately compatible principles: the search for undiscovered knowledge, the pursuit of new market opportunities, and the movement for greater social inclusion.

This introductory chapter discusses the book's main themes and methodology. The book is an ethnographic study of Muslim American undergraduate women on U.S. college campuses. It is based on a research study of Muslim American women undergraduates at Georgetown and George Washington Universities in Washington, D.C. It examines the following: Muslim American women's struggles on university campuses to pursue religious authenticity while being “normal” Americans/women/youth; the majority of Americans' Orientalist stereotyping of Muslims; how Orientalist images constitute a pervasive presence in Muslim American women's own identity constructions; campus social and leisure culture; and the flawed pluralism in America and American campus culture.

This chapter provides insight into how Black and Latinx students navigated their identity as activists during a period in American history when social media documentation of racially-ethnically motivated violence made it impossible to pretend that America had entered a post-racial state of consciousness. There was little variation in how these students felt about police brutality and the targeting of Latinx deportation; almost all were disturbed, most were outraged. However, there was variation in the public visibility of their response and engagement with activism. Because of these societal realities, Black and Latinx college students have to balance academic pursuits with evolving racial-ethnic identity and growing civic purpose. As such, this chapter focuses on how identity-based counterspaces and activist campus culture facilitate Latinx and Black students' critical examination of race-ethnicity and racism.

This chapter discusses the history of sexual violence in US universities to see where things have changed and where they have not. It first explains the relevant terms, such as ‘higher education institution’, ‘college’ and ‘university’ as well as ‘on campus’, ‘sexualised violations’, and ‘sexual misconduct’. It then reviews the early research which overlooked the gendered nature of campus sexual violence, the initial efforts that sought to ‘teach women how to stay safe’ which were critiqued for implicit victim-blaming, and more recent prevention approaches which focus on bystander intervention and the role of friends, peers and social networks in preventing violence. It also examines victimisation and perpetration, along with the interrelationships between perpetration dynamics, campus culture and institutional governance. The chapter concludes with an analysis of issues relating to policy framing and victims' formal reporting.

Drawing on the theology of Johann Metz, students’ reflections concerning sexual assault, and social scientific research, this final chapter identifies three essential commitments needed to create a sexually just culture. Those three commitments are: endorsing an affirmative sexual consent standard, embracing a culture of zero tolerance for sexual violence, and forming a conscious, collective commitment among undergraduates to free one another from the constrictive sexual, gender, and social norms of typical party and hookup culture. Citing recent changes in federal regulation on sexual assault and recent social movements by undergraduate activists nationwide, the author suggests that the possibility of cultural transformation and sexual justice on college campuses has never been more within our reach than at the present moment. As the author explains, such transformation will require the collaboration of a wide range of constituents on local, state, and federal levels.

While nothing can equal the experience of doing fieldwork in an unfamiliar culture, it is possible for students to approximate it close to home. Two fieldwork assignments the authors use in anthropology classes give students hands-on experience. One involves conducting participant observation in local bingo halls. In the other, students interview international students on campus. Both teach important research and life skills (e.g., observation, communication, analysis), but the latter, in particular, gives students insight into their own culture and awareness of ethnocentrism.

This chapter identifies sixteen specific threats to academic freedom. The unique diversity of American higher education, embracing both private and public institutions, secular and religious schools, small liberal arts colleges and mega-universities, community colleges and research universities, unfortunately leads to these threats. The seemingly encompassing economic and cultural force of corporatization—with its neoliberal economic values, instrumental view of educational mission, and managerial model for administration—has subjected very different sorts of educational institutions to similar pressures for change. It has also brought permanently exclusive and proprietary contracts to campus culture, along with elaborate security regimes designed to protect corporate secrets. As a result, there is a mix of threats to academic freedom, some specific to institutional type, some affecting many types of institutions.

In this chapter, the author shares her experiences in navigating her doctoral research in building places of Hawaiian learning through her interviews with eight female educators at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She highlights her own struggle with the cultural dissonance of being a Native Hawaiian scholar grounded in Hawaiian culture pursuing a Hawaiian-focused research topic in a predominantly non–Native Hawaiian institution. She also discusses her process as she develops a framework around moʻolelo and the metaphor of the ʻaʻaliʻi (Dodonaea, a native shrub) to understand and analyze her informants' leadership experiences through ʻōlelo noʻeau, mele, and oli. The author reflects on the lessons she learned as a Native Hawaiian researcher in the academy by engaging in moʻolelo as methodology and how she used those lessons to learn about transformation: transforming campus cultures and transformative leadership.