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“Neoliberal Diversity” At The University Of California, Merced: Hmong Students Creating Belonging And Building Community, May Kao Xiong

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

Neoliberalism impacts the implementation of diversity in higher education, consequently this affects the place and meaning of diversity as it relates to Hmong students. Within the neoliberal university, diversity is increasingly co-opted to stand for institutional inclusivity and implemented to silence critiques about the academic industrial complex. I consider and examine the interplay between “neoliberal diversity” and Hmong students’ experiences at the University of California, Merced (UC Merced). I use critical refugee scholar Yên Lê Espiritu’s (2014) refugee framework and Indigenous scholar Glen Coulthard’s (2014) self-recognition model to examine the Hmong Student Association. The data for this study is from …