Toward a Theory of Institutions: Institutional Betrayal and Dispersions of Accountability at Johns Hopkins University
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Date
2021-06-20
Authors
Smith, Robert D.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Taylor & Francis Group
Abstract
To more fully understand how trauma can be inflicted by institutional
betrayal, in this article I suggest that we first must ask
who or what is the institution. To understand this, I analyze two
recent events at Johns Hopkins University (JHU), the establishment
of a university private police force and funding cuts to the
Women, Gender, and Sexuality Graduate Teaching Fellowships
(WGS). Paradoxically, JHU claimed it was necessary to establish a
private police force because of a lack of accountability of the
Baltimore Police Department; however, simultaneously JHU was
unaccountable to direct JHU affiliates by ignoring their explicit
disapproval of a private police force. JHU imagined themselves
as accountable to an ambiguous ‘us’ beyond direct JHU affiliates
and dispersed its accountability, evidenced by advocating for
state legislature and making mayoral campaign donations. This
lack of accountability was rearticulated in discussions about
WGS cuts, when JHU embraced a rhetoric of the market to
substantiate their claims and evade the questions of direct
JHU affiliates. These cases show how articulations of who the
institution imagines itself as accountable to are dynamically
mutating, yet build upon precedents that set the conditions of
possibility for how trauma is produced and mediated. I conclude
by suggesting that it is important to move beyond a monolithic
conception of the institution, and to be attuned to how dispersions
of institutional accountability create new terrains where
institutional contestation take place as well as the institution's
strategic rupturing of the concept of the institutional citizen.
Description
14 pages
Keywords
trauma, institution, accountability, imaginary, private police, land saving pv system
Citation
Robert D. Smith (2021) Toward a Theory of Institutions: Institutional Betrayal and Dispersions of Accountability at Johns Hopkins University, Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 22:4, 465-477, DOI: 10.1080/15299732.2021.1925867