Foreign faculty tokenism, English, and "internationalization" in a Japanese university

This project explores racial tokenism in the Japanese academy. It grows out of concerns regarding the low status of foreign university faculty in Japan along with a need to evaluate recent government initiatives aimed at fostering "internationalization" of Japanese higher education. In this three-year case study, I investigated the work conditions of faculty hired as full-time instructors for an English as Medium of Instruction (EMI) programme created as part of the internationalization initiatives at one Japanese university. Results indicate that the work of these faculty entailed strong elements of tokenism: all non-Asians, they were highly visible minorities; they lacked professional agency; and the institution sought and derived "propaganda" benefits from their visibility. In addition, these faculty themselves perceived the situation as unfair. Although frustrated, they had access to no institutional mechanisms to alter their status. Ideological underpinnings sustained this situation via a nexus of beliefs surrounding English studies, English native speakers, internationalization, and race. These findings illustrate how policy statements touting internationalization were depleted of transformative moment at the ground level.