Governing antiracism: Affective governmentality and managerial learning in the neoliberal university

This article examines how universities in the United Kingdom and the United States learn to govern antiracism through managerial processes of containment and control. Drawing on Foucault’s concept of governmentality and Ahmed’s analysis of institutional affect, the study conceptualizes learning not as progressive adaptation but as a political and emotional technology of governance. Based on an online survey of 138 staff working in equity, diversity and inclusion roles across 88 universities, the analysis identifies three interrelated mechanisms through which institutions absorb racial critique: procedural containment, where bureaucratic expansion substitutes for structural change; reputational governance, where risk management and moral branding secure legitimacy; and affective regulation, where emotional norms such as civility, optimism and composure sustain moral comfort and inhibit dissent. Together, these mechanisms show how universities translate racial critique into governable routines that preserve legitimacy while limiting structural change. By reframing institutional learning as governance, the article contributes to critical debates in Management Learning on the politics of reflexivity, affect and organizational change. It concludes that for universities to learn otherwise, they must unlearn the satisfactions of virtue that make moral progress feel good while leaving structural injustice intact.