Seen but Unseen: The Invisibility/Hypervisibility Paradox among MENA American Faculty

Despite being legally classified as White, Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) people in the United States have long been racialized as non-White, producing an invisibility/hypervisibility paradox. In other racially minoritized communities, this paradox has been linked to harmful effects across multiple social, political, and economic domains, including higher education. Integrating literature on the racialization of MENA Americans with scholarship on hypervisibility and invisibility among faculty of color within academia, this study examines MENA American faculty perceptions of campus climate and belonging. We address two questions: (1) How do MENA faculty at a predominantly White institution experience this paradox? (2) What possibilities exist for resisting it? Using novel qualitative data collected from a series of focus groups with 24 self-identified MENA faculty across academic programs, we examined their sense of belonging in relation to campus climate. Our findings indicate that MENA identity occupied a paradoxical position, as faculty reported being invisibilized (through confusion, stereotyping, essentialization, lack of support, and silencing), while simultaneously being hypervisibilized (through tokenization, cultural taxation, heightened scrutiny, and hostility). We theorize that transcendence of hypervisibility/invisibility emerges through relational experiences of being truly seen. Such moments enable MENA faculty to cultivate validation and agency, thereby reshaping the terms of belonging under conditions of racialized constraint. Ultimately, our findings contribute to broader conversations about inclusion by highlighting MENA Americans’ conditional belonging, wherein racial politics shape the terms of their visibility.