The Telegraph is a known as a conservative or right-wing publication, and this tone was quite evident in the assigned YouTube clip called ‘Revealed: The charity turning UK universities woke’. From the dramatic soundtrack to the upper-class cadence of the narrator, there was an overarching scepticism toward AdvanceHE’s Athena Swan initiative and the findings of the University of Cambridge as institutionally racist. Dr. Vincent Harinam argued that the statistical evidence was not conclusive (Orr, 2022). I am dubious about Harinam’s assertions, as decolonial scholarship would define the university as an institution of coloniality, which was constitutive of racism, however some of the critiques about anti-racism and diversity policies are echoed in Sara Ahmed’s On Being Included.
‘Decolonising’ seems to have replaced diversity and anti-racism in a rebranding attempt that funnels money into initiatives that silo the project (of anti-racism, decolonialising, diversity) into departments or teams of diversity. One of Ahmed’s arguments is that when we institutionalise diversity it can become a performative speech act, wherein the recognition itself seems to absolve the institution, while simultaneously doing the bare minimum: ‘we have institutional racism!’, which she parallels to an addicts’ confession, as if the recognition will be the first step to absolution (Ahmed, 2012, pp. 55). Last session’s assigned reading by Ramadan highlighted how ‘BME academics continue to be positions at the bottom of the ladder vis-à-vis contract-types, seniority and salary bands’ (Ramadan, 2021, p. 34), then this week’s review of the UAL Anti-Racism policy offered evidence to the point as the document encouraged more staff hiring at the level of Visiting and Associating Lecturing (UAL, 2021). UAL recognises that it is institutionally racist, but does the bare minimum. What about senior management? What about full-time positions which hold job security? Racism is reinforced through unequal distributions of power, so recognising how power is distributed through racism is probably a good place to start dismantling.
This discussion filters down through so many aspects my lived experiences, from getting rejected from funding to the casually racist remarks about Chinese international students from staff (which I witnessed in a staff symposium last week) to being the expert on race. I could go on and on and on. These beliefs are so ingrained in the public thinking that its casual nature often slips by me until after the event. In our recent class we discussed how the data metrics often don’t match up to the policies, but what about the data that is not quantified, or not easily quantifiable. Imagine if I were to report every microaggression that I witnessed, how could I even do that? I don’t even know who to report that to. Then I think about the labour that one would have to endure to report this constantly, instead of trying to forget it. I wonder if we could create a microaggression box – an anonymous comment box for every time someone said something in the school to them (maybe a plausible intervention).
Works Cited
Ahmed, S. (2012) On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Orr, J. (2022) Revealed: The charity turning UK universities woke. The Telegraph [Online]. Youtube. 5 August. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRM6vOPTjuU (Accessed on: 5 June 2025)
Ramadan, I. (2021) ‘When faith intersects with gender: the challenges and successes int eh experiences of Muslim women academics’, Gender and Education 34(1), p. 33-48
UAL (2021) Anti-Racism Action Plan. [Online] Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0032/296537/UAL-Anti-racism-action-plan-summary-2021.pdf (Accessed on: 5 June 2025)