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Anti-Racist Curriculum Project in Scotland

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Anti-Racist Curriculum Project in Scotland

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There will be a small Executive Group steering the project and a larger Working Group comprising 24 higher education staff and students from across the Scottish universities, colleges and agencies who will help to inform and input into the project research for the anti-racist curriculum. They will bring a range of lived experience, teaching and curriculum design expertise, and sector knowledge. Together, they will be focusing on terms of inclusion: defining an anti-racist curriculum and accompanying terminology to enable curriculum conversation; scoping current and best practice, learning from and highlighting the innovative work of our colleagues in this area; identifying the whole institution approach required to embed an anti-racist curriculum and foregrounding the BAME student and staff experience by listening to and amplifying underrepresented voices.

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There will be a small Executive Group steering the project and a larger Working Group comprising 24 higher education staff and students from across the Scottish universities, colleges and agencies who will help to inform and input into the project research for the anti-racist curriculum.

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The Library in the Lives of Latino College Students1Denice Adkins and Lisa Hussey

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The Library in the Lives of Latino College Students1Denice Adkins and Lisa Hussey

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The under-attainment of ethnic minority students in UK higher education: what we know and what we don’t knowJohn T.E. Richardson

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The under-attainment of ethnic minority students in UK higher education: what we know and what we don’t knowJohn T.E. Richardson

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Turning words into actions: Eliminating racism and racial inequality in higher education

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Turning words into actions: Eliminating racism and racial inequality in higher education (with captions)

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📹LSE Blog by Dr Rimi Saini From management meetings to meaningful change: risks of institutional capture in the decolonisation of UK higher education and recommendations for delivering structural change

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📹LSE Blog by Dr Rimi Saini From management meetings to meaningful change: risks of institutional capture in the decolonisation of UK higher education and recommendations for delivering structural change

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As there are growing calls from below, alongside expanding formal initiatives, to decolonise universities, Dr Rima Saini outlines what decolonisation means in the higher education context. She highlights that it is a radical project of institutional transformation that lies in exposing and upturning the colonial underpinnings of our universities. Given the immensity of this task, Saini explores the risks of institutional capture - that structural change will be absorbed into management strategies- and offers recommendations for meaningful change.
The anti-racist protests that followed the killing of George Floyd in May have brought longstanding issues of structural racisms into sharp focus. In many UK universities, this has resulted in a nascent or renewed sense of commitment to the decolonisation of the curriculum - in a number of cases coming from senior university management. Indeed, in recent months, despite the tumult of the COVID-19 pandemic and the retreat of our in-person spaces of action to predominantly online fora, conversations around decolonisation have continued and in places flourished. For those of us living with, and/or researching, racial marginality and Whiteness in a higher education system that has long been problematic or inactive on matters of race, however, efforts from 'above' have been met with a healthy dose of scepticism.

What is decolonisation in Higher Education?

Decolonisation in higher education is primarily concerned with the unacknowledged coloniality of academic knowledge and practice. It entails a structural and cultural change in the way universities think about the representation and the uplift of historically silenced voices. This is particularly relevant to the treatment of racially marginalised staff and students, and the way in which our pedagogy - across all disciplines - acknowledges the legitimacy of, and sufficiently reflects, frameworks of thought beyond the Western canon. Decolonisation thus cannot be applied singularly to the curriculum or to the attainment gap. It feeds into, amongst other things, the very structure of the university, the experiences of students, staff and wider publics, knowledge creation and outputs, and stymied institutional cultures and mind-sets.

Decolonisation thus cannot be applied singularly to the curriculum or to the attainment gap. It feeds into, amongst other things, the very structure of the university, the experiences of students, staff and wider publics, knowledge creation and outputs, and stymied institutional cultures and mind-sets.

Given the immensity of this undertaking, however, discussions and initiatives that have taken place under the banner of decolonisation have regularly fallen short of addressing the structural and cultural roots of coloniality in higher education. One example is the subsumption of decolonial praxis into the considerably tamer and less weighty 'equality and diversity' discourse. There have also been longstanding issues with, as I stated earlier this year in Political Quarterly, encouraging colleagues and managers to discuss - with appropriate rigour - the meaning and relevance of decolonisation in relation to their own positionalities and practice. As a result, institutional capture - the process by which demands for structural change get absorbed into already existing management policies-of the decolonisation framework, is a reality.

As conversations around decolonisation in universities are being afforded greater urgency, some key risks of this institutional capture or inertia to wider decolonisation efforts are outlined below:

Institutional capture: risks and recommendations
Risk 1. 'Diversity' supplanting 'decolonisation'
The language of decolonisation seems, in recent years but especially at this moment, to have proliferated in network meetings, steering groups, and task forces, platforms where the realities of White supremacy, privilege and fragility have been rarely touched upon. This might be cause for celebration, but this mainstreaming of decolonisation runs the risk of diluting and indeed capturing decolonisation within Eurocentric boundary making practices. Unspecific and un-actioned expressions of anti-racist support re-shifts the onus for curriculum overhaul, for example, onto predominantly non-White scholar activists. This reproduces racial hierarchies by placing the burden of proof and labour onto those who suffer most from institutional racism. Decolonisation which becomes redefined and redeployed through a non-threatening white gaze also serves to side-line the often more meaningful and impactful grassroots efforts of longstanding staff and student networks within universities to generate sorely needed funding and recognition.
Risk 2. Ideological pacification
Many current institutional approaches to equality, diversity and inclusion lack a framework for genuine transformation. They tend to pay lip service to social difference or 'diversities' within higher education institutions, largely for the profit-centred means of attracting international student recruitment. They often fail to link these explicitly to a critical reimagining of current higher education systems that is genuinely inclusive, with a focus on those who are acutely marginalised and silenced. At the very least, a 'diverse' student body requires a commitment to ensuring equal attainment across students from different backgrounds, and an adequate representation of minority staff. However, data from the Higher Education Statistics Authority states that as of 2018/2019 less than 1 per cent of university employees at professorial or senior academic level are Black ( compared to just over 3 per cent as a percentage of the population at large as of the 2011 census), alongside the existence of a persistent attainment gap between Black and White students particularly. As Tom Conford stated in a blog post last year on anti-racism in theatre studies, ' the diversity of 'diverse' categories begins to suggest that everyone could be considered in some way 'diverse', which obscures rather than exposes inequalities'.

At the very least, a 'diverse' student body requires a commitment to ensuring equal attainment across students from different backgrounds and an adequate representation of minority staff.
Recommendation 1. Embracing discomfort
As alluded to thus far, decolonisation is inherently disruptive, destabilising and non-linear. Efforts to streamline and formalise the process more often than not prove reductive. Facing discomfort with an open mind and encouraging others to do the same through humility and active listening is key. Seminal postcolonial theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak famously asked 'Can the Subaltern Speak?' but noted that perhaps less crucial than 'who will speak' is 'who will listen'. Maintaining firm lines on minimum expected institutional efforts - whether a university-wide re-haul of inherently racialised recruitment and promotion practices or substantial investment and innovation in training beyond 'unconscious bias' sessions - is difficult when institutions have a history of maintaining the status quo through either largescale silencing or the means of ideological pacification discussed earlier.
Recommendation 2. Trying to move beyond the curriculum
Most university staff looking towards decolonisation would acknowledge that a quantitative approach to diversifying reading list is, in and of itself, insufficient in addressing the historical misrepresentation and side-lining of non-Western and non-White theoretical and methodological traditions. However, this does little to preclude the fact that such changes are seen as more 'do-able' and regularly become the first port of call in decolonisation efforts. It is important then, that decolonising the curriculum does not become the aim for decolonial efforts in HE, at the expense of the more profound pedagogical efforts needed to decolonise our classrooms. Frank, open and often uncomfortable conversations about the realities of racial and postcolonial trauma inside and outside the walls of the institution go a long way to destabilising institutional hierarchies beyond the scope of the reading list. Creating spaces of intellectual autonomy and recognition for those with marginalised histories, all while fostering a sense of ' engaged pedagogy' that values, as bell hooks advocates, care and mutual respect, is as important as other curriculum-orientated modes of decolonisation work.

Conclusion

The mainstreaming of discussions around decolonising the university represents a potential turning point in UK Higher Education. However, if decolonisation is to avoid becoming a new buzzword, space needs to be made for difficult conversations to be aired. For those of us living with, and/or researching, racial marginality and Whiteness in the higher education system, this requires a strong dose of caution in order that easy solutions or quick-fixes don't capture the promise of the present moment.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Impact Blog, nor of the London School of Economics. Please review our comments policy if you have any concerns on posting a comment below Image Credit: Dylan Gillis via unsplash (meeting)

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From management meetings to meaningful change: risks of institutional capture in the decolonisation of UK higher education and recommendations for delivering structural change

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As there are growing calls from below, alongside expanding formal initiatives, to decolonise universities, Dr Rima Saini outlines what decolonisation means in the higher education context. She highlights that it is a radical project of institutional transformation that lies in exposing and upturning the colonial underpinnings of our universities.

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Using LibGuides to support racial justice & create inclusive communities

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Using LibGuides to support racial justice & create inclusive communities

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https://buzz.springshare.com/springynews/news-49/libguides-tricks?preview=f765068afa3d2ae2aaea74a6f422af87#s-lg-box-24462157

Bernadette

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The Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) has published a new report with original testimony and practical guidance for UK universities on decolonising higher education

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The Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) has published a new report with original testimony and practical guidance for UK universities on decolonising higher education

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A list of regularly updated BCU resources  linked to Black History Month

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A list of regularly updated BCU resources  linked to Black History Month

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https://bcu.keylinks.org/#/list/8743

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Exploring Criminology Curriculum - This paper serves as a call to action to critically engage with the sources used: in so doing it uses a simple ‘inclusivity matrix’ that can be used both when designing curricula and for teaching critical information literacy

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Exploring Criminology Curriculum - This paper serves as a call to action to critically engage with the sources used: in so doing it uses a simple ‘inclusivity matrix’ that can be used both when designing curricula and for teaching critical information literacy

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Black Lives Matter – Recording and resources from the event on 8 July 2020

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Black Lives Matter – Recording and resources from the event on 8 July 2020

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The slides presented at the start can be downloaded here.

A write up of the event by Wonkhe's editor Debbie McVitty can be found here.
With thanks to Melanie Rimmer for supporting the collation of the following list of resources shared by attendees of the event. Inclusion in this list doesn't imply specific endorsement by Wonkhe.
Books and journal articles

Akala, 2018. Natives: Race And Class In The Ruins Of Empire.

Agarwal, P. (2020) Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias, Bloomsbury Sigma.

Applebaum, B. (2017). Comforting discomfort as complicity: white fragility and the pursuit of invulnerability. Hypatia, 32(4), pp.862-875.

Andrews, K. (2018). Back to Black: Black radicalism for the 21st century.

Arday, J. and Mirza, H. (Eds) (2018) Dismantling Racism in Higher Education, Racism, Whiteness and Decolonising the Academy, Palgrave Macmillan. Zed.

Berenstain, N., 2016. Epistemic exploitation. Ergo, an Open Access Journal of Philosophy, 3. Available here.

Bhopal, K. and Alibhai-Brown, Y., 2018. White Privilege: The Myth Of A Post-Racial Society. Bristol: Policy Press.

DiAngelo, R., 2019. White Fragility: Why It's So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism. Penguin.

Eddo-Lodge, R., 2018. Why I'm No Longer Talking To White People About Race. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Haney López, I. (2015) Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class, Oxford University Press.

Hirsch, A., 2018. Brit(Ish). On Race, Identity And Belonging. London: Random House.

Kwakye, C. and Ogunbiyi, O. (2019) Taking Up Space: The Black Girl's Manifesto for Change, Merky Books.

Saad, L. (2020) Me and White Supremacy: How to Recognise Your Privilege, Combat Racism and Change the World, Quercus.

Shukla, N. and Suleyman, C., 2019. The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect On America. Dialogue Books.

Singh, G., 2018. Post-racial pedagogy-challenges and possibilities. Race Ethnicity and Education, 21(4), pp.555-563.

Steele, C., 2011. Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us. New York: W.W. Norton.

Sullivan, S., 2006. Revealing Whiteness : The Unconscious Habits of Racial Privilege. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Sullivan, S., 2014. Good White People: The Problem With Middle-Class White Anti-Racism. SUNY Press.

Zuberi, T. and Bonilla-Silva, E. (Eds) White Logic, White Methods: Racism and Methodology, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Blogs and web resources

The Race Equality Charter convened by Advance HE.

Advance HE's diversifying leadership programme.

The Reimagining Attainment for All toolkit developed by the University of Roehampton, Queen Mary, University of London, and Carshalton College, containing examples of projects and resources produced in partnership (staff and students) to extend the knowledge base and develop practical solutions to closing the BAME awarding gap.

Nicola Rollock's investigation of the experience of black female professors for UCU, Staying Power (2019).

Cultural diversity and inclusion in marketing.

A list of research methods books by women of colour.

A Padlet of resources for decolonising the curriculum.

UCL inclusive teaching toolkit.

The National Education Union's anti-racism charter.

Active bystander training.

Be an active bystander video.

Code Switch podcast: Why now, white people?

Antiracist resources compiled by UCU Sussex.

Blog by William Ackah at Birkbeck, University of London, on the differential impact of Covid-19.

People

Rachel Cargle - Ohio public academic.

Black student Nazbit reflects on opportunities for universities to tackle racism.

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Black Lives Matter - Recording and resources from our event on 8 July 2020 | Wonkhe

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The slides presented at the start can be downloaded here. A write up of the event by Wonkhe's editor Debbie McVitty can be found here. With thanks to Melanie Rimmer for supporting the collation of the following list of resources shared by attendees of the event.

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A reading list for Business staff developed in collaboration with Sola Adelsola as part of the 'Diversifying the Curriculum' workstrand of Oxford Brookes University's PESE2 Inclusive, Multi-Modal Learning Environment project (2015 - 2017).

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A reading list for Business staff developed in collaboration with Sola Adelsola as part of the 'Diversifying the Curriculum' workstrand of Oxford Brookes University's PESE2 Inclusive, Multi-Modal Learning Environment project (2015 - 2017).

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List of Research Methods Books By Women Of Colour by Helen Kara

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Last week I was tagged in a tweet asking this very interesting question:

#AcademicTwitter, I'm looking to be educated: on the subject of #researchmethods, what non-white non-male authors are out there? Because DAMN, the reading list I've inherited is... problematic. #academic #pedagogy @DrHelenKara @SuzanneCulshaw @FitzwalterFran

- Dr Zann Albary (@ZannPhD) June 3, 2020

I thought of a couple of responses immediately, then another the next morning. I also decided to write this blog post because I knew there was more I could say.

Disclaimer: this isn't a 'best of' or a full review, this is simply what is on my shelves in my personal research methods library. I have found these books from social media, peer reviews, bibliographies, recommendations. Between them they cover a wide range of methods and topics: qualitative, quantitative and multi-modal research; arts-based methods and technology; decolonizing methods and Indigenous research; various disciplinary topics; and a lot of ethics.
'Why to' books
These books make a case for doing research in certain ethical ways. Let's start with a classic: Decolonizing Methodologies by Linda Tuhiwai Smith. I read this ground-breaking book during my Masters' in Social Research Methods around the turn of the century, and bought the second edition when it came out in 2012. This little paperback is remarkably comprehensive and full of wisdom.

Building on the work of Smith: Decolonizing Educational Research: From Ownership To Answerability by Leigh Patel (2016). This is a thoughtful, passionate clarion call for education research to focus on learning.

Building on both of the above: Decolonizing Interpretive Research: A Subaltern Methodology for Social Change, edited by Antonia Darder (2019). Interpretive research prioritises philosophical and methodological ways of understanding society. While this book is quite conceptual, its use of multiple voices provides a depth of insight into the importance of the points it makes. Also, if you have read Smith and Patel before you get to this book, it will make more sense.
'How to' books
Heewon Chang's Autoethnography As Method (2008) is a book I frequently recommend to students. It is readable, practical, and clear. Autoethnography is sometimes criticized as self-indulgent and navel-gazing, but if you do it Chang's way, it won't be. Also autoethnography has a key role to play in these pandemic times.

Pranee Liamputtong's Performing Qualitative Cross-Cultural Research (2010) is another classic. It is great on cultural sensitivity and gives lots of really helpful examples. Every researcher should read this book unless they're absolutely sure they are doing monocultural research - and even then they would probably learn something useful.

Caroline Lenette's Arts-Based Methods in Refugee Research: Creating Sanctuary (2019) is more specialist, yet has a lot to offer to anyone interested in arts-based methods. She pays particular attention to the methods of digital storytelling, photography, community music, and participatory video.
Indigenous methodologies
Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations, and Contexts (2009) is by Margaret Kovach from Saskatchewan in Canada. This very readable book includes conversations with six Indigenous thinkers which contribute an interesting diversity of ideas and experiences.

Indigenous Research Methodologies (2019 - 2 nd edition) by Bagele Chilisa from Botswana in Africa is another classic. It is also very readable and comprehensive.

The first disciplinary book I found on Indigenous methodologies is by Lori Lambert: Research for Indigenous Survival: Indigenous Research Methodologies in the Behavioral Sciences (2014). Lambert is from the US and, like Kovach, includes other voices in her work. However, the other voices in Lambert's book are of people from Indigenous communities, in Canada, the US and Australia, who are subject to research. As is common with Indigenous research texts, Lambert's book is very readable.

Maggie Walter from Tasmania is lead author of Indigenous Statistics: A Quantitative Research Methodology (2013) with Chris Andersen from Canada (who is a man, but I guess he can't help that, and evidently he was happy for Walter to be first author so good for him). If you're quant-averse, don't worry; this is not about how to do sums, it's about which sums are worth doing and why. And, again, it's very readable.
Edited collections
These are both edited by men, but are on relevant topics and include chapters by women of colour. The first is White Logic, White Methods: Racism and Methodology (2008) edited by Tukufu Zuberi and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. Two-fifths of chapters are written or co-written by women of colour.

The second is Research Justice: Methodologies for Social Change (2012) edited by Andrew Jolivétte. Only two chapters in this book are by men, the other 14 are by women (including Antonia Darder and Linda Smith). I reviewed this book for the LSE book review blog back in 2015.
Other relevant topics
While these books are not directly about research methods, they are on topics which are so relevant to researchers that I will include them here.

Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (2018), by Safiya Noble, is a passionately and beautifully argued book about why algorithms are not neutral and the impact that has on society. Researchers use search engines all the time and we need to know about this stuff.

Race After Technology (2019) by Ruha Benjamin builds on and expands Noble's work. She demonstrates that advances in technology are lauded as objective and progressive, but in fact they reproduce and reinforce existing inequalities. Crucially, she includes a chapter on practical ways to counter this dissonance.

Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias (2020) by Pragya Agarwal helps us to understand and challenge our own unconscious biases. Any researcher concerned about ethics would benefit from reading this book.

In fact, any researcher concerned about ethics would benefit from reading any of the books listed here. Although the word 'ethics' doesn't appear in any of the titles, each of these books points the way towards a more ethical research practice.

This is certainly not a comprehensive list of methods and other research-relevant books (and chapters) by women of colour. If you have other suggestions to make, please add them in the comments.
This is a simulpost with the blog of the Social Research Association of the UK and Ireland. This blog, and the monthly #CRMethodsChat on Twitter, is funded by my beloved patrons. It takes me at least one working day per month to post here each week and run the Twitterchat. At the time of writing I'm receiving funding from Patrons of $52 per month. If you think a day of my time is worth more than $52 - you can help! Ongoing support would be fantastic but you can also make a one-time donation through the PayPal button on this blog if that works better for you. Support from Patrons and donors also enables me to keep this blog ad-free. If you are not able to support me financially, please consider reviewing any of my books you have read - even a single-line review on Amazon or Goodreads is a huge help - or sharing a link to my work on social media. Thank you!

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Research Methods Books By Women Of Colour

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Last week I was tagged in a tweet asking this very interesting question: #AcademicTwitter, I'm looking to be educated: on the subject of #researchmethods, what non-white non-male authors are out there? Because DAMN, the reading list I've inherited is... problematic. #academic #pedagogy @DrHelenKara @SuzanneCulshaw @FitzwalterFran - Dr Zann Albary (@ZannPhD) June 3, 2020 I thought...

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Decolonising and Diversifying Librarianship and Higher Education

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Decolonising and Diversifying Librarianship and Higher Education

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This site was set up in the light of a recent campaign organised by students in the UK asking ‘Why is my curriculum white?‘ It is a website of resources that will complement and broaden shared conversations in this area.

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This site is intended as a free resource for students, teachers, academics, and others interested in social theory and wishing to understand it in global perspective.

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Guardian article by Ahmed Olayinka Sule argues BAME label is problematic as racism hits black people the most.

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There is a tendency to classify all victims of racism under the label "people of colour" or "black, Asian and minority ethnic" people (shortened to BAME). However, this generalist approach fails to account for the varied ways that racism affects different races. There is anti-black racism, anti-Asian racism (which affects east Asians and south Asians differently), anti-Arab racism, even sometimes anti-white racism. To be clear, all these strands of racism are significant, and we need to work to eradicate them all. Yet, historically, it's black people who have most often found themselves at the bottom of the pile.

In Brazil, black people are still treated as second class citizens; in India, students of African origin are persecuted

Look at the figures: according to the UK government's race disparity audit, relative to whites and Asians, black defendants at crown court were the most likely to be remanded in custody. Between 2017 and 2018, black people in Britain were approximately 10 times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police than white people were, and three times more likely than Asians. Black Caribbean pupils were permanently excluded at nearly three times the rate of white British pupils, while black people are more likely to be unemployed and homeless than all other racial minority groups.

This is not only a British phenomenon. In the US, black people are more likely to be arrested for drugs offences even though they are not more likely to use or sell drugs, and as a result make up a disproportionate amount of the prison population. They also have a higher chance of getting shot by the police than white or Hispanic people. In today's Brazil, black people are still treated as second-class citizens; while in India, students of African origin are persecuted. In South Africa, a majority black country, 72% of the country's private farmland is owned by white people, who make up 9% of the population. During the apartheid era there was a clear racial hierarchy: whites at the top, Indians and "coloureds" in the middle, and black people at the bottom.

Historically, though slavery covered a range of civilisations, countries and races, for the black race its legacy lives on. From the 16th to the 19th century, around 12 million Africans were transported across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas by European slave traders. Millions more were born into slavery and spent their whole lives enslaved. And after slavery ended in the US, African Americans were subjected to segregation laws, the denial of civil rights and lynching.

And between AD 650 and the 1800s, almost 10 million Africans were sold by Arab slave traders to Arabia and the Indian subcontinent. In fact the Arabic word abeed, which means "slave", is still used to describe black people in countries from Algeria to Yemen.

In her book White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo notes that black people are the "ultimate racial other". In the US, they are called "nigger", in Brazil they are termed macaco; in South Africa, they are nicknamed kaffir; in India, band ar; in China hak gwai.
Barbados didn't feel like black man country - till I saw boys walking freely | Chibundu Onuzo
Even though there is a dictionary definition of anti-blackness, it hasn't yet gained much traction. The political class does not grasp its toxicity. We're currently in the middle of the UN International Decade for People of African Descent, so it is an appropriate time for anti-blackness to be classified separately from racism and given its own prominence. The one-size-fits-all approach to tackling racism leaves undersupported the racial group which suffers the most brutality, hatred and discrimination. Furthermore, in white-dominant societies, blackness has come to be a synonym for crime, laziness, poverty and low intelligence.

A key step in bringing anti-blackness to the forefront is by developing a working definition. This could cover caricatures, stereotypes, disparagement, the perception of black populated countries and the trivialisation of transatlantic slavery. As a precursor, there needs to be buy-in from governments, regional bodies, international organisations, academia and the global black civil society.

Ultimately, it is crucial to call out the most toxic brand of racism. We need to sear anti-blackness into our collective consciousness, so as to put an end to the mistakes of the past and the present, which have brought so much misery to so many people.

* Ahmed Olayinka Sule is a writer and social critic
Topics

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Racism harms black people most. It's time to recognise 'anti-blackness' | Ahmed Olayinka Sule

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There is a tendency to classify all victims of racism under the label "people of colour" or "black, Asian and minority ethnic" people (shortened to BAME). However, this generalist approach fails to account for the varied ways that racism affects different races.

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A padlet containing lots of useful resources, stats and articles

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A padlet containing lots of useful resources, stats and articles

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LibGuides: Decolonising the Curriculum: What is a Decolonised Curriculum?

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LibGuides: Decolonising the Curriculum: What is a Decolonised Curriculum?

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Decolonising academic libraries padlet inc slides from the Mercian Online Conference at DMU 

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Decolonising academic libraries padlet inc slides from the Mercian Online Conference at DMU 

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NOWAL Conference Exploring & supporting diversity in academic libraries.Presentations from the day listed below 

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NOWAL Conference Exploring & supporting diversity in academic libraries.Presentations from the day listed below 

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Decolonising the Curriculum Collection at DMU and links to the work by the Library

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Decolonising the Curriculum Collection at DMU and links to the work by the Library

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Skip to main content It looks like you're using Internet Explorer 11 or older. This website works best with modern browsers such as the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. If you continue with this browser, you may see unexpected results.

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A woman of colour blogs about working in the U.K university context

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Only a fifth of UK universities say they are 'decolonising' curriculum

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Only a fifth of UK universities say they are 'decolonising' curriculum

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Only a fifth of UK universities have committed to reforming their curriculum to confront the harmful legacy of colonialism, an investigation by the Guardian has found.

The disclosure comes as universities are under pressure to modernise their syllabuses to address the attainment gap between white students and those from black and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds.

The campaign to give a fuller version of British history that reflects injustices and lauds the contributions of black British people has also won widespread support from the Black Lives Matter protesters.

Academics and students said the Guardian's findings reflected a reluctance in British higher education towards addressing the impact of colonialism on present day racism.

They said many universities apparently failed to grasp that "decolonising the curriculum" went beyond adding black and non-western scholars to reading lists, arguing that reform should involve challenging and remaking the current pedagogy, which was rooted in imperial and colonial ideas about knowledge and learning, at an institutional level.

Responses to freedom of information (FoI) requests from 128 universities found only 24 said they were committed to decolonising the curriculum. Of those, 11 were committed to reform across the whole institution, with most efforts confined to a few departments, or just one, or a handful of academics and students.

Queen Mary's University of London, said decolonising was confined to the school of English and Drama, while Newman University said one course in the English department explicitly referenced decolonising the curriculum.

The University of East London reported it had run decolonising workshops in the school of art and digital industries.

Only nine of these universities had put their commitment to decolonise in writing, with just two, including Bristol University, mentioning it in their core strategic plan and another two noting it in their main curriculum framework.

Educational experts said the findings showed that little progress had been made in decolonising higher education since the Rhodes Must Fall campaign - to demand the removal of a statue of the Victorian imperialist Cecil Rhodes from Oxford University's Oriel college - began in 2015.

Fope Olaleye, black students' officer at the National Union of Students, said the lack of progress was "shocking". "Decolonising the curriculum means providing an accurate portrayal of history and providing students and staff with the tools to critically identify [how] the university reproduces colonial hierarchies. This will empower them to confront and reject the status quo and ensure knowledge production reflects our diverse society."

Prof Kalwant Bhopal, the director of the centre for research in race and education at Birmingham University, said the sector should be ashamed of the findings. She added: "Every university should have this as a priority. If it's not in the strategic plan, it's not considered important to the university."

Sunny Singh, professor of creative writing and inclusion in the arts at London Metropolitan University, one of the universities committed to decolonising, said: "Despite the small pockets of resistance, as a sector, higher education in the UK is unconcerned or not bothered, if not actively hostile, to the idea of decolonisation.

"I'm very glad I work in a university that has for the last year and a half been happier and more supportive of my efforts. But I can also say that we're an exception."

A further 84 universities said they were committed to other kinds of curriculum reform - making the syllabus more diverse, more international or more inclusive.

Of the 106 universities committed to decolonising and other forms of curriculum reform, only 35 said BAME students were formally engaged in some way in this work, although the degree to which varied widely.

Race equality specialist Sofia Akel, who last year wrote a report on racism at Goldsmiths, University of London, raised concern that universities were often leaving such curriculum reform to BAME students.

"Some universities are saying they're doing work, but what they really mean is the students are doing the work for them for free," she added. "And often they're met with hostility from senior members of staff."

Only 36 universities said they were providing relevant staff training on designing and teaching more inclusive and diverse courses - with just nine of those providing dedicated training, and three institutions making this training mandatory.

Rebecca Long-Bailey, Labour's shadow education secretary, said: "Black and Asian people and their history are hugely underrepresented in academia and throughout our education system. Understanding the breadth of Britain's history is crucial to tackling the injustices and racism in our society and around the world that persist today."

Twenty universities declared that they were currently doing no formal work to reform their syllabuses in this manner.

Akel said: "I think the universities that have just outright said no were probably the ones being the most honest because when you really drill down, it can come down to one or two academics, or a humanities subject, usually sociology, maybe anthropology."

Some universities that said they were making their curriculum more international based this on having an overseas campuses. Heriot-Watt University said students on its campuses in Dubai and Malaysia were taught the same programmes as those in the UK. A spokesman added: "This means we are more attuned to the different cultures and cultural assumptions in the programmes we teach."

Heidi Mirza, visiting professor of race, faith and culture at Goldsmiths, said the findings showed "a poverty of understanding" of what decolonisation entailed: "We've still got archaic, anachronistic tutors and curricula that's never changed. I'm shocked at how stark this is."

Mirza said other approaches, such as internationalising or diversifying the syllabus, often were a watered down approach to reform. "You can have an overseas campus but it doesn't mean you're changing your curriculum," she said. "Are you including Chinese philosophy or just a white western knowledge you're imparting in an imperialist way. It's a tourist approach to the curriculum."

The Guardian asked students involved in campaigns to decolonise the curriculum on their first thoughts to these figures.
Sabrina, 21, studying international relations, Decolonise S oas

It doesn't surprise me. It's not in the universities' interest and nationally people don't want to see this kind of discussion take place because it requires us to revisit the UK's relationship with empire and have an honest conversation about race construction and racism which is very different than what we are told and taught. The British empire and European imperialism was founded on a white supremacist ideology which exploited the bodies and labour of Black and brown people in the colonies.

Decolonising is about de-centring Eurocentric knowledge production. It's acknowledgement of alternative forms and centres of knowledge and contribution to the world, especially from revolutionary academics and thinkers who aren't old white, middle-aged men. This is more than just about reading lists and racism.

Critics suggest that by decolonising you're erasing history, but in fact you are just accurately portraying history. If you look at the way in which the British nation has been constructed, it's very much been an exclusionary space, an exclusively white space.

Fides Dagongdong, 24, studying law and politics, Decolonise Keele
Sumayyah, 21, religion, politics and society, Decolonise Kings College London

It's very hard to not just convince, but to attempt a new conversation on this issue. So the data is what I expected it to be. You can see it with the BLM protests. A lot of the comments were, like, I don't understand why these statues are being either forcibly removed or crowds are gathering, protesting for its removal.

Other students think decolonising is about completely eradicating the current system, which is not the case at all, we just want to make it more inclusive.

Why is it that in the UK in most history curriculums it's usually an elective to learn about colonisation? It's very strange considering colonising was major part of British history. When I was a teenager, I was taught about American history, but nothing about British colonialism.

I think many institutions see it as a lot of work for something they don't really care about - that's why such initiatives are usually only responses to student demands, when the work to silence these students becomes more than the work to engage with them. Also, our entire education system, and even our concept of what knowledge is, cannot be untangled from its colonial roots and once we start looking at the curriculum, we provide non-white students with the power to demand more change and more justice.

Most people I know can point to a text that they read that empowered them to advocate for change - by including such texts and ideas in the curriculum, universities know that they're placing their power structures at risk and they refuse to do that.

Attempts by universities to 'decolonise the curriculum' will always be performative without a proper confrontation of how white supremacy and colonialism continue to manifest within academic institutions. The curriculum is a product of its environment and starting and ending our work with the curriculum will not create lasting change.
Additional reporting by Aamna Mohdin

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Only a fifth of UK universities say they are 'decolonising' curriculum

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Only a fifth of UK universities have committed to reforming their curriculum to confront the harmful legacy of colonialism, an investigation by the Guardian has found. The disclosure comes as universities are under pressure to modernise their syllabuses to address the attainment gap between white students and those from black and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds.

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Guardian Article 'Students want to confront it': academics on how to decolonise the university"

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Guardian Article 'Students want to confront it': academics on how to decolonise the university"

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The Black Lives Matter movement has turned up the pressure on all areas of UK society to confront its colonial legacy. Within universities, this follows on from the widespread student campaigns which have been asking for decolonised curriculums and more thinkers of colour on reading lists since 2017. Yet recent research by The Guardian shows that only a fifth of universities have made genuine attempts to address the harmful legacy of colonialism.

Three academics tell us what's holding universities back from making the changes that their students are demanding.

'It's not about how many black or brown authors are on the reading list'

Manali Desai Photograph: Manali Desai

Manali Desai, reader, University of Cambridge
What's important to hold at the core of all of these discussions is the need for Britain, and white people especially, to really grapple with the colonial legacy. A tick-box approach to inclusion, diversity and equality isn't going to cut it because these concepts do not address that legacy. It's really important to hold that line between the colonial past and the racist present.

Universities often shove these things under the carpet. I think there's something about the word colonial that people are allergic to. There's a massive reluctance to address the colonial past, and it's layered with this imperial nostalgia you see all around us. But I think this is a generational issue: frankly, the students want to confront these issues, and at Cambridge a lot of decolonising work has been driven by students and not by staff, despite how the press can sometimes frame it. A lot of the campaigning around it comes from white students as well as students of colour, although the latter shoulder a heavier burden.

Students' consciousness is not framed in parochial British terms anymore. It can be a lightning rod to see what happened with George Floyd and police violence and to see connections with the UK. Students are thinking internationally and outside of the Eurocentric frames that have traditionally dominated sociology as a discipline. It's no longer acceptable for us to teach sociology in the old way - the students find it utterly inadequate.

Is this the end for colonial-era statues? - video

When we created our own decolonising sociology committee three years ago, we held an open meeting in the department that was attended by students and staff at all levels. It was a wide-ranging and honest conversation that covered all aspects of the department's operations. We've since embedded decolonising into the life of the department - we have meetings once a month and we've also been looking at how we can connect with social justice and anti-racist campaigns in the city. But if we leave it up to students alone it won't work because they're a transient population - more permanent members of staff need to take responsibility on leading these things.

Since I've been working on decolonising, we've heard so much from detracting voices saying "What percentage of white authors are you going to remove? Does this mean you won't read Kant and Hegel?" But the point isn't a calculation about how many black or brown authors are on the reading list, but rather how does your curriculum train students to think critically about the present?

To me the question is: "What tools does decolonisation give us to understand how power works?" "What kind of conceptual intellectual tools does it give us to really understand these mechanics of power?" If we're not asking these questions, we're not taking the work seriously.

'Decolonising is used as a buzzword'

Sadhvi Dar. Photograph: Sadhvi Dar

Sadhvi Dar, senior lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London
When we look to the current resurgence of the Rhodes Must Fall campaign at the University of Oxford, we see how universities protect their racist colonial figures while continuing to exclude their black students and students of colour. Equally, the Rhodes Trust (created in line with Cecil Rhodes' will) at the University of Oxford exists today as an international centre specialising in knowledge from the global south. This paradox exposes the problems with decolonising the curriculum through university management structures, because managers profits from a racialised curriculum while they claim to be working towards inclusion.

Moved by this, I co-wrote a blog piece called Is Decolonising The New Black? with my collaborators, Jenny K Rodriguez and Angela Martinez Dy. We argue that decolonising is increasingly used as a buzzword across university websites, teaching strategies and academic publications suggesting its radical politics are diluted while its usage as rhetoric accrues financial and symbolic value for the institutions and people employing it.

Decolonising movements in universities must recognise that from their inception they have been recolonised by European elites and so they need to be disruptive and aimed at destabilising existing management structures. I see hope in students running their own movements by using digital platforms. For example, POC Squared is a student-led campaign organised by three women of colour in science and produces podcasts, online resources and interrogates curricula to challenge its colonial roots. Equally, the Decolonizing Alliance, an international collective of students and academics, actively challenge exclusion and recently formed a writers collective which interrogates the meaning of solidarity and mutual care. These movements work outside the university capturing their members' lived experiences while resisting creating value for the university.

'These efforts can't be driven by students alone'

Clive Nwonka Photograph: LSE

Clive Nwonka, fellow at the London School of Economics
There is no universal meaning to decolonisation within UK higher education. This has produced an uncertain and ambiguous set of approaches that differ between universities, departments and subjects. That just 24 of 128 universities have declared that they are committed to decolonising their curriculums is shocking, but we should recognise that there are implicit and explicit forms of decolonising the curriculum.

For example, making a curriculum more diverse, international or inclusive does not necessarily mean it has been decolonised. These interventions can be as minimal as introducing black reading into an otherwise Eurocentric programme of study, or offering a special lecture on race. Often, this focuses on African American and black British history and literature. While this is crucial, it disregards key areas of study from the Africa, the Middle East and the rest of the global south.

There is still an inordinate focus on the curriculum as the primary - sometimes only - area of universities to be decolonised. But student admissions, staffing and recruitment, and campus culture all need to be tackled, too. Decolonisation should be a holistic experience of equality.

These efforts can't be driven by students alone. Decolonising curriculums solely in response to student protest and demand places an additional burden on the student, particularly on those from black and minority backgrounds who are often at the forefront. Universities must take a more proactive approach to this transformation - one that does not need to be motivated by student disquiet.

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'Students want to confront it': academics on how to decolonise the university

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Students have been calling for decolonised curriculums for years, yet few UK universities have made meaningful changes

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People who teach digital skills in a computer lab know that students aren't always as adept as they might pretend to be, says Elizabeth Losh With US enrolment numbers falling off a cliff, the future is ripe for deep, cross-border partnerships between institutions, says Rick Shangraw

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Students want their curriculums decolonised. Are universities listening? | Education | The Guardian

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When students at the University of Cambridge called two years ago for more non-white writers and postcolonial thought to be included in their English curriculum, there was a backlash. Lola Olufemi, who led the call, became the target of online abuse after one report wrongly suggested it meant replacing white authors with black ones. Sam Gyimah, the then universities minister, later appeared to weigh into the debate when he reportedly warned that universities "should be cautious of ... phasing out parts of the curriculum that just happen to be unpopular or unfashionable".

But the Cambridge students were part of a broader movement focused on widening the horizons not just of their peers but of their institutions. Campaigns including Rhodes Must Fall (which called for institutions in South Africa and Oxford to remove statues of the imperialist Cecil Rhodes) and Why is My Curriculum White?, launched by students at University College London, argued that only by challenging some of their own traditional assumptions could universities be truly inclusive.
'Universities shouldn't be comfortable': vice-chancellors on campus protests
Many institutions have taken this on board. Individual departments at universities including Cambridge, LSE and Birmingham have been reassessing their curriculums and reading lists to make them more inclusive. A new set of resources for module convenors, put together by academics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas), shows how far traditional biases limit learning and teaching, and how to make programmes more inclusive. Advance HE, which supports universities' leadership, teaching and equality strategies, will begin a project later this year working with around 10 universities to embed equality into their curriculums; it is already identifying where gaps in attainment between white and black and minority ethnic students start and how best to address them.

"There is a moral element to it," says Pauline Hanesworth, who advises on equality and diversity at Advance HE. "We can get a bad rap sometimes but universities do care about their students and they are aware that there are disparities in their experiences and outcomes."

Universities are also under pressure to publish figures on the access, participation and attainment of different groups of students. Meera Sabaratnam, senior lecturer in international relations at Soas and chair of the decolonising Soas working group, says many universities are beginning to focus more on inclusion because these figures make disparities more obvious.

The latest figures show that only 63.2% of BME students awarded a degree in England received a first or 2.1 in 2015/16 compared to 78.8% of white students. Broken down further, they reveal that 72% of Chinese students were awarded a top degree, compared to only 50% of black students.

Perceptions of what constitutes worthwhile knowledge have also shifted, Sabaratnam argues. She attributes this to a decline in western supremacy, a need to find global solutions to global problems like climate change, and because of higher education expansion. In the UK, this expansion has brought in more students and staff from minority backgrounds. "To them, it's very obvious that the kinds of things taught and ways of teaching them are problematic," she says.

These drivers have led the Open University to identify decolonising the curriculum as one of the top trends likely to influence teaching over the next 10 years.

The need for change became apparent to Nona McDuff, director of student achievement at Kingston University, after speaking to students who complained they found case studies unengaging and some of the subjects they studied irrelevant. One, whom McDuff considered a bright and engaged learner, confessed that she had edited material used in one module because she was the first in her family to go to university and did not have the cultural references the terms assumed. "That was an important message - how much we take for granted," says McDuff.

The same message was clear to Annie Hughes, head of academic staff development in the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Centre at Kingston, when she led field trips in her discipline of geography. The trips were always to rural parts of the UK and white students were much more likely to have had experience of the types of areas they visited. With increasing numbers of local and commuting students from BME backgrounds joining the course, these differences became hard to ignore. She also realised that many of the fun bits of the field trip revolved around alcohol, which did not suit Muslim students.

This prompted her involvement with McDuff, with the goal of developing an approach covering every aspect of teaching at Kingston - from the concept behind what is taught to content, assessment, feedback and review. The aim is for each of these areas to fulfil three criteria: to be accessible, to allow students to see themselves reflected in the curriculum, and to contribute to a globalised world. The idea is to encourage academics through workshops and discussions to think about how inclusive their teaching really is, in terms of reading lists, activities and assessments. Students are also used as paid inclusive curriculum consultants, with the university keen to use those usually more reluctant to speak up.

Nobody wants every student to come out with the same degree, says Hughes. But they do want academics to reflect on unexplained differences between groups, and to ensure the curriculum is not privileging one group above another.
How do universities prepare graduates for jobs that don't yet exist?
This is not just about different ethnic groups but applies to gender, disability, and sexual orientation too. It's driven not just by universities' sense of fairness but also by political and legislative pressures.

New rules about improving digital accessibility, introduced last September, mean institutions will need to ensure online learning in every discipline is accessible to all students, including those with visual impairments or who are unable to use a mouse. In January the universities minister, Chris Skidmore, called on universities to improve how they accommodate disabled students. He said he expected them to be "ambitious" in their plans, which will be scrutinised by the university regulator the Office for Students, for encouraging more students from all underrepresented groups into higher education.

Birmingham is among the universities to have assessed their curriculums to make them more LGBT inclusive, producing a best-practice guide that encourages measures such as including LGBT case studies and being aware of exclusive language.

Sabaratnam says that Soas's working party aims not just to decolonise the curriculum but to make her institution - and higher education generally - more inclusive, from contracts for cleaning staff to the way academic research is conducted.

Some can find the extent of the changes that need to be made overwhelming, says Hanesworth, but she insists progress can be achieved in small steps. The main thing is to realise that change is needed. "It's not that students have to change to fit us. We have to change to fit them."
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Students want their curriculums decolonised. Are universities listening?

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When students at the University of Cambridge called two years ago for more non-white writers and postcolonial thought to be included in their English curriculum, there was a backlash. Lola Olufemi, who led the call, became the target of online abuse after one report wrongly suggested it meant replacing white authors with black ones.

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LInk to Inclusive Resources (BAME) padlet

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Aiming Higher-race, Inequality and Diversity in the Academy