Race Equality

Racism and discrimination have no place in society and no place on our campus. Our staff and students have the right to work and study in a positive, professional and safe environment and we are committed to supporting them to thrive against a background of respect for the experiences, abilities and skills of all individuals. We recognise that this commitment, on its own, is not enough, and we are striving to make a difference with our ongoing work.

Equality and Human Rights Commission

We recently established an Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) internal inquiry and working group to respond directly to the issues highlighted by the Commission’s report on racial harassment in Higher Education.

Our EHRC group has representation from staff across the University and the Guild of Students. News, blogs and updates from its members including Professor Fiona Beveridge, Executive Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Humanities and Social Sciences and University Council member Cilla Ankrah-Lucas are available on the internal EHRC group webpage.

Action Plan

We want to make more progress across the University in advancing race equality and developing an active anti-racist stance, to ensure that Black and Ethnic Minority staff and students are welcomed, supported and can thrive at the University. We have adopted a Race Equality and Anti-Racism Action Plan which identifies current, forthcoming and longer-term plans.

Race Equality Charter 

We have made a commitment to sign up to Advanced HE’s Race Equality Charter with the explicit goal of eliminating any racial disparities for our staff and students wherever we may find them.

We will submit a self-assessment of our progress which will be independently reviewed. We will embed this work within our institutional commitments and sign up to begin the process for submission in the spring 2021. Advance HE anticipate it will take us a further 18 months to three years to apply for an award.

We are committed to achieving absolute race equity on our campus.

Ongoing work

Important work has been undertaken in recent years to meet our commitments, including:

  • the recent work of our Equality and Human Rights Commission Group
  • our Equality Action Plan
  • becoming a member of Universities Studying Slavery to explore our own legacies
  • our ongoing work after signing the joint National Union of Students and Universities UK Closing the Gap pledge, which seeks to tackle the barriers to success faced by Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic students
  • mandatory equality and diversity training for all staff
  • online equality and diversity training for students
  • our emergent student success strategy and associated Access and Participation Plan targets
  • reporting mechanisms for any student or staff member who encounters racial harassment in any form.

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