Inside the strikes: When ‘being realistic’ is social value reduced to pure economics

Photo credit: Vincent Møystad As Goldsmiths UCU strikes to prevent 52 workers being made redundant in a ‘restructure’ desired by university management, Goldsmiths lecturer Kiran Grewal speaks on the rationale behind the action As a lecturer at Goldsmiths participating in yet another round of strike action, I have been asked quite a lot recently what the… Read More

On being exceptional: the trap of thinking we can do (and be) diversity “differently”

Shana Almeida discusses her research on diversity in Toronto In 2016, BBC Radio 4 officially declared Toronto, Canada to be the most diverse city on earth. According to BBC reporter Ed Davey, Toronto is most diverse because approximately 51% of its population is foreign-born, with over 230 nationalities living there (“WS More or Less: The… Read More

Diversity initiatives don’t work, they just make things worse: the ideological function of diversity in the cultural industries

by Anamik Saha  edited by Yasmin Gunaratnam Dev Patel might have won the award for Best Supporting Actor (that’s Dev Patel and not Riz Ahmed, Burberry), but when the nominees for the 2017 BAFTA Awards were announced, the lack of racial (and class) diversity amongst the nominees felt wearingly inevitable. What is more troubling is how… Read More

Reclaiming ‘race’ in postcolonialism: A personal reflection on the politics of the racial experience

by Amal Abu-Bakare and edited by Xavia Warren  This past October, while reading Homi Bhabha’s The Location of Culture, I came across the following poetic verse: “I am standing here in your poem-unsatisfied.” (1994:xxi) Originating from Eastern War Time, a poem by the radical feminist Adrienne Rich, this verse was highlighted by the famous literary critic and… Read More

Where are all the Black historians?

Black historians in the UK: the unseen scholars by Patrick Vernon    BBC Radio 4’s Making History programme recently considered the plight of black historians, taking six minutes to explore the question of whether black historians exist in the UK. A number of white historians gave their perspectives on the issue but the views of… Read More

The Political Case for Caring Inside the Academy

by Aliya Yule Academic institutions are not built for caring. My university is built for a class of men with money and time to spend reading, writing, and thinking. It is built from the profits of slavery, with statues celebrating famous colonialists adorning almost every building. With the creeping marketisation of education there is even… Read More