In Video 1, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Learning how to get it right (2023), Asif Sadiq, a senior executive at Adidas, focuses on a critique of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training in corporate and institutional spaces.
He argues that, despite the investments, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training do not produce meaningful change. This failure, he continues, is the result the of training content which reproduces the dominant cultural perspectives, delivers single stories, prioritise specific areas, fall into generalisations and stereotyping, and mostly, focuses on the challenges and negative aspects of diversity experiences instead of the benefits and potentials. Up to here, despite the wide generalisations, I followed his argument without much trouble. My alarm was raised when, after these observations, Asif Sadiq concludes that the responsibility to get educated, to create a fair space to talk about differences and produce transformative changes, lies with the individual, not the institutions.
For me, it is this responsibility-shift, from institution to individual, which is very troubling. While it is unclear whether Asif Sadiq, a man of colour, was aware of the pervasive mechanisms of the neoliberal discourse of his responsibility-shift proposal, in Video 2, Revealed: The charity turning UK universities woke (2022), Professor James Orr, a white British academic from Cambridge University, clearly uses shifts and inversions with great dexterity and awareness to argue that, at Cambridge University, there is no evidence of the perpetuation of institutional racism. And, to build his argument, he presents a series of conversations where he uses the visible diversity of the interviewees to validate his opinion.
His critique is aimed at the Advance HE frameworks for gender and race equality which, he claims, preach a vision of society rejected by the “general public” and push a particularly ideological line about “white fragility or about how we’re all racists”. Advance HE frameworks when applied by the institution in the form of training or admissions, he continues, become ideological mandates which produce “diversity bureaucracies” that can jeopardise academic freedom and teaching excellence.
I searched online for an official public statement or a comment from the University of Cambridge responding to the The Telegraph‘s video by Professor James Orr and I found nothing. Is this silence what Cambridge University understands as freedom of speech?
While I am quite critical of UAL’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion mandatory trainings which feel like box ticking exercises, applications of the Advance HE frameworks in spaces such as the PgCert Academic Practice are examples of initiatives where the institution provides a safe space to talk about differences, share experiences and where individuals can fulfil their responsibility as learners.
I am sure that the PgCert graduates will promote meaningful changes in their practices and in their spaces of sovereignty at an individual level – mine is a vertical design studio in the CSM BA Architecture. However, at institutional level, UAL is playing the same responsibility-shift game. Lecturers, technicians, librarians and frontline staff, many on precarious contracts like mine (hourly paid lecturer) and reduced teaching hours, are offered to take volunteering “learning hours” (PgCert) and charged with the institutional responsibility to fulfil UAL’s commitment to social justice.
I wonder how far UAL can still push this responsibility-shift game. I wonder how far I will go on playing it.
References:
Video 1 – with Asif Sadiq:
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Learning how to get it right. (2023) YouTube video, added by TEDx [Online]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR4wz1b54hw
Video 2 – with Professor James Orr:
Revealed: The charity turning UK universities woke. (2022) YouTube video, added by The Telegraph [Online]. Youtube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRM6vOPTjuU
