Dismantling Race in Higher Education “In this impressive collection, editors Arday and Mirza tackle the perennial sta- tus of racism in the academy. Beyond the common refrain that Whites are the center of the problem, the contributors rightfully focus our eforts at disman- tling the ideology of whiteness itself. Tey argue that decolonizing higher edu- cation means confronting the white occupation of academic knowledge and unsettling its grip over mundane as well as high stakes decisions. Te authors launch a compelling assault on whiteness that not only grabs our attention, it renews our commitment to democracy and simple decency. Teir brave response is a welcomed voice during these challenging times.” —Professor Zeus Leonardo, University of California, Berkeley, USA “Arday and Mirza have brought together some of the most exciting and highly respected voices in contemporary anti-racist research. Tey explore the pro- cesses by which a war is being waged to determine the knowledge that uni- versities are allowed to teach and the racialized nature of the staf and student body. Tis superb collection is a landmark intervention into one of the most important debates of our time. Te World’s universities are becoming a key battleground in the ongoing struggle for racial justice, equity and respect. From Cape Town to Berkeley, Oxford to Sydney, Harvard to Toronto, a bat- tle is being waged for the soul of Higher Education. Minoritized scholars, students and communities are making their voices heard as never before but the forces of repression have many weapons and shamelessly deploy concepts like ‘free speech’, ‘choice’ and ‘meritocracy’ as loaded devices that camoufage White self-interest behind the hypocrisy of grand-sounding ideas.” —Professor David Gillborn, University of Birmingham, UK “Tis collection is a long awaited and much needed challenge to institutional racism in UK universities. It insists on the necessity for present/future decolo- nization for racial equality and social justice transformation within these white spaces.” —Professor Shirley Anne Tate, Leeds Beckett University, UK “Dismantling Race in Higher Education is a must read edited volume for those individuals who are really interested in understanding the infuences of race within the UK higher education enterprise. Both Dr Jason Arday and Professor Heidi Safa Mirza assembled an all-star team of UK ‘race studies’ scholars and researchers to put this book together. In my opinion, it includes important content that may stimulate a new generation of ‘race studies’ thought leaders in the UK. Tis edited volume has immense potential to become a classic text for higher education scholars and researchers throughout the UK higher edu- cation system and beyond.” —Professor James L. Moore III, Te Ohio State University, USA “Tis collection of essays is a timely intervention given the discussions going on in Whitehall and on campuses about access, equality and the legacy of colo- nialism and empire in our universities. Whilst of course attention must be paid to who is able to participate in higher education, we must also focus on issues of race within the institutions themselves.” —Rt Hon David Lammy MP, Higher Education Minister 2007–10, House of Commons, UK Parliament “Covering multiple experiences, histories, policies and pedagogies, Dismantling Race is an impressive contribution to scholarship on higher edu- cation. Across a set of beautifully curated chapters the imbrication of whiteness in the British Academy is catalogued, reported and explained. Few, having read the book, will doubt that higher education is institutionally racist; and few will doubt the urgency of contemporary decolonizing initiatives.” —Professor Robbie Shilliam, Johns Hopkins University, USA “Tis landmark publication takes on an ambitious project: fercely critical anal- yses intertwined with intersectional visions of hope and tools for a diferent practice. A new generation of critical voices takes us closer to the tipping point where ‘enough enough’ can trigger genuine transformation.” = —Professor Philomena Essed, Antioch University, USA Jason Arday · Heidi Safa Mirza Editors Dismantling Race in Higher Education Racism, Whiteness and Decolonising the Academy Editors Jason Arday Heidi Safa Mirza University of Roehampton Goldsmiths College London, UK University of London London, UK ISBN 978-3-319-60260-8 ISBN 978-3-319-60261-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60261-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018938347 © Te Editor(s) (if applicable) and Te Author(s) 2018 Tis work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Te use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Te publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Te publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional afliations. Cover image: © Image Source/Getty Printed on acid-free paper Tis Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature Te registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Foreword Dismantling Racial Inequality Within the Academy Te foreword to this volume argues that in Britain issues of race and rac- ism continue to be viewed as ‘outside’ academia’s domain. Te greatest bar- rier to addressing race equality in higher education is academia’s refusal to regard race as a legitimate object of scrutiny, either in scholarship or policy. Consequently, there is little recognition of the role played by universities in (re)producing racial injustice. Te contributions to this collection challenge this studied ignorance by drawing attention to academia’s racialised culture and practices, detailing experiences and outcomes among those Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) students and academics who have successfully accessed higher education but who still fnd themselves marginalised. As a way of explaining why this collection of writing on race and higher education in Britain is important and why it is overdue, let me begin with an everyday story: a story of everyday racism. Some years back, I sat on the equalities committee of an elite university. Since the univer- sity’s physical environment was a regular agenda item, I raised the issue of grafti in the changing rooms of the gym. Now, I grew up on 1970s v vi Foreword council estates and I am not liable to be shocked by scribble on walls. However, this was not the odd mark but an accretion of racist, sexist, anti-Semitic and homophobic scrawl. Layer upon layer, it must have taken years of deposit. Once I had convinced the committee that I was not mistaken, that the grafti really did exist and that it was a problem, the university acted: not just painting over the grafti but resurfacing the walls with a kind of meringue-like woodchip so that they could not be defaced again. At the next committee meeting we congratulated ourselves on having taken practical and immediate action—at which point, an experienced member of the committee piped up, ‘Yes, it was terrible. Perhaps it was done by visitors from outside the university’. From outside the university. From outside the university. Te most powerful block to challenging and dismantling racial inequality in higher education is glossed in those four words. For in British univer- sities, race is rarely considered a legitimate object of scrutiny, either in scholarship or in policy. Race very much remains the ‘outside child’ and its continuing illegitimacy means that often the most signifcant discussions about race and racism remain at the level of corridor con- versations: rarely surfacing in published papers, unlikely to attract the validation of grant funding. Te marginalisation of critical voices is compounded at the institutional level, where equalities committees are too often out of the executive loop, entirely separate from the senior bodies that make decisions about learning and teaching, stafng and funding. Consequently, too much of our energy is spent fending of derision at the very mention of the ‘R’ word: going over and over the same back-to-square-one arguments about the legitimacy of scholarship on race and the need for institutional action on racism. In particular, there exists a stubborn refusal to acknowledge that aca- demia itself might be complicit in the (re)production of racial injustices, that it does not just passively ‘refect’ disadvantages already existing in society but actively (re)creates inequalities. Tis current collection sug- gests ways forward in the struggle to dismantle these inequalities but it does not underestimate the extent of the challenge. Te book’s starting point is that race and racism are not ‘outside’ the university; they are not prior entities, carried on to campus like a lunch bag. Academia— like schools, the labour market and the criminal justice system—is one Foreword vii of the social sites in which race as a social relationship is constructed, in a tangle of stratifcations, exclusions, privileges and assumptions. Sadly, in British academia Gargi Bhattacharyya’s words, written some twenty years ago, still too often hold true: Te powerful hog the privilege of the norm and the rest of us squeeze in behind, around, wherever there is room.