Universities can and should do much more to address systemic racism

The Wikipedia entry on Nigerian academics seems to be overwhelmingly composed of African-sounding names. Does the author see the lack of white academics in Nigeria as a problem? If not, why not? If foreign students wish to come to Britain and be educated here by foreigners, why should hard-pressed British taxpayers have to foot the bill? Maybe it would be better if African universities marketed themselves more effectively to these students. Certainly there are some subjects where British students should be going to them, not the other way around.

This is a humanitarian issue not a 'black vs white' one. We need to address inequality wherever and whyever it occurs, be it attributed to skin colour, wealth, gender or anything else except capability and achievement. Those who are, or feel, disadvantaged need help and support to attain whatever it is they want to do (but of course without diminishing standards). We do everyone a misservice to keep harping on about 'black professors'... if you are good enough to reach professor, then you should be there. And if you're not good enough, you should not get promoted because there are not 'enough' professors who share whatever characteristic you care to name. Do we want to fix PROBLEMS or BLAME within the academy? Whilst it's important to understand what's gone before, moving forward needs to be done in a way that is fair to everyone... or it's just as bad as what you think is wrong with its current state.

Universities used to be a place where excellence was the most important thing and nerds could thrive and push the world ahead. If you can find equally suitable black geniuses, fine, crowd out some of the white geniuses. But more often than not, outcome equality is achieved by sacrificing excellence. Are universities really the place where we want to do that? I would have never thought I'd say this, but I fully agree with the mandatory equality of opportunity instructional videos HR is presenting university employees with when they take up their position. Equality of opportunity is what we need to maximise, not equality of outcome. Only then will the best people thrive.

It takes a great level of maturity and character for any individual, group, organization or institution to acknowledge the wrongs that they have done. Theoretically, this should be easy for highly educated people to do, people go teach about objectivity, ethics and who understand the credibility of evidence-based based decision making. To be willing to do something to reduce racial discrimination senior administrators in UK universities have to confront their current sense of self. Culture and ingrained habits can make this difficult or easy. Some of the changes that are required given stated policy positions on promoting diversity can happen when the government, Athena Swan and World University Rankings Group and Accreditation agencies decide to make it mandatory that universities make visible and major efforts to promote diversity either through promoting more minorities into professorial and vice-chancellor positions, introducing courses such as Comparative Religion, Multicultural Studies,Identity Research Institutes, joint projects in minority communities, offering more scholarships to minorities, establishing Multicultural Advisory Groups. Let us really demonstrate greater refinement of character.

A start would be to make all selection processes blind - remove all information about the protected characteristics and remove all instances of face-to-face interviews and find alternative selection procedures that do not disclose the applicant's protected characteristics (e.g., Skype interviews) and only evaluate them on the relevant criteria.