British Universities Should Resist US Diversity Culture Wars, Says Oxford Chief
The Official White House portrait of former United States President Ronald Reagan is pictured behind US President Donald Trump
2 min read
UK universities should push back against "culture war excesses" from the United States, the chief diversity officer at the University of Oxford has said.
Tim Soutphommasane, formerly Australia's Race Discrimination Commissioner, told an event in Parliament that higher education institutions like Oxford have an "important role in promoting equality of opportunity and social understanding".
His remarks came after President Donald Trump launched a crackdown on diversity practices in US workplaces.
Since returning to the White House earlier this year, Trump has signed a number of executive orders seeking to ban diversity practices across the federal government, educational institutions and private companies.
The President also suggested, without evidence, that diversity programmes played a part in a collision between a passenger plane and a helicopter in Washington which killed 67 people late last month.
Speaking at a seminar on inclusion in higher education and hosted by the think tank Higher Education Policy Institute, Soutphommasane said: "The UK is not the US. That is a critical starting point for any approach we have. And we should be very mindful of allowing culture war excesses from the US contaminating the public culture here."
"Public institutions in the UK, including universities, have an important role in promoting equality of opportunity and social understanding," he added.
He also warned that the practice of equality, diversity and inclusion in British universities "can't be sucked into a vortex of culture war politics".
"At the very simplest level, this work should be about helping people in higher education to do their jobs and helping universities to reduce barriers of equal opportunity," he said.
Speaking at the same event, professor Dame Sally Mapstone, principal and vice-chancellor of the University of St Andrews, said "we're all keeping an eye on what's happening in the US with the Trump administration's recent crackdown on diversity, equality and inclusion initiatives."
Mapstone said this crackdown was already leading to universities across the Atlantic halting related research, cancelling conferences and closing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) offices "to comply with regulations and to avoid losing vital federal funding".
She said that universities needed to be "very alert to the broader cultural and ideological ramifications" of Trump policy.
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