Making Connections Overcoming Barriers

An inaugural cross Institutional forum for Race Equality in Higher Education, the first of its kind, was held on the 31st January 2012 hosted by Kings College London.

An inaugural cross Institutional forum for Race Equality in Higher Education, the first of its kind, was held on the 31^st January 2012 hosted by Kings College London.  The event  saw the joint voices of the London based Russell  group  universities come  together to share good practice initiatives around Race Equality and the enormous value that  BME staff networks bring to their institutions.  Particularly effective is the way in which members can proactively address the on-going challenges they encounter in higher education and academia. 

 The event was facilitated by Professor Gus John with guest speakers Professor Nirmala Rao, Pro-Director at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Professor Amrita Ahluwalia from Queen Mary University, Sir Lawrence Freedman, Vice Principal of King’s College, and Sir Stephen Wall, Chair of Council of UCL who was present all day and willingly gave the opening and closing remarks. Panel members from the 4 networks (King’s, LSE, Imperial and UCL) included our own Chair of Imperial As One (IAO), Betty Yue who showcased the progress Imperial has made and who held her own among all the distinguished guest speakers.

The event was designed to be interactive and included  a voting session (clickers gave immediate responses) to gather people’s views on Race Equality in Higher Education.  The outcome of the  responses revealed unanimous agreement that Race Equality remains  of great concern with participants believing it is not given enough priority in these times of scarce resources,  hence the need for institutions to collaborate and share resources, expertise and ideas and work together to keep  race equality a top priority at institutional level.

The event was followed up by a networking reception allowing attendees to forge better cross institutional relationships, network and swap details for further discussion. The report has been completed  and is available to download from the Equalities website.