We read the interview with Dr Kehinde Andrews (Universities accused of institutional racism, 24 October) and there is not much to disagree with. There are clearly race-related issues in higher education that need to be tackled, but things can be done and we do not have to accept the status quo.
At UCL, we are determined to tackle inequality in all its facets. We achieved a bronze race equality charter mark in 2015, enabling us to begin the difficult work of ensuring equality of opportunity and outcome for all staff and students. We are working in a number of areas, including curriculum review, widening participation, academic promotion, implicit bias training and recruitment.
We have had success in addressing equality issues, for example identifying and addressing pay gaps to ensure that black and minority ethnic (BME) professors are paid the same as white professors. We are working to tackle the differential attainment gap, learning from the departments where student success has no ethnicity element. We are also instituting a widening participation strategy to encourage successful applications from BME candidates and those from poorer backgrounds. Finally, we are piloting a sponsorship scheme to remove any barriers to promotion that may affect BME staff.
While we do not claim to know which interventions will work best, and we know that culture change takes time, we are willing to learn from best practice around the world. Our goal is to demonstrate that UCL is proactive on race equality and we aim to achieve real results.
Michael Arthur President and provost of UCL
Ijeoma F Uchegbu Professor of pharmaceutical nanoscience and provost’s envoy for race equality
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