This month, Constance Sommerey, director of the Diversity & Inclusivity Office, presented the plan to the University Council, who took note of it.
The Executive Board felt that such an action plan was urgently needed and asked Sommerey in June of last year to draw it up. To determine what it should contain, various focus groups with BIPOC students and employees came together in the following month. In one of those meetings, the term ‘BIPOC’ was chosen.
There is a main role for ‘decolonisation’ of the curriculum. Exactly what that will look like, will be “a search within each discipline”, says Sommerey when asked. “At any rate, decolonising does not mean, for example, that we can no longer read the work of white male philosophers. It does mean that we will add other philosophers and provide a context for ideas.”
An infrastructure must also be set up for the BIPOC group. They often don’t know where to go with complaints and where they can look for help, the plan states. Another idea concerns a peer-to-peer system. The UM must also do its best to appoint and retain BIPOC staff.
But the most important of all is to create an atmosphere in which these types of sensitive issues can be discussed, says Sommerey. “How do you start such a talk?” This applies to major issues, such as a curriculum, but also for what she refers to as ‘micro-aggressions’. “For example, if it is really hot and you say to an Asian student that he can probably handle it because he is used to it, that may not go down well. It confirms that someone is from elsewhere.”
Such a remark is undoubtedly not meant to be racist, says Sommerey. “But a lot of racism is not as black and white as the ‘n’ word. Everyone at the UM has probably at one time or other said something that was unintentionally hurtful. It is important to be able to talk about this without someone immediately being labelled a ‘racist’ or a ‘victim’. Preventing polarisation is crucial.”
Together with EDLAB, the UM’s institute for educational innovation, Sommerey is looking into the best way to make the subject discussible. “For tutors, for example, it could be embedded in their training. This is already done at some faculties, on the basis of examples from practical experience.”