Diversity Committee

Even if it is evident that we all differ from each other, we run the risk of believing that being in an international academic environment means to live among other cosmopolitans that are all “just like me”. In order to learn how we can fruitfully and meaningfully differ for each other and enrich each other by sharing what we cannot access on our own, we need to listen to others. 

Often, diversity talks focus on individual “diversity”, and on how to overcome the obstacles that prevent some individuals from being included. Obviously, overcoming obstacles and finding ways to include diverse individuals is an important task, which I will embrace with dedication, so that we can increase religious, socio-economic, ethnic and ability diversity at UCU.

However, diversity is more than variety. Only availability of and reflection on a multiplicity of frameworks and experiences can change structurally how we deal with diversity. As the anti-racism student group reminds us, we cannot stop discrimination if we regard it as an individual flaw. We are all implicated in structural discrimination and the solution needs to be political: if we don’t want to keep seeing our old, privileged ways of knowing and being as “normal”, we need to educate ourselves through encountering other frameworks and listening to multiple voices. These encounters need to be facilitated structurally, by means of hiring, recruitment and admission policies. But also in other ways. Among the efforts I made so far towards listening to different voices and facilitating encounters across differences, I would like to mention some practices that informed my position:  

• listening to personal stories. Thanks to the talks organised by the Diversity Committee, I listened to the first person experiences of a student being offered a cap in intro week that they could not wear because of the nature of their hair, of the parent of a disabled child, and of a 1st  generation student and their response to the “I am glad you made it”- language; 
• including non-western authors, frameworks and approaches in our curriculum, (see my HUMPHI12, HUMPHI25, HUMPHI34, HUMCHI31, INTCHI23; Topics);

• putting different traditions in dialogue and publishing about new concepts: e.g. the one of continuous decentering: realising again and again that my views and values are not universal; 
• providing readers with a toolbox of Asian, African, Islamic, Western and Indigenous concepts, like Key Concepts in World Philosophies, through which one can examine one’s views on reality, knowledge, self and others. Its introduction bears the title “Valuing diversity”; 
• offering diverse paradigms to young people to enable them to reflect on their predicaments in dialogue with philosophers from different traditions, as in the TV show Food for thought

As the Diversity Committee chair, I am constantly listening to our students and their experiences and recommendations on how to include voices that have been excluded, and how to learn together the very difficult art of carrying out dialogues — consisting in call and response, rather than in a series of monologues. Dialogues seem to me the only way to stop seeing ourselves as in the centre of reality and as “normal”, our experiences as representative of those of others, and our values as normative for others.

I see my task as a chair to facilitate this listening, sharing, call and response, and to produce —together with students, colleagues, Dean, Board of Studies, admission— concrete recommendations on how to diversify both curriculum and student, staff and faculty body at UCU.

While my early research was focused on the political potential of aesthetics in performance, in the last ten years I have been more involved in the practical and theoretical research of modes of production in the arts (see my publications here and my research activities here). 

I consider diversity more clearly articulated today through the notions of anti-racism, and social and epistemic justice. The student and teaching body at UCU is beautifully international and unless we actively interrogate ‘internationalism’ through an intersectional and anticolonial perspective, the political asymmetries and diversities can be invisibilised. My task as a faculty member is thus to foster exchange and cooperation with other committees and initiatives at UCU/UU and beyond that are doing such diversity work, in order to arrive at meaningful advice as UCU diversity committee.

Given that I am in my fourth year, I am acutely aware to how the student cultural environment has shifted within just a few years, and how there is a growing need for inclusion as our student body raises its voice. I am eager to let these voices be heard, especially in tandem with faculty and staff within constructive spaces for improved understanding.

My experience in working with diversity at UCU lies in my three years experience of being the previous PR Manager of QueerCo and my two year experience as member of the (previously named) Pronouns Team and facilitator for the ‘Neurodivergent @ UCU’ group here on campus. Additionally, last year I helped organize diversity events under the name ‘Conversations 4 Change’ where I presented for the second time about Autism, this time concerning ASD at University. It is fair to say that this path has taught me a variety of ways solitude may be felt by students at UCU, particularly in the face of being so different to what you may see around you. 

Throughout my time at UCU I’ve been passionate in creating bridges within our community, and have greatly learned about efficient communication through compassion and refined understanding. It is crucial that we look at diversity as a chance to connect through shared differences and train ourselves in leaving behind our fear of discomfort from inexperience. Aren’t we all here to learn?

I believe that in order to carry it out we must put at the forefront feminism, anti-racism and class consciousness. Obviously, these intersect with many other identities that are present in our campus. 

I am most passionate in working towards decolonisation. This implies a deconstruction at institutional and personal levels (from students, to staff, to professors) in order to reconstruct as a community. I have not been very involved in these efforts at UCU beforehand but yes outside. Especially in the past months of this year, while I lived in Chile, I participated in student activism and political parties. My project as an intern is inspired by the political involvement that I witnessed there. I aim to propose a plan for the DC to become a bridge between institution and student body. Most fundamentally, a way in which we can actively collaborate and cater to UCU’s student needs. 

Lyn Abdul Hameed

I'm a second year Humanities student from the Maldives, majoring in History/Literature with a minor in Political Science. Since my first semester at UCU, I've been involved in several efforts towards diversity and inclusivity- these include being on the board of the Feminist Committee and leading the informal UCU PoC group. More recently, I became a member of the newly formed Anti Racist Action group which aims to strengthen efforts to decolonize UCU.

Rishabh Suresh

I am a 3rd year student at UCU. I was initially the intern to the Diversity Committee in the spring semester of the academic year 2020-21, and will continue as a student member for the year 2021-22. As an interdepartmental major with a science and a humanity, I am especially interested in what it means to decolonise the sciences. I am myself still learning the vocabulary of decoloniality and am in the process of researching how this vocabulary can be applied to disciplines such as mathematics and physics where it is often not as clear what “diversity” and “colonialism” have to do with such abstract concepts such as numbers, or space and time. To that end, I have, on behalf of the Diversity Committee, been working to compile a repository of resources that attempt to address these questions which we hope to make available very soon to anyone and everyone who is interested in finding answers to these questions. I look forward to continuing with these efforts and more with the Committee in the year ahead.   

Ella Shields (they/them)

Ella is joining the Diversity Committee as a research intern to conduct fieldwork for their master’s thesis. They were part of a group of alumni who wrote a letter demanding that UCU becomes anti-racist, mainly through critically reflecting on its admissions and hiring process and decolonizing the curriculum. That work has led them to this research project. They will explore students' sense of security and belonging on campus through the lens of racism, with special attention given to student mental health. Further, they are interested in creating an archive of past UCU diversity efforts, hopefully helping future projects to avoid common pitfalls. Their research findings will be presented to campus in the Spring. 

Dušan Janković (he/him)

I was born, raised, and have lived most of my life in the city of Niš in southern Serbia. I am currently a student at UCU majoring in humanities and social science, with tracks in Literature and Political Science. I will be an intern at the UCU Diversity Committee during the Fall 2021 semester. I am passionate about making the UCU campus a socially just place, which I do by organizing various events as part of an Anti-Racist initative on campus. Starting Fall 2021, I will also be working as a receptionist at the College Hall.

Morgan Diakite (she/her)

Apart from monthly meetings with the rest of the board centered on a variety of subjects from decolonizing the curriculum to discussing sexual misconduct and racism on campus, I have been more personally involved in other projects as well. This includes building a bridge from us to our community by starting our Facebook page and keeping students up to date as well as increasing our visibility to those students Vicky and I are representing. This means advertising other groups or resources which may be helpful to marginalized groups on campus, which ranged from promoting the new African and Caribbean Heritage Network to making an infographic about Microagressions to educate the larger UCU community. I have also been a part of discussing sexual misconduct on campus alongside other student representatives such as the UCSC and UCSA, and most recently giving recommendations as a Diversity Committee representative at the Sexual Misconduct Townhall. The biggest project I was a part of was organizing this year was the first student-led Diversity Symposium at UCU, where we gave a platform to 10 different groups and committees on campus representing a variety of minoritized and/or stigmatized groups of people, and with its success, it is my hope that this will become an annual event in the years to come! 

Vicky Pinheiro-Keulers (she/her)

I’m an Anthropology and Sociology major at UCU (Class of 2021). Being on the Diversity Committee as a student member, I participated in board meetings and meetings with other institutional bodies at UCU. This semester (Spring 2021) I was particularly involved with establishing relations with other institutional bodies; establishing relations with the student body (i.e. through setting up a Facebook page and through doing the groundwork in talking to students); guiding students through their complaints procedures; advising the Board of Studies on decolonising the curriculum; advising the Management Team; discussing application procedures with the Admissions Office; and more. Key recurring themes this semester were racism and sexual misconduct on campus. Morgan and I also organised the first-ever student-led Diversity Symposium, where marginalised students were given the platform to talk about topics ranging from neurodiversity to women in science. I myself presented the research I did on ‘Decolonizing UCU’ (2020), in which we talked to teachers about what decolonizing UCU means to them and in which we made an overview of all current diversity and decolonizing initiatives at the college. Alongside being on the Diversity Committee, I was also doing an internship at ECHO Expertise Centre for Diversity Policy and I was co-organiser of the student-led honours course Deconstructing Race and Racism, which gave me knowledge and experience I could apply in the Diversity Committee.