Universities minister urges caution over ‘decolonisation’
SAM GYIMAH, the new universities minister, has warned against “decolonising” curriculums to avoid “unfashionable” subjects.
Mr Gyimah said that academics should be “cautious” about phasing out writers and ideas from courses, merely on the basis that they are unpopular with students. Instead, students should “face up” to such ideas and challenge them, which he said was all part of the higher education experience.
Students at several universities have called for courses to include more works by writers from black and ethnic minority backgrounds.
Earlier this month, Baroness Amos, the Labour life peer who runs the School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas), said that the university was decolonising its curriculums as part of a culture shift. Students at Soas previously called for figures such as Plato, Descartes and Immanuel Kant to be largely dropped because they are white, while insisting that “the majority of philosophers on our courses” should be from Africa and Asia.
Cambridge University’s English Literature professors last year discussed proposals to add more black writers to reading lists, following a student campaign to decolonise the curriculum.
The National Union of Students (NUS) ran a campaign titled “Why is My Curriculum White?” where students were encouraged to question whether they were taught from a white, male, Western perspective.
Speaking at the official launch of the Office for Students, the new higher education regulator, Mr Gyimah said: “What we should be cautious of – and this is caution – is phasing out parts of the curriculum that just happen to be unpopular or unfashionable.
“I genuinely believe that part of the university experience is actually facing up to the unpopular, facing up to the unfashionable, engaging with it, challenging it. That is how you widen your horizons.”
He also said that universities should compensate students affected by strikes by union members in a bitter row over pensions.
Mr Gyimah said that Department for Education officials were “looking closely” at the issue, and warned institutions they must “step up to the plate”.