Not really sure how universities claiming they want to decolonise the curriculum are going to do anything of the sort when they’re effectively firing a significant proportion of their teaching staff, perhaps they don’t really care at all

There is a huge amount of work required to change content and approaches in modules to decolonial ones. If universities are serious about this work, rather than being happy with an extra week for race just added at the end, they need to actually resource it

Most academics will not have been taught this nor have researched it. This is a damning indictment of the existing university but also a barrier to change without actually resourcing it

In the same moment as claiming to care about curriculum reform, universities are effectively laying off the early career staff who teach the optional modules more likely to contain elements of a decolonised curriculum.

Why not start from the principle that everyone keep their jobs: allow research leave for this vital reparatory research such that modules can actually be changed and the smaller teaching load that comes w/ a smaller cohort can be picked up by those who would have lost their jobs

Of course, this would rely on universities actually caring about the things they claim to care about, which they don’t.

Lots of the academics I know (I realise this may not be typical) want to do this work. However, their time is taken up by the massive intensification of work the last decade of HE reforms has caused. On this issue (as w/ so many!) management needs to put money where its mouth is