The Race Equality Charter

In the winter of 2020, Advance HE, a major charity and membership scheme for higher education, wrote about the need for members to sign up to the Race Equality Charter (REC) scheme to address the systematic racism that is alleged to run rife in British universities. Academic supporters of DDU were quick to write a robust critique of the flawed use of statistical disparities in reports by Universities UK and the EHRC, which were mobilised by Advance HE to justify their introduction of racially divisive policies. We wrote to Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), Lady Kishwer Falkner, explaining our concerns and received a gracious reply that acknowledged some of the weaknesses of the EHRC.