Black Lives Matter: Decolonize Your Curriculum
Written by Imogen Stevens and Sagal Arboshe
“The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and the cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”
— Martin Luther King Junior
Martin Luther King Junior’s words foreshadow a phrase that is currently swarming across Instagram feeds, HuffPost op-eds, Tweets and handcrafted signs; white silence is compliance. Succinct and to the point, the phrase “white silence is compliance” is reflective of the intervening power held by white people. A power to speak out against racism without facing violent repercussions; to challenge the racist status quo from within the institutions that determine the lives of everyone but are inaccessible to people of colour. Silence is compliance. Maintaining a ‘peaceful’ silence despite claiming to privately be anti-racist is simply to be racist. Racism is not private, it exists in every sector, every sphere, every walk of life and until we all choose to consider how we, as individuals and intuitions, can end it, it will remain rife- assisted by your silence.
We have created a subject specific resource list so that you may begin to decolonise your own curriculums. Whether you’re a STEM student, an arts student or a business student, your academics are entangled in a racial history that you must confront to achieve a truly comprehensive education. These resources are by no means exhaustive, they only provide a starting point for you to do more research to decolonize your own curriculum.
Decolonizing the Curriculum: The Toolkit
General Curriculum
If you’re not familiar with the concept of decolonizing university curriculums, this article is a good place to start to give you an overview.
Arts, Humanities and Cultures
An article on what decolonizing history means with several contributions from academics. Also includes more links for further reading.
An article on decolonization and language.
The introduction to a special issue on pop music and postcolonial studies.
Business
This book chapter on decolonization and research methods in business studies.
Moving Black Lives Matter beyond a marketing strategy.
A guide to beginning the decolonization of economics.
Social Sciences
This blog post covers decolonizing classrooms.
Movement lawyering and how you can help as a law student.
A look at what defunding the police might look like.
Blog from a University of Leeds student on their experiences pursuing a PhD.
Decolonizing international relations.
Decolonizing and Africanizing political science curriculums.
Engineering and Physical Sciences
Article on the colonial history of science and how to begin to decolonize it. (CW: racist language)
This article discussed how to decolonize physics.
This article in Nature covers racism experienced by academics.
An academic article on decolonizing engineering.
The problem with societal inequalities and AI.
Environment
Here is a recording of a lecture on geography and racial justice.
This is an article linking colonialism and climate change.
This article discusses climate change as a race issue, written by a founder and member of Black Lives Matter.
Here’s how racism can stand in the way of saving the planet.
Biology, Medicine and Health
Superior by Angela Saini is a book examining scientific racism and the lasting consequences on current biological science. It’s available from the university libraries, but if you can’t access the full book, here’s a review.
This article gives a history of African Americans and medical research. (CW: medical research without consent)
The BMJ published a special issue on racism in medicine earlier this year.
COVID-19 and racial inequalities in the UK are explained in this article.
This blog explains the importance of decolonizing the medical curriculum.
