A new paper aims to address ¡°the stark under-representation of staff from black and minority ethnic (BME) backgrounds at senior management levels¡± in British universities.

How Can We Make Not Break Black and Minority Ethnic Leaders in Higher Education? by Gurnam Singh and Josephine Kwhali ¨C respectively principal lecturer and senior lecturer in social work at Coventry University ¨C is published by the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education.

It is designed, says Dr Kwhali, as ¡°a stimulus report¡± and ¡°to incite to action particularly those power-brokers who may display the biggest blind spots¡±.

The authors survey the facts about BME staffing levels and the experiences of BME staff.

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They explore possible lessons from the United States, with its ¡°106 historically black colleges and universities¡±, traditions of ¡°black leadership programmes¡± and ¡°celebration of black achievement in higher education¡±, while warning of the dangers of black academics being ¡°held back because of moral obligations they feel towards writing about subjects of race and injustice¡±.

And they urge universities to think critically about ¡°generic and largely meaningless ethnic monitoring categories¡± and ¡°not to rely on simply counting numbers of BME staff¡±.

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After noting that ¡°the ideal of treating everyone the same [within universities] does little to change inequalities in the system or achieve equality of outcomes¡±, the authors conclude with a number of ¡°possible actions for [higher education institutions]¡±. They can, for example, publish statistics on the breakdown of staff according to ethnicity, nationality and gender; ¡°develop proactive recruitment and selection strategies that actively seek to increase the numbers of BME applicants¡±; ¡°review BME participation in research assessment exercises¡±; and introduce or improve mentoring services often through partnership arrangements with other institutions.

Although there is a place for black studies and black leadership development programmes, universities should remember that ¡°the success of these initiatives will be dependent on there being no need for them in the longer term¡±, the paper says.

matthew.reisz@tesglobal.com