Professor Bobby Banerjee delivers insightful lecture on the impact of slavery in higher education
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Bayes Business School Professor of Sustainability, Bobby Banerjee, was invited by the Management School and delivered an insightful lecture on modern slavery and the colonial legacies in British higher education, specifically on business and management studies.
The guest lecture was hosted by the Work, Organisation and Management (WOM) Group and the Centre for Organisational and Employee Wellbeing (COEW), as part of the Group's Leadership Week, and held at the International Slavery Museum on Tuesday 16 January.
During a hard-hitting lecture titled 'From Slaves to Stakeholders: A Manifesto for Decolonizing Management Studies', Bobby explained the challenges management schools face in decolonising their thinking, practice and teaching syllabi.
He also presented evidence of the failure of initiatives under the banner 'equality, diversity and inclusion'.
This included data showing how up until 2015, taxes paid by descendants of 19th-century slaves were being used by the UK Government to fund debts incurred as part of a compensation scheme to former slave owners for dispossessed ‘property’.
Bobby concluded that not only universities, but society, need to make greater efforts to redress these historical wrongs and the legacy of violence, inequality and injustice which persists today.
Speaking after the event, COEW Director, Professor Damian O'Doherty, said: “The lecture was a timely reminder of the dangers of complacency amongst colleagues in higher education.”
“We cannot have organisational or employee wellbeing so long as these racial injustices persist through legacies of power and inequality in which black, Asian and other ethnicities are denied fair access to opportunities for education and employment.”
Professor Alf Rehn from the University of Southern Denmark also commented: “This is without doubt one of the most important lectures I have been to in recent years and it left me feeling angry and sad, but also intellectually challenged by the enormity of the task now facing us all.”