More than 160 students have signed a letter asking Cambridge University to “decolonise its reading lists and incorporate postcolonial thought alongside its existing curriculum.”
The letter reads in part: We believe that for the English department to truly boast academically rigorous thought and practice, non-white authors and postcolonial thought must be incorporated meaningfully into the curriculum.
The letter was created by Lola Olufemi, the Cambridge University student union’s women’s officer, who believes that there needs to be a shift in the way the English department treats Western literature. According to her Facebook profile, Olufemi regards herself as a “black feminist interested in the politics of liberation, race & feminist organising.”
“For too long, teaching English at Cambridge has encouraged a ‘traditional’ and ‘canonical’ approach that elevates white male authors at the expense of all others,” Olufemi said.
In response to the student campaign, academics at Cambridge have ensured they will do what they can to increase the presence of BME (black and minority ethnic) texts.
Race isn’t the only issue students have with the reading lists. The concept of colonialism is also a matter needed to be addressed, according to Olufemi and the rest of the letter’s proponents.
The letter also demands “diversity training for supervisors.”
Not everyone agrees with the demands. Gill Evans, a Medieval Theology and Intellectual History professor at Cambridge, believes that the proposed changes would be a revision of history.
“If you distort the content of history and literature syllabuses to insert a statistically diverse or equal proportion of material from cultures taken globally, you surely lose sight of the historical truth,” Evans stated. “The west explored the world from the sixteenth century and took control – colonially or otherwise – of a very large part of it. It is false to pretend that never happened.”
Despite promises from professors, the university has not made any official changes.
“While we can confirm a letter was received from a group of students taking the postcolonial paper, academic discussions are at a very early stage to look at how postcolonial literature is taught,” Cambridge released in a statement. “Changes will not lead to any one author being dropped in favour of others – that is not the way the system works at Cambridge.”
Isaiah Denby is a college freshman from Tampa Bay, Florida studying economics and political science.
