We have been hard at work building a team and preparing this historic
prevalence study into racism in universities in a very short period of time.
There are 42 universities across Australia and the task we must perform is not
small. We have had valuable initial consultations with students and staff from a
variety of communities and I thank them for sharing their experiences. Reliving
and recounting experiences of racism is traumatic, and I hope we can honour
their stories in this and our final report. We have commenced the work to build
an online survey tool that will determine the prevalence of racism across
universities.
One of our challenges will be getting students and staff from all cohorts affected
by racism to complete this survey. I urge universities, staff and student
associations to encourage all those who are eligible to participate in the survey
when it is circulated next year. I strongly encourage everyone who gets the
survey to complete it.
We will run trauma informed engagement to convene focus groups next year so
we can get nuanced and detailed information on the experiences of racism on
campus. We have conducted an initial literature review and will have a further,
more detailed review to accompany the Study’s final report. The initial review
shows that academics have been writing about racism in universities for some
time, but there is a need for a coordinated, in-depth approach. We hope that this
prevalence study can be the first step in that direction.
Finally, I’d like to thank the team at the Australian Human Rights Commission
that has been working so hard on this project. Led by Hashini Panditharatne,
working with Catherine Duff, Emilie Priday, Jenny Renda, Carrie Chan, Anna
Nguyen, Wayanna Padukka, and Heaven Muecke, with important advice from
Dr Rosalie Atie, Darren Dick, Leanne Smith and President de Kretser.
Thank you to our Advisory Group, the Senior Officers Working Group, our
consultants, and everyone else who has assisted.
I look forward to working with you all next year to complete this historic and
important project.
8