The Academic Senate of the University of Bremen has produced a strategy paper that details its perception of diversity as a cross-sectional task. Now the aim is to breathe life into the proposals put forward in the paper and to engage the support of all members of the University in dealing responsibly with all aspects of diversity in University life. Professor Yasemin Karakaşoğlu, Vice Rectress for International Affairs and Diversity, sees this undertaking as a central task of the University management and has assumed the overall responsibility for its implementation. In order to communicate the strategy and its aims, a four-part series of lectures titled “Diversity @ Uni Bremen: excellent and equal opportunity?!“ will begin on January 20, 2016.
Whose voice is heard in the science system?
The key topic of this year’s lecture series and discussion forum revolves around the question: “Whose voice is heard in the science system?”. The aim here is to scrutinize objectivity and representation at universities. “This topic is currently very much in the public eye”, says Karakaşoğlu. It’s a discussion about whether universities are racist or not. In posing this question, the Vice Rectress is also inquiring into the participation of people of color at universities.
Structural exclusion at universities?
This is the first main theme of the forum “Diversity@Uni Bremen”. On January 20, 2016, at 6.00 pm in building SFG room 0140, political scientist and cultural scholar Dr. Kien Nghi Ha will speak on “The color of scíence. Racist exclusion and being white in university structures”. The focus here will be on whether and if so to what extent universities in Germany are places of institutional discrimination and structural exclusion. Universities are not only important because they determine access to highly skilled jobs in a knowledge society via the provision of state-financed work and student places, but also because they produce the knowledge subsequently appropriated by society. Beyond their basic function as places of scientific work and learning, they therefore also constitute an important political space in which socially relevant knowledge is produced, negotiated and legitimized.
About Kien Nghi Ha
Dr. Kien Nghi Ha is a fellow of the University of Bremen’s Institute for Post-colonial and Transcultural Studies (INPUTS). He has taught and done research on post-colonial critique, migration, and Asian Diasporic Studies at New York University and the universities of Heidelberg, Tuebingen and Bayreuth. He is active in the social arena as member of the board of an association called “korientation”, a network for German-Asian perspectives, and co-spokesperson for the association for Intercultural Welfare Work, Empowerment and Diversity (VIW).
Next lecture in the series on February 4
Organizers of the lecture series are Vice Rector Professor Yasemin Karakaşoğlu and Dr. Margrit E. Kaufmann, an expert on diversity advising the University management. In the next lecture in the series scheduled for Thursday February 4, 2016, Professor Dr. Astrid Messerschmidt will talk on the topic “Racist-critical education in the migration society”.
If you would like to have more information on this topic, please contact:
University of Bremen
Officer for Diversity Management
Nele Haddou
Phone: +49 421 218 6030
e-mail: nele.haddouprotect me ?!vw.uni-bremenprotect me ?!.de
