Dear colleagues,
Until relatively recently, the importance, and implications, of an institutional commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion might have been taken as relatively uncontested. But we live in times in which public discourse is increasingly polarised, not least around issues of diversity. In that context, I thought this month I should write and explain why I think diversity is so crucial to our work, and more than that, to who we are as an institution.
So many of us are proud of our foundation story, that UCL was the first university in England not to require subscription to the 39 Articles of the Church of England. Bentham subscribed in order to be admitted to Queen’s College, Oxford, and is said to have resented it for the rest of his life. Given his secularism, and that of several of the founders of UCL, it is not surprising that our history has been given a secularist spin, the ’Godless institution on Gower Street’.
But there is a different possible reading of the foundation of UCL, one that I would argue is both more interesting, and richer in its implications for our life today. This is a vision of the university not as secular, but as pluralist, not a university for atheists, but a university for everyone. After all, many of the non-conformists, Roman Catholics and Jews admitted to the fledgling university were every bit as serious about their faith, if not more so, as the Anglicans of Oxbridge.
This view of the university as pluralist suggests that a commitment to diversity is deep in our identity as a community. We are, and were always intended to be, an institution to which it is possible to bring your ’whole self’, to bring your history, culture, identity, and views of the world, free of arbitrary discrimination. Moreover, the implication of our foundational narrative is that UCL should be a place in which everyone finds a genuine welcome, and in which barriers to participation in the life of the university are constantly reduced for both staff and students. On this basis, working to support the diversity of our community is not only a good thing to do, it is fundamental to who we are.
This commitment to pluralism has many implications for our life together. It means, for example, that we should be teaching our students to understand, and equipping them to respond to, very different ways of seeing the world. It means that we should expect them to bring their own perspectives to the classroom and the campus more generally and to have those perspectives challenged, though without hostility. It means that in our research we should be particularly alert to the dangers of ’group think’ and of academic communities in which one particular methodology or school of thought becomes dominant. On a pluralist view, the university should be a place in which we are constantly confronting the other and engaging the other in constructive dialogue.
Understood in this way, a commitment to diversity and a commitment to free speech are not at odds in the way that they are sometimes presented as being. I cannot bring my whole self to the university, if I cannot freely speak for my most deeply held beliefs about myself and about the world. It would have been very peculiar if UCL had admitted non-conformists, Roman Catholics, Jews and atheists (all, in 1836, persecuted minorities) and forbidden any talk of theology or metaphysics lest some might be upset or feel their identity threatened. A commitment to pluralist diversity is a commitment to encountering the other, even when that other’s view of the world is objectionable or even deeply offensive.
Pluralist communities such as this are dynamic, creative, and exciting places to be. They can also be uncomfortable and distressing. Within that context, while speech is free, there are limits determined by law to what can be said, and we all’have a duty to ensure that we disagree, as much as agree, with one another in ways that advance understanding. We should identify with some precision the points on which disagreement exists, looking for points of commonality, and choose language commensurate with the goal of increasing understanding. We all’have a responsibility to look out for the most vulnerable. But a commitment to real diversity means that issues of identity will sometimes be at stake, and that our emotions, as much as our reason, will often be involved. That is the cost of living in a diverse community. But the joy of living in a diverse community is that it is through encounter with people not at all ’just like us’ that we will grow, even if only in understanding.
As we come to celebrate our bicentenary in 2026, I think it is important that we recommit to the pluralist vision that was so strong at our foundation and that is now under attack in so many communities globally. We may well disagree about the precise implications of our commitment to diversity, and we will sometimes, in practice, fail to realise our own best goals for reducing barriers to participation. But we must be committed to constantly getting better at being a community in which all find a welcome, and in which their views can be heard. If we do not, then we run the risk of only poorly serving the needs of this wonderful, global, and incredibly diverse city of which we are a part. If we do, we may just be able to demonstrate what it looks like to live together well with, and to reap the benefits of, real diversity.
Yours,
Michael
Dr Michael Spence
UCL President & Provost
- University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT (0) 20 7679 2000
