Cambridge's 'reverse mentoring' scheme was always going to fail

Institutional racism is rife at Cambridge university – that was the assumption behind the university’s ‘reverse-mentoring’ scheme which was launched to much fanfare last summer. The idea was simple enough: senior academics who were white would be educated about racism by their BAME colleagues.

But the news that the scheme may be scrapped after its short pilot is hardly a surprise. As I wrote back in July, the singling out of white colleagues for mentoring is flawed on many counts. Worst of all, it embraces the increasingly popular belief that racism is an unconscious state of being that is inexorably inherent in some (but not all) racial groups.

This is not, however, the reason why the scheme might be shelved. According to Joanna Jasiewicz, an equality and diversity consultant at the university, some BAME staff who were asked to mentor their white colleagues found participating in the scheme to be ‘yet another burden’.

People’s jobs, livelihoods and research grants now depend on there being a racism problem to solve

Jasiewicz put this down to the fact that the BAME mentors were uneasy with the emotional labour involved in helping senior white staff better understand racism while Cambridge academic Dr Priyamvada Gopal blamed ‘a culture of not taking race seriously’.