Academia, Liberation, Equality, and Diversity

I must confess I missed this story when it appeared in the Times Higher as it had a rather bland headline. No fear of missing it in Pink News however. They scream the headline 'Academia Has Ignored LGBT Issues'. These news stories follow the publication by the National Union of Students (NUS) of a briefing document entitled Liberation, Equality and Diversity in the Curriculum which explores the issues of liberation, equality and diversity in high education curriculum's. The report seems to bear very little to the media coverage associated with it. You can check out the briefing document/report here.

It isn't just about sexuality, it's about disability, race and any other discrimination that can take place. The idea is that 'non-traditional' (in the language of the report) students should be catered for. For example, family law problems might commonly include same-sex couples in exam problem questions, but what about contract law, or commercial law, or tort?

In my experience, academia has actually been addressing these issues for years and the ratcheting up of quotes by NUS folks in a bid to get a headline (rather than base them on the substantive report) coupled with the near hysterical academic reactions on the Times Higher story are both misplaced responses.

This was a well meaning report that seems to have suffered a PR disaster. I'd be interested in hearing the thoughts of fellow academics and students on this.

Time for Some TLC

As you might have seen from Twitter, having flown back in from Canada I was soon off again, this time to Manchester for the UK Network of Sex Work projects Annual Conference. For reasons of privacy I won't disclose the contents of the event, though it was a very interesting and rewarding two days. I do want to flag up the excellent TLC website though: http://www.tlc-trust.org.uk/

In their own words: 'TLC is a group of disabled and non-disabled people who work together in a voluntary capacity, to provide information and contact opportunities so that disabled people have access to the best possible commercial sexual services. We also provide background support for our sex workers.'

The presentation on disabled clients and sex work was both informative and moving and I would recommend people take a look at the website along with http://www.outsiders.org.uk/