Alum Baroness Sayeeda Warsi has delivered a guest lecture at the University.
The lecture, titled ‘‘Muslims Don’t Matter’ - Islamophobia and the silencing, sanctioning, and stereotyping of British Muslims’, took place in the University’s Great Hall on Thursday 19 October, in front of an invited audience of staff, students, alumni and members of the wider community.
Over a decade after her famous "Islamophobia has passed the dinner table test" speech, Baroness Warsi addressed the unfolding policies of successive governments and their impact on British Muslims, underscoring the necessity for Britain to remain true to its core values of equality and inclusiveness.
Baroness Warsi was the first Muslim to serve in the UK Cabinet, including roles as Minister of State in the Foreign Office and Minister for Faith and Communities in the Department for Communities and Local Government. Beyond politics, she has had a successful legal, business, writing and more recently a TV career, as co-host of the political reality show ‘Make Me Prime Minister’ and as a regular on Channel 4’s daytime show ‘Steph’s Packed Lunch’.
Baroness Warsi has also founded The Savayra Foundation, a women’s charity that has supported the lives of 30,000 women through economic empowerment programmes.
The University aspires to be a community where every person is able to be their authentic self, treated with fairness and respect and is able to thrive in their education or career.
Equity, Diversity and Inclusion is an inseparable component of our vision and is critical to our aim of making a positive difference in the world, as set out in our EDI strategy.
The University also recently reaffirmed its clear intent to be an anti-racist institution, starting a comprehensive programme of activity to create greater race equity.