An interview with Mia Liyanage, a decolonisation advocate and author of the 2020 HEPI debate paper Miseducation: decolonising curricula, culture and pedagogy in UK universities. Liyanage has worked in equality, diversity and inclusion, anti-racism and decolonisation in higher education. Liyanage started this work as a student activist when she was studying at the University of Oxford, and is the former Co-Chair of Common Ground Oxford, a student movement challenging institutional racism and classism and campaigning for decolonisation.
Location: London, England, UK
Liyanage provided me with great insight into decolonisation and anti-racism in higher education and how it intersects with anti-violence work. Decolonisation and anti-racism have a common thread that many of the people I have interviewed on this journey have emphasised. We cannot address sexual violence without also addressing racism and colonial structures within the university system.
During her time at Oxford, Liyanage was also involved in a public campaign about sexual and racial harassment at the university. This campaign formed part of an Al Jazeera investigation into complaints of sexual harassment, sexist, drunken behaviour, and coercive control across British universities by staff towards students. Liyanage shared her experience with a professor at the university, Degrees of Abuse, and wrote about her experience in a blog. Liyanage worked with Al Jazeera for a year to put together this media campaign, and eventually her perpetrator remained employed by the university but was removed from student contact (teaching).
During our discussion, Liyanage spoke about how people don't want to make formal complaints against people who harm them because they don't want their name attached to the report. This sense of fear is so common for people who experience sexual and racial harassment against them, especially by people in positions of power and authority.
Liyanage has since transformed her activism at university into her career and has worked in student-facing roles in equality, diversity, inclusion and social justice.
“I have been thrust into the space but it's become a part of my activism and work because of a shoddy complaints process. I was trying not to be involved in that movement.”
When Liyanage took part in the Transforming Silence symposium and spoke about the struggles of being a part of any movement like that, it was the first event where she ever felt truly included in. She told me:
“Visually you fit the mould but I don’t.”
It's true. So much of the anti-sexual violence activism movement is made up of white, straight, cisgender and educated women - like me. This is the problem with a lot of sexual violence activism - it excludes people who don't fit into this mould of the ‘perfect victim’ and those who hold ‘pretty privilege’ in society. Pretty privilege is a problem as Liyanage reflected on her lived experience of not necessarily upholding western standards of beauty. This sort of western pretty privilege feeds into silencing many voices of people who have experienced sexual violence but feel that they won’t be believed or taken seriously. Another way that pretty privilege plays out is the media coverage on the issue, and how people who fit this western idea of beauty tend to gain more media interest and subsequent coverage.
Liyanage spoke about how complaints processes are sites that uphold racism and misogyny where they should dismantle it. The UK's Equality Act 2010 provides guidelines that should be followed in relation to discrimination, however many processes do not follow this Act as a guideline and continue to discriminate against people based on their identity and background. Liyanage spoke about how trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) are not being challenged as much as they should, which has been extremely harmful to trans people and the feminist movement overall.
A big problem is that even if a sexual violence reporting policy itself seems sufficient, the way it is enforced in practice is terrible. For example, when undergoing a formal complaints process within a university setting, many are made to sit through interviews and hearings, and write multiple statements repeating the traumatic experience over an undisclosed length of time. The mental toll this takes is a major deterrent for people to report, especially people from oppressed backgrounds.
“Access is improving, but actual inclusion and belonging are dire.”
Institutions cannot effectively combat sexual violence without dismantling harmful colonial structures that continue to exist. These institutions are supposed to be places where people go to learn and grow, but instead many are faced with abuse, harassment, bullying and discrimination. Universities are meant to have a duty of care to the people who attend their campuses, but they fail in this regard. Liyanage is passionate about decolonising institutions because she believes that in their current forms they are not fit-for-purpose.
“Money, power, status and influence are the core elements of the colonial society we live in.”
We can't address sexual violence without actively addressing racism and colonial practices alongside it. Universities are inherently colonial, and in the UK every university is a reflection of society of which colonial practices are completely embedded. Australia is the same.
Every university system is designed for students they had from their beginnings - those being upper class, cisgender, straight white men. Liyanage spoke about how we must understand how it is influenced by all of these things to address and improve university policy. While there is increasing recognition of intersectional challenges flowing into awareness-raising and communication activities within a university system, there remains a lack of more radical policies that would more meaningfully change the culture for the better.
Universities want to protect themselves as institutions, and not protect their people. This is demonstrated when they patronise students and betray them by covering up harm, rather than acknowledging the harm occurring and speaking up about how they are going to change it.
“I was an 18-year-old doing the work my university never did.”
Liyanage is a reluctant ‘activist’ - she still doesn't call herself one, even though she has engaged in activism. For Liyanage, activism means using her personal time where she should have been free as a young person. People have told Liyanage that it’s great that she is speaking up, but in reality she is a person that couldn’t afford to not speak up. Liyanage describes herself as more of an advocate for social justice and transformation.
“Students' voices are central and crucial to everything. Places that are using the student voice are doing better, their policies are better, their practices and outcomes are better.”
Thank you Mia Liyanage for your extremely insightful perspective on decolonising universities and anti-racism as a part of the puzzle to addressing campus sexual violence. Decolonising universities is central to creating a culture where rape and violence doesn't thrive. We're a long way off, but I do believe it is possible for us to change the culture on campus so that one day experiences of rape and harassment are minimal.
In solidarity,
Camille Schloeffel
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