A note in support of Professor Chris Jackson
I wrote this piece in support of Professor Chris Jackson, especially as I was asked to provide the journalist Tosin Thompson some copy for their article in Nature. If you haven’t read the article, I can strongly recommend that you read that first.
In October of 2021, Chris was a newly minted Professor of Sustainable Geosciences, within the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Manchester. In the run up to accepting this role, Chris and I had chatted about the opportunities and strengths of bringing new ideas and growing their sustainable geosciences portfolio, as well as the encouraging support he felt was on offer that reflected his growing voice advocating on behalf of addressing widespread equality, diversity and inclusion issues that affect scientists and engineers across the UK and beyond. As one of the UK’s few Black professors, Chris is acutely aware of the issues associated with racism in the UK and has been sent (horrific) threatening letters, abuse emails and threatening tweets from members of the public. These threats and abuse hit harder when your employer says it is supporting you in public, and yet behind close doors it is anything but.
In October 2021, Chris (rightly) stated that UK research was institutionally racist, and this is echoed in the evidence provided by (for example) UKRI on the funding success rates of BAME researchers in the UK (see https://www.ukri.org/news/ukri-publishes-ethnicity-analysis-of-funding-applicants-and-awardees/). After this claim was made by Chris, he was contacted internally by Professor Martin Schroder (in his capacity as Vice President of the University of Manchester) who shared a GB News (a heavily right-wing leaning news outlet) article written by Mercy Muroki critiquing institutional racism (https://www.gbnews.uk/gb-views/mercy-muroki-im-just-not-sure-that-labelling-everything-as-institutionally-racist-will-get-us-very-far/140413). It is worth noting that Mercy Muroki is/was a member of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, which in 2021 made the conclusion that British society is not institutionally racist. This conclusion from the Commission was widely condemned by UK academia.
At this point, Chris reached out to a number of friends and colleagues (including me) who have been working with him to understand EDI issues in higher education, collective evidence, analysing it and trying to address it at different levels across academia. From our discussions, it became clear to me that Chris was angry, frustrated and upset that, in effect, Prof Schroder was gaslighting the opinion and issues raised by Chris in his email (which I believe was sent to 5 other senior management members of the University).
As an external observer to this, it is remarkable that the University was suggesting that Chris should be brought in to explain his views and offer suggestions how to fix it. This is a clear example of the ‘minority tax’ (where by members of marginalized groups are brought in and asked to fix the problems that the individuals from majority/oppressing groups have created). Furthermore, it was remarkable that in the news pieces leading up to this (e.g. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58795079) there was no mention that Manchester University was institutionally racist (the specific quote was related to the status of public funding in the UK, mostly conducted in universities, is “definitely institutionally racist”). Further support of institutional racism is brought out by Wellcome Trust, where the Director Jeremy Farrar explicitly states that Wellcome has perpetuated racism and that in 2022, Wellcome is “still an institutionally racist organisation” (https://wellcome.org/news/update-wellcomes-anti-racism-programme).
I share these pieces of evidence, as it is clear for any academic who is interested in understand the status of UK academia that there are numerous reports and evidence that structural/institutional racism exists in UK research funding, and that Chris was simply using a prominent platform due to his media presence (e.g. as a RI lecturer) to share this knowledge and call for change. You would expect that being a newly appointed Professor, into a prestigious and well-funded research Chair, would provide some safety when making these statements and yet it is clear that Prof Schroder and colleagues felt that they could exert their power over him to silence the matter and push a counter narrative. The net result of this has been an ugly and damaging internal investigating which ultimately resulted in Chris losing faith in the institution and UK academia, and Chris now works in the private sector. As a friend of Chris, and also an academic looking to raise the voice of individuals from marginalised groups, I am deeply upset by this whole story and furious at those at the University of Manchester who continue to propagate and ‘other’ the story that Chris shares regarding his experience at the institution.
As some background on our relationship, Chris and I have been friends for many years, and we spent quite some time together within the pandemic. In London, I was living alone, Chris and his family become my ‘support bubble’ and we would hang out in our downtime, discuss career moves (I was moving to UBC, Vancouver, and he was contemplating the move to Manchester — at the time we were both employed at Imperial). We have both a professional and personal connection, which is echoed for instance that I elected to leave Imperial on the same day that he did (https://twitter.com/OtherProfGreen/status/1306197809050386433). Over the years, in addition to our personal friendship, we have worked together on a number of matters, co-authored papers, and assisted each other in addressing EDI issues at Imperial (and beyond). I continue to have much respect for Chris’s work (technical, his advocacy and his outreach/public engagement) and we continue to keep in regular contact.
From my observation, the incident with Prof Schroder and colleagues has marked the end of Chris’s direct engagement with academia, and it has shattered his faith in academia being a supportive environment. It is clear from his tweets and our private conversations that this (and related incidents) at the University of Manchester continue to bother him and impact his continued contributions to academia as a whole. This continued ‘bothering’ has a pattern of behaviour which could be construed by many organisations as institutionally sponsored harassment, which is truly remarkable given that many of the actors of this are senior members of the Human Resources division within the University of Manchester. (As a slight aside, this reminds me that HR acts for the benefit of the organisation, and not for it’s people, especially those who have been forced to leave.)
Overall, Chris is flourishing in the private sector and I am super proud of him and his accomplishment. Chris’s departure remains a significant loss to academia, as many current members benefited from having a kind, enthusiastic, well-rounded, talented, and honest role model and leader who really thought about the people first, and delivered the best science and engineering as a result.
The associated tweets around this one can provide some context from Chris (and others) on the wider story here around his leaving of academia:
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If you want to get in touch, you can reach me easily via Twitter as @bmatb
