The Business School are proudly launching JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion). JEDI is a positive action programme that's all about providing additional support to help overcome disadvantages and barriers. JEDI aligns with the University's 2030 Strategy to address Black and Global Majority students’ attainment gap and increase their sense of belonging and identity within our university community. JEDI provides pathways of aspiration and success for students from Black and Global Majority communities.
JEDI revolves around four main pillars: Belonging, Networking, Unlocking and Mentoring to uplift and inspire Black and Global Majority students. JEDI is about making fair attainment possible, ambition visible and providing equity to the communities that need it most. JEDI is the vehicle we are using to actualise our commitment to change from rhetoric to action.
Sadly, racial inequalities and low achievement permeate our higher education sector. JEDI will make a concerted effort to eradicate systemic barriers that students may face, and provide students with an opportunity to explore their own self-identities. By doing this, JEDI will be unapologetically authentic, radical and will centre the experience of people racialised as Black and Global Majority.
The first step on this journey is moving away from the deficit lensed acronym 'BAME', Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic. Identity is complex and becoming increasingly so. JEDI is moving away from the negativity surrounding the term BAME, and will embrace the term Black and Global Majority. Black and Global Majority is a collective term that first and foremost speaks to and encourages those so-called, to think of themselves as belonging to the majority on planet earth. It refers to people who are Black, African, Asian, Brown, dual-heritage, indigenous to the global south, and or, have been racialised as 'ethnic minorities. Globally these groups currently represent approximately eighty per cent (80%) of the world's population, making them the global majority.