Revealed, charity cashing in on campus culture wars

A charity has been accused of spreading ‘egregious wokery’ in universities by charging them thousands to take part in a racial equality programme.

Advance HE has signed up dozens of universities to its Race Equality Charter scheme, which advises them on ‘inclusive teaching’.

The training provider claims to help tackle racism on campus with ‘contemporary approaches’, but critics say its scheme is promoting toxic political ideology. 

They say it is encouraging universities to obsess over woke issues such as trigger warnings and decolonising the curriculum.

MPs even compared the scheme to Stonewall’s Diversity Champions programme, which has been dropped by some employers following concerns that it is extreme. Advance HE previously received millions in taxpayer funding but now relies on membership fees.

Advance HE has signed up dozens of universities to its Race Equality Charter scheme, which advises them on ‘inclusive teaching’. A file photo is used above

Universities compete for medals as part of the scheme, to prove that they are the most ‘inclusive’. 

MPs say that Advance HE’s influence is leading to instances where, for example, trigger warnings were recommended on thousands of texts at Cambridge University. Documents say that the warnings enable students to ‘take the necessary steps to engage safely and with minimal psychological distress’.

But Tory MP Brendan Clarke-Smith, a former member of the Commons education committee, said: ‘When institutions like Cambridge University are putting trigger warnings on Little House On The Prairie, you know something’s going badly wrong on campuses.

‘Advance HE is doing exactly the same thing Stonewall did – ramming through its toxic political ideology under the pretext of fighting for social justice.’

A government source told The Sunday Telegraph that Advance HE ‘uses diversity to degenerate universities into the most egregious wokery’.

Alison Johns, chief executive of the charity, said the charter ‘is a sector-created, evidence-based framework to support staff in universities to develop their own plans to address the independent evidence of racial inequality in higher education from the Equalities and Human Rights Commission and Universities UK’.

Stonewall says it simply helps employers to ‘build an LGBTQ+ inclusive workplace’.