Following the racist murder of George Floyd in 2020, many higher education institutions in the EU and other Western countries announced new policies to try to tackle racism on their campuses.

Learned societies have all issued statements to the effect that they denounce racism. Major private companies such as Netflix, Google, Apple and Microsoft have all created up ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ (DE&I) departments within their organisations and announced commitments to combat racial and other forms of discrimination.

But what measurable indicators have been put in place to monitor these organisations’ progress towards equality and a working environment free from racial discrimination?

While it has been established for decades that there are no ‘races’ that are different from or even inferior to others, racism is on the rise in the society and in several European countries.

The academic world, as a mirror of society, reproduces stereotypes, facts and more or less tacit procedures that perpetuate inequalities in treatment and opportunities, based on origins, the sound of a name or skin colour.

ARCHERIF project will raise awareness about the procedures and reflexes that can result in racism in the higher education and research institutions (HERIs) in France.

To do this, ARCHERIF will first conduct an international study to identify the best anti-racism, policies and measures in foreign universities, in order to inform its design of innovative educational resources to prevent insidious, structural and systemic forms of racism in HERIs and help promote equal opportunities for students, teaching and administrative staff from ethnic minorities.

The research activities will be carried out in two phases:

Phase 1 (2024-26) :

Carry out an international review of best practice and anti-racism measures in place in HERIs internationally (Objective 1);

Carry out a survey of ethnic minorities on French campuses to identify the forms of racism faced by students, teaching staff and administrative and technical staff), as well as a survey of people in senior management positions in selected French HERIs institutions (Objective 2);

Phase 2

Based on the results of phase 1, ARCHERIF will develop innovative teaching resources and tools for students, staff and teaching and administrative personnel by adopting an innovative, arts-oriented pedagogy and sophisticated data visualisation techniques (Objective 3);

Finally, ARCHERIF intends to lay the foundations for the development of an anti-racism certification or charter for French and European HERIs (Objective 4).

To achieve these objectives, ARCHERIF will deploy an intersectional approach that takes into account the way in which racism and other forms of discrimination (gender, religion, disability, etc.) combine to affect ethnic minorities on French campuses.

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