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PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Higher Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1560504
This article is part of the Research Topic Advancing Equity: Exploring EDI in Higher Education Institutes View all 14 articles
Rotten from all that came before? How Interest Convergence has Informed and Usurped Initiatives for Racial Progress in the UK
Provisionally accepted
Jens Klots *
Uche Ogwude - Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom
This discussion paper examines how British Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) approach anti-racist and decolonial initiatives through the lens of Interest Convergence (IC). It highlights how institutional actions, largely sparked by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in 2020, align with existing neoliberal and capitalist priorities -therefore limiting their transformative potential. While efforts to participate in the Race Equality Charter (REC) and decolonise the curriculum have gained traction, they are often implemented in ways that fail to properly address systemic inequalities. Finally, a case is made for ritual theory as a potential vehicle to educate staff and students about IC, as ritualised activities can promote community building and wider cultural change.
Keywords: Anti-racism, Critical Race Theory, decolonisation, interest convergence, race equality charter, Ritual theory
Received: 14 Jan 2025; Accepted: 24 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Klots and Ogwude. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Jens Klots, Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom
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