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A photo of Professor David Ruebain

On Thursday 25 January, David Ruebain, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Culture, Equality & Inclusion) emailed all staff. You can read the message below:

Dear Colleagues, 

First, I want to thank those students and staff members who joined our community dialogue last week to listen and share their thoughts and feelings on the ongoing conflict in Israel and Palestine. Those who took part told us afterwards that the group spoke with respect, honesty and courage, sharing grief, hopes and fears. Participants also felt it important to continue the dialogue to help create mutual understanding, especially during times of conflict and trauma and we will continue to seek to develop spaces where we can listen and share experiences at Sussex, taking into consideration the reflections and feedback from attendees and our wider University community.   

This month, I’d like to talk about:    

• Publishing our Race Equality Charter submission and action plan   
• Holocaust Memorial Day, 27 January  
• In Conversation with Dame Nicola Dandridge DBE and Dr Omar Khan, 28 February   
• Arts Piazza Cafe introduces Café Queero – socially responsible coffee   
• Inclusion calendar for 2024  

Publishing our Race Equality Charter submission and action plan   

As mentioned in my October update, the University received the Race Equality Charter Institutional Bronze award in September 2023. You can now view our award application and the four-year action plan, including letters from senior leaders at the University in which they explore the race equality challenges we face. We hope that this will support the sharing of good practice and approaches. The action plan provides a measurable framework for improvement which will help us to address the structural inequalities, underrepresentation and disadvantage experienced by racially minoritised staff and students, as we build an Inclusive Sussex. 

Holocaust Memorial Day, 27 January  

Holocaust Memorial Day takes place each year on 27 January, remembering the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, alongside the millions of people murdered under Nazi persecution of other groups and during more recent genocides. The University’s annual Holocaust Memorial Day event is on Wednesday 7 February and will feature testimony from Holocaust Survivor Ivor Perl BEM. There will also be a taster of the film The Third Reich of Dreams followed by a discussion with the director, Amanda Rubin, chaired by Professor Ivor Gaber. The event is now fully booked, but you can email: events@sussex.ac.uk to join a waiting list or to register interest in receiving a link to the livestream.   

This year’s Holocaust Memorial Programme also includes an open exhibition titled Remembering the Roma Holocaust. Led by the Widening Participation Team and developed by partners across the University and in collaboration with Friends, Families, and Travellers, the exhibition seeks to re-situate the Roma and Sinti experience within the broader Holocaust narrative, reflecting on contemporary issues of equality, diversity, and inclusion of all people of Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller-heritages. The event, which is open to all, will be in Woodland 3, Student Centre on Friday 9 February from 2pm-3pm and will then move to the Jubilee Library in Brighton from 12-16 February. Following this, the exhibition will be available across schools in Sussex as part of their curriculum resource in History at Year 9 and for subsequent GCSE content.  

In Conversation with Dame Nicola Dandridge DBE and Dr Omar Khan, 28 February  

Intergenerational justice and equality will be the focus of our next In Conversation event and I am delighted that we will be welcoming two hugely important individuals in higher education to campus for the event.   

Dame Nicola Dandridge DBE is a former Chief Executive of Universities UK and was the first Chief Executive of the Office for Students (OfS). She is now Professor of Practice in HE Policy at Bristol University. Dr Omar Khan was formerly Director of the Runneymede Trust, Britain's oldest race equality organisation, and is now Chief Executive of TASO (Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in Higher Education). Both are long-time equality activists and advocates. We will be joined on the panel by two academics from the School of Education and Social Work, Dr Emily Danvers, Senior Lecturer in Higher Education Pedagogies, and Professor Janet Boddy, Professor of Child, Youth and Family Studies. The event, which runs from 5.30pm-7pm, is open to all but booking is essential. I hope to see some of you there. 

Arts Piazza Cafe introduces Café Queero – socially responsible coffee   

The Arts Piazza Cafe has a new coffee offering as part of our catering partner’s Coffee for Causes, where a new socially responsible coffee is introduced each term. A proportion of the profits from each cup will go towards charitable causes and this term it's the turn of Café Queero, part of The Outside Project which aims to provide a free queer sober space for LGBTIQ+ people who are destitute, homeless, in recovery or feel isolated. Please do support this fantastic initiative – you can also get a free upgrade to a large cup until tomorrow, Friday 26 January, at the cafe.  

Inclusion calendar for 2024   

You can now view our new inclusion calendar which has information about awareness dates and events as well as key faith days and festivals.   

With good wishes,    

David Ruebain     
Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Culture, Equality and Inclusion)

Coming up

• LGBT+ History Month, 1–29 February  
• In Conversation with Vaneet Mehta (Author of Bisexual Men Exist), 1 February  
• Race Equality Week, 5–11 February  

We will be sharing further information about LGBT+ History Month and Race Equality Week on the Staff Hub shortly.   

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