{"id":7405,"date":"2019-03-11T07:54:08","date_gmt":"2019-03-11T07:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7405"},"modified":"2019-03-11T07:54:08","modified_gmt":"2019-03-11T07:54:08","slug":"male-pale-and-stale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2019\/03\/11\/male-pale-and-stale\/","title":{"rendered":"Male, pale and stale"},"content":{"rendered":"

I see that a jobbing duchess has been foolish enough to describe<\/a> universities as \u201cmale, pale and stale\u201d. \u00a0This is an easy gibe to make if you don't look carefully into background data, and which busy duchess has time for that. \u00a0No doubt her advisers would have been pleased with all the publicity. \u00a0Personally, I\u2019m not taking lessons in sustainability from someone who uses a private jet to pop over to the USA for the weekend.<\/p>\n

I first came a cross this term in an NUS meeting<\/a> in 2016, and I wrote this:<\/p>\n

\"We learned that, in future, NUS is going to be lobbying for \"a liberated and sustainable curriculum\u201d in universities (and colleges, presumably). \u00a0I wondered (aloud) what this was liberation from. \u00a0From those who are \u201cpale, male and stale\u201d, someone suggested. \u00a0Like me?, I thought, and wondered whether the NUS liberation team\u00a0has its eye on everyone\u00a0like me. \u00a0Maybe my time on the advisory group is near its overdue\u00a0end.\"<\/em><\/p>\n

Well, I'm still there and it's the group that's coming to an end; and maybe the liberation group has gone as well in the wave of cuts that NUS has had to endure of late although NUS probably thinks that liberation's too important for that.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile I read today that \"male, pale and stale\" is regarded by some as a racist slur although I didn't see it like that from the NUS and it wasn't personal. \u00a0I first encountered real (anti-white) racism in Uganda in the 1970s, and there the perpetrators had guns. \u00a0Happily, it was only a tiny minority of Ugandans expressing this whilst everyone else we came across were open, friendly and welcoming \u2013 rather like the NUS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I see that a jobbing duchess has been foolish enough to describe universities as \u201cmale, pale and stale\u201d. \u00a0This is an easy gibe to make if you don't look carefully into background data, and which busy duchess has time for...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7405\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}