Priyamvada Gopal, who teaches in the Faculty of English at Cambridge, has refused to supervise students at the university\u2019s King\u2019s College in protest against what she has described as \u201cconsistently racist profiling and aggression by porters\u201d at its gate.<\/p>\n
An alumni of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Gopal, 50, cited \u201cthis long festering sore\u201d and said unless the college addresses it, she would not supervise students there.<\/p>\n
As reports in the British news media and on social media sparked much reaction, the college issued a statement denying racism. On Tuesday, Gopal, an expert in colonial and postcolonial literature, tweeted that she stood by her decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have been subjected, like many other PoC (people of colour), some of have come weeping to my office, to, yes, I\u2019ll say it \u2013 outright racist treatment \u2013 at Kings Gates. Since Kings denies it, this will not change. And so, my refusal to any more work for them stands,\u201d she posted.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have now received hate emails and a continued barrage of vitriolic racist abuse,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
In a series of tweets on Monday, Gopal cited examples of racism at the college and claimed that her attempts to raise this with the fellows and management of King\u2019s had \u201cfailed to elicit any changes\u201d.<\/p>\n
She tweeted that her decision was made \u201cwith deep regret but with 17 years of consideration behind it, I have finally decided on my behalf & of other people of colour\u2026to refuse to supervise any students at Kings College. Enough is enough\u201d.<\/p>\n
She described one of her experiences at the college: \u201c\u2018I repeatedly asked them to address me as \u2018Dr Gopal\u2019 and repeatedly failed to get them, including the aggressive Head Porter to whom I attempt to complain to address me as anything other than \u2018madam.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
King\u2019s College said in a statement: \u201cWe have investigated the incident and found no wrongdoing on the part of our staff. Every visitor was asked to show their card during the course of that day, as the college was closed to everyone except King\u2019s members\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cNon-members such as Dr Gopal were asked to take alternatives routes, around the college. This was a matter of procedure, not discrimination. King\u2019s College is a rich and diverse community, and take the wellbeing of its students and staff extremely seriously.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Priyamvada Gopal, who teaches in the Faculty of English at Cambridge, has refused to supervise students at the university\u2019s King\u2019s College in protest against what she has described as \u201cconsistently racist profiling and aggression by porters\u201d at its gate. An alumni of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Gopal, 50, cited \u201cthis long festering sore\u201d and said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34817,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34816"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34818,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34816\/revisions\/34818"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}