Designing Strategic Principles for a Prejudice-free Higher Education Institute

Use these principles if you need to improve intergroup relations and/or reduce racial and ethnic prejudice in your university.

The strategies should:

1. Identify institutional and/or individual sources of prejudice and discrimination
2. Aim to affect individual behaviour.
3. Deal with the dispositions and behavior of all racial and ethnic groups involved.
4. Include participants who can pinpoint the racial, ethnic, and linguistic diversity of the context.
5. Have the support and participation of those with authority and power.
6. Involve students. Also new students are to be continually encouraged and reinforced.
7. Examine similarities and differences across and within racial and ethnic groups.
8. Be part of a continuing set of learning activities that are valued and incorporated throughout the university.
9. Recognize the value of bicultural and multicultural identities of individuals and groups.
10. Expose the inaccuracies of myths that sustain stereotypes and prejudices.
11. Include a careful and systematic preparation of those who will implement the learning activities.
12. Conduct thorough analyses of the learning needs of participants and continue evaluating outcomes.
13. Identify the lessons related to prejudice and its consequences for any particular racial or ethnic group. The lessons may not transfer to other races or groups.

The principles were first developed 1995 to be implemented through the basic education years, but they can be adapted to university level strategy planning as well.

“Tolerance is respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich diversity of our world’s cultures, our forms of expression and ways of being human…Tolerance is harmony in difference.” (UNESCO, Declaration of Principles on Tolerance 1996)