In a 2023 paper, Prof Zembylas and his co-author, Prof Cheryl Matias, an academic and race coach, argued that “whiteness” – which they distinguished from white people and described as an oppressive ideology – persisted “perniciously” in teacher education and should be held “accountable and culpable”.
The critical race theorists argued that teacher education must stop “emotionally deflecting anti-racist critiques” by merely appearing to say the right things about anti-racism, because this “only ignores, and diverts attention away from the hegemonic presence of whiteness”.
In an earlier paper with a UC Berkeley academic, Prof Zembylas argued that white people should become critical of “whiteness” to create a more equal society, insisting this would not cause white people to hate themselves.
The authors wrote: “Contrary to the impression that this move promotes self-loathing, a politics of anti-whiteness is precisely the re-education of Whites for a world shared with the other.”
The second external elector, Prof Nayak, published a paper last year outlining how to remove colonialism from the field of geography, in which he suggested that charging international students higher tuition fees could be racist.
He wrote: “The neo-liberal whiteness of Anglo-American universities is exemplified in the practice [of] charging international students often over double the degree fees of domicile students and doing little to mitigate punitive visa restrictions.”
Prof Nayak added that, in other sectors, the practice “could appear a discriminatory act, tantamount to institutional racism”.