So many universities are opening campuses in places that their staff are not safe. They don’t care about us! https://twitter.com/dramyburge/status/1200317295819657218
When I was at UCL they opened a campus in Qatar, and the LGBT staff organisation had to tell LGBT staff not to travel there because homosexuality is punishable with the death penalty.
There were also questions about the use of slave labour in the building of the UCL Qatar campus, and general anger about Qatari human rights abuses. (I just dug up this conversation I had with one of the Pro-VCs about it, because it still makes me furious. Education! FFS.)
The University of Southampton has a campus in Malaysia. Sodomy is still illegal in Malaysia (since British imperial rule), punishable by fines or prison; LGBT people are not allowed to appear in the media; vigilantism and violence against LBGT people is tolerated and encouraged.
I’m talking about UCL and Southampton here because I got my PhD at the first and work at the second. But many, many British universities have campuses overseas and many of these are in places with poor human rights records, and where women and/or LGBT people cannot live freely.
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