The state, academia and policy advice: better horizons?

Arzu was asked to present her thoughts in a panel discussion, as Head of Research at IHRC, at the launch of the Tolerace toolkit dealing with racism and how to counter it, in various European settings.  The launch took place in Lisbon, Portugal, in February 2013.  What follows was written up and uploaded for the first time in July 2026.

Some thoughts on better horizons.

I was really struck by comments yesterday about the making invisible of diversity except where it comes into conflict with the state or wider society. Comments from respondents about losing minority culture, comments regarding feelings of shame. I was struck by these because they express the loss at the heart of what, as Salman [Sayyid] said yesterday, the answer to the question we don’t realise is being asked.

I’ve been trying to address some thoughts to the idea of academia and policy, because we know that those that make policy don’t listen to what they don’t want to, so that eventually whether academic or activist or community leader, you end up doing what muted groups do i.e. change the way you talk to get heard and in doing so you are no longer talking about what you experience, but what policymakers / government / powerful elites SAY is your problem. We do so because we have to at the community level, most of the time, because that’s the only way you can get something for your cause, even though it compromises your cause – maybe even totally undermines it.

How do you break the cycle?

I’m not sure, in fact I’m fairly sure you can’t. So, what can we do? How can we address the loss as activist or academics? Or as political actors or a combination of two or three of the above?

The case studies that are paradigmatic of all that is wrong are presented [in the toolkit] in a way where the violence – physical, social, psychological – of racist processes, everyday racist processes – normal racist processes – are apparent.  Sometimes this seems too obvious to be important but I think this centrally holds the key to where and how academia can play an essential role in transformation. Even, whereby presenting something radical and unabashed and refusing to be muted or to mute the voices of victims of social injustices, it can actually nurture in the long run, the essential understanding that needs to be protected if we are to build a political movement that challenges the basis of injustice, not just the symptoms or effects of it.

A question was raised yesterday: what is there that stops the 12-year-old child who understands the importance of his peers’ religious values and why they should be protected growing up to be a racist bigot?  Not the system, not the media, not not… There is a second question here that runs in opposition to it and parallel to it: what stops that child not growing up to internalise all the hatred that they are surrounded by and regurgitating it? That child needs, we all need, to have this understanding protected: at the level of the demos, in academic papers, in policy recommendations, in cultural production and through the celebration of culture by ourselves, etc etc not as an autoethnographic subject of an acceptance and tolerance project. I was reminded of responses from children to our survey for the British Muslims Expectation of the Government project, volume three, which looked at the education system. To summarise one or two of them they ran thus: we know what we go through and the job of the devil is to tell us we are wrong.

In the UK, from the Tottenham riots of 1981, the Notting Hill riots of the 1960s, or the Rushdie affair, or the war in Iraq, or the anti-terrorism laws, or the SUS laws of the 1980s, or the SUS laws of the 1990s, or etc. etc. etc. we have been told we have an unjust/unjustifiable sense of grievance, and to be fully integrated – there is a formula now – we need to drop those grievances, as well as some aspirations and accept some values.

Well, we don’t have to do any of the above, but at the moment we have little support to tell us that and if we don’t hold on to what we know whether it is the understanding of what we go through, what the problem is or that we know our knowledge can be part of the solution of not just our problems but for the problems, economic, social etc. of wider society, there will be no alternative, even in theory if not practice.

So, what now?

Yes, tell government and policy makers. Send copies to Theresa May in the UK but don’t be under any illusion about what this achieves. What’s next is about movement building that protects understanding and nurtures knowledge outside of the academic/policy binary, that creates “policy” with and for movements to work to try to deliver transformation in a short and long term.

I think we have an idea of the horizon, of the need for change in the way European society thinks/constitutes itself.  How to get there?  Well that is what we need to learn.

For the short term? Well, the world is changing, Europe is under pressure. With David Cameron in India right now begging for trade we can see it, yet until now he’s not managing any humility. There’s an attempt to portray his visit to the Amritsar massacre site as an apology – well it’s not an apology even for that act let alone the colonial violence that still hasn’t ended. There is some space here for some of us to mobilise or if we can hold onto the idea that we deserve so much better than that, then actually maybe we have the props to make a start.   Thank you.

Arzu Merali is a writer and researcher based in London, UK.  Find her on X and Instagram  @arzumerali.  This is reproduced courtesy of www.arzumerali.com

Find all materials relating to the highly recommended Tolerace: the semantics of tolerance and (anti)racism in Europe: public bodies and civil society in comparative perspective project here.