Graduate’s hope to make universities “free, anti-colonial, and accessible to all”

By Melissa Kasule

University libraries can be a breeding grounds for dust – or a sneaky snack spot for students who should be studying.

But it stops there for black students, says a former university education officer – who wants to change the narrative.

So writer, speaker and PhD researcher, Melz Owusu, from Croydon, has raised almost £100,000 for The Free Black University project.

It would be a space for black students outside British universities where education is – “free, anti-colonial, and accessible to all”.

The project is seen as part of the Black Lives Matter movement, creating a space of liberation and wellness for black people in education.

Melz has championed for change in universities and the curriculum at Ted Talks, after living a distressing experience as one of the only black students on a course at The University of Leeds.

The university graduate gathered together a small team to help fundraise the project, and within a month has raised £95,112 of the quarter of a million target.

The Free Black University will deliver a range of lectures and online teachings and aims to connect its students with black therapists, counsellors, and community healers.

The campaign gained praise from Hollywood filmmaker Ava DuVernay – known for her Netflix series When They see us and for Martin Luther King Jr movie, Selma.

Melz said: “After a number of years of campaigning about decolonising education, asking for changes on the reading list and history curriculum, it got to a point of recognising that universities will only change at an incredibly slow rate. Colonisation is a part of them.

“It is a difficult situation when you already hyper-visible because you’re one of the only black students on your course.

“But then at the same time you are demanding your course should be more representative of people like you.

“Most students are just there for an education that affirms them. But I’m already at a disadvantage that this education is a source of violence for me.

“Then I’m being positioned as the person that has to speak on these issues.

“That’s why, for so many black students, university is not a nice experience – it is often traumatising.

“I studied philosophy and politics and it was shocking how little I was able to learn that wasn’t centred on the West.

“You would rarely find a black lecturer, black professors and even just black people on the reading list.

“The Free Black University is all about marrying up education with healing. Mental health is a deeply problematic issue at universities right now especially to black students.

“Then you are having to go into a lecture theatre every day and have knowledge being shared with you that is racist at the heart of it.

“Education should about wellness as well. We need to be healthy in order to create knowledge that is going to take us into the new world.

“We really want to encourage validating systems and practices that aren’t just Western. It’s important to explore roots to mental wellness and holistic healing that isn’t from the West, and looking across the African continent at ways, prior to colonisation, people explored the healing journey.

“The need for The Free Black University stems from that. We see the harm universities are causing black students and we see how deeply entrenched that harm is.

“So how do we create a space in which black students, black queer students, and black trans students and so on are not seen as an addition at the end of a series of lectures or just completely forgotten.

“I’m speaking to a lot of institutions as well as universities themselves and exploring ways in which they can support the work we are doing, especially financially.

“But just trying to build that deep infrastructure to ensure this project outlives me even.

“It is not like there is an immediate finishing point, it’s going to be a project that grows in a number of different ways.”

To donate and find out more on the Free Black University click here.

Pictured top: Melz Owusu