Lisbon university drops racism course with only white teachers

A top university in Lisbon has suspended plans to launch a post-graduate programme on racism and xenophobia after the course was criticised for hiring only white instructors.

- Ashifa Kassam

The programme, offered by the faculty of law at Nova University in tandem with the government-backed Observatory on Racism and Xenophobia, was also blasted for some of its content, such as a session entitled: "Does racism really exist?"

Among the first to sound the alarm was Paula Cardoso, the founder of the Afrolink online platform for black professionals in Portugal.

"It's absurd to have a 'postgraduate course on racism and xenophobia' coordinated entirely by white people and, so far, taught without a single non-white person," Cardoso wrote on her organisation's website.