Marking National Stephen Lawrence Day in partnership with the Oxford Law Black Alumni Network

This year a series of events were organised by the Law Faculty in partnership with the newly established Oxford Law Black Alumni (OLBA) Network to mark National Stephen Lawrence Day.

BCL students Samuel Bailey and Josiah Senu interviewed the Rt Hon David Lammy MP. The Shadow Lord Chancellor offered powerful and moving responses to a series of important questions relating to institutional racism. The full recording is available on the Faculty’s YouTube channel. Following the success of this interview, BCL student Seun Matiluko is curating an interview series, in conjunction with the Law Faculty, between OLBA members and inspirational British and international leaders. These interviews will be recorded over the summer and will become publicly available during Michaelmas 2021.

In another event this academic year, Seun Matiluko and fellow BCL student Sfiso Benard Nxumalo chaired an online discussion with Matthew Ryder QC, who represented the Lawrence family in their civil case against the Metropolitan police, and Dr Eddie-Bruce Jones, Deputy Dean of the School of Law and Head of the Department of Law at Birkbeck College, University of London, on institutional racism and the criminal justice system. The event was very well-attended; a recording is similarly available online for those who could not attend live.

The chairs of this second event - Seun Matiluko and Sfiso Benard Nxumalo – have been at the forefront of the establishment of the OLBA Network. Following extensive conversations with the 2020-21 class of black BCL students and recent black BCL alumni, Seun Matiluko created the OLBA network with the Law Faculty in order to provide a platform for current black students and alumni of Oxford Law to connect with each other, support current students, and build a global, professional network. Seun Matiluko organised many of OLBA’s activities this year with Sfiso Benard Nxumalo and, from 2021-2022, Sfiso Benard Nxumalo will be the chief student organiser of OLBA events. Networking events are currently being planned for both Oxford and London in the 2021-2022 academic year.

The Faculty’s Equality and Diversity Committee, together with our Allen and Overy Equality and Diversity Officer (Clara Elod) and Associate Dean for Equality and Diversity (Kristin van Zwieten), continues to work on implementing the Faculty’s agreed race equality actions, and to plan additional policy changes, events, and training in furtherance of our equality and diversity goals. We have celebrated a number of recent initiatives, including the launch of new scholarships for UK black or ethnic minority doctoral candidates, and new recruitment initiatives, but are ambitious in our desire to do much more in pursuit of the realisation of our vision of a more equal, more diverse, and more inclusive institution.