UM Anti-Racism
UM is committed to taking active and conscious efforts toward understanding and eliminating all aspects of systemic racism, including religious-based racisms. We strive to be a community where anti-racism is embraced. Learn about the steps we are taking to make UM a community where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.
UM Anti-Racism Learning Framework
The UM Anti-Racism Learning Framework is one component of UM's broader efforts to advance racial justice. It also complements and supports the Truth and Reconciliation Framework: Time for Action.
Our fundamental commitments, as outlined in MomentUM: Leading Change Together, UM’s 2024-2029 strategic plan, are:
- Advancing Reconciliation for Transformative Change
- Fostering a Vibrant Community
- Building a Sustainable Future
We walk together to advance Reconciliation by addressing the root causes of inequities, acknowledging the harms of colonial actions both past and present, and building respectful relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples. This includes addressing anti-Indigenous racism and its impacts on Indigenous communities and peoples.
We work to cultivate a vibrant and accessible UM Community rooted in equity, diversity, human dignity, inclusivity, respect, well-being, and care for one another. This requires addressing underlying structures that exclude and create barriers to meaningful participation. Creating the conditions for all to thrive requires recognizing the many forms of racism that exist within the UM community and society, acknowledging the harmful impacts of racism, and working together to dismantle systemic racism.
The anti-racism journey and individual learning
The learning journey on racism and anti-racism varies for each member of the UM community — student, staff, and faculty. Some are early in that journey and others have long-standing engagement, community activism, and expertise in areas of racism and anti-racism.
UM is committed to providing learning and engagement that is meaningful for students, staff, and faculty at all stages of their learning. This requires ensuring learning opportunities are dynamic and engaged with current anti-racist research and practices, diverse community experiences and voices, and broader work at UM to advance Reconciliation and decolonization, as well as to advance equity, anti-oppression, and accessibility.
Individual anti-racism learning should include:
- learning about anti-Indigenous racism and how to incorporate anti-racist actions that further Reconciliation;
- learning about specific histories and manifestations of different racisms, including (but not limited to): antisemitism, anti-Black racism, Anti-Asian racism, and anti-Muslim racism;
- learning about diversity within racially marginalized communities and how systems of oppression intersect, along with learning that advances understanding of anti-oppression.
Mandatory annual anti-racism training for UM employees
As mandated by Government of Manitoba legislation, all public employees must complete annual anti-racism training. This includes all UM staff, faculty and student workers.
The University of Manitoba shares and supports the goal of ongoing anti-racism training for all government employees, and has integrated the Manitoba Government Anti-Racism module into our anti-racism learning strategy.
The course covers themes such as: how racism and bias result in unequal treatment of people based on ancestry or ethnicity; legal rights and obligations under The Human Rights Code; how implicit bias is unconscious and automatic; and how racism can be challenged.
Starting April 2025, the course will be launched in UM Learn. Full information about the course and its rollout will be made available via the UM Intranet.
Shared fundamental anti-racism learning will enable academic and non-academic units across UM campuses to organise and participate in anti-racism learning for employees that addresses racism and anti-racism specific to their unit or academic disciplines. Central units will also scaffold anti-racism learning opportunities on the mandatory training to provide staff and faculty opportunities for anti-racism learning that continuously nuance and advance knowledge of different racism to promote anti-racist action.
UM-Specific Anti-Racism Learning Opportunities
There are many learning opportunities on racism and anti-racism organized by units, groups, and individuals across UM campuses.
Office of Equity Transformation
The Office of Equity Transformation (OET) provides strategic leadership on anti-racism and anti-racism learning at UM. OET coordinates various lecture series and public events that advance understanding of different racisms and development of anti-racist practices. OET also offers workshops for UM staff, students, and faculty.
- Public Classroom Initiative
- Data Justice Series
- Anti-Ableism Speakers Series
- OET Workshops:
- Intersectionality: Building Understanding and Application
- Anti-Oppression: Framework and Praxis
UM Indigenous
UM Indigenous provides a plethora of learning opportunities specific to anti-Indigenous racism and to advancing Reconciliation.
Central units
Several central units offering anti-racism learning opportunities:
Research centres and institutes
Research centres and institutes also provide programming and public talks related to anti-racism:
Faculties
Some faculties have dedicated offices with resources and learning opportunities specific to the field and disciplines.
Rady Faculty of Health Sciences' Office of Anti-Racism is committed to addressing the racial inequities that exist within our learning and work environments to close the profound gaps in professional education and health service delivery.
Faculties and academic units regularly incorporate anti-racism learning into their programming, shared committee learning, or retreats.
Considerations for Unit and Individual Anti-Racism Learning
Strong learning and education on racism and that advances anti-racism will centre:
- Evidence-based research
- Knowledge and expertise in specific forms of racism and anti-racism
- Voices of racially marginalized people as appropriate for the event or topic, recognizing no one person speaks for an entire community or history, nor can a single talk, event, or series cover all viewpoints and perspectives
- Consideration of how racisms manifest in the specific field of work, profession, academic discipline
- Understanding of the harms of racisms
- Plan for supports and resources for those engaged in the learning
- Self-reflection
Anti-Racism Task Force
The Anti-Racism Task Force, established in 2022, includes diverse members from across the university who have been active in advancing racial justice and decolonization throughout the university through their leadership, experience, subject matter expertise, and community involvement.
UM’s Anti-Racism Task Force recommended areas for immediate action focused on education, policies and processes, and aimed at eliminating all forms of racism across all areas and levels of the institution.
The Task Force’s work gathered voices from across our campuses, while building on decades of community anti-racist activism at UM. This work includes creation of the roles of the Vice-President (Indigenous) and Vice-Provost (Equity), President’s Task Force on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, and Rady Faculty of Health Science’s Disruption of All Forms of Racism Policy.
Recommendations to Address Racism
The Task Force produced an interim report in November 2022 that presented recommendations for immediate action, based on the lived experiences of the task force members and on the significant work already done by community members, key constituency groups and offices within UM. These are foundational recommendations, focusing on education, policies and processes, aimed at laying the groundwork for the process of dismantling racism in all its forms throughout the UM community.
The Task Force recommends that:
- UM define measurable targets, develop clear accountability structures and provide dedicated resources to lead the implementation of these and future recommendations in a manner that supports transparency and accountability and ensures that intersectionality is considered.
- UM establish an overarching anti-racism policy.
- all UM Board of Governors and Senate approved policies and procedures be reviewed via Racial Equity Impact Assessments (REIA) with an intersectional lens.
- UM educate decision makers to inform the appropriate application of an anti-racism lens to internal decisions and processes.
- UM adopt and provide common terminology to engage in anti-racism work at the University of Manitoba, and that this terminology be reviewed regularly to reflect community recommendations on evolving language in anti-racism work.
- UM develop and implement a communication plan, beginning with a website dedicated to educating the university community and promoting the elimination of racism.
- UM establish a process to collect and distribute demographic data to identify and close diversity gaps.
Download the full Interim Report
The Anti-Racism Task Force also has worked tirelessly on recommendations to inform development of an anti-racism strategy for UM. They recommend that an anti-racism strategy centre around five themes:
- representation and equity
- leadership transformation
- safety and wellness
- education and empowerment
- research and academic