The RSC accredits degrees. The process for this is outlined in the accreditation procedures, and in a UK context this incorporates the QAA benchmark statement in Chemistry. Accreditation is an endorsement by the RSC, which is valuable as an ‘externally validated mark of excellence by a leading professional body’.

Accreditation can be awarded to Universities beyond the UK. This includes some near neighbours like the Republic of Ireland, and others much further afield.

I would like to use this blog to consider the ethics of accrediting degrees in countries where homosexuality is illegal. This is not a theoretical exercise; I believe that the RSC has done this in four countries (maximum prison terms for consensual homosexual sex in brackets):

Malaysia (20y);
Mauritius (5y);
Oman (3y); and
UAE (14y).

I am not going to focus on the specifics of each country, but rather on what it means for the RSC to accredit courses which take place in these legal regimes. In the spirit of transparency, though, I believe that such laws are wrong. This must be a common-enough view among millenials in the UK, but I recognise that my perspective may not be shared by many people in the states with these laws. This geographical aspect is important for the whole blog, and I present a map of LGBT-sympathy as measured by voting in the UN.

States shaded blue supported a UN vote on LGBT rights; those in red opposed it. Grey states did not vote, and black states are not UN members. Image credit: self (Wikipedia)

Thesis Statement

The RSC should not accredit degrees in countries which criminalise homosexuality as there is no way of fulfilling its stated commitments to supporting LGBT+ scientists while doing so.

Terminology Note

I am using the term ‘homosexual’ throughout, as this is the basis of the legal analysis I have used to identify homophobic countries. I am using the term ‘LGBT+‘ as it is the language used in the RSC report discussed below.

Legalistic Responses

I can find no legalistic barrier to the RSC endorsing degrees in countries where students or staff can be imprisoned for consensual homosexual sex.

The charter and by-laws are silent on any kind of equality, and the accreditation procedure seems to follow in suit. It could perhaps be argued that the accreditation procedure would protect students visiting these countries on placement (though risk assessments), but there is no relevant RSC-mandated standard for courses once people reside in a country for study.

UK laws such as the 2010 Equality Act protecting sexual orientation are - like all national laws - bounded by the territory of their jurisdiction. While this seems to mean that the RSC can legally endorse non-UK degrees in explicitly homophobic settings, it also has the seed of really thorny issue for any organisation operating in an international context: the ethos of the organisation should respond closely to the values of its home, and cultural features persist beyond the minimum legal responsibilities of an organisation.

Policy Responses

If such accreditation is permitted legalistically, is it consistent with RSC policy?

Existing Policy Positions

The RSC inclusion strategy focuses on (1) understanding the landscape, (2) fostering change, and (3) celebrating success. To this end, the Society has committed to certain goals and behaviours, including:

Diversity, inclusion and accessibility will be embedded across all our activities.
Diversity responsibilities are recognised at the highest levels and driven by our Council and Boards, as well as senior management.
Our Inclusion and Diversity Committee will drive and monitor progress in our diversity policies, procedures and activities.
Our staff are informed of their individual responsibilities to support diversity and inclusion and, where appropriate, have relevant objectives to support this.
Our members and the wider community feel that our activities are accessible across all demographics, are aware of the diversity implications in their activities, and are supported with information and tools to make improvements.
We initiate and take part in distinct activities and projects dedicated to driving improvements in the diversity and inclusivity of the chemical science community.
We measure the impact and progress of improving diversity and accessibility across all areas.

Research into the LGBT+ landscape has recently been commissioned by the RSC. The report touches on themes of barriers to entry, the pressures on LGBT+ scientists to leave scientific jobs, and the way that international attitudes to LGBT+ identities are often unwelcoming.

RSC Infographic outlining the low rate of disclosing sexual identities at work among scientists.

I hold that this report suffers from the same teaching erasure which I argue characterises the RSC website, and perhaps does not deal robustly with the unique situation of students (though 242 of the 1025 survey responses were from undergraduates, it is unclear whether any of them were interviewed). For example, terms like ‘workplace’ are used in a way which might not reflect a student’s conception of their University experience. In the context of a pilot study, these issues seem tolerable within the helpful quantitative and qualitative findings.

The report paints a picture which isn’t great for LGBT+ scientists, and the internationalisation of science is explicitly identified as something associated with difficulty or even danger. The recommendations designed to help scientists bring their whole self to work are strikingly incompatible with national laws criminalising homosexuality: including LGBT+ status in an email signature, for example, could be a huge personal risk.

Relating Policy Positions to International Accreditation

The RSC has clear policy statements in support of training and supporting homosexual scientists; some of the justification for the drive towards diversity is that a more diverse workforce is more successful. It recognises that there are significant cultural barriers to homosexual scientists succeeding in professional science, and that these can be matters of formal policy or harder-to-define culture. Further, the RSC LGBT+ report accepts that international views on homosexuality have significant consequences on the careers of these scientists.

And yet the RSC’s support does not - perhaps cannot - extend to the students on its accredited courses in certain countries, or the staff who teach them. Maybe this is even appropriate: the laws of the land probably should take precedence over the accreditation criteria of an awarding body.

Aside from the commitment to scientists, the RSC has publicly committed to behaving in a way which is inclusive. It seems to me that, for example, that the ambition

Diversity, inclusion and accessibility will be embedded across all our activities

has not been realised in RSC degrees operating in an environment which is uninclusive by national statute.

The RSC does not have to accredit degrees in such nations; no-one is forcing the RSC to get involved with undergraduate degrees in these countries. By endorsing an education within a system which criminalises homosexuality, it makes a certain set of moral judgements. These judgements are what I am most interested in exploring.

Coherent Moral Positions

I think there are several coherent moral positions which could be adopted to justify the decision of the RSC to accredit degrees in a homophobic country. I want to consider a few of the ones I find most plausible. I disagree with all of them, and will offer my rebuttal to each.

My ultimate view is that the RSC should not accredit degrees in countries which criminalise homosexuality. This approach respects the national legal systems without compromising the values of the Society.

A Narrow View of Accreditation

The position: Accreditation is a technical judgement on the extent to which a degree fulfils the accreditation criteria. It is right to accredit degrees which satisfy the assessors that the rigour/coverage/assessments are satisfactory; to withhold accreditation due to factors outside the published criteria would be wrong.

The rebuttal: While this position perhaps defends past practice consistently, it cannot defend future actions. The accreditation criteria are not objective statements, but were created by the RSC in a particular historical context. They can be changed by the RSC; if the RSC is truly concerned with the plight of homosexual scientists, it shall change the accreditation criteria to embed a substantive EDI criterion at the next possible opportunity and stop accrediting degrees in homophobic states in the meantime. Doing otherwise would be objectively incompatible with its inclusion strategy.

Moral Scope

The position: The RSC has no right to meddle in the laws of any country. Accreditation is not a vehicle for transmitting ideological values, but rather for the narrow purpose of supporting the progress of chemical science in ways which are sympathetic to national contexts. Some of these contexts are homophobic, but this shouldn’t stop us promoting chemistry.

The rebuttal: This view assumes that the discipline can be advanced without diversity, which seems directly at odds with the stated policy basis of the RSC: its reports have repeatedly emphasised that diversity among scientists leads to better science.

Doing the best for science means retaining LGBT+ scientists.
LGBT+ Landscape Report Launch webpage

Accrediting degrees which socialise students into a professional identity of hiding homosexuality does not support the progress of chemical science, according to the RSC. The Moral Scope position is internally consistent, but not compatible with the RSC’s understanding of workforce diversity.

This is a technical argument, but I think there is also a substantial moral claim: homophobia is bad for reasons which do not relate at all to workforce productivity (e.g. because of the inherent dignity of human life). I note, though, that such arguments are not prominent in the RSC’s EDI documents. Arguably, the Moral Scope view recognises the homophobia but simply does not judge it to be as morally significant as the moral case for accreditation. This is an extraordinarily strong claim; if it is the current position of the RSC, I think the community could benefit from exploring such ideas publicly. I recognise, for example, that my position might be criticised on the basis of unrealistic moral purity, but a debate would help to articulate how far moral principles should extend.

A Force for Change

The position: By bringing homophobic countries into our accredited community, we gain the chance to influence their views. Growing our international community gives the RSC a wider platform to showcase our values, including our LGBT+ inclusivity.

The rebuttal: The RSC’s own reporting has shown that LGBT+ scientists are discriminated against, especially in international contexts; we do not yet have a community which values LGBT+ chemists as much as other chemists so showcasing seems premature. The showcasing of values is a less significant feature of globalisation than the harm done to the under-privileged LGBT+ members of our community.

There is a secondary pragmatic (i.e. non-moral) debate about whether the Force for Change argument is an effective strategy. It is very unclear to me how accrediting a degree has any influence at all over national policy, and I feel that the ‘Force for Change’ argument would need a lot of development before it became viable on a technical basis.

Conclusion

This conversation is about the way that incompatible moral views clash. There isn’t any way of elegantly reconciling two parties with binary views on a moral issue. I thought it might be constructive in closing to compare the RSC’s situation to that of the Anglican communion, where some form of political reconciliation has been possible.

The Anglican church has long discussed its stance on homosexuality. The international dimensions of this discussion are fascinating, because the national perspectives are valued by the Synod. It seems likely that different national churches wish to move in different directions on this issue, and yet the party line is that specific services such as marriage are reserved for the union between man and woman. There are a series of elaborate ways that the Church of England has tried to soften this locally, but the homophobic symbolism of Anglicanism remains very clear.

As an institution, the Anglican church is committed to a specific political process: the mechanism of voting is used to navigate the incompatible positions which its members have reached through thought and prayer.

The RSC is not operating in this model of political conversation. National approaches to homosexuality are decided at tables where the RSC has no seat. Conversely, the process of accreditation is not a political compromise but instead lies squarely in the gift of the accreditor. Endorsing degrees in homophobic contexts seems to me a very clear act of symbolism: the RSC is prepared to compromise its stated commitment to inclusivity in order to accredit degrees. It is hard for me to see this as anything but a unilateral decision by the Society: no one is forcing the RSC to become complicit in international expressions of homophobia.

Legalistically, it seems entitled to accredit degrees in homophobic states, but such decisions open the organisation up to political charges of hypocrisy. As a large part of the RSC’s approach to improving diversity is to influence the cultures in its communities, the loss of moral authority is a significant risk.

RSC Infographic describing some of the cultural problems facing LGBT+ scientists in the workplace.

I am unsure what calculations are happening behind the scenes, and concede that these might have moral weight. Perhaps international accreditation provides direct and extravagant funding for LGBT+ member networks, for example. I am also ignorant of the detailed internal workings of the RSC. Perhaps international accreditation simply has not yet been considered in this light, and when the procedure is reviewed it could be readily incorporated. Perhaps the teaching erasure within the RSC has led EDI agendas to deprioritise scrutiny of UG education, and improving the standing of teaching as a professional activity would help bring this perspective to research-dominated policy agendas.

Suggestions

I urge the RSC to review whether its approach to international degree accreditation adequately preserves the inclusive ambitions of the organisation.

I also urge them to publish the detailed EDI principles it applies when judging applications for accreditation of any degree. Specifically, this should be done by incorporating explicit and rigorous EDI requirements into future accreditation criteria.

I recognise that these actions may take some time to implement consistently (as the accreditation cycle is so long), but an interim statement from the RSC committing to specific and accountable actions with transparent timings would be welcome in the meantime.

Perhaps to end it is worth stating that I assume good faith on the part of the RSC. I am critical of these accreditation decisions, but hopeful that the inclusivity strategy was meant as more than fine sentiment. I see the current EDI-accreditation tension as one of the necessary hypocrisies involved in changing the RSC to make it more inclusive.

Accrediting Degrees in Homophobic States