The diversity officer at Goldsmith University is facing suspension following a recent twitter row in which she allegedly wrote that all white men should be killed.
27 year-old Bahar Mustafa, who acts as the Student Union’s Welfare and Diversity officer, will be sacked if 3% of the Union sign a petition calling for her resignation, amidst complaints that she uses racist language on her twitter account. Following the tweets, in which she allegedly banned white students from attending an event on diversity because it ‘didn’t concern them’, students at the University, situated in south London, began a petition to have Mustafa sacked.
“The current welfare and diversity officer has used hate speech based on race and gender,” the petition on change.org says.
“For example, the consistent use of hashtags such as #killallwhitemen and #misandry, and publicly calling someone ‘white trash’ under the official GSU Welfare and Diversity Officer Twitter account.”
In a video, Mustafa, who has since deactivated her twitter account, defended herself by claiming that, as an ethnic minority, she cannot be racist. She also added that, her use of terms like ‘white trash’ and the hashtag #killallwhitemen were not racist at all, but were ‘in jokes’ that she, and other members of the “queer feminist community used to express themselves”.
“It’s a way of reclaiming the power from the trauma many of us experience as queers, women, people of colour, who are on the receiving end of racism, misogyny and homophobia daily,” she added.
An open letter, in support of Mustafa, which refutes the “attacks based on a series of wilful distortions and omissions” has also been uploaded on change.org and now has nearly 1,500 signatures.
