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King’s College Replaces Portraits of its Founders with Ethnic Minorities | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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Kings College London. Getty Images


London- King’s College London agreed to replace portraits of some of its founding fathers with ethnic minorities and women amid student pressure, said the dean.

According to the daily Telegraph, the plan to move portraits of former faculty staff from the main entrance wall and replace them with more BME scholars are being implemented by the world famous Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, following concern among academics that the current classroom environment is too intimidating for ethnic minorities.

The proposals were unveiled by Professor Patrick Leman, the Institute’s dean of education, who said that the faculty should not just be filled with busts of 1920s bearded men, but rather more modern, diverse scholars so that the Institute feels less alienating.

Founded in 1924 as a hospital medical school, the Institute owes its existence to a donation from Dr. Henry Maudsley, a pioneering British psychiatrist, and neurologist Sir Frederick Mott, who drew up plans for university courses for training in the field of psychiatry in 1896.