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While I am delighted to be here, I have to admit that I thought long and hard about whether to accept the invitation to speak today. I am aware that we’ve heard a lot of voices like mine, that voices like mine can drown out other people's voices, and that really it is time for me, for us at CILIP to stop speaking and start listening.
But we also have to be accountable, to our members, to the profession, to society at large. We have to explain ourselves – not to dictate terms but to set out a commitment to change and to learn, and to listen.
Because all of us that hold leadership positions in this sector have to confront the fact that we are where we are because of a system of unseen privilege – a system which lifts some of us up while holding others down. The basis of that privilege is rightly being challenged. We are being challenged, rightly, to reflect on that privilege critically and to think about the impact it has on other people’s right to shape our profession.
As a profession, we aspire to universality – but we have to be critical about what ‘universal’ really means. I don’t want to be complicit in a system that promotes some voices at the expense of others.
