A diasporic fight that surged with UN-approved ambitions saw optimism dwindle early this month. Jamaican government officials have elevated their call for reparations with a petition to Buckingham Palace. Amidst the anticipation of a response, Prime Minister Andy Burnham has rejected the proceedings, asserting: “The UK does not and will not pay reparations.” A remedy for the government’s refusal of reparations could be found within one of the world’s leading institutions: the University of Oxford.
Although positive discrimination is legally prohibited in the UK, Oxford contextualises each application regarding one’s personal background. The University reviews achievements relative to educational environment and socioeconomic background, a step towards fiscal equity for economically disadvantaged applicants. Indirectly addressing the fact that fewer than 10% of students enrolled in a UK university are Black, Oxford provides a pathway programme, Target Oxbridge, for Black African, Caribbean, and mixed-race students to receive mentoring and application guidance. Discounting Oxford’s programmatic aid for marginalised groups is nonsensical, but to solely believe that justice is ever satisfied is impractical. Oxford, as the top-producing institution of future prime ministers, can establish a precedent for the policymakers of today and embed reparative justice initiatives.
For starters, one Oxford college already employs reparative justice. All Souls College provides a graduate scholarship to address its alumnus Christopher Codrington’s slave-holding past. Codrington, who profited from several hundred enslaved persons in Antigua and Barbados, left £10,000 (several million in today’s currency) to All Souls College. Aside from removing Codrington’s name from the College library and etching the names of enslaved labourers on Codrington’s statue, the College allocates a fully funded scholarship for graduate students who are nationals of a Caribbean country and identify as Black or mixed Black. On top of this, All Souls offers financial support to Oxford’s Black Academic Futures programme, distributing around a million pounds over the past decade to support UK Black and mixed Black graduate students.
All Souls College’s initiative to confront an inhumane history must be implemented across collegiate beneficiaries of the transatlantic slave trade. Undergraduate inclusion in reparational programming is vital, because a decade has lapsed since Labour MP David Lammy accused Oxford of “social apartheid” due to 10 out of 32 colleges not awarding a place to a Black British pupil with A-levels. The University’s most recent statistics, between 2021 and 2025, state that the undergraduate proportion identifying as Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) increased from 24.6% to 30.0%, although without any extrapolation of data for solely Black students. Independent reporting revealed a more specific picture: only 3.3% of undergraduate admissions in 2024 were of Black African or Black Caribbean heritage.
Aside from the juxtaposition of a 3.3% Black undergraduate student body existing at an institution that benefited from millions of enslaved Africans, the demand for systemically implemented reparations is pressing given recent events. Attention to the University has heightened following the death of Black Cambridge Professor Jason Arday. Arday, who faced allegations of plagiarism in his doctoral thesis by self-proclaimed race realist Nathan Cofnas, was hounded by the British press for weeks until his sudden death. The inspection of the treatment of Black scholars within prestigious spaces continued with reports that 17 Oxford academics have signed an online statement “opposing punishment of Nathan Cofnas for whistleblowing”, despite the hereditarianism espoused by Cofnas. Most recently, The Nation published an opinion piece by a Black alumna not only arguing that Oxford has long been shaped by racism, but also insisting that Oxford’s “tendency to undermine the suffering of Black people led to Jason Arday’s demise.”
To help relieve the racial tension surrounding Oxford, colleges with beneficiary ties to African enslavement, such as Balliol College, Christ Church, Exeter College, and Oriel College, should follow the scholarship model designed by All Souls College and create their own endowment-funded scholarships at both the undergraduate and graduate level. Further, following the mounting anti-immigrant sentiment amplified by Reform UK – including Nigel Farage’s proposal to deny visas to countries seeking reparations, such as Jamaica – Oxford can counter right-wing opposition through investment in the Caribbean. Building on Target Oxbridge, Oxford can replicate a preparatory scheme for Black students based in Caribbean government-funded schools. Because enslavement extended beyond fiscal disadvantage to intergenerational psychological harm, Oxford must supply funding by employing mental health professionals to support newly arrived Black Oxford students. Amongst discussion about protections of Black academics in elite institutions, and the almost-ritualistic encounters of racism marginalised students experience in predominantly white spaces, one thing is clear: accessible mental health help from the University is imperative. Counsellors funded by college endowments and trained to address imposter syndrome and racial prejudice would not replace institutional reparations, but supplement them, addressing the psychological harm that material reparations of a scholarship alone cannot repair.
While Caribbean leaders return to the drawing board to rectify the inhumanity their ancestors endured, the feasibility of reparations appears bleak but not impossible. The largest obstacle is the absence of accountability required to believe reparations are owed at all. The lack of action can be attributed to the belief that slavery was never technically illegal or legal in the UK; British constituents largely oppose redressing Britain’s involvement in one of humanity’s greatest atrocities. Despite the ambiguity found within Somerset v. Stewart that technically (but not immediately, nor unanimously) abolished England’s practice of slavery, the potential price of restorative justice should also not stand as a pinpoint of prevention. Until 2015, UK taxpayers paid the government’s loan to compensate slaveholding families for their loss of “property” (enslaved Africans) after emancipation. As part of the Slave Compensation Act 1837, white enslavers received £20 million, equivalent to approximately £17 billion. Historical evidence crystallises the possibility that the UK government can take on a loan in the interest of a population – albeit the question is which population.
Regardless, amidst prime ministers rejecting responsibility and refusing to issue reparations, now is the time for Oxford to serve as the globally leading institution it is so prestigiously upheld to be. The University, with an acquired wealth obtained from benefactors and alumni, who’ve capitalised from the tragedy W E B Du Bois declared “the cause of all sorrow”, has an opportunity to initiate a route to national reparations. Oxford must succeed where Westminster has failed: reparatory justice for Caribbean descendants of enslaved Africans.
