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The University of York has postponed a Brexit conference due to having all male speakers

The decision comes ‘in order to create a more balanced statement’


The University of York's "Brexit and History Conference" has been postponed due to a lack of diversity on the panel, with the originally planned speakers all being male.

Dr. Janina Ramirez, a York graduate who is now an academic at Oxford, called out the planned all-male panel.

The University of York responded saying the conference has now been postponed "in order to create a more balanced programme."

In a statement, Professor Lawrence Black, head of York's History Department who helped organise the event, said: "It has come to my attention that a conference organised to explore issues related to Brexit and History has an all-male speaker list.

"The University – and the Department of History – are utterly committed to developing, maintaining and supporting a culture of equality and diversity. The current gender balance reflected in this conference programme does not reflect those values. We have got this wrong and I apologise for that.

"For this reason I have asked the organisers to postpone the conference in order to create a more balanced programme. The Department’s Equality and Diversity Committee will work further with our institutional Equality and Diversity Committee to ensure that all of our future events reflect the widest possible diversity and to ensure that this does not happen again."