'Ethnic diversity can mean so many different things'

When Mohammad Fazlhashemi came to Umeå as a visiting student from Iran in 1977, he was one of few foreign students there. He wrote his thesis on a 12th century Persian thinker — a subject that some people considered to be obscure and irrelevant to Sweden.

He emphasises that he's always been well-received in Umeå:

'I had great support and I got extra help when I wrote my thesis. When the department was unable to provide satisfactory supervision I received extra funding for fees and travel to assistant supervisors at other universities in Sweden instead, as well as for proofreading my thesis.

However, not all students are as lucky and during his time at Umeå, Mohammad Fazlhashemi has been greatly involved with improving the situation for students with non-Swedish backgrounds. He took the initiative to founding the Equal Treatment Council at the university and was appointed its chairman by the vice-chancellor.

'Our task is to ensure that that the Equal Treatment of Students at Universities Act and the Discrimination Act are complied with at the university," he explains. The council has also worked on producing statistics as regards students and employees and their ethnic/national background.

Mohammad Fazlhashemi has pushed for the university to recognise the differences how culture influences study habits, to provide support for students with foreign backgrounds. He teaches about such issues as part of continuing education for teachers and supervisors.

'Ethnic diversity means many different things, there are so many aspects and perspectives to work with; but if people are prepared, if teachers are aware of how different groups can react, the cultural clashes will be milder. Knowledge of these things must always be part of developing educational competence.

Mohammad Fazlhashemi has written a report, based on interviews with around 20 students with non-Swedish backgrounds, about their experiences of studying at a Swedish HEI: Möten, myter och verkligheter — studenter med annan etnisk bakgrund berättar om möten i den svenska universitetsmiljön (Meetings, myths and realities — students of different ethnic backgrounds talk about meetings in Swedish higher education).

There has been a recent upsurge of interest in the Muslim world, and Mohammad Fazlhashemi's research is often referred to, not least in the media.

'It still happens that experts present my research area — the Muslim history of ideas, focusing on the construction of the image of the West among Muslim thinkers and the Muslim political history of ideas — as a narrow field.

'My supervisor advised me not to sit and wait to be discovered, but to be active in marketing my research and making it accessible to a wider audience: ‘Be visible, make yourself unavoidable!' I've really benefitted from that advice," says Mohammad Fazlhashemi.

Last updated: 2011-12-14

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