The white divide in European academia

“In an interview with Michelle Pauli, LSE HE Blog Fellow Tamas Dezso Ziegler and Anna Unger suggest how systemic barriers and administrative burdens reinforce the dominance of Western and Western European institutions while marginalising Eastern European and non-European scholars Michelle: Two years ago, you published a paper, Eurowhiteness in Science , based on József Böröcz’s concept of Eurowhiteness , where you argue that Western European academia operates behind a facade of openness and diversity while maintaining exclusionary institutional structures. In your opinion, what does this look like in practice, and how does it differ from the more visible forms of academic exclusion typically discussed, such as those based on gender and race? It is like a large puzzle of exclusion made up of many small pieces. Tamas: We claim that while Western science portrays itself as an open, competitive, and diverse system, it is actually the opposite. There are multiple elements that create this dynamic; it is like a large puzzle of exclusion made up of many small pieces. For example, when we examine the educational backgrounds of academics in Western institutions, they are mostly trained in the same few countries. Dual labour markets also exist, where foreign-trained scholars typically receive positions at the lower end of the academic hierarchy. In Germany, for instance, the majority of university leaders are men who were trained in the Western part of Germany. Moreover, contrary to what German statistics would suggest, you rarely find high-level non-Western trained professors: statistics are misleading because they mix lower level, temporary post doc and paid doctoral student positions with high-level professorships. Several studies found that access to networks and influential mentors gives German-born academics an advantage in attaining professorial appointments. It is also common in continental Europe to use specific academic titles, such as the habilitation , to exclude foreigners , who have to go through the domestic habilitation procedure to be competitive. Added to this is the problem of scientific journals: in most cases, the editors and reviewers come exclusively from Western European countries, often from the same countries or even the same institutions, which results in a geographical representation bias . Interestingly, the situation is the same whether the subject is STEM , medicine , geography or the social sciences . This creates a conformist environment; empirical research demonstrates a direct link between the diversity of editorial boards and the diversity of published research output. Anna: We explain this as a form of privilege escalation rather than true competition: a pseudo-meritocratic mechanism in which pre-existing structural advantages are transformed into further systemic dominance over the rest of the world. We argue that Western European academic communities use their structural lead – such as greater financial assets, established personal connections, and shared institutional knowhow – to define scientific excellence in their own image. This creates a cycle where initial advantages, such as gatekeeper access and funding, allow these institutions to set the rules of the game. This results in allocating even more resources and prestige to those already inside the system – the Matthew effect . Consequently, this process shuts out scholars from the periphery, including those from Eastern Europe and beyond, by disguising systemic privilege as personal achievement, widening the gap between established Western centres and the academic periphery. Michelle: You have used Cass Sunstein’s concept of ‘ sludge ’ – originally developed to describe bureaucratic friction in public administration – to analyse EU research funding structures. What does ‘ intentional sludge ’ mean in the context of European academic funding, and how do these seemingly neutral administrative processes function as gatekeeping mechanisms that preserve Western privilege? Access to EU funding is hidden behind sludge: it is overly bureaucratic… Anna: We claim that the majority of EU HE funding goes to the same institutions year after year. If you examine the geographical allocation of Horizon projects or ERC grants, you will see an extreme imbalance. This is because access to EU funding is hidden behind sludge: it is overly bureaucratic, and the system is intentionally set up so that many EU countries or non-European countries are unable to attract significant funding. We argue that this is comparable to a situation where the United States only develops its wealthiest regions, such as Manhattan, while abandoning smaller cities or rural areas. While efforts are underway to change this, the EU needs to recognise that it has a serious issue with inclusion, otherwise the systems it creates will reproduce the same mistakes. Tamas: We have not written about this topic, but it is ironic that the EU created a scheme for US scholars in the wake of funding freezes in US universities, but did nothing when academia was attacked in Hungary, and not much for Ukrainian scholars fleeing war either. It reveals how they see non-Westerners. Michelle: You position Eastern European scholars in a particularly complex bind – neither fully inside nor outside the structures of Western privilege, what Böröcz calls ‘dirty whites’ attempting to become ‘pure whites’. In your paper, you describe this as a ‘self-colonising attitude’, which seems to place significant responsibility on Eastern European academics themselves. How do you navigate the tension between critiquing external structures of exclusion and identifying internal complicity? Many Eastern European scholars engage in active self-colonisation: they have utopistic illusions about ‘inclusive’ Western academia. Anna: Yes, we claim Easten European scholars are treated by Western academia as ‘dirty whites’, which is like a second-class whiteness, if you will. With the rise of post-fascist, illiberal, anti-democratic political developments between 2010 and 2026, East-Central Europe became the laboratory of democratic backsliding and Western scholars turned again towards our region as they did in the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, nowadays, this kind of interest is generally one-sided: with innumerable invitations to assist Western colleagues on recent developments in Hungary – providing data, local knowledge, and information about Hungary, usually for free. For years, I provided this help, but after a while I realised that although I have the knowledge and the background, and the research will be based on information I provide, I am not deemed good enough to participate as a peer, but merely as a source of the research. Now I make it clear upfront, I will contribute if my work is properly funded and credited. Tellingly, I haven’t received a response from these potential collaborators. Many Eastern European scholars engage in active self-colonisation: they have utopistic illusions about ‘inclusive’ Western academia, and do not understand the deep underlying structural issues. Michelle: Given your diagnosis, what does meaningful reform look like? What specific policy interventions or institutional changes would you advocate for? Anna: We published our article to get people to think about solutions to these complex issues. We discuss some of these ideas in our paper – greater geographical and ideological diversity among professors and editors and an end to peer review fetishism. We also recognise that these issues can be difficult to address in practice. To promote pluralism and territorial diversity, a mandatory waiting period should be introduced for funded institutions. Tamas: At the EU level, a more equitable allocation of funding and resources across territories would help reduce regional disparities. In connection with this, simplifying procedures is essential to lower the administrative burden and eliminate the EU’s ‘sludge’, which currently acts as a form of territorial gatekeeping. To promote pluralism and territorial diversity, a mandatory waiting period should be introduced for funded institutions; universities that have recently received significant grants would undergo a cooling-off period before becoming eligible again, ensuring a more diverse range of recipients. There are some interesting efforts, such as the Widening Participation and Spreading Excellence actions . However, without deeper structural change, these initiatives fail to alter the fundamental design of EU science funding. Main image: BigSteve CC BY-SA 3.0, modified for the LSE HE Blog. This post is opinion-based and does not reflect the views of the London School of Economics and Political Science or any of its constituent departments and divisions. The post The white divide in European academia first appeared on LSE Higher Education .

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