Where is the School Pride?

Written by Anon Yu Henriksen, International News Staff Writer

I was first introduced to SOAS by a friend I knew through the Norwegian Socialist Youth. They described it as a place filled with like-minded radical and progressive students, and as an institution well-known for teaching beyond Eurocentric narratives. I have always been particularly interested in anti-racist and postcolonial thought, so SOAS seemed like the perfect institution for me. When I received my UCAS offer, I was ecstatic. I even chose SOAS over a Russell Group university.

However, after arriving at SOAS, I quickly realised I was among the minority of students who seemed openly excited to be there. Many of the people I met instead seemed to view SOAS as a ‘safety’ school or C-choice, and some even seemed ashamed to go there instead of top-ranking schools.

My personal experience at SOAS has been overwhelmingly positive and nothing short of how my friend described it. I have been able to study anti-racist approaches to world politics, and taken modules on postcolonial theory and capitalist-skeptical political economy. It is hard for me to imagine other institutions where one could receive such an academic offering. Yet, instead of encountering a student body equally excited by these opportunities, I have overwhelmingly encountered negativity. Constant complaints and an internalised narrative that SOAS students are mere UCL or LSE rejects has seemingly dominated the student discourse.

Part of this attitude is structural. As a highly specialised institution surrounded by highly ranked neighbours, SOAS exists in a prestige hierarchy that its own institutional nature does not easily map onto. SOAS is a specialised, critical, and intentionally alternative university. This makes it difficult for it to meaningfully compete with large, generalist, orthodox institutions in conventional rankings. A university grounded in critical studies of three specific regions may never fully align with the conventional measures of prestige or ranking success.

Let me be clear: there are many legitimate reasons to be discontent with our university. I myself hold many such frustrations. Concerns about leadership responses to the Israeli genocide of Palestinians, consequent tensions around student activism and democracy, and persistent administrative inefficiencies all shape student dissatisfaction. These are real issues and deserve thorough critique.

What I find troubling, however, is shame rooted purely in reputation: the idea that SOAS is a non-prestigious or unserious place to study. I also believe this pessimism leads to a sense of apathy when students face administrative or leadership issues.

I know that many domestic students might feel a sense of shame about going to SOAS, as it is viewed as lesser compared to the likes of UCL, LSE, or KCL. For us international students, the problem is often that people in our home countries have never even heard of SOAS. I have lost count of how many times I have had to explain what SOAS is, carefully breaking down the abbreviation and explaining what UoL is.

I used to approach this as an embarrassing performance: the fall of a previously gifted child who now studies at an institution people barely know of. However, as time has passed and I have tried to reclaim my pride in SOAS. I have started tackling this explanation rather as a friendly introduction to an institution everyone ought to know of, although it is small and focused on niche topics. On that note, I have also noticed that as I increasingly have met more people in circles related to East Asian studies and diplomacy, the number of people who know of SOAS and think highly of it has also increased. Despite this, the vast majority of ‘ordinary’ people I meet abroad have still never heard of SOAS. It is my belief that we, the student body, can do something about this, and that we must approach the world with institutional pride. 

It is time to reclaim the narrative about SOAS. Our university has distinctive intellectual strengths. Yes, institutional shortcomings must be addressed, but beyond SOAS’ reputation for administrative and leadership problems, the student body in itself also plays a significant role in shaping the external perception of our university. If we continue to reproduce narratives of mediocrity, we end up reinforcing them. However, if we foreground the intellectual ambition, critical thinking, and wonderful diversity that continue to define this space, we contribute to building a reputation that reflects our strengths instead of our weaknesses.

Ultimately, SOAS is not only its rankings, external perceptions, or poor leadership, it is also the students who inhabit it. That means that we, the students, have a lot of agency in shaping our university’s identity. It is time we reclaim our school pride.