After two full days of lectures on Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI), I’ve come to a stark realization: someone like me—who already considers themselves quite liberal back home—might actually come across as unnervingly conservative in this environment.
This disconnect feels especially pronounced in the cultural industries, where my instincts seem entirely misaligned with the prevailing mindset. The biggest difference? In the UK, there is a genuine, deeply held belief that cultural industries should not be driven solely by economic profitability.
I respect this perspective, but as someone with a background in investment and consulting, I find it hard to comprehend how cultural organizations can be so detached from commercial realities. Many of these institutions and professionals operate under the default assumption that funding should come from the government. Not only do they unquestioningly trust the government, but they also seem to believe—without a shadow of doubt—that the government has money to give.
Even in today’s economic downturn, with funding streams drying up, their response is never “How do we generate revenue?” but rather “Who else can we ask for more money. If anything, this feels less like capitalism and more like a socialist system in disguise.
And with the growing emphasis on EDI, government policies now fund not just cultural institutions themselves, but also an ever-expanding list of EDI-driven initiatives—supporting minority communities, LGBTQ+ representation, accessibility for people with disabilities, childcare subsidies for women, and so on.
These efforts are, without question, meaningful and necessary. But the biggest question on my mind is:
Where does the money come from?
How can an entire sector sustain itself purely on goodwill and government grants? No society can advance simply by expanding its wishlist indefinitely. Even when you go grocery shopping, you can’t just bring your shopping list—you need money, too. Or is public funding one of those things, like cleavage—where the more you squeeze, the more you can make appear?
After these lectures, I also have a clearer understanding of how postgraduate education here operates—a place, it seems, designed to dream big and build grand ideals.
When the semester started, every professor emphasized how crucial critical thinking would be. And I must admit, after half a year of experience, they do an excellent job cultivating it. Whether discussing ethics, diversity, law, or technology, students are actively encouraged to challenge surface-level harmony and uncover underlying contradictions and conflicts.
But perhaps because of my background in business consulting, I’ve now come to see critical thinking as merely a baseline skill. Plenty of people can identify problems. Even more can feel the barriers firsthand. Eliminating wrong answers is easy. Even picking the “right” answer isn’t that difficult. The hardest part—the real test of impact—is translating those paper-perfect solutions into reality.
In other words, getting things done.
How do you navigate constraints, work within limited resources, and cut through bureaucratic complexity—all while still achieving something that is (at least somewhat) ethical and (at least broadly) recognized as valuable?
That is the ultimate question.
And it will require trade-offs—human limitations, economic realities, resource scarcity. It means making compromises—between competing priorities, between ideals and feasibility. Demanding everything, refusing to yield an inch, leads only to either “division” or “bankruptcy.” (Which, incidentally, sums up the current states of the US and UK quite well.)
At this point, whenever I take courses on ethics or morality, I feel like the most morally bankrupt person in the room. Maybe I just care too much about money and trust too little about society’s moral standard. Perhaps I’ll never master the effortless detachment of old-money capitalists, who can afford to be unbothered by such concerns.
