What Edinburgh University's campaign of self-destruction says about modern Britain

Telegraph

5 days ago

Edinburgh University, that most genteel of institutions, is not all it seems: the ancient facades provided cover for white supremacism in the past and continue to harbour racism today.
At least, that is, according to a new review of the institution's 'historic racial and colonial injustices'. Apparently, the prestigious university played an 'outsized' role in developing 'racist scientific theories' at the same time as profiting from the transatlantic slave trade.
This devastating critique was not commissioned by Edinburgh's rivals but by the university itself. Led by academics, the investigation into the university's historic links to slavery and racism is being lauded as one of 'the most ambitious, wide-ranging and sustained consultations of its kind'. The result is 130 pages of self-flagellation.
A light is shone on horrors such as buildings funded by donors who had links to the slave trade and the British empire; a room containing 300 skulls reportedly used in the study of phrenology; and student notebooks from the 1790s that suggest philosopher Dugald Stewart taught that white Europeans were superior to other races.
At Edinburgh University, widely recognised the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment, the past itself is now on trial. Fingers are pointed at great scholars such as the aforementioned Stewart, Adam Ferguson, David Hume and Adam Smith. The legacy of these intellectual giants has been assessed by today's pygmies and found to be that most heinous of all things: 'damaging'.
What's seemingly missed by the review's authors is that scholars of the past, just like today, reflect the attitudes and values of the era they inhabit. Phrenology, for example, has been so thoroughly debunked that few current students are likely to have ever encountered the word.
Taking potshots at long dead scholars for going along with the prejudices of their time overlooks nuance and progress. The Edinburgh review, in its determination to uncover white supremacism, is forced to rapidly brush past the inconvenient fact that Stewart was also an abolitionist.
The desperate search for racism ends up discrediting the entire Enlightenment project. Yet, in reality, the intellectual gains of this important period in time benefitted everyone, not just white men. And as a nation we should be proud of this legacy.
For example, the work of philosophers such as John Locke was truly revolutionary in promoting the idea that all men (and later women) are created equal. The Enlightenment's scientific advances sowed the seeds of the industrial revolution which lifted people around the world out of poverty. And, ironically, the academic methods developed at this time made modern universities possible.
Compared to the astonishing advances in thought made by the Enlightenment philosophers, the academics who compiled the Edinburgh race review are engaged in an anti-intellectual act of self-harm. Their report inevitably leads to calls for reparations in the present. The authors want formal apologies to be issued, buildings to be renamed and scholarships set aside specifically for black students.
Scholarships are an important means of making higher education more accessible. Indeed, the money wasted on what's been heralded as 'the most extensive investigation of its kind carried out by any university in the UK' could have been better spent funding current students.
But scholarships should be awarded on the basis of economic need or academic merit. Doling out money based on skin colour reintroduces racial categories into the university, turning back the progress the Enlightenment made possible.
The Edinburgh review reveals that researching the legacy of slavery now has nothing to do with the past and everything to do with the concerns of today's cultural elite; especially in universities, but across other areas of culture and learning, from museums to galleries. Edinburgh University should celebrate its great philosophers and scientists. Academics cannot stand on the shoulders of giants they have kicked to the ground. This attitude is not only bad for universities, but for Britain as a whole.