Edinburgh University has no need to apologise for sins of the past

Times

a day ago

The speed with which Edinburgh University's vice-chancellor Peter Mathieson has moved to issue a 'deep apology' for the university's colonial past and its links with slavery is predictable, but misguided.
It was prompted by a race review which, for the past four years has been investigating the role played by the university and some of its most celebrated thinkers, reaching back to the 18th-century Enlightenment, in promoting 'racist ideas' and 'the advancement of colonialism'.
Its conclusions are extreme. It argues that Edinburgh was 'a haven for professors and alumni who developed theories of racial inferiority and white supremacism'. It played 'an outsized role in developing pseudo-sciences … that habitually positioned black people at the bottom and white people at the top.' It accuses the university's sometime chancellor, and later foreign secretary, AJ Balfour, of being a racist, and blames his 1948 declaration, creating the state of Israel, for the 'historical harms' that have led to the present Middle East conflict; it goes on to recommend the university ceases 'its direct and indirect investments that are supporting the Israeli government's human rights and international law violations against Palestinian people today'.
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Most contentious of all, it proposes the university should drop the internationally accepted definition of antisemitism, on the grounds it prevents free discussion of Palestinian rights.
This is dangerous territory. It goes well beyond the review's remit in examining the university's past links to colonialism, and suggests it should adopt a pro-Palestinian stance. By accepting the review and its recommendations, Mathieson is pitching the university into the centre of a political maelstrom. Across the western world, universities have been striving to maintain an equilibrium between those who demonstrate for Palestinian rights, and Jewish students exposed to antisemitism; in America, Harvard University and others are fighting for their very future as Donald Trump accuses them of supporting anti-Israel protesters and therefore inciting terrorism.
If Edinburgh goes along with the recommendations of this review, on the grounds that a long-dead chancellor was responsible for what the review calls 'Israel's war of annihilation in Gaza', it will surrender any claim of independence at a time when establishing peace depends on diplomacy not defiance. Taking sides at a time when feelings run so high is the last thing a university should be doing.
From the start, however, the review makes it abundantly clear that balance is not a priority. It says its aim is 'to shine a light on some of the darker aspects of university history', and in doing so it discounts the civilising aspects of Enlightenment thinkers such as David Hume and Adam Ferguson, preferring instead to focus on their racist inclinations, which, claims the review, have filtered through to the university's institutions today.
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The review digs out, once again, the footnote Hume appended to one of his letters, where he suggested non-whites were of inferior intelligence; it castigates medical research at the university which examined the size and shape of African and West Indian skulls in a study known as 'comparative craniology'; it attacks, as a racist venture, the Darien expedition backed by the university, to set up a colony in Central America in the 1690s; and it even criticises the botanists searching for rare plants, who went along with it.
Its conclusions are stark. The university, it says, was 'implicated in the practices and systems of enslavement and colonialism and apartheid and genocide of colonialised people across the world'.Yet even as it draws up the charge street, the review concedes the record is not quite as bleak as it is painted. 'Truth-telling,' it admits, 'is not without its complications.' Thus, as the abolition of slavery was being proposed in the late 18th century, multiple meetings were held by students and staff to debate its merits. Dugald Stewart, who taught race as part of his philosophy course, and believed Europeans were superior to non-whites, nevertheless argued that slavery was 'a moral abomination' and took issue with Hume on the subject. Even Ferguson, who is accused of holding racists views, believed that all human beings belonged to the same species. What is more, such views on race were common across Europe at the time, and were certainly not confined to Edinburgh.
All of this might have contributed to a genuine debate on the study of race and race relations in the Enlightenment period. Instead the review chooses to see these early links to colonialism and slavery as influencing the whole ethos of the modern university, and proposes steps to reverse it. Among the recommendations are some that would cost the university millions of pounds at a time when its finances are in a perilous state, and would make the study of colonialism and slavery 'central to the [university's] educative mission'.
It proposes the setting up of a fully-staffed centre for the study of slavery and colonialism; it recommends that all buildings financed originally by donations linked to the slave trade should be renamed, and any endowments deriving from the trade transferred to promote the hiring of academics from black or minority backgrounds.
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What the review at no stage recognises, is how the debate on academic freedom has developed since the early days of the Black Lives Matter campaign. There has been a pushback from universities which have found that promoting the interests of ethnic minorities over those of others has sometimes led to the cancelling or restricting of lecturers whose views do not conform to the current trend. Some higher education institutions have faced heavy fines for failing to stand up for the interests of academics targeted by students.
There is nothing wrong with exploring a university's history, however unsavoury. That history should, however, be seen in the context of its time and judged against contemporary states of knowledge and opinion. Visiting the sins of the past on the universities of today is not only unfair, it may turn out to be counterproductive. The Edinburgh vice-chancellor's endorsement is one he could come to regret.