4 days ago
University of Edinburgh could abandon anti-Semitism definition
The University of Edinburgh could drop a definition of anti-Semitism following a report.
Academics have audited the university's links to the empire, particularly the role played by Arthur Balfour, a former prime minister and Edinburgh chancellor, whose influential support for a Jewish homeland they have branded 'racist'.
The report on colonial connections has recommended that the university drops the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism that it currently adheres to.
It claims that this definition inhibits free discussion of wrongs committed by Israel, as this might come under the scope of the recognised definition for anti-Semitism.
Sir Peter Mathieson, the university's principal, has said that discussions about scrapping the definition are still continuing against the backdrop of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Reflection on the definition comes following the publication of the report Decolonised Transformations, produced by the university's research and engagement working group set up in the wake of Black Lives matter protests.
It was co-led by Tommy Curry, Edinburgh's chairman in Africana philosophy and black male studies, who has publicly contended that 'phallicism (worship of the phallus)…remains an under-theorised aspect of race/gender theory despite being observable in every theatre of war & colonial oppression such as Palestine'.
Mr Curry, the co-leader of the research project, was criticised in 2017 for a radio interview in which he talked about 'killing white people in context' and the fact that 'in order to be equal, in order to be liberated, some white people may have to die'.
The same year, he published a paper which argued that the 'fear-desire-anxiety of the white woman' near a black male 'creates the conditions for rape'. In a discussion of the postcolonial thinker Frantz Fanon, he wrote that 'the white woman cries out for rape'.
The controversial psychiatrist claimed the 'fear of rape not itself ' could be a 'cry out for rape', and that a woman afraid of black men was'nothing but a putative sexual partner' just as a racist man is a 'repressed homosexual'.
Fellow authors also include Esther Stanford-Xosei, a reparations activist, and Shaira Vadasaria, a lecturer in 'race and decolonial studies'.
Their report traces the current violence in Gaza to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which the statesman, serving as foreign secretary and as chancellor at Edinburgh, offered support for the idea of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East.
This 'irreversibly triggered a process of settler-colonial dispossession and dehumanisation in Palestine', which continues 'following the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023' with what it terms 'Israel's war of annihilation'.
To address this link historical to the foundation of Israel, which happened 18 years after Balfour's death, academics have recommended that Edinburgh establish a 'Palestine studies centre'.
Edinburgh may also create a scholarship programme for students of Palestinian heritage, and promote greater levels of teaching on 'race, racism, settler-colonial dispossession, refugees, migration, displacement'.
University bosses have also been urged to divest from any investments in companies linked to Israel, a process that has already begun.
Their report criticises Britain for inaugurating the dispossession of 'Palestine's Indigenous community'.
History of slavery and racism
It states that at the time of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, 'General Allenby was put in charge of Britain's 1917 Palestine campaign that led to the occupation of Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip '.
The report makes no mention of the fact that Britain was fighting the Ottoman Empire, which had occupied the land of Palestine for 400 years, with the help of Arab allies.
The report makes further claims about the 'outsize influence' that Edinburgh had on Britain's history of slavery and racism.
Academics have claimed that the university was 'a haven for professors and alumni who developed theories of racial inferiority and white supremacism, such as the idea that Africans were inferior to whites'.
The report once cites a small footnote written by alumnus David Hume, in which the renowned 18th century philosopher wrote: 'I am apt to suspect the N------ to be naturally inferior to the whites'.
To address this kind of legacy, recommendations have been made to establish another research centre for the 'study of racisms', in addition to further decolonisation of the curriculum.
