Edinburgh University had ‘outsized' role in creating racist scientific theories, inquiry finds

The Guardian

3 days ago

The University of Edinburgh, one of the UK's oldest and most prestigious educational institutions, played an 'outsized' role in the creation of racist scientific theories and greatly profited from transatlantic slavery, a landmark inquiry into its history has found.
The university raised the equivalent of at least £30m from former students and donors who had links to the enslavement of African peoples, the plantation economy and exploitative wealth-gathering throughout the British empire, according to the findings of an official investigation seen by the Guardian.
The inquiry found that Edinburgh became a 'haven' for professors who developed theories of white supremacism in the 18th and 19th centuries, and who played a pivotal role in the creation of discredited 'racial pseudo-sciences' that placed Africans at the bottom of a racial hierarchy.
It reveals the ancient university – which was established in the 16th century – still had bequests worth £9.4m that came directly from donors linked to enslavement, colonial conquests and those pseudo-sciences, and which funded lectures, medals and fellowships that continue today.
Sir Peter Mathieson, the university's principal, who commissioned the investigation, said its findings were 'hard to read' but that Edinburgh could not have a 'selective memory' about its history and achievements.
In an official statement, Mathieson extended the university's deepest apologies for 'its role not only in profiting materially from practices and systems that caused so much suffering but also in contributing to the production and perpetuation of racialised thought which significantly impacted ethnically and racially minoritised communities'.
The investigation also found that:
The university had explicitly sought donations from graduates linked to transatlantic slavery to help build two of its most famous buildings, Old College on South Bridge in the 1790s and the old medical school near Bristo Square in the 1870s.
The donations were equivalent to approximately £30m in today's prices, or the higher figure of £202m based on the growth of wages since they were received, and as much as £845m based on economic growth since then.
The university had at least 15 endowments derived from African enslavement and 12 linked to British colonialism in India, Singapore and South Africa, and 10 of those were still active and had a minimum value today of £9.4m.
The university holds nearly 300 skulls gathered in the 1800s from enslaved and dispossessed people by phrenologists in Edinburgh who wrongly believed skull shape determined a person's character and morals.
Fewer than 1% of its staff and just over 2% of its students were Black, well below the 4% of the UK population, and despite Edinburgh's status as a global institution.
The report's authors said their findings raised serious questions about the university's role as the seat of the Scottish Enlightenment in the 18th and 19th centuries when it became famous for the work of luminaries such as the economist Adam Smith and the philosopher David Hume.
The fact its history was in part 'connected to slavery and colonialism, the violent taking of bodies, labour, rights, resources, land and knowledge is deeply jarring, not least for an institution so closely associated with the humanistic and liberal values of the Scottish Enlightenment', it said.
The report's authors urged the university to redirect the money from those bequests to hiring academics from Black and minority backgrounds and on research and teaching about racism and colonialism, partly to combat the institutional racism that permeated the institution, they argued.
Among a sweeping series of 47 recommendations, the review's authors have also asked Edinburgh to support the unadoption of the definition of antisemitism published by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) because it stifled 'free conversation' about Israel's policies and actions in Gaza and the West Bank. Most UK universities recognise the IHRA definition.
The review also called on Edinburgh to urgently sell off its investments in companies with significant contracts with the Israeli government.
Mathieson said Edinburgh was 'actively' reviewing its support for the IHRA declaration and its investments in Israel-linked companies after a series of protests by staff and students who have accused the university of complicity with Israeli actions in Gaza.
He added that he recognised the strength of feeling but said he could not commit to withdrawing support for the IHRA definition or to divest in companies facing boycott until those reviews were complete. 'Obviously this is a very hot, contemporary topic,' he said in an interview with the Guardian.
Mathieson said the decolonisation report had reached 'deeply shocking' and 'really discomforting' conclusions, including the discovery in student notebooks from the 1790s that one of its most famous moral philosophers, Dugald Stewart, had taught thousands of students that white Europeans were racially superior.
Ironically, Stewart and his mentor Adam Ferguson were 'lifelong abolitionists' yet their theories of race had been used to justify slavery in the American south.
The university had to accept harsh truths about its past activities, as well as bask in its successes, Mathieson said. This review, he added, was the most extensive investigation of its kind carried out by any university in the UK.
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Mathieson said: 'I think a lot of the report is hard to read, but I have confidence in its accuracy because I trust the experts that have produced it. I think we were seeking the truth – that's really the purpose of a university, and it includes the truth about ourselves as well as the truth about anybody else.'
Mathieson and university executives set up the review, which was chaired by Prof Tommy J Curry, a specialist in critical race theory, and Dr Nicki Frith, an expert in reparations, in response to a groundbreaking review in 2018 by the University of Glasgow on its links to slavery and the Black Lives Matter protests after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, which also affected Edinburgh.
Among other findings was evidence that the university had invested endowments derived from African enslavement into government war bonds, colonial bonds and buying Scottish Highland estates, and had received money from taxes levied on ships transporting sugar and tobacco from those plantations.
The university had reacted to the abolitionist cause with 'inertia', the report finds, by not joining three other Scottish universities and colleges who had petitioned parliament calling for the abolition of slavery, even though Edinburgh had professors at the forefront of abolitionist campaigning.
Curry said: 'Scotland has a moral debt to pay by sustaining an ideology that helped to exploit, kill and dominate racialised people for centuries.
'There's no argument against the fact that the people who orchestrated colonialism came from Edinburgh. It is not the only place they came from, but the University of Edinburgh was at the forefront at that time of creating and proliferating those theories.'
Edinburgh became one centre of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, when some staff and students demanded it rename a tower block named after Hume, the Enlightenment philosopher who published an overtly racist footnote that upheld the notion that black people were inferior.
To the fury of some historians, the university agreed to temporarily rename the building '40 George Square'. A further review by the university has recommended the change of name should be permanent and that a new naming committee investigates renaming another modern building named after Dugald Stewart due to his theories of race.
Mathieson indicated the university will accept many of the recommendations of the decolonisation review submitted by the 24-strong team of academics, researchers and consultants, but others would require consideration and external funding.
'If at the end of it we lose courage because we don't like the conclusions, that kind of invalidates the original decision to do the work,' he said. 'We knew that this was not going to be pretty.'
The university will set up a new race review implementation group which will actively support the review's call for Edinburgh to establish a centre for the study of racisms, colonialism and anti-Black violence, he said, by helping find philanthropic donors and external funding, and find rooms for a community space.
Mathieson said the university also had a lot of work to do to understand why it had so few Black staff and students. In contrast, a third of its students are Asian, including nearly 9,300 students from China.
Edinburgh would 'undoubtedly' fund new scholarships for students from minoritised groups, he said. 'Some of the university's resources can be and will be diverted to this.' Even so, he said, the university may be unable to repurpose some bequests linked to slavery or colonialism if their terms restrict the money to specific purposes.