University of Edinburgh publishes Race Review into colonialist past
Principal and vice chancellor, Professor Sir Peter Mathieson, issued a formal statement following the University of Edinburgh's Race Review and pledged to 'learn and move forward' from the report, which was commissioned in 2021.
Nearly 50 recommendations were made following a subsequent policy report and the work was overseen by Scotland's first black professor, Professor Sir Geoff Palmer, who had seen a draft of the review and contributed to feedback before he died in June.
The report, Decolonised Transformations: Confronting the University of Edinburgh's History and Legacies of Enslavement and Colonialism, has been published online, amid a public pledge to address racial discrimination and inequality.
Archival research examined how the 'legacies of wealth' amassed from slavery and colonialism in the 17th and 18th centuries can be traced to contemporary endowments and capital campaigns, and how leading thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, who were also prominent University figures in the 18th Century, promoted theories of racial inferiority and white supremacism used to justify colonialism.
Last year, the University funded further research into its historical links with Arthur Balfour, who played a key role in the creation of Israel and was a former Chancellor of the university as well as Prime Minister and Conservative politician.
Sir Peter said: 'Only by fully engaging with and understanding the entirety of our institutional past can we truly learn and move forward. We are unwavering in our commitment to a future where racism, racial discrimination, and racialised inequalities have no place in higher education or society.
'We cannot have a selective memory about our past, focusing only on the historical achievements which make us feel proud.'
He paid tribute to Sir Geoff Palmour and said the work would 'honour his memory through our ongoing commitment to advancing race equality within our institution and in society more broadly' amid data showing under-representation of racially and ethnically minoritised staff and students, disparities in degree awarding and challenges in seeking support for racism.
Among recommendations in the report was the creation of a Naming Approval Committee to manage requests for naming or renaming University buildings in a bid to consider how it acknowledges its historic links to racism and colonialism on campus.
A response group identified actions as part of 'reparative justice', including continued research into racial injustice, strengthening connections with minoritised communities, boosting scholarships, as well as reinforcing anti-racist educational programmes, after the findings.
The university pledged to achieve 'meaningful change' and transparency, and to 'learn from and repair its past'.
Professor Tommy Curry, co-chairman of the Race Review's research and engagement working group, said: 'This review demonstrates a level of self-reflection that very few institutions have had the courage to embark on.
'We have fundamentally changed what we understood as the Scottish Enlightenment. We have shown that the study of racial difference had a major home here, and that there are legacies of discrimination that we still have to correct today.
'We hope our findings will enable the University to emerge as a better version of itself. This sets a standard for other institutions to not only reconsider their historical perspectives and legacies, but also their institutional culture.'
Dr Nicola Frith, co-chairwoman of the Race Review's research and engagement working group, said: 'We've placed a huge amount of effort into joining the dots between the past and present to uncover the impact on our students, staff and community from racially and ethnically minoritised communities.
'Now it can be in the business of producing decolonised and reparatory forms of knowledge that genuinely embrace and include those communities it has harmed in the way that it thinks, acts and is structured.'
Fiona McClement, co-leader of the Race Review response group, said: 'The University exists to produce and disseminate knowledge for the betterment of society.
'Now we need to look at what this means for our future, and how we can move forward within a framework of reparative justice principles.
'Our aspiration is to be an anti-racist organisation. We want to ensure that are a welcoming and nurturing environment in which all members of our community feel a sense of belonging, and can flourish and succeed without facing unjust racialised barriers'
Chris Cox, vice principal of philanthropy and advancement at the University of Edinburgh and chairman of the Race Review's policy report, said: 'Universities are all about opening up difficult conversations such as those raised by our Race Review.
'Our response isn't based on closing down these discussions, but on beginning new and important ones.
'In addressing our legacy, we have the chance to plan for a better future and celebrate the full diversity of our community.'
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More academics have spoken out – one of them being Prof Stephen O'Rahilly: 'For me it was the need to be able to discuss the issue of biological sex and its importance for how we structure medicine, law and society that made me feel I could no longer be simply an observer. 'I am pleased to say that I received no pushback from the university about any public statements I made.' At a national level, protecting the right to free speech in universities was the subject of legislation by the Conservative administration – and, after some hesitation, it has been substantially endorsed by the Labour government and will come into effect on Friday Aug 1. Every university and college in the land will be required to publish a code of practice as part of a duty to promote freedom of speech in higher education. And, crucially, many universities had already got the message. New vice-chancellors at Oxford and Cambridge decided that it wasn't enough to speak the rhetoric of free speech – they needed to show it in their actions. The Cambridge vice-chancellor, Deborah Prentice, who regards free speech as 'the first principle of any academic institution', launched a series of vice-chancellor's dialogues on some of the knottier issues of the day, with the express aim of exposing students to a wide range of opinions and learning how to disagree well; and similar initiatives have taken place across the sector. We had a meeting at Selwyn with academics from Yale to share experiences and coordinate the fightback. Prentice, who was born in California and was previously provost at Princeton University, says: 'Practising free speech is a challenge, and not just here in the UK. Having come from the United States, I am concerned that on both sides of the Atlantic free speech is being dampened by spirals of silence – a hesitancy to voice an opinion if we think it might cause offence. Free speech needs constant nurturing and reinforcement. It is a principle that we must uphold.' A long way to go There has been an easing of some of the tensions. The pro-Palestinian encampments on campuses, which provoked bitter conflicts especially in the United States, have been better managed in Britain, including in Cambridge, through a tolerance of peaceful protest tempered by the use of injunctions when they became unreasonably disruptive. The truth is that some students are passionately engaged with the conflict in the Middle East, but many aren't. 'Students are obsessed with the personal politics, not the big issues facing the world,' claims one senior figure. This disengagement by many, perhaps out of a feeling of impotence, is a sharp contrast to my own student days in the 1970s. It may be the reason why today's activists are losing their grip. But a colleague has a wider criticism about the culture across British academia: 'The exciting ideas in our country are not in universities. Universities are dominated by liberals, and it has been the Right in wider political discourse which has come up with the new ideas. The problem is that those ideas are not very good, and they lack intellectual coherence. But the clever people in the universities are not in the debate.' O'Rahilly agrees that 'we still have a way to go' to restore health to the dialogue in universities. He and I were at a dinner a few weeks ago which showed the opportunity but also the remaining challenge. For a couple of hours, Cambridge academics and administrators discussed the recent Supreme Court ruling on biological sex. The people around the table were from a wide range of backgrounds and views, and it was – as Stephen says – a 'polite but vigorous' debate. Exactly what you'd hope for in a university. But at the end of the dinner, one of the participants said, wistfully, that it was a discussion that couldn't be held in their college. Why not? 'Because it would tear the place apart.' But experience shows that not having the discussion is by far the worst option. Views get better if they are tested; and communities, especially universities, are stronger if they are open and free in their thinking. Rights, as we saw with gay marriage, are more powerful if there is public consent. As I prepare to step down from my role in September, the biggest lesson from more than a decade in Cambridge is about the peril of trying to impose conformity on a university whose driving force should be academic freedom. Britain needs universities to guarantee our future, and they cannot do that if they shackle themselves to the campaigns of the moment.
