Edinburgh University’s Decolonisation Report is Pure Left-Wing Politics

The University of Edinburgh has published a report with the barely literate title, ‘Decolonised Transformations: Confronting the University of Edinburgh’s History and Legacies of Enslavement and Colonialism’. Yes, indeed, I intend to be contemptuous. This is because I think high contempt is now the only weapon remaining to be used against this low, grifting, scraping, self-abusing sort of literature, ubiquitous and official as it is, and questionable as it should be seen to be. Almost no one in the universities seems capable of recognising, let alone saying, that it is questionable.

For the sake of, and against:

• the Research and Engagement Working Group (REWG)
• its co-Chairs: Tommy Curry and Nicola Frith
• the REWG members: Kobina Amokwandoh, Ebo Anyebe, Obasanjo Bolarinwa, Simon Buck, Silence Chihuri, Kevin Donovan, Zaki El-Salahi, Omolabake Fakunle, Daryl Green, Roger Jeffery, Nini Kerr, Samantha Likonde, Nasar Meer, Thabani Mutambasere, Abigail Ocansey, Diana Paton, Nicola Perugini, Esther Stanford-Xosei, Ian Stewart, Shaira Vadasaria and Yarong Xie

who wrote the report, and

• the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee (EDIC) and the Race Equality and Anti-Racist Sub-Committee (REAR)

who read it, and approved of it, I want to say the following: you (YOU, all of you) do not appear to understand what academic study is about.

The fact is that almost all supposedly academic study – when it concerns human society and sometimes even when it is does not – is so politically skewed to the Left that the academic standards of earlier times now come across not only as political but, paradoxically, as more objectionable (to Left-wing academics) than any other political position. (By ‘Left’, I mean progressive, concerned with world betterment, astoundingly self-certain, uncritical of self, critical of the society in which one has found novel privilege.) The consequence? It is that a thousand ‘academics’ – hackademicks – have emerged to adorn our vast university system and supply our regime with a new myth which, in addition to being a myth, is also a heavily moralising chastisement.

In other words, this report is an interestingly double thing. It is a chastisement of our old order, and, by extension, of our contemporary order, insofar as our contemporary order is a ‘legacy’ of the old order. But it is also a vast novel ideological formation attempting to supply the order of the future, and, by extension, our contemporary order, insofar as it adequately instantiates the ideals of these visionaries, with a monological and monopolistic system of belief.

This, it should be said, is not academic.

A word on what is academic.

Academic, as everyone knows, has a straight but vague meaning: it means 1. more or less something to do with higher education and the university. But it has an ordinary man-in-the-street meaning which, ironically, gets a bit closer to the truth of the meaning of the word. In ordinary language, if something is ‘academic’ it is 2. unworldly, irrelevant.

The true meaning of academic is both of these together. Academic is not, certainly not, everything that happens in the university. It is, rather, the things that happen in the university that are unworldly and irrelevant because they are concerned with either the higher business of reconciling ourselves to our ultimate destinies – admittedly an antique vision (that comes from the time when colleges were endowed to pray for the souls of the founders) – or, more significantly, because they are concerned with understanding things and not changing them.

Ever heard of Marx? Ever heard of his 11th thesis on Feuerbach?

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.

Full reference: Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, Thesis XI (1845), in Marx/Engels Selected Works transl. W. Lough, Vol. 1, (Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969), pp. 13-15.

I have no doubt that one could complicate Marx, but I have always taken this thesis to be extremely simple. There is a choice, one is academic, and one is not. If one seeks to interpret the world, or, better, understand it, then one is engaging in academic activity. If one is seeking to change the world, then one is not engaging in academic activity. Marx, being political, preferred the latter. The rest of us choose Hegel and the former.

Hume distinguished the ‘politician’ from the ‘philosopher’, and his distinction was the same as Marx’s. The politician wants to do something in the world, or change something: he is active, and he takes sides. Whereas the philosopher does not take sides, and stands back from the world to attempt something like an objective, or blessed, view of it. The philosopher is academic. The politician is not.

Back to the slums.

The Guardian wrote about the Edinburgh report. This is where I learnt about it. My monocle flew out because it struck me as not academic: it struck me as political. But never underestimate the enemy, especially those guarding the flanks of the enemy: the ready snipers. Listen to this. An academic called Alan Lester went on the attack. He wrote a rather clever pre-emptive X thread. And I believe that it is Lester rather than Curry, Frith et al. who is the real danger.

Listen to this, from his X post:

1/7 Edinburgh has released a report on its institutional complicity in slavery & colonial exploitation. A few observations on why its ‘shocking’ findings shouldn’t surprise us, and how History Reclaimed and their Right-wing media allies will likely react:

Good to know Lester ain’t shocked. Well, he is a hexpert, of course. He is a Professor of Historical Geography at Sussex University, in Brighton, and author of many books, including, e.g., Deny and Disavow: Distancing the Imperial Past in the Culture Wars (2021).

Just a moment. Let me ask. Does that book sound academic? No. Political, right? Lester is a pre-emptive striker and smearer of his enemies. And why? Here is the blurb from the Amazon website:

His analysis draws upon thirty years of research and writing and supports BLM’s call for increased awareness of the legacies of structural racism bequeathed by the British Empire.

Aye, political. Thought so. Supports BLM? [Laughter.] Shall we continue? For, as I say, Lester is clever. He doesn’t want to write reports, dull and directed, like Curry/Frith, but instead anticipate in chess grandmaster manner the sorts of criticism of such things he expects to come from the other side. Now, this is why I say he is ‘clever’. Because he says that the other side is political. Listen:

2/7 First, it should be no surprise that key figures were both anti-slavery and deeply racist. A self-comforting myth of British history is that abolishing slavery meant opposition to racism. Far from it. Belief in White moral supremacy reinforced the ‘need’ to colonise others.

3/7 The Right-wing lines of attack on Edinburgh’s recognition are predictable: Attack the report’s authors as politically biased and therefore wrong. They’ll see three elements of this article as gifts. [Lester means the Guardian article.] First, the fact that an author is described as a critical race theorist.

Let me interrupt here. Notice what he is doing? His clothes are white. The clothes of the authors of the report are white. But anyone who disagrees with these saints is, NB, “Right wing”. Lester is not political, in his own unspotted book. Neither is Curry/Frith. But their enemies are.

4/7 The US Alt Right has sought to discredit this body of largely legal theory since 2021. The fact that the historical research is accurate won’t matter if they can wield this propaganda.

I sigh at this. Alright, Lester, what you are offering is “historical research”, and what anyone else is offering is “propaganda”. So you are not political, and everyone who disagrees with you is political?

I should add that Alan Lester is not very knowledgeable about history. I wonder if he has read any F.H. Bradley, R.G. Collingwood or Michael Oakeshott: if he had, he would know that the “presuppositions of critical history” (Bradley’s phrase) are that we get the history we want. Oakeshott suggested that if we honestly tried to establish what had happened in the past this could be called history, the writing of a “historical past”, though if we wanted to engage in “historical research” to push a particular political position, as Lester obviously wants to do, then this would be, at best, a “practical past”, i.e., self-serving history. Lester wants this sort of history; well, I do not; and since he wants it so badly, it is a bit rough that I, who do not, am called political. I am simply trying to resist his, Lester’s, politics. If that makes me political, as a reactionary, so be it: but own your tricks, Lester: you are the initiator, along with all your Olusoga allies.

5/7 The second ‘gift’ is an author being described as a reparations expert. Again ignoring the evidence in the report they’ll draw a false equivalence between their own willingness to distort the historical record against reparations and this ‘reparations activist’s’ activities.

Hmm. Well, aren’t “critical race theorist” and “reparations expert” slightly dubious terms? But note what Lester is doing: not defending the indefensible, but assuming its soundness and going on the attack.

6/7 Thirdly, they’ll target the report’s call to reject the IHRA declaration of antisemitism as another sign of the report begin driven by activism. They’ll ignore the context of an ongoing colonial genocide and the chilling effect that the IHRA declaration has on speaking out.

Well! Isn’t Lester doing a good job of doing our work for us! Now, I have to say I actually read through – NB not the same as ‘read’, God forbid – the Edinburgh report, and I noticed that it had a long section on former Prime Minister A.J. Balfour. Why? Because he happened to be the Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh. So in comes the Balfour Declaration, and its consequences, decorated, of course, by a few bland but standard assertions by Balfour of white supremacy of the sort that were, alas, fairly common around 1910. But the Edinburgh report is “exploring links”, you see. So, everyone, Balfour, Edinburgh, looks bad. Good.

But this is guilt by association, an association of ideas. Links prove nothing: they are great for smear. David Runciman recently reviewed Quinn Slobodian’s book for the London Review of Books, and he obviously agreed with that very silly book (entitled Hayek’s Bastards: The Neoliberal Roots and the Populist Right), but he said something shrewd about it. Finding links between x and y is very convincing, if you are preaching to the converted, but worthless when it comes to convincing anyone serious of anything. Slobodian doesn’t like Hayek or the Populist Right so finds links between them, and condemns both by association. But back to Lester.

7/7 They will deflect at all costs from discomfiting historical truths and from any sense of institutional accountability for ongoing racial disparities.

But, Lester, what if this is not the truth? (Let us speak of the truth in the singular.) What if the report is all loading of the dice? What if it is all association and smear and critical-race-baiting and reparations-politics? What if it is simply to supply a new and facile ideology to replace the cardboard cut-out of what you suppose to have been the old and facile ideology of our imperialist and racist ancestors?

Now, I do want to deflect all this. Because I think it is not academic. It is not necessary to be ‘Right wing’ to be appalled by this. I think we can admit that academics in the past failed to be as objective as they claimed to be, but this is no justification for being as subjective as we want to be now. It is no justification for the base and one-sided and smearing style of anticipatory forensics supplied by Lester from his happy position as an entrenched and well-allied figure within the grievance-industrial complex that is the ivy clinging onto Higher Education in the United Kingdom.

The report itself is a depressing document. It apologises for drawing our attention to such upsetting subjects. It notes how every other major university in the UK-US world is engaging in similar forms of flagellation and hairshirt. It finds that certain figures in the past who gave money to the university made this money in ways associated with slavery. It finds that certain figures who taught at the university said things we would like to bowdlerise on their behalf. (Isn’t it funny that bowdlerisation is coming back in?) It finds that Balfour made a Declaration. It finds that ethnic minorities are underrepresented at the university and alleges historic conspiracy. It refers to “background racism”: identifiable by the clicks on Douglass-Fanon Counters. It offers reparatory justice recommendations. And, worst of all, it opens its pockets and asks for further endowment. Listen to this:

To demonstrate the University’s commitment to repairing its racial legacies, the REWG is calling for the establishment of a Research and Community Centre for the Study of Racisms, Colonialism and Anti-Black Violence that will provide a dedicated infrastructure in which to house and implement the REWG’s recommendations, while furthering research and community engagement into the history and legacies of racial violence.

Hang on. The authors of the report, that is

Tommy Curry, Nicola Frith, Kobina Amokwandoh, Ebo Anyebe, Obasanjo Bolarinwa, Simon Buck, Silence Chihuri, Kevin Donovan, Zaki El-Salahi, Omolabake Fakunle, Daryl Green, Roger Jeffery, Nini Kerr, Samantha Likonde, Nasar Meer, Thabani Mutambasere, Abigail Ocansey, Diana Paton, Nicola Perugini, Esther Stanford-Xosei, Ian Stewart, Shaira Vadasaria, Yarong Xie, Old Uncle Tom Cobbley…

want to continue their work. Yes. It wasn’t enough that Sir Peter Mathieson, the Principal of the University, commissioned this investigation: now the investigators ‘find’ that they should be more or less be permanently established and endowed to continue this important, cough, academic, cough, my apologies, activity.

This is where I have to intervene, with high seriousness and contempt.

What Sir Peter Mathieson should have done is commission such an investigation, if he had to commission it, by asking scholars to write it who did not have a vested interest in the vexed politics of reparations and critical race theory. Scratch the identities of all the author of the report and you will find predictable sounds. Nicole Frith works on “the need for reparative justice”. And Tommy Curry can speak for himself:

My current research investigates the processes through which Western nations create civil society through racial phobics. I am particularly interested in understanding racism as a kind of misandric aggression used by modern democratic societies to recreate the ethnological category of the brute that legitimises the criminalisation and extermination of racialised (outgroup) males.

What? Is civil society only created “through racial phobics”? Sounds political to me, unless we consider other possibilities, Professor Curry.

In fact, since asking Sir Peter Mathieson, or any other Chancellor or Principal of the university for something like academic objectivity is a waste of time, let me suggest this: why do we never see any universities commissioning, I don’t know, imperialists to establish the opposite finding? If someone found a lot of fascists and racists to state their own version of the obvious, and decorate it with historical ‘links’, I daresay it would be as impressive a document as that offered by the University of Edinburgh? Why does this not happen? For political reasons. One type of politics is in, the other is out.

Stare at this imposing fact, Lester, and reflect on thyself and thy petty politics.

The Guardian quotes Curry:

Curry said: “Scotland has a moral debt to pay by sustaining an ideology that helped to exploit, kill and dominate racialised people for centuries.”

What? One man can loftily say that an entire country has a moral debt? What world is he in? The oddity is not that he is trying it on, like this. That is his job. Unfortunately. The oddity is that the Scotland of Hector Boece, George Buchanan and James MacPherson – and, yes, I am mocking Scotland (I have just read Trevor-Roper’s spectacular The Invention of Scotland) – is trotting out this absolute rubbish, and then that it is being adopted and believed by the credulous and craven Sir Peter Mathiesons, all the Death-to-the-IDF activists, and probably, alas, all average Scottish schoolchildren.

The very sad fact, since I have mentioned Trevor-Roper, is that, in England, in the old days, we used to laugh at the Scottish for believing in Scota and the lineage of hundreds of Scottish kings from the Pharoah onwards, or for falling for the balderdash of Ossian. (Read the Wikipedia page on Ossian to despair over everyone in Scotland, even Hume – but not the great English Samuel Johnson, who knew it was rubbish.) But no longer. The English are just as daft as the gullible Scots when it comes to critical race theory and reparations. No wonder Lester is so exultant. He thinks history is on his side. But it is not history that is on his side, just some nasty little confection that he wants to call history.

Decolonisation is not academic. If it is academic, then recolonisation is.

Academics could, I daresay, study decolonisation, if they wanted. But they should never engage in decolonisation. That is, simply, not academic. Universities will continue to be laughable institutions, on this side, until someone notices this grave mistake. Worse, they will continue to be coercive, puritanical little institutions, forcing houses of the intellect (that’s E.B. Pusey’s phrase, though he meant something else by it), in the worst sense.

It is one the great ironies of history that these modern miserable sub-Calvinist scribes are kicking the Scottish Enlightenment in the shins. One hopes that Scotland in future will enjoy the irony of the tale, while also putting up blue plaques decorated in dunce caps for all the contributors to this and every other report of its type.

James Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.