The announcement that Noah Carl, a social science researcher who is linked to a network of far-right activists propagating racist ideas in the guise of ‘scientific’ research about intelligence, was recently appointed to a research post at St Edumund’s College at the University of Cambridge, has led to protests from academics and students.
An open letter condemning Carl’s work and his association with the discredited ‘London Conference on Intelligence’, where racist, sexist and eugenicist ideas were discussed, has gathered nearly 600 signatures from academics and won the back of around 900 students.
Nita Sanghera, UCU Vice-president was one of those signing the letter.
“There is no way that the appointment of someone whose work encourages the spread of claims about a racial hierarchy of intelligence can go unchallenged”, she says. “These ideas are completely discredited and false. The fact that this appointment was made in the first place should ring alarm bells about levels of institutional racism at Cambridge and in other educational institutions.”
Universities are simply not doing enough to stop the normalisation of racist incidents on our campuses. Recently we saw how the University of Lancaster reacted to revelations that the ‘Snow Sports Society’, wore t-shirts with homophobic, racist and antisemitic slogans. Rather than take any serious action against the perpetrators, it was a black woman student union officer who has been suspended from her role [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-46598275/thread-shred-i-exposed-racism-at-my-university-and-got-suspended] because she alerted the media to the incident. Stand up to Racism activists have helped launch a campaign against this injustice.
We are seeing time and time again the lack of leadership from universities, where racist incidents are ignored or perpetrators are being given token punishments. We need to build mass campaigns against both institutional racism and attempts by the Right to bring their vile ideas into our campuses. Stand up to Racism has a vital role to play in this and we’ll be mobilising in support of campaigns such as those in Cambridge and Lancaster next term.”