Photos: Students Protest Racist Appointment at St Edmunds College

Demonstrators light up flares to protest the appointment of racist pseudo-scientist Noah Carl.

#NotMyFellow read one banner as students mobilised in the CR.

Nearly a hundred joined a demonstration against racism at St Edmunds College, University of Cambridge from 3pm until 7pm on Monday, 28 January 2019. First, over 60 protesters gathered outside Masters office at St Edmunds College to protest the appointment of Noah Carl, regular attendee at London Conference on Intelligence who publishes papers correlating race, genes and IQ in controversial journals like OpenPsych and Mankind Quarterly. 40 protesters joined later at 6pm to protest outside a council meeting carrying a flag that read “Rescind the Fellowship.” Several college officials left the premises before the protest began and left it upto the college janitors, administrators and catering staff to man the doors. One employee of the college, joining the protest of students said he/she felt “humiliated” by college’s racism.

Several student activist groups from Cambridge joined St Edmunds college in solidarity.

A student raises a banner to an unoccupied Master’s office from the lawns outside.

A student raises a banner that read “Dear Newton Trust”

Newton Trust, the estate of Toby Jackman, and St Edmunds College together funds the research fellowship. Since an open letter signed by over 1400 people from the academic community, including previous appointees to the post was published two months ago, none of the parties have responded to the particular concerns of the letter. An “investigation” set up by college was rejected unanimously by a packed congregation of students last week. A student representative who addressed the crowd stated that the panel had “no verifiable distance from the appointment” and “lack of student and academic representation” in the investigation was a show of “staggering disrespect to students.” Another student noted that the difference between college fellowship, students and administrators had become “irreconcilable” but that it showed that “racism of every kind was intolerable”.

Students walked through the Tutorial wing corridor and the Masters offices, banging at doors and chanting “What is there to investigate?”

Professor Clement Mouhot addresses the crowd. Several other academics also joined students in solidarity.

Debunking the misguided notion that all kinds of views are protected by academic freedom, Professor Clement Mouhot, said at the gathering that “Academic freedom and Free speech are two separate principles. Freedom of speech is a democratic principle to protect minority views in political debates and decisions, whereas scientific research is based on truth and scientific method, and academic freedom is a protection against dogmatism, but comes at a cost: academic integrity. Challenging well-established scientific views bears the “burden of proof”, it is only allowed when seriously engaging the accumulated evidences, not just because it fits some racist agenda.” Several academics, including Sociologists, Anthropologists and Psychologists around the world have written to students to show solidarity against racist pseudo-science.

A St Edmunds student re-reads the “Open Letter” from December in front of the Masters offices.

“Silent Fellowship shame on you” was a chant that lasted several minutes as students walked through college corridoors.

Noting that it was Holocaust Remembrance Day only the day before, a St Edmunds student reminded everyone how racist pseudo-science was at the heart of genocidal atrocities of the twentieth century that all started with this pernicious, but seemingly garbled, research.

Student representatives and PhD scholars in social sciences address the crowd.

“When someone tries to reopen case files on pseudo-scientific racism without rebutting the very research that closed and disposed off those files, what is there to be investigated? These investigations are a show of complacency and complicity, are here only to fluster those who are protesting, and to wait in hope that the matter dies down.”

“End the silence on Race Science” “Eugenics is of Empire” “Race Science keeps the far-right alive, don’t let it thrive” said some banners.

The college fellowship and staff may have evacuated the college premises before the peaceful protests on Monday but the questions remained, loud as ever. Infographics, flyers and banners were slipped under the doors of locked offices. “Rescind the Fellowship” was a clear message to a silent college fellowship, the Newton Trust, and the University of Cambridge to act, as the time for inquiries was now past. A St Edmunds alumni at the protest remarked: “An investigation implies that you have to dig up some private material to establish racism in the research. But the research is in the public domain, and is both self-explanatory and self-incriminating.” Remarking at the presence of Cambridge University communications team, who were there to presumably salvage University’s image, not to mention security personnel on college premises, a student remarked: “Look at this, they are looking at ways at how to ‘wriggle’ out of this with minimum damage, not how to confront their own racism.”

A St Edmunds alumni (2012–16) stood as the protesters eventually dispersed: “I never thought I would ever see a reserved access sign on a St Edmunds door. This college has changed, and I am ashamed.”

#NoRaceSciences #NotMyFellow #EndRacismatEddies

If you are a St Edmunds alumni, or are generally interested to hear directly from students, join this newsletter. Photographs courtesy Jess Ma.