Confronting the Legacies of Slavery, Colonialism and Racial Thought at the University of Edinburgh

The past decade has seen many academic institutions turning their attention to exploring their local links to the global histories of slavery and colonialism. This work is often associated with efforts to decolonise and address the longstanding legacies of harm that continue through structural forms of racism today.

In January 2021, Principal Peter Mathieson issued an important statement that the University of Edinburgh would also be investigating its history with ‘a report for the University Executive listing reparatory recommendations’ to address the legacies of contemporary and historic racism.

To oversee this process, Sir Geoff Palmer, an Edinburgh alumnus and a respected figure on issues of race and racism, was appointed to chair the Steering Group, and Tommy Curry and Nicola Frith — the authors of this blog — were asked to co-chair a Research and Engagement Working Group (REWG) tasked with researching and compiling the report. In parallel, a policy sub-group chaired by Chris Cox (Vice Principal Philanthropy and Advancement) was created to investigate the university’s material culture and develop ideas around changing the institution’s ‘look and feel’.

As co-chairs of the REWG, we spent the next year working in collaboration with fellow academics, members of the steering group and representatives of racially minoritised communities to develop a bold decolonisation and reparatory justice programme dedicated to addressing the legacies of slavery and colonialism.

This period also allowed us to reflect upon comparable work being conducted at other higher education institutions and to identify several trends. For the most part, the reports tend to focus on the contributions (and education) of enslavers and financial links to slavery more generally. Typically, any recommendations following the report are adjudicated by university executives through top-down, decision-making processes. As a minimum, these usually include the creation of scholarships to fund Caribbean and African graduates. However, the Universities of Glasgow and Cambridge have gone a step further by committing to establish a research centre, with Glasgow promising to raise £20 million over the next two decade as part of what it has termed its programme of reparatory justice.

We also noted that, when attitudinal studies have been conducted into the kinds of racism experienced by students and staff at an institution, these are usually part of a separate report. The findings also tend to remain quite general — for example, by analysing the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) as one category — which does not always capture the distinct experiences of different (disaggregated) racialised groups.

While such reports and studies have become an important mechanism for universities to begin recognising their connections to slavery and colonialism, in many cases they do not sufficiently consider two preliminary steps. The first is that any institution claiming to engage in reparatory justice processes ought first to recognise how it continues to perpetuate harms against racially minoritised peoples, and then commit to ending those harms. And the second is that any programme of reparatory justice must primarily be shaped by the needs and demands of affected communities, rather than executives, to transform and repair the institution and its racial structures for the university and its wider community as a whole.

It was with these considerations in mind that the REWG began its work in September 2022 with the recruitment of three research fellows (Yarong Xie, Simon Buck and Mishka Sinha), a community engagement officer (Samantha Likonde) and a research assistant (Obasanjo Bolarinwa), along with their mentors drawn from existing university staff (Nasar Meer, Professor of Sociology; Diana Paton, William Robertson Professor of History; and Daryl Green, Head of Heritage Collections).

Importantly, the REWG also includes a student representative (Maryam Yusuf, BAME Liberation Officer for EUSA) and three community representatives from outside of the university who are helping to shape and drive our engagement and reparatory justice processes. These are Esther Stanford-Xosei (Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe, PARCOE), Zaki El-Salahi (Community Education Professional) and Jatin Haria (Coalition of Racial Equality and Rights). More details of our membership can be found here.

Work is now well underway into the three key areas of our report. The first part will be historically focused. It will explore the role of the University, its academic staff and its alumni in the development of racist and anti-racist thought, and it will establish the links between our institution and the histories of slavery and colonialism. In this sense, our work will go beyond the tendency to focus only on African enslavement by identifying some of the key historical linkages to the larger project of colonialism throughout the African and Asian diaspora, and other colonised areas, as well as understanding the role of the university as a central hub for the development of racialised thought.

Given the length of the university’s history, there are many possible directions that this research could take, from the role of David Hume and other Enlightenment thinkers in developing anti-Black and racialised thinking, through to investigating the sources of donors linked to wealth accumulated through slavery and colonialism, or even understanding the role of the university in educating physicians and surgeons who worked on the ships that trafficked African peoples across the Atlantic. Conversely, there is also the need to recognise and reclaim, in line with the work of existing projects such as UncoverEd, the central role of racially minoritised peoples at the University of Edinburgh as alumni, academics, activists and theorists in the development of anti-racist thinking within our institution.

The second part will assess the current situation of race and racism at the university and will help us to join the dots between the histories of slavery and colonialism and their legacies today. We want to understand more about the distinct forms of racism that are being experienced by different racialised groups. This disaggregated approach will help us identify, for example, any specific forms of ‘Afriphobia’ (a term that refers to the prejudice and discrimination against, or fear, hatred, or bigotry towards, people of African heritage and all things African).

Our findings here will contribute to the work of existing bodies within the University, such as the Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee (EDIC), and will draw from previous efforts to draw the executive’s attention to institutional racism, notably the Thematic Review 2018-2019: Black and Minority Ethnic Students report. Over the next year (2023–24), two surveys will be conducted to measure attitudes among staff and students towards race, as well as the effects of institutional racism on Black, Asian and other minoritised ethnicities.

This will be accompanied by an analysis of the demographic and ethnic data gathered by the university to paint a clearer picture of the state under-representation upon different racialised groups, and allow us to begin exploring some of the barriers to recruitment, retention and promotion.

The third and final part of our report will be to outline an institutional vision on how the university should seek to repair both past and present legacies of harm in ways that will benefit both affected communities and the wider university community.

Key to making this work is the recognition that there are publics (internally and externally) that need to be actively incorporated into any process that calls itself reparative. Proper engagement with these groups is required to verify the relevancy of the work we are doing. Internally, these publics can be any member of the student or staff body (academic or non-academic). While externally, there are publics who represent community-based interests that need to be specifically highlighted, including activist and heritage groups who have a stake in any proposed action.

Our community engagement process is framed by our Principles of Participation that emphasise the importance of cognitive justice (or the equity of all knowledges). These have been developed in collaboration with the International Network of Scholars and Activists for Afrikan Reparations (INOSAAR) and other affected communities, while also drawing from Runnymede’s Finding Common Cause. They commit us to ensuring that all participants benefit from the work undertaken and are left in a stronger position than when they first entered the process. They also ensure that affected communities have the agency to be able to drive, shape and challenge the direction of travel.

These principles will not only help us to identify community-based recommendations, but also develop these ideas into fully workable projects. Our workshop and focus group series will therefore concentrate on specific recommendations linked to reparatory justice in the first instance. We aim to set out a blueprint for how to construct a climate in which racially minoritised faculty and staff can thrive alongside their white colleagues, while the university as a whole can begin the long process of implementing a lasting and deep-rooted commitment to reparatory justice, anti-racism decolonisation.

For as we recognise, a twenty-first century university dedicated to the central aims and spirit of decolonisation must not simply diversify, but also remedy the universalist supposition that locates Europe and European knowledge as the centre of human consciousness. This requires a new order of knowledge and an investment in the minds of scholars that have not often been seen on the grounds of the University of Edinburgh. To quote Robert Staples, ‘Decolonisation is the process by which the oppressed group begins to determine its own destiny and run its own affairs… A genuine decolonisation effort requires breaking the psychological, cultural, political and economic shackles of the old order’.

It is with these words at the forefront of our minds that we embark upon the work to investigate the university’s links slavery and colonialism, and seek ways to collectively repair its longstanding legacies.

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