Editor’s Note: The following is a short excerpt of a much longer article originally published by the author on his Substack, Possum’s Substack, on July 30, 2025. With edits to match MTC’s style guidelines, it is cross-posted here with permission.
The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1582, has an illustrious history. Famous alumni are pre-eminent philosopher and historian David Hume, founder of political science Adam Smith, electromagnetism pioneer James Clerk Maxwell, telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell, and writers Arthur Conan Doyle, Walter Scott, and J. M Barrie. Charles Darwin was a medical student for a while, but after watching pre-anesthetic surgery, he decided that he much preferred evolution to evisceration. In later years, Tanzanian premier Julius Nyerere learned Fabian socialism at Edinburgh.
Now, admirers of the U. of Edinburgh are in for a shock. As the culmination of a four-year effort, a report has been published, revealing what is claimed to be the university’s most distinctive feature: its shameful racist foundations.
A well-subsidized investigation has revealed that “Edinburgh University had an “’outsized’ role in creating racist scientific theories” and “benefited from transatlantic slavery and was haven for white supremacist theories.” Who knew? Who even cares? It was a long time ago, and the result was a great university.
In fact, the whole process, the people commissioned to write the report, the person who did the commissioning, and the report itself, all are an utter betrayal of the U. of Edinburgh’s great history and of the academic values that underlie it. The University seems now to be infected by white-racial guilt, impelling it to “decolonize” itself from science and rational thought. This report reflects a muddled, activist social pseudoscience that rejects the Enlightenment and demands economic and cultural reparations for favored groups.
Yes, in the 18th century, the University of Edinburgh, along with many other Scottish, English, and American institutions, benefited from slavery. Slavery had a good outcome for society at that time: economic prosperity and a great university. But this report ignores the good outcome and obsesses about the bad cause, slavery, which is long past and cannot be remedied. Even if it could, the result would, by this same logic, be a weaker university. If the university benefited from slavery, as this report argues, then absent slavery, it must be worse off? The report seems not to understand that very often in human history, bad in the short term may yield long-term good.
The committee had a choice: recognize both the good and bad effects of slavery, or make civilization abhorrent because it tolerated slavery. They unhesitatingly chose the latter: trash civilization and denigrate Edinburgh University. (Britain gets no credit for abolishing slavery, of course.) I will substantiate these conclusions in a moment.
First, a few words about David Hume, who is attacked in the report for a footnote he wrote on the topic, but whose philosophical insights are at the heart of science. Then comments on Professors Nicola Frith and Tommy Curry, chairs of the report committee, and finally on the report itself…
Read the remainder of the essay here, and for insights on higher education worldwide, explore our Minding the World column.
Image: “New College, University of Edinburgh” by Jorge Franganillo on Wikimedia Commons
