RUTHFULLY YOURS

Few events have done more for human freedom and prosperity than the rise of secularism, capitalism and the Industrial Revolution. Scotland, and in particular its universities, was pivotal in their incubation and eventual flourishing. This period, beginning in the mid-18th century and known as the Scottish Enlightenment, was once considered to be a key achievement of civilisation, a hinge that allowed the history of the West to swing in a more liberal direction. But according to a new report commissioned by Edinburgh University, arguably the epicentre of this movement, this period is supposedly nothing to celebrate.

Apparently, the Scottish Enlightenment and Edinburgh University, in particular, were instead wellsprings of racism. Or, in the words of the report – co-authored by US academic Tommy J Curry – Edinburgh was a ‘haven’ for white supremacy. In particular, it blames the university for the discredited discipline of phrenology and it claims it played an ‘outsized role in developing racial pseudosciences’.

These accusations are levelled at the university in Decolonised Transformations, a report published this month that was commissioned by Edinburgh in 2021 in response to the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. Curry – a philosophy professor at Edinburgh, who lists critical race theory as his speciality – appears to have clutched at every conceivable straw to justify his findings and to taint his university.

One of the report’s prime targets is 18th-century philosopher David Hume, initially a student and later a librarian at Edinburgh. Despite Hume’s published works exceeding 5,000 pages, the report focusses on a solitary footnote from 1753 in which he described ‘Negroes’ as ‘inferior to whites’. It is undoubtedly an unpleasant comment, but it is hardly proof that Hume contributed to the ‘intellectual justification’ for ‘transatlantic trafficking and enslavement of African people’, as the report wants us to believe.

The report goes on to claim Edinburgh played a ‘central role’ in promulgating the theory of phrenology. But again, the evidence it provides for this claim is distinctly threadbare. It appears to rely almost solely on the presence of two skulls in the university’s Anatomical Museum, which belonged to half-Barbadian students at Edinburgh in the 19th century. The report said it can ‘be assumed’ the students’ status as ‘mullato’ (of mixed white and black ancestry) ‘is what aroused interest’ in the skulls at the Edinburgh Phrenological Society. Well, perhaps it was. But it doesn’t exactly prove the university was ‘central’ in ‘assert[ing] the existence of the hierarchy of human races’, as the report claims.

In what must have been a moment of true desperation, the report turns its attention to James Sutherland, Edinburgh’s first professor of botany. After reading the heading, ‘Research Finding 3’ alongside ‘Empire’ and ‘Enslavement’, one might expect to discover that this quiet plant enthusiast had some sort of connection to the slave trade. Instead, we learn that his position was merely at the head of a ‘global network of botanisers’ who acquired seeds from the West Indies. We are left to infer that this is an unforgivable sin that we should still be atoning for, more than 300 years after his death. If only there were a statue of Sutherland to smear in red paint.

Curry’s determination to discredit his university doesn’t stop at 17th-century botany. In what is no doubt news to Israelis and Palestinians, Curry’s report also gives Edinburgh University a leading role in the current Gaza war, and the many conflicts preceding it. The basis for this imperceptibly tenuous link is the fact that Arthur Balfour, who in 1917 signed the Balfour Declaration in support of the creation of the Jewish State, was also chancellor of Edinburgh University. To atone for these supposed past sins and its alleged ‘ongoing entanglement’ with the war today, Curry suggests the university should repudiate its adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism, and create a dedicated ‘Palestine Studies Centre’ while it’s at it.

The real target of Curry’s report, however, is not so much Edinburgh University but the Scottish Enlightenment itself. In his words, ‘We have fundamentally changed what was understood as the Scottish Enlightenment… We hope our findings will enable the university to emerge as a better version of itself.’ By which, of course, he means a diminished version of itself, ashamed of the intellectual movement it helped to realise.

Sadly, Curry might be right: at least at Edinburgh University, the Enlightenment has been increasingly viewed through a hostile lens. We saw this most clearly when, in 2020, David Hume Tower was renamed on the grounds that some students felt distressed by his views on race. The university showed it was only too happy to excommunicate one of its most important alumni, and indeed one of the most significant figures in modern philosophy, at the demand of a handful of students. Its war on the Enlightenment was well underway before Curry’s report.

Before Edinburgh University abandons the Enlightenment entirely, it is worth remembering what we owe to the Scots who contributed to it. David Hume was one of the first public intellectuals to challenge the religious dogma that choked liberty and stifled scientific progress in his time. While his avowed atheism put him at significant personal risk, it also gave other free thinkers confidence. He had a profound impact on the French and American revolutions, and the steady rise of secularism in the West.

Or we could talk about Adam Smith. In his 1776 Wealth of Nations, Smith became the first to realise that wealth creation need not involve, in the words of historian Robert Tombs, a ‘violent competition for limited resources’. His concept of free international trade – an idea that comes under fresh assault in every generation – wasn’t just an economic theory. It also helped the world to chart a course from feudalism to modernity. And let us not forget James Watt and his invention of the separate condenser in 1765, without which the steam engine – and therefore the Industrial Revolution – could never have taken off. Taken together, these ideas have liberated billions from poverty and superstition.

Decolonised Transformations reminds us that 18th-century white Europeans had a sense of racial superiority. To most people, this is hardly news. It certainly provides no evidence to suggest that Edinburgh University was a special ‘haven’ for this belief – simply that its professors shared in many of the bigotries that were a feature of their age.

This should hardly discredit them. Everyone is bound by their time in which they live, yet it takes people of genius and originality – such as those Edinburgh University and the Scottish Enlightenment once produced – to expand the frontiers of knowledge, and to develop ideas that have made us freer and wealthier. Those who read history backwards and damn it all as evil are the antithesis of the reflective, inquiring and open-minded spirit of the movement they want to discredit.

Posterity, as Bertrand Russell said, will make a mockery of most of our views (or, hopefully in Curry’s case, the present). What makes the giants of the Scottish Enlightenment so exceptional is the debt we still owe them today. These regressive, small-minded attacks on the Enlightenment must be fiercely resisted.

Hugo Timms is an editorial assistant at spiked.