TESTIMONY to racism from students at the Faculty of Divinity in Cambridge is to be posted online throughout the Lent term, in a campaign that has called on the faculty to “combat its burgeoning image as an incubator for alt-Right ideology”.
The campaign, Divine Dissent, was established last year. Its stated aim is to “embed anti-racist, equitable practice and expose alt-/far-right influence” in the faculty.
The catalyst was an invitation to the Canadian Professor Jordan Peterson to visit, from Dr James Orr, a university lecturer in philosophy of religion (News, 1 October 2021). An earlier invitation from the faculty had been withdrawn after Professor Peterson was photographed next to a supporter who was wearing an anti-Islam T-shirt (News, 29 March 2019).
An open letter to the faculty, published by the campaign last December, suggested that it was “difficult (impossible?)” to reconcile the invitation with the faculty’s statement on race, theology, and religion issued after the killing of George Floyd in May 2020, in which it had pledged to “think more deeply about race and to learn from those who have been marginalized”. The invitation, and another extended to Dr Charles Murray, a political scientist invited to address the Cambridge branch of Trinity Forum Europe, indicated “complicity in the active promotion of racist views”.
Dr Murray’s book The Bell Curve, published in 1994, linked intelligence to class and race. Writing in Varsity, members of Divine Dissent wrote that Dr Murray’s work was “straightforwardly racist in its assertion that there are genetically determined, racial differences in cognitive ability”.
Their open letter warned: “We are tending toward a ‘freedom of speech’ that is nothing other than a freedom to promote racist views, as well as to deny the viability of racism as both theoretical concept and lived reality.” Published on the website change.org, the letter attracted 227 signatures, including that of Professor Judith Lieu, Lady Margaret’s Professor of Divinity in the university from 2007 to 2018.
The backdrop to the campaign comes is a debate about free speech in the university. In December 2020, Cambridge adopted a new Statement on Freedom of Speech. Amendments to a first draft replaced the demand for “respect” for the opinions of others with “tolerance”, and limited the circumstances under which the university could prevent a speaker’s attendance.
Dr Orr was among those championing the amendments. Writing for The Critic last July, he described a “Coddling Vision” (of the university), which “insists that although truth-seeking is a laudable and important aim, it should never supersede the greater goal of pursuing equality, diversity, and inclusion, or of maximising the psychological wellbeing of its members”. The amendments were a challenge to “a brazen attempt by the University’s senior leadership to wire the Coddling Vision into the ancient fabric of Cambridge”.
A member of the Advisory Council of the Free Speech Union, a “public interest body that stands up for the speech rights of its members”, founded by the journalist Toby Young, a convener director for Trinity Forum Europe, a Christian charity that hosts forums and scriptoria in universities, he is also a vocal critic of critical race theory.
His article for The Critic described how university staff inboxes had for years been “overflowing with invitations to university workshops or lectures or courses on ‘race awareness’, all of which robotically intone the wokus pocus of Ibram X. Kendi or Reni Eddo-Lodge or any of the other authors lucratively laundering political activism as serious academic inquiry”.
He is also a trustee of St Paul’s Theological Centre, part of Holy Trinity, Brompton, and one of the partners that formed St Mellitus College.
In December 2021, Byline Times reported that Dr Orr was among the Cambridge staff who in 2017 had met Charles Vaughan, the chief of staff of Peter Thiel, a German-American billionaire venture capitalist and donor to Donald Trump. This prompted the Divine Dissent campaign to warn of the existence of a “fifth column” in the university which was “seeding an ideology that is fundamentally, indeed deliberately hostile to the University’s aims and values”.
That month, the chair of the Divinity Faculty, Professor James Aitken, wrote a response to Divine Dissent, sent to all students: “As the Head of Faculty I recognise the right of any member to facilitate discussions on topics within the law; doing so does not equate to acceptance or endorsement of those views by that member or the Faculty . . . neither the Faculty nor the University tolerate bullying and harassment against any individual. I urge everyone to act with tolerance and civility towards one another.”
Divine Dissent issued another open letter to Professor Aitken last month, making five demands, including a request that the Faculty Board distance itself from the invitations extended to Professor Peterson and Dr Bell.
It should also create a fund “dedicated to platforming minority academics within Theology and Religious Studies”, and a timetable for the adoption of an “anti-racism action plan”. A visitor policy should be drawn up “that ensures students are informed in advance of visiting contributors to their core lectures/seminars, together with an outline of the topics to be covered”, and elected student representatives should have the same access to faculty mailing lists as staff, “to ensure student concerns can be communicated directly to the entire Faculty community”.
This letter has been signed by 17 members of the faculty and seven directors of studies, including the Dean of Trinity, the Revd Dr Michael Banner; the Dean of Emmanuel, the Revd Jeremy Caddick; and the Vice-Principal of Westcott House, the Revd Dr Paul Dominiak. In total, it has 93 signatories, including current undergraduates and alumni.
To date, testimony from three students has been published. One says that, on the student’s first day, a postgraduate student and senior member of staff said “that there were travel grants available for us to go to ‘Bongo Bongo Land’. Equally shocking to me was the lack of response from other members of staff who were present. That incident gave me a clear indication of Faculty culture on my first day, an indication that has proved true since.”
Another states: “A student told me that during a supervision about the early missionary movement in Africa, the supervisor defended the missionary movements by saying that ‘before the missionaries came and brought Christianity, there were some tribes in Africa that used to eat each other and that’s not a good thing by any moral standard.’”
The third records how a lecturer called on a black student to answer a question. “When the student answered, the lecturer asked them to repeat what they had said, because they had ‘never heard someone speak like that before.’ Despite the student explaining that they were born in this country and privately educated, the lecturer continued to make them repeat what they had said in front of the class.
“In the following classes, the lecturer would regularly make a point of highlighting how ‘odd’ the student spoke, until one day saying, ‘I think you are the funniest person I have ever met in my life.’ From what the student told me, they were not trying to be ‘funny’ but rather just trying to answer the questions as they were asked.”
Among the endorsements listed by the campaign is one from the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Williams, formerly Master of Magdalene College, who writes: “I don’t believe there is any appetite to restrict anyone’s freedom or impugn anyone’s integrity, but the current challenges offer an opportunity for the Faculty to clarify its collective commitments on various matters, especially on issues of race and diversity. I look forward to hearing that this opportunity has been taken, and a constructive conversation encouraged.”