Solidarity with Cambridge University Students in their Struggle Against Scientific Racism

The University of Cambridge is recently shaken by the appointment of controversial scientist Carl Noah. White conservative publications are spinning yarns about a global conspiracy of a radically politicised academic establishment bullying a lone conservative staff member. We at Mangal Media remain incredulous to this story. As a collective of writers, thinkers and artists who have been excluded from prestigious institutions for our ethnic background and radical politics, this framing of events does not corroborate our reality. As Mangal Media, we support every initiative which prioritises the wellbeing of students in hostile institutional environments. In this spirit, we share the open letter penned by concerned parties.

Solidarity!

Mangal Media

Open Letter: No Place for Racist Pseudoscience at Cambridge

We write to express our dismay at the appointment of Noah Carl to the Toby Jackman Newton Trust Research Fellowship at St Edmund's College, University of Cambridge. A careful consideration of Carl’s published work and public stance on various issues, particularly on the claimed relationship between ‘race’, ‘criminality’ and ‘genetic intelligence’, leads us to conclude that his work is ethically suspect and methodologically flawed.

These publications, drawing on the discredited ‘race sciences’, seem nothing more than an expression of opinion on various social matters. As members of the academic community committed to defending the highest standards of ethical and methodological integrity in research and teaching, we are shocked that a body of work that includes vital errors in data analysis and interpretation appears to have been taken seriously for appointment to such a competitive research fellowship.

We are deeply concerned that racist pseudoscience is being legitimised through association with the University of Cambridge. This fellowship was awarded to Carl despite his attendance at, and public defence of, the discredited ‘London Conference on Intelligence’, where racist and pseudoscientific work has been regularly presented. Carl’s work has already been used by extremist and far-right media outlets with the aim of stoking xenophobic anti-immigrant rhetoric. In a context where the far-right is on the rise across the world, this kind of pseudoscientific racism runs the serious risk of being used to justify policies that directly harm vulnerable populations.

We are also concerned that the appointment process for this fellowship was not carried out with the degree of academic rigour, diligence and respect for principles of equality and diversity that we would expect from a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.

We call on St Edmund's College, the University of Cambridge, and the Newton Trust to issue a public statement dissociating themselves from research that seeks to establish correlations between race, genes, intelligence and criminality in order to explain one by the other.

We also call on the University of Cambridge to immediately conduct an investigation into the appointment process that led to the award of this fellowship. Such an investigation, which should be independent of St Edmund's college, must involve recognised experts across relevant disciplines and include a thorough review of the appointee's body of academic work.