A TORY MSP has been accused of making a politically motivated attack on research of slavery links in Scotland.
Tommy J Curry, a philosopher at the University of Edinburgh, co-led a major peer-reviewed study into the institution’s own history of racism.
Briggs claimed the work, which cost £359,000 to complete, was a “staggering misuse of resources” and “self indulgent”. He had previously accused the project of “pandering to revisionist right-on views”.
The review catalogued how academics at the University of Edinburgh, some of whom were leading figures of the Scottish enlightenment, developed a racist ideology to justify slavery and the British Empire.
Crucially, it found that Dugald Stewart, one of Edinburgh’s most celebrated mathematicians and moral philosophers, taught thousands of students that white Europeans were racially superior.
Peter Mathieson, the university’s vice-principal, issued a “deep apology” in response to the findings.
The Sunday Times reports that Curry, originally from Louisiana, was not surprised by Briggs’s remarks.
“I’m from the United States, where conservative politicians have often tried to censor or defund research on race, colonialism and enslavement,” he said.
“The tactic is familiar: reduce serious scholarship to a soundbite, dismiss the expertise of black academics, and argue that economic scarcity should silence research that makes them uncomfortable. It’s not a new line of attack — just a recycled one.”
“There is a very clear strain of anti-intellectualism,” Curry (below) added. “Universities should be places where all questions can be asked and pursued.
“Instead, what we see in the UK is an effort to censor ‘radical’ ideas from racial and ethnic minorities, while privileging perspectives that align with a conservative political platform.
“The UK has very few black academics compared to the US or Canada, and no major research centres on slavery, colonialism, or racial conflict. Yet critics insist they know these subjects better than scholars who have spent their careers studying them. That is the very definition of anti-intellectualism.”
The review was initially chaired by Sir Geoff Palmer, Scotland’s first black professor, who sadly died before the work was published.
Asked to respond to Curry’s comments, Briggs stressed his friendship with Palmer to the newspaper.
“In the almost decade I have served in the Scottish Parliament I have never seen a situation where a university employee has been given such free rein to attack an elected representative in such a crass and unprofessional manner,” he added.
“I have throughout my career supported the work of Edinburgh University and given the dire financial position it currently finds itself, along with the potential for hundreds of my constituents who work at the university to lose their jobs, feel the university should be looking wisely at how they are spending every penny and pound.
“I have engaged over several years on the issue of race and slavery especially with my late friend, Professor Sir Geoff Palmer, and believe it is vital that we understand our history and not try to erase it.
“We must learn the lessons from history, especially in our universities.”
Critics, including Times columnist Magnus Linklater, have argued that Edinburgh University had no need to apologise. A group of staff members, anonymously, objected to proposals for the institution to make amends by funding more students of colour.
