We live in strange times. A host of highly contestable concepts and practices very critical of western world standards and based on gender theory, identity politics, political correctness and so on are being introduced into our institutions with little prior scrutiny or debate.
These concepts/practices are all amenable to professional investigation by the appropriate academic disciplines – indeed, I can think of no other way they could be adjudicated. One would therefore expect the higher academies to be working overtime examining and adjudicating these matters. But the reality is that those sectors of the academy not busily promoting these highly contestable concepts are sitting silent, transfixed like rabbits in the glare of a blazing headlamp while pillars of the academy, such as academic freedom, teeter and wobble around them under the new pressures.
The current criticisms gain traction with the assistance of powerful new pressures, principally “wokeism” and cancel culture. Woke is an adjective derived from African-American vernacular meaning “alert to racial prejudice and discrimination”, eg sexism and “white privilege”. Cancel culture means ostracising/banning those deemed to act or speak in an unacceptable manner – usually conservatives who criticise the new order.
One easily understood example of the current situation in historical research is the widespread use of “presentism” – judging actions and ideas of historical figures on the basis of modern standards. For example, last year a committee at Imperial College London recommended removing the name of famous evolutionary biologist Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) from a college building. Huxley was a great champion of the evolutionary ideas proposed by Charles Darwin (1809-1882), made important contributions to evolutionary theory himself, coined the term “agnosticism”, was president of the Royal Society and pioneered the education of women and the poor. In early writings he proposed a hierarchy of human races. Anthropologists then mistakenly thought the newly-studied black Africans in their simple cultures represented the infancy of the human race. Huxley renounced such ideas in his later years.
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Sticking with historical scholarship, the term colonialism, specifically European colonialism, from the 16th-century spread of empire to its eventual dismantling in the 20th century, is a woke synonym for an irredeemable system of the worst forms of exploitation and injustice. This attitude is informed by the undoubted injustices perpetrated by these empires, but is nowhere tempered by acknowledgment of known good also accomplished by these empires. Tellingly, although many non-western empires arose over the centuries, the Aztec empire (1428-1521) and the Ottoman empire (1299-1922) for example, one rarely hears woke moral critiques of them, eg of human sacrifice and slavery in the Aztec empire or slavery in the Ottoman empire.
In his new, carefully researched book Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (William Collins 2023), Nigel Biggar, Oxford emeritus regius professor of moral and pastoral theology, argues that the British empire is much more complicated than woke interpretations based on presentism. Although, as we Irish well know, it exhibited no shortage of bad/evil practices such as slavery, racism, economic exploitation, displacement of natives and more. But it was also leavened by good behaviour, such as opposition to and eventual elimination of slavery, emphasis on the rule of law, conservation of language and culture in India that would otherwise have been lost, elimination of appalling Indian practices such as sati, elimination of chronic intertribal warfare in Africa, introduction of modern medicine and agricultural practices – and much more. Biggar probably overestimates the “good” done by the British empire but I think his data is good enough to make his point.
[ The Great Defiance: How the World Took on the British Empire by David VeeversOpens in new window ]
The British empire was a mixture of good and evil, as were most historical enterprises – it was not irredeemably bad because it was also shot through with good principles, differing from projects such as nazism, Lenin’s and Stalin’s Soviet Union and Mao’s China. As Biggar emphasises, the fact that any regime consists of a mixture of good and evil is not enough to condemn it as evil. If it were, every regime that ever existed would be classified as evil.
[ Molly O'Gorman: Cancel culture is a self-defence tool for the establishmentOpens in new window ]
The western world is now besieged by criticisms of its beliefs, practices and institutions. I am not claiming there is no merit to this criticism but it must all be adjudicated and much of this adjudication must be done in the universities. Unfortunately, many of the critics are highly intolerant and regularly shout down opposing sides in university debates. Academic freedom is under threat. Academics must stand up and be counted.
William Reville is an emeritus professor of biochemistry at UCC