Geoffrey Alderman

How genuine and inclusive are complaints about institutional racism affecting non-white academics and students in British universities? To find out, over the past half year I’ve made it my business to attend academic conferences (four in all) focused or largely focused on alleged racism at UK universities and the experience of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) students and staff. I had been shocked by the insistence of my colleagues and peers that racism on university campuses is not merely alive and well, but flourishing and growing. Could this be possible, when it seems that every UK higher education institution has draconian policies and procedures in place to combat racism?

David Cameron announced five years ago that he was establishing a “Holocaust Commission”. The purpose? To “investigate what more needs to be done to ensure Britain has a permanent and fitting [Holocaust] memorial and the educational resources needed for generations to come.” Out of this Commission came a Holocaust Memorial Foundation; and out of this Foundation – technically an Advisory Board to the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government – a breathtaking proposal has been issued: to construct within Victoria Tower Gardens (next to the Houses of Parliament) a gigantic edifice incorporating a learning resource centre to honour Jewish and other victims of the Nazi Holocaust, such as Roma, disabled and LGBT people.

The ultimate purpose of a university is, without fear or favour, to pursue the truth, and in furtherance of that ideal I try, as an historian, to go wherever the evidence leads me. That some folks – even some academic colleagues – may not feel comfortable with the end results is of absolutely no consequence. I’ve always been supported by the institutions at which I’ve worked and by the colleagues with whom I work with.  But it’s now becoming clear to me that this world and these norms are under attack, and – scarcely less worrying – that they are being betrayed from within.

Universities up and down the land are clambering to recruit students in time for the start of the new academic year. International students – those from outside the EU – are the most lucrative market, not least because there are no legal restrictions on the fees that they can be charged; top universities, such as Oxford, can charge as much as £23,000 a year for some courses. But there are also sound academic reasons why we should recruit internationally. We want our campuses - which are places of education as well as training - to be centres of social, religious and ethnic diversity. We also want, of course, to recruit the best students. Yet the signs are that the sector is failing in its mission to make campuses as cosmopolitan as possible.

A campaign is currently underway to have Bristol's Colston Hall renamed because Edward Colston was a slave trader. This has set me thinking. How gross does someone’s moral turpitude have to be before memorials to him are considered ripe for removal? Two years ago, the Rhodes Must Fall campaign successfully lobbied for the removal of a statute of Cecil Rhodes from the campus of the University of Cape Town. The campaign then spread to Oxford, of which Rhodes was a graduate and at which he endowed the scholarships that bear his name. Rhodes was targeted as an architect of repressive anti-black colonialism. But not everything that was done in the name of colonialism was necessarily bad. In 21st-century terms, Rhodes harboured racist views.

The UCAS deadline for the receipt of applications for university entry this coming autumn has just passed.  In terms of lifetime earnings a university degree – especially a degree from a top-drawer Russell Group university - is still excellent value for money, so thousands of students now working hard to complete their sixth-form studies will soon be waiting anxiously to see if their A-Level grades match university entry requirements.    I have some bad news for them. Some of them, who reach grades that would normally have guaranteed them a place, will nonetheless have been deliberately denied an offer, just so that others – who have not done so well at A-Level - can take their place. Why?

It may come as a surprise to some that, in itself, being homosexual has never been illegal in Britain. But, for hundreds of years, homosexual acts between consenting males were regarded as criminal offences. Thousands of men of all ages were prosecuted, sent to prison – or worse. One of these was Alan Turing, whose brilliant work on artificial intelligence was pivotal to the success of the Bletchley Park code breakers in World War Two. In 1952, Turing was convicted of gross indecency and, in order to escape imprisonment, agreed to undergo chemical castration. But while Turing's ordeal is difficult to imagine now, does pardoning him - and others convicted under such laws - do any good? When Turing received his Royal Pardon, there was much celebration.

In 1962 I made the leap of a lifetime - from a severely cash-limited working-class household in Hackney (my father had been a packer in a Whitechapel warehouse) to Oxford University. No obstacles were put in my way. Educated at an LCC secondary school, I spent a week at Lincoln College, taking exams for admission to the BA (Hons) in Modern History, and answering questions at a series of intellectually punishing academic interviews. No concessions were made to my socio-economic background. Nor, incidentally, did I benefit from any private tuition, which my parents could never have afforded. I was awarded an Exhibition (a form of scholarship) on merit.

As of 6.30pm this evening, Londoners will (once again) suffer miserably at the hands of the transport unions, which have called another 24-hour strike on the Underground system in support of a demand for higher payments for operating a night-time service on parts of the network. Many commuters – forced onto overcrowded buses - will arrive late for work, while many more will be unable to work at all. Shops and restaurants will lose custom. When the last such strike took place, on 15-16 July, the Federation of Small Businesses estimated the cost at around £300 million. With more tourists in the capital, the cost of this next strike is likely to be even higher. But the unions will bear none of these financial consequences.

Weekends are quality time in the Alderman household. On Saturday evenings, following the termination of the Sabbath, my wife and I are accustomed to sit together, review the week that has just ended, and map out the week ahead. But last Saturday the conversation took a very different turn. My wife and I considered the drama that had unfolded in Copenhagen, and asked ourselves, for the very first time in over forty-one years of marriage, whether we should not make plans to leave (flee?) England – this green and hitherto pleasant land in which we had both been born and educated– and seek shelter in some foreign field.