The Professor Who Refused To Be De-colonized

 

Professor Paul Harper-Scott

A professor of musical history and theory at the Royal Holloway, University of London, has resigned in protest against plans to de-colonize curriculums and the 'no platforming' of academics. Paul Harper-Scott, 43, had worked in the Music Department of Royal Holloway for sixteen years when he decided to leave in the summer of 2021 because he'd become 'profoundly disillusioned' at how increasingly dogmatic universities were becoming with 'cancel culture', seemingly endemic.

The first member of his family to go to university, and from a mining community, Harper-Scott says on his blog, "Why I Left Academia', that he'd entered the profession as an outsider naively believing that academics were committed to the pursuit of truth, "This did not turn out to be true...I wrongly supposed the universities would be critical places, but they're becoming increasingly dogmatic." The professor of musical history, believes that music departments could cease teaching the works of Wagner and Beethoven because their compositions were produced during a time of empire and "in the frankly insane belief that in doing so, will somehow materially improve current living conditions for the economically, socially, sexually, religiously, or racially underprivileged." 

Harper-Scott wrote on his blog that, "too many humanities scholars move in lock step with the general ideology of our time, dogmatically echoing the opinions of politicians, the media and business." He warns that if universities abandon a basic commitment to scepticism and a critical mode of thinking, then they will have ceased to serve a useful function.

Earlier this year, the Royal Holloway, announced that in an effort to combat 'structural racism' and to support the BME community (whatever that is), they would be removing certain book titles from their collection and 'de-colonizing' and 'diversifying' their collections to make their service more inclusive and to tackle racism. 

While the Royal Holloway hastily compile a woke index of forbidden books, so that some people may never have to confront an unpleasant thought or view, there is nothing new in libraries eliminating books and literature deemed inappropriate for political purposes. During the 1960s and 1970s, many so-called 'looney-left' London councils discretely destroyed thousand of books that were considered sexist, imperialist, colonialist, homophobic and racist. While book burning was a craze in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and led by student activists, the actions of the Royal Holloway, are more akin to book binning. 

Just what 'de-colonizing' and 'diversifying' literature actually means and who will be tasked with doing it, is an issue open to argument and debate. We should bear in mind that history is inevitably contaminated by views peculiar to the times and the personal biases of historians. 

While recent attention has focused on the nefarious activities of 17th century slavers like Edward Colston, and the Atlantic slave trade, many are less happy to talk about the estimated "20 million black slaves" who were exported to the Ottoman and Turkish Empire - the Islamic world - over a period of 500 years or the abduction in 1631, of 107 people from the little village of Baltimore, West Cork, Ireland, by Barbary pirates to be sold in the slave markets of Algiers. White people were still being bought and sold as slaves in the Ottoman Empire, decades after American blacks were freed.