A Great University Betrayed

Slavery wasn't all bad: it helped fund the University of Edinburgh

Jul 30, 2025

A Great University Betrayed

The University of Edinburgh (founded 1582) has an illustrious history. Famous alumni are pre-eminent philosopher and historian David Hume, founder of political science Adam Smith, electromagnetism pioneer James Clerk Maxwell, telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell and writers Arthur Conan Doyle, Walter Scott and J. M Barrie. Charles Darwin was a medical student for a while but after watching pre-anesthetic surgery he decided that he much preferred evolution to evisceration. In later years, Tanzanian premier Julius Nyerere learned Fabian socialism at Edinburgh.

Now, admirers of the U. of Edinburgh are in for a shock. As the culmination of a 4-year effort[1], a report has been published, revealing what is claimed to be the university’s most distinctive feature: its shameful racist foundations.

A well-subsidized ‘investigation’, has revealed that “Edinburgh University had an “’outsized’ role in creating racist scientific theories” and “benefited from transatlantic slavery and was haven for white supremacist theories.” Who knew? Who even cares? It was a long time ago and the result was a great university.

In fact, the whole process, the people commissioned to write the report, the person who did the commissioning and the report itself, all are an utter betrayal of the University of Edinburgh’s great history and of the academic values that underlie it. The University seems now to be infected by white-racial guilt, impelling it to ‘decolonize’ itself from science and rational thought. This report reflects a muddled, activist social pseudoscience that rejects the Enlightenment and demands economic and cultural reparations for favored groups.

Yes, in the 18^th century, the University of Edinburgh, along with many other Scottish, English and American institutions benefitted from slavery. Slavery had a good outcome for society at that time: economic prosperity and a great university. But this report ignores the good outcome and obsesses about the bad cause, slavery, which is long past and cannot be remedied. Even if it could, the result would, by this same logic, be a weaker university. If the university benefitted from slavery, as this report argues, then absent slavery, it must be worse off? The report seems not to understand that very often in human history, bad in the short term may yield long-term good.

The committee had a choice: recognize both the good and bad effects of slavery or make civilization abhorrent because it tolerated slavery. They unhesitatingly chose the latter: trash civilization and denigrate Edinburgh University. (Britain gets no credit for abolishing slavery, of course.) I will substantiate these conclusions in a moment.

First, a few words about David Hume, who is attacked in the report for a footnote he wrote on the topic, but whose philosophical insights are at the heart of science. Then comments on Professors Nicola Frith and Tommy Curry, chairs of the report committee, and finally on the report itself.

Hume and the fact-value distinction

David Hume (1711-1776) is the most famous Edinburgh alum. Hume’s epistemology is a cornerstone of modern philosophy. By all accounts, he was also a very decent fellow. His work reshaped how philosophers think about knowledge, causation, and the limits of reason. A key contribution is the clear separation of matters of fact — science — from the values we attach to those facts. This is a separation of which Curry, Frith et al. seem to be totally unaware. Hence their allusions to “racist science”, even though the only properties a scientific proposition may have are, truth, falsity — or “don’t know.” A fact is neither racist nor antiracist. Facts can elicit emotional reactions, to be sure. But the reactions are a property of the reactors and may differ from one person to another. They are no more a part of science than the motives of the scientist. Truth is all that matters.

Many great scholars thought well of Hume: Immanuel Kant credited Hume with awakening him from his “dogmatic slumber,” leading to the Critique of Pure Reason. Logical positivists and empiricists built on Hume’s emphasis on observation and skepticism. Contemporary cognitive science echoes Hume’s insights about habit, association, and perception. Defacing Hume’s name because some students find him uncomfortable reveals a serious rot at the heart of Edinburgh University[7].

Much is made in the Report of David Hume’s supposed racism, represented by a single 1753 footnote. It is discussed, but not quoted, at length, along with the claim that Hume thought ‘inferior’ negroes “ought to be slaves” (In fact Hume deplored ancient slavery and said little about the contemporary variety[2].) Strangely, the exact text of Hume’s footnote is difficult to find via standard search engines, one of which at first gave it then immediately deleted it, saying “I’m afraid I can’t talk about that.” The evil effects of AI censorship are a topic for another day. But here is the quote:

I am apt to suspect the negroes, and in general all the other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There scarcely ever was a civilized nation of that complexion, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites, such as the ancient Germans, the present Tartars, have still something eminent about them, in their valour, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction between these breeds of men. Not to mention our colonies, there are Negroe slaves dispersed all over Europe, of whom none ever discovered [showed] any symptoms of ingenuity; though low people, without education, will start up amongst us, and distinguish themselves in every profession. In Jamaica, indeed, they talk of one negroe as a man of parts and learning; but it is likely he is admired for slender accomplishments, like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly[3].

Whether human beings are one species or many was a matter of dispute at that time, although the consensus probably favoured the many. Genetics being more than a hundred years in the future, the issue could not easily be settled other than by the possibility of interbreeding. Even that was not conclusive, since different species of animals were known to interbreed and produce fertile offspring (wolf and dog, Yak and cattle, and a few others). Hume’s comment was perfectly reasonable given his limited experience with Africans who were probably very different in behavior and even in appearance from the literate mixed-race African-Americans and Brits of today. Perhaps he never met anyone like the great Dr. Samuel Johnson’s freed-slave helper, friend and heir Francis Barber (1742-1801). In any event, I suspect from his general indifference that for Hume slavery, which had been universal for millennia, though less in Europe than elsewhere, was not an important issue.

In sub-Saharan Africa, of course, some racial differences remain: sub-Saharan Africans on average have dramatically lower[4] IQ scores than Western and Asian populations, for example. It is not racist to point to factual differences between Black and white populations, be it skin color, hair type, disease resistance/proneness or IQ. To censor[5] uncomfortable information subverts science. It is also inevitable that if such differences exist people will automatically generalize about, stereotype, the most recognizable groups[6].

With little data to go on, Hume was making a reasonable assessment about racial differences. The main difference between then and now is not just the data but the fact that the whole topic has now become taboo. A recent report has announced that there are in fact four not one species of giraffe. If human variation was as uncontroversial as giraffe, we might well come to a similar conclusion about humans. Because discussion is so inhibited, finding the truth about racial differences is probably more difficult now than it was in Hume’s day when they could be freely discussed.

Lead Authors: Curry and Frith

Tommy Curry and Nicola Frith are both activists. Let’s look at their intellectual accomplishments and then see how they weigh up against those they seek to throw under the bus[8].

Tommy Curry is Professor of Philosophy and holds the Personal Chair of Africana Philosophy and Black Male Studies at the University of Edinburgh, a strangely niche position and a big advance from his previous Associate Professor position at Texas A & M. I asked an AI chat the following: “What are the most important writings of Tommy Curry, Black academic?” A response flashed up, only to be replaced at once by the comment “I'm afraid I can't talk about that topic, sorry about that.”[9] AI had second thoughts! What, I wondered, could be the problem with Mr. Curry? Apparently it was the word “black,” since the query “Tommy Curry academic writing?” did elicit a response.

Curry’s oeuvre is mainly concerned with the victimization of Black males. Here are the AI summaries of a few of his works:

“Decolonizing the Intersection” (2021)
Critiques intersectionality for reproducing racist theories about Black men and boys, arguing that it fails to account for their unique vulnerabilities.
“Killing Boogeymen: Phallicism and the Misandric Mischaracterizations of Black Males in Theory” (2018)
Introduces the concept of phallicism to describe how Black men are simultaneously seen as hypersexual threats and sexual victims.

To a Humean point, Curry summarizes his view of rationality:

“What the West has called “rationality” is not a universal human capacity, but a historically and politically constructed standard that privileges whiteness and excludes nonwhite peoples—especially Black men—from being recognized as fully rational beings[10]” [emphasis added].

Nicola Frith is a Senior Lecturer in French and Francophone Studies at the University of Edinburgh and “an expert in reparations.” AI summarizes her work as follows:

“Now [the university] can be in the business of producing decolonised and reparatory forms of knowledge that genuinely embrace and include those communities it has harmed in the way that it thinks, acts and is structured.”
— Race Review, University of Edinburgh
This quote reflects her vision for institutional transformation—where reparative justice is not symbolic but embedded in epistemic and structural change.

And not just institutional, but epistemological transformation: not knowledge, but decolonized and reparative knowledge. Frith apparently looks unfavorably on the idea of objective truth, and justice is not just justice, but must be reparative.

“The pressing question of reparations for slavery is not simply about financial compensation, but about cultural, spiritual, and ecological repair.”
— Summary of AHRC-funded projects and INOSAAR work
Frith reframes reparations as multidimensional, challenging narrow economic interpretations and advocating for holistic justice.
“Decolonising the archive means correcting the ways we collect, interpret, and display histories of enslavement and colonialism.” [emphasis added]
— Decolonised Transformations blog
She critiques institutional memory practices and calls for ethical engagement with historical materials and community narratives. [emphases added]

So, not only is the idea of reparations to be expanded beyond financial recompense, history is to be rewritten from her point of view. (The word objective is absent from the Report.)

Arguments?

Do Curry and Frith make arguments? Well no, what they usually offer are unsubstantiated claims. Let’s look at a couple. An unintentionally humorous comment by Curry is this: rationality is “not a universal human capacity… [it] privileges whiteness and excludes nonwhite peoples”. There are three things to say about this.

First, yes the assumption that rationality is universal is clearly false. IQ tests show that some people are better at reasoning that others. Some, alas, are no good at all. But inability to reason should disqualify anyone from academic work.

Second, Curry’s comment that rationality “privileges whiteness and excludes nonwhite peoples” gives a clue as to what is really going on: Curry simply doesn’t really understand logic and rigorous reasoning. Being translated, “privileges whiteness” means “white people seem to understand reasoning better than me.” Black people are not excluded from rationality. Some, like Thomas Sowell and John McWhorter, excel, but others, like Tommy Curry, find it difficult. It is perhaps for this reason that Curry has insisted, at least since 2010, that we need more different kinds of race-based academic departments: “Concerning the Underspecialization of Race Theory in American Philosophy: How the Exclusion of Black Sources Affects the Field”1. In this way, weak arguments by black scholars can be even more thoroughly insulated from open critique than they are now.

Third, yes, the assumption that rationality, however well or ill understood, is universal, is an assumption. It is the assumption on which science and philosophy are based. Without it, arguments can only be decided by emotional or physical force. Above all, it is a core assumption of any institution of higher learning. In what sense is it “politically constructed”? Does Curry think that arithmetic is politically constructed? No, the methods of reason are true.

The fact the Prof. Curry has a problem with reason should not lead the academy to abandon reason. But his difficulties do suggest that he find alternative employment.

Prof. Frith’s chief emphasis is the importance of connecting historical legacies of slavery and colonialism to contemporary inequalities in education and society. How does she make this connection? Well, she really doesn’t. She does take contemporary racial inequalities as evidence for the after-effects of colonialism, ignoring other possible causes. Or indeed other comparisons; her specialty is French colonialism. Perhaps British colonialism, which is more relevant to Edinburgh, looks a little different? for example, what effect did colonialism have on the wealth of colonial people? If Prof. Frith were to look, she might find that the longer a country was colonized, the better off it seems to be. For example, here is a table comparing GDP per capita for a few British colonies with their date of independence: the longer the colonial period, the better off they seem to be now:

Country Independence Year GDP per Capita (2020, current USD)
South Africa 1994 (from apartheid) $5,580.60
Zimbabwe 1980 (from UK/Rhodesia) $1,730.45
Zambia 1964 (from UK) $951.64
Liberia 1847 (founded by freed U.S. slaves) $616.79

These figures seem to show that British colonization left the colonies better off than they would have been without colonialism. Does this mean that colonialism can be a good thing? Or perhaps the greedy colonialists just held on longer to intrinsically richer countries. Of course, this is only partial information. What about other countries, other measures, mineral and other resources? Would a fuller picture make colonialism look better or worse? Some people have done more careful analyses, and have come to the conclusion that British colonialism was on the whole a good thing^[11]. Professor Frith cites none of this evidence but instead emphasizes the importance of connecting historical legacies. In other words, she simply asserts the evil aftereffects of colonialism without any attempt at proof. This is not scholarship but propaganda.

Reparations

Finally, what about reparations, which seems to be Frith’s major concern. Ignoring for the moment the clear injustice of punishing the living for the supposed sins of the long dead, what have been the actual effects of slavery on living Blacks? In fact a strong case can be made that contemporary Brits and Americans, Black as well as white, have benefitted from slavery, in which case reparations are unnecessary.

Here is the argument^[12]. In the period up to the American Civil War, all Americans benefitted from slavery, the South more than the North — except, of course, the slaves.^[13] Much of the DECOLONIZED report points out the economic benefits to Britain and Scotland. The Report correctly assumes that the U of E, like every other Scottish institution of the time, gained from 17^th-19^th century slavery. A recent BBC documentary[14] on Empire devoted a whole episode to the immense wealth generated in the 17^th century by the decision to use first indentured servants and then Black slaves to farm sugar cane in British-owned Barbados. Slavery was big business and Britain benefitted.

But after Western industrialization, the US civil war, and especially after the Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s, slavery and legal racial discrimination ended, and the whole of British and American society, Blacks as well as whites, inherited these early benefits. Blacks were at first at a lower level, just like women when sex-discrimination was abolished. In many respects, particularly labor-force participation, women now do as well or better than men. Contemporary blacks still lag, but the after-effects of segregation, not to mention slavery, likely play a very minor role, given that many Black-white social differences have actually increased in the last few decades.

The evidence is that American and British Blacks are better off than if slavery had not brought their ancestors to the US centuries ago. First, the better economic situation of contemporary American and British Blacks compared to Blacks in third-world Africa and, second, the immigration of third-world Blacks into Britain and the United States: many more Africans wish to settle in Britain than British Blacks wish to return to Africa. So, if contemporary American and British Blacks have in fact benefitted from the West’s history of slavery, what are reparations for? Logic would suggest that if there are to be reparations, their direction should be reversed, which is absurd. But so is its opposite.

The Report

In response to widespread allegations of anti-black racism, Sir Peter Mathieson, Principal of the University “set up [a] review, which was chaired by Prof Tommy J Curry, a specialist in critical race theory, and Dr Nicola Frith, an expert in reparations,” together with some twenty like-minded committee members. The report[15] was “Read and approved by: the REWG, the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee (EDIC) and the Race Equality and Anti-Racist Sub-Committee (REAR) in consultation with the Steering Group,” an appropriately sympathetic collection.

The report was celebrated:

The publication of the University of Edinburgh’s Race Review is a landmark moment in this ancient institution’s willingness and determination to learn from its past, as well as its present, in order to shape its future[16].

Sir Peter Mathieson is a nephrologist by training and a former President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong where he had to deal with totalitarian influences and a free-speech controversy[17], which he resolved in a way that many found unsatisfactory. Curry and Frith have we have already discussed. The committee they chaired produced a report titled

DECOLONISED TRANSFORMATIONS: CONFRONTING THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH’S HISTORY AND LEGACIES OF ENSLAVEMENT AND COLONIALISM

The report is book-length and hard to summarize, but from the Executive Summary:

[The report] identifies some of the ways that the University of Edinburgh and its staff and students were implicated in the practices and systems of enslavement and colonialism and the apartheid and genocide of colonised peoples across the world in Australasia, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas. It also considers some of the consequences of these histories today in terms of statistical under-representation and the persistence of institutional and structural racism. At the same time, it points towards areas for future investigation to throw more light on this long and complex history, while outlining a clear path to decolonial transformation and reparatory justice grounded in our Principles of Participation. [emphases added]

Genocide is mentioned mostly in connection with the war in Gaza, which is otherwise outside the racial remit of the rest of the report. But a pro-Palestinian position is not controversial in the community to which this report is addressed, so why not? By implication, slavery is also labeled as genocide, which is absurd. Slaves died in transit and after, but in no way were slave owners intending to eliminate some of their assets. Cruelty, laziness, inefficiency, perhaps, but genocide no.

The report also refers to “epistemicide (or the killing of Indigenous knowledges), that demand recognition, atonement and reparation” which seems to sideline science, a reliable killer of indigenous knowledge, as a way of attaining objective truth. Are “Indigenous knowledges” not to be tested? Apparently unquestioned acceptance of approved but untested beliefs is one aspect of decolonization.

An odd demand is for “restitution, or restoring, as far as possible, people to the original situation before their rights were violated” which could mean sending Scottish Blacks back to Africa? Or do they just want money?

Statistical under-representation is the main theme of the report. This ill-written paragraph gives the general idea:

[T]he alleged willingness of institutions and departments to address racial/ethnic under-representation tends to be undergirded by a colourblind ideology that asserting that racial disparities may be a product of individual biases rather than institutional practices. As such, this colourblind approach emphasises treating individuals equally within the institution, instead of addressing institutional practices of racism. Colourblind practices downplay and/or ignore the existence of racism and white racial privilege, and thus actively thwart progress in addressing racial discrimination against under-represented racial and ethnic minorities and anti-Black racism.

In short, equal treatment will not do. All races must be represented proportional to . . . what? Individual differences are dismissed by fiat; differential outcomes are all due to racism. So there should be more “minoritized” people at the University, how many more is unclear.

It is revealing that in the 46,000 words of the report, neither merit nor excellence occur even once. If there aren’t enough Black or ‘minoritized’ people, it is because of “institutional practices of racism”, which are defined by existing “under-representation.” All disparities are racist, apparently. The report fails to respect an obvious truth: disparities by themselves are uninterpretable. They raise causal questions. They cannot answer them — unless, like authors of the Report, you assume an answer.

Here is one problem: apparently white teachers grade Black students unfairly:

Additionally, racial disparities in undergraduate assessment by White teaching faculty produce a segregated education system making it difficult for Black students to be admitted into postgraduate programmes at elite UK universities.

What is the evidence? Could there be other reasons? None are considered.

How is under-representation measured? Well, the report has many tables showing a low proportion of blacks and a few more Asians. There have been small changes in recent years, but “Despite this, the overall staff composition across all grades remains predominantly White.” This is self-evidently a problem, apparently. Like American writer Ta Nehisi Coates years ago, if it’s all white, it must be racist.

Since merit is evidently to be excluded, what other criterion is to be used in selecting staff? The only answer offered is the feelings of minoritized students and faculty. The racial composition of the University must change until all “minoritized” members feel comfortable. To measure feelings, two online questionnaires were administered across the university, one entitled “Understanding the Present Racial Climate in the University of Edinburgh”, the other “Understanding People’s Experiences of Racial Discrimination.” To the extent that these two instruments measure anything, they both say something about how the subjects feel about their situation. There is no effort at independent verification. Unsurprisingly, the first questionnaire revealed that subjects saw prejudice. Responders to the second one also saw…racism.

From a scientific point of view, the substantial amount of work that went into the preparation of these many tables and graphs was a total waste. Even if the results are accurate which, given the self-selected group of subjects, is unlikely to be the case, they are still just feelings. A person feels her instructors are prejudiced. Is that true, was her work really graded more harshly than comparable work by others? This question is not even asked, much less answered, in this lengthy report.

The Report is scientifically worthless. It is in effect a political ploy aimed to degrade the academic standards of the university by eliminating merit in favor of some kind of racially balanced pattern of hiring and student admission — a power grab. It is indeed a betrayal of the traditions of a great university and a threat to Edinburgh’s academic integrity.

Conclusion

The academic/intellectual case for the “CONFRONTING…” report, celebrated by Principal Mathieson, is feeble. The case against colonialism is weak, for racism in the university unsubstantiated and for reparations, non-existent.

Slavery is morally bad. Many in the 18th century recognized its evils, but accepted it as an established institution. Its economic effects were for a while good for the University of Edinburgh and many other institutions at the time. The authors of the Report had a choice. On the one hand, they could condemn everyone who took any of the benefits of slavery, which would presumably include not just the University but many other Scottish institutions. On the other, they could at least celebrate the fact that some of the resources supplied by slavery went to a good cause. Without hesitation they have followed the former path: to stigmatize the University for doing good with money from a bad source and giving no weight to the liberal ideas advanced by the Scottish Enlightenment that eventually helped to end slavery.

To adopt the racial hiring proposed by the Report would destroy the academic integrity of the University of Edinburgh (no merit, no excellence). But the main reason to ignore this report is that the race issue is both trivial and irrelevant. It is trivial in the sense that until yesterday no one thought that Scotland, much less the University of Edinburgh, had a racism problem: Scotland in 2025 is not Alabama in the 1960s. But the main reason to put this issue to one side is that it is irrelevant. Scotland, like any country, has many domestic problems, from inflation to immigration to housing to unemployment. Racism is at the tail end of that list. None of these problems is a direct concern of a university. By all means, study the processes that underlie society’s challenges; by no means seek rectify them. The university’s business is to understand and transmit that understanding. Action is up to other institutions. This overtly political Report undermines the logos of the university that spawned it.

A great university, a seedbed for the Enlightenment, has been placed by its pandering Principal in the hands of a group of greedy pseudo-intellectuals who value racial issues over everything else, and are happy to traduce a great institution whose history they neither understand nor respect. Reason, objectivity and science are disdained. All is racialist dogma.

Edinburgh has been betrayed by a leader who has ignored the values that made his university great. Truth, logic, reason matter. Race should be a minor issue so long as all are treated equally (but color-blindness is condemned!). A university is not, should not be, an enforcer of social justice. By elevating pretended racial victimhood over knowledge, Principal Mathieson has harmed the wonderful historical edifice that Hume, Maxwell, Scott and their successors built. It is a betrayal.

J. E. R. Staddon

[1] https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/decolonise/2023/05/09/introducing-decolonised-transformations/

[2] Peter Hutton & David Ashton (2023) David Hume – An Apologia August Scottish Affairs 32(3):347-364.

[3] David Hume Essays Moral, Political, Literary, p 452. https://eet.pixel-online.org/files/etranslation/original/Hume_0059_EBk_v6.0.pdf. This is the 1777 version of a note that first appeared in 1753.

Postscript: The Overton Window

This article had a bumpy history. I posted it here, on Substack, after an interaction with the National Association of Scholars journal Academic Questions and its blog site Minding the Campus. The article is too long, I thought, for a blog, so I sent it to AQ, where the reception was at first sympathetic. But then there were a couple of problems. First, my treating slavery as an economically profitable enterprise. The reviewer commented “our own research and that of other economists, that the preservation of the premodern agriculture system of the south prevented economic growth, modernization, industrialization in a large swath of American territory, hurting the American economy overall.” I felt that overall, slavery, though a moral deficit, was probably an economic benefit, at least in Britain which is the topic of the article. Most importantly, the authors of the report I was criticizing argued strongly for this position. But this was not the main problem, as it turned out.

In any event, once I had posted the entire article on Substack, the editor of MTC was kind enough to post the first few hundred words with a Substack link. But then, a few days later, the extract with its link vanished.

After making some inquiries it turned out that Peter Wood, the president of the NAS, had vetoed any reference to the Edinburgh article. I wrote to Peter and the following correspondence ensued:

From: Peter Wood <pwood@nas.org>
Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2025 1:18 PM
To: John Staddon <jers@duke.edu>
Cc: Seth Forman <forman@nas.org>
Subject: Re: Edinburgh Betrayal
Dear John,
Thank you for your email. Having pondered your points for a while, I am not convinced that your article is right for Academic Questions. We could publish Hume’s footnote with cavail, [sic] except I would not publish it as anything more than a historical artifact. I agree that he was a man of his time and deserves to be treated with courtesy despite his not [sic?] discredited views, but you have gone beyond that. There may be value (some day) in AQ venturing into the IQ and race controversies. But I am not prepared to take AQ there now. You have colleagues who think otherwise, but that’s my decision.
Seth and I discussed this before I responded to you. He can speak for himself but he was also disheartened by your submission.
Yours, Peter
From: John Staddon 8/13/2025 5:05 PM
To: Peter Wood <pwood@nas.org>
Cc: Seth Forman <forman@nas.org>
Thanks your honest response but, again, I must disagree. The IQ issue is perfectly straightforward. The IQ is just a predictive test, never mind the stuff about whether it measures “real” intelligence. As I said, high blood pressure predicts risk of strokes, low IQ predicts risk of academic failure. In what way is that “complex”? The fact that the issue is “explosive” can only be cured by spreading understanding, not by censorship. I’m very sorry that NAS’ dedication to free inquiry has not just limits but unreasonable and inconsistent-with-your-mission limits.
J
On Wed, Aug 13, 2025, 3:13 PM John Staddon <jers@duke.edu> wrote:
PS But I would like a clear answer to one question: Are you rejecting the piece for factual inaccuracies, or simply because you feel the NAS should not discuss the race issue at all? If the former, I am happy to be corrected. If the latter, I will have to re-evaluate my longtime allegiance to (and very generous support of) the NAS as an organization dedicated to free inquiry.
Thanks in advance, J
From: Peter Wood <pwood@nas.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2025 5:38 PM
To: John Staddon <jers@duke.edu>
Subject: Re: Edinburgh Betrayal
Dear John,
I am rejecting the piece because it would damage the reputation of the journal. You appear not to understand that this topic is outside the current limits of responsible debate. [emphasis added]
Perhaps it shouldn’t be, but it is. There are other journals that don’t care about that. So it may be publishable elsewhere. But AQ is for a general leadership [sic?]. Publishing your article would cost us readers and members. It would also be taken as a deliberate effort to demean black readers. That might be far from your intentions, but that’s how it would be read.
I’m sorry that you are aggrieved at this decision but I’m aggrieved that you would thrust us into this situation.
Peter
After giving the matter more thought, I wrote:
On Fri, Sep 26, 2025 at 1:37 PM John Staddon <jers@duke.edu> wrote:
Dear Peter:
The NAS should not have an Overton Window for truth. The reputation of NAS depends on respecting truth whether or not it “is outside the current limits of responsible debate” — whatever “responsible” means. The racial guilt which infects US society will not be dissipated until the facts of the matter can be discussed with the same frankness exhibited by David Hume in his quote. Walking on eggshells is not an elegant mode of travel.
AQ is not Vanity Fair — or Science. To judge an article by its popularity is not what AQ should be doing. Not that I agree that my article would “cost us readers”. My point is that that should not be AQ’s criterion.
I’m sure you are implacable about this. I’m sorry, for NAS, and for you.
Best, John
To which Peter responded:
Re: Edinburgh Betrayal
Peter Wood<pwood@nas.org> 9/26/2025
John Staddon
Dear John,
It is easy for you to say NAS should not have an Overton window. We didn’t create it. It simply exists, and anyone running a membership organization has to be aware of it. We already press the outward limits of what is sayable by publishing article, for example, defending colonialism and questioning the climate change orthodoxy. Our standing in opposition to the diversity doctrine forecloses many opportunities to get AQ in academic libraries.
Much as you might like to have your views on race and IQ appear in our pages, I won’t put AQ or NAS in that position. Yes, I am implacable on that point.
Any journal holds many considerations in mind as it weighs what to publish. I don’t apologize for choosing not to send AQ into an ideological tarpit.
Yours,
Peter

So, there the matter stands. The chief stumbling block appears to be any reference to the well-established fact that African Americans, as a self-identified group, have a lower average IQ than other racial groups — and sub-Saharan Africans lower IQs still. Of course, science doesn’t yet know what to make of these differences. But that doesn’t mean they should be ignored. My own belief is that until these matters can be openly, objectively and dispassionately discussed the racial guilt that seems to envelop so many of our intellectual elite will persist, with many damaging effects on science and politics.

So, dear reader, judge for yourself whether the following article is reasonable or not. It is indeed frank about the racial-differences issue, partly because of my annoyance at the betrayal of the ideals of a university at the hands of Principal Mathieson and his collaborators. But that’s not the point. Does my article ignore critical facts? Does it demean any group? Above all, is true within the limits of our current knowledge? If it satisfies these conditions, then it deserves to be part of NAS’ oeuvre.

The Pluralist, Volume 5, Number 1, Spring 2010, pp. 44-64

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