Edinburgh university confronts slavery links

By Catarina Demony

LONDON (Reuters) -The University of Edinburgh benefited financially from transatlantic slavery and served as a haven for scholars developing racist theories in the 18th and 19th centuries, a review has found.

The review, commissioned in 2021 and published on Sunday, found the university profited from slavery through individual donations to endowments that have funded bursaries, scholarships, chairs and fellowships.

Donations were traced to profits made by individuals and industries involved in enslavement through the cultivation, production and sale of colonial commodities, such as tobacco, sugar and cotton.

Edinburgh follows in the footsteps of other UK universities that have acknowledged historical ties to slavery in recent years, including the University of Glasgow, University of Bristol and University of Cambridge.

Founded in 1583, Edinburgh holds 15 historic endowments linked to African enslavement and 12 tied to British colonialism in India, Singapore, and South Africa. Some remain active, the review said.

"We cannot have a selective memory about our past, focusing only on the historical achievements which make us feel proud," the university's principal Peter Mathieson said. "We are right to address its complexities too."

The report said that between 1750 and 1850 the university served as a "haven" for professors and alumni who promoted ideas of African inferiority and played an "outsized role" in developing racial pseudo-sciences that justified slavery and colonial expansion.

Among the review's recommendations were the creation of a research and community centre focused on racism, colonialism, and anti-Black violence, and action to address under-representation of Black staff and students, degree awarding disparities and support barriers for those facing racism.

As well as universities, other major UK institutions, such as the Church of England and the Bank of England, have also started to recognise how they benefited from slavery's injustices.

Some activists and scholars have criticised such efforts as largely symbolic, arguing that true commitment to addressing historical injustices requires meaningful reparations, not just acknowledgements and reports.

Calls for reparations have been gaining momentum but the backlash against it has also been growing, with critics saying modern institutions should not be held responsible for historical wrongs.

(Reporting by Catarina Demony; Editing by Alison Williams)