They Kant be serious!
The latest demand from PC students? Don’t teach us about white philosophers
THEY are titans of philosophy, without whose work an understanding of the subject is all but inconceivable.
But now students at a University of London college are demanding that such seminal figures as Plato, Descartes, Immanuel Kant and Bertrand Russell should be largely dropped from the curriculum simply because they are white.
These may be the names that underpin civilisation, yet the student union at the world-renowned School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) is insisting that when studying philosophy ‘the majority of philosophers on our courses’ should be from Africa and Asia.
The students say it is in order to ‘decolonise’ the ‘white institution’ that is their college.
Last night philosopher Sir Roger Scruton lambasted the union’s demand, saying: ‘This suggests ignorance and a determination not to overcome that ignorance. You can’t rule out a whole area of intellectual endeavour without having investigated it and clearly they haven’t investigated what they mean by white philosophy. If they think there is a colonial context from which Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason arose, I would like to hear it.’
The vice-chancellor of Buckingham University Sir Anthony Seldon said: ‘There is a real danger political correctness is getting out of control. We need to understand the world as it was and not to rewrite history as some might like it to have been.’
Entitled ‘Decolonising SOAS: Confronting The White Institution’, the union’s statement of ‘educational priorities’ warns ‘white philosophers’ should be studied only ‘if required’, and even then their work should be taught solely from ‘a criti- cal standpoint’:’ ‘F‘ For example,l acknowledging the colonial context in which so-called “Enlightenment” philosophers wrote within.’
The democracy and education union officer responsible for the statement, Ali Habib, is on SOAS’s governing board of trustees. He recently told a student newspaper that he is an admirer of Frantz Fanon, the Martinique-born Marxist thinker whose book The Wretched Of The Earth is a seminal work of revolutionary anti-colonialism.
A wider campaign to counter the ‘colonial violence’ students say is ‘embedded’ in British universities has been led by a movement calling for the removal of the statue of ‘imperialist’ Cecil Rhodes from Oriel College, Oxford.
SOAS is a leading centre for the study of Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The head of SOAS’s Religions and Philosophies department Erica Hunter said the union’s viewpoint was ‘rather ridiculous’, adding: ‘I would firmly resist dropping philosophers or historians just because it was fashionable.’
Mr Habib declined to comment.