Lecturing handbook sees Darwin evolve into racist
Sheffield University guide to ‘decolonising curriculum’ says scientist used theories to justify white superiority
CHARLES DARWIN is among “highly celebrated scientific figures” who “held racist views” because he used his theory of natural selection to justify white male superiority, according to a university’s new handbook for teaching and research.
The naturalist is on a list of 11 scientists whose views “influenced the type of research they carried out and how they interpreted their data”, according a University of Sheffield guide drawn up to “decolonise” the biology curriculum.
This is despite Darwin’s fervent support for the abolition of slavery, a position that was not shared by all of his 19th-century contemporaries. He said human slavery “makes one’s blood boil” and held abolition to be a “sacred cause”.
The handbook, seen by The Sunday Telegraph, tells students and lecturers that the scientist must be historically caveated when lecturers teach his seminal theory of evolution.
Historians told this newspaper that Sheffield’s guidelines were “unhistorical, misleading” and “authoritarian”.
In the guidance, the Russell Group university also told science students and lecturers to drop the terms “founding father”, “idols” and “geniuses” to avoid “hero worshipping” scientific figures. This practice treats them as “white saviours” and erases less privileged scholars, it explains.
Drawn up by lecturers in the Animal and Plant Sciences faculty, the guide says “whiteness and Eurocentrism of our science” must be dismantled.
“It is clear that science cannot be objective and apolitical,” it adds. “The curriculum we teach must acknowledge how colonialism has shaped the field of evolutionary biology and how evolutionary biologists think today.”
Darwin published the theory of evolution by natural selection with his 1859 work On the Origin of Species, widely viewed as the core of evolutionary biology. Central to it is the concept of survival of the fittest, where species with physical characteristics best adapted to their environment are most likely to reproduce.
According to Sheffield’s decolonised curriculum, Darwin “believed that his renowned theory of natural selection justified the view that the white race was superior to others, and used his theory of sexual selection to justify why women were clearly inferior to men”. It says his voyage on HMS Beagle, when he collected plant and animal samples, was to map colonies.
But Prof James Moore, a biographer of Darwin and historian of science, told The Telegraph: “Almost everyone in Darwin’s day was ‘racist’ in 21st century terms, not only scientists and naturalists but even anti-slavery campaigners and abolitionists.
“What set his ‘racism’ apart – and makes him more like us today – was his profound conviction that all the human races are ‘family’, sisters and brothers.
Darwin’s wokeness was most obvious in his maintaining the full common humanity and unity of the races in the face of a rising anthropology that insisted the races were in fact separately originated and unrelated species, thus offering justification of atrocities that Darwin is now blamed for.”
It was only after the scientist’s death that eugenicists adapted his theory to form “Social Darwinism” to justify racial differences in society.
Prof Nigel Biggar, an Oxford historian, added: “During Darwin’s lifetime the British Empire was busy emancipating slaves across the world. The ‘decolonising’ assumption that ‘colonial mapping’ was all about oppression is false, and the judgment that Darwin should be damned by association is morally stupid.
“Before propagating this ideology, did Sheffield University secure the consent of academic staff, and does it now allow for conscientious objection? If not, its conduct is authoritarian and arguably a violation of academic freedom.”
The latest move to decolonise the sciences and maths follows plans to diversify Sheffield’s engineering degrees, leaked to The Sunday Telegraph, taking aim at Sir Isaac Newton as a potential beneficiary of “colonial-era activity” whose rule of gravity requires context.
Other scientists named in the handbook, titled Applying a decolonial framework to teaching and research in ecology and evolution, include James Watson, who discovered DNA, and Carl Linnaeus, an 18th-century Swedish botanist.
Michelle Donelan, the universities minister, has previously warned that UK campuses risk mirroring the Soviet Union by “censoring history” with decolonising efforts.
A University of Sheffield spokesman said: “We are not removing key historical figures from our curriculum, but we are adding those who have also made significant contributions to the fields of maths, science and engineering that are not currently represented.”
‘The judgment that he should be damned by association is morally stupid. This is arguably a violation of academic freedom’