Cambridge dons condemn ‘woke activist’s’ slavery report

A CAMBRIDGE University college has been accused of hiring a “woke activist” with an agenda to produce a “shambolic” slavery report that it is now being forced to correct.

Gonville and Caius college hired a junior researcher on a year-long contract to investigate legacies of slavery and coerced labour following the murder of George Floyd.

However, it has descended into a furious row after a 50-page draft led to a backlash from senior historians who condemned the “indefensible” attempt to tarnish the college’s history.

In a quarrel that insiders said “got completely out of hand”, Nicholas Bell-Romero, the postdoctoral researcher who was leading the report, quit accusing dons of “censorship” after the college ordered a series of clarifications.

In turn, dons said Mr Bell-Romero, who was hired between 2020 and last September and stayed on afterwards, had produced a report with the “distortions of a politically motivated student”.

The draft was circulated among college fellows in the spring, prompting one legal historian to send back what sources described as a 16-page “demolition job”. Sources said one error included an individual being wrongly named as having slave links to the college, but their identity was confused with someone else.

One don, who wished not to be named, said the blunders were “typical of the situation we’re in where woke activists have got this big agenda and actually when it comes down to the details they make a complete mess of it”.

Mr Bell-Romero did not respond to a request for comment, but has said earlier that objections from fellows were “disproportionate”.