‘Anglo-saxon’ put to the sword ‘over tie to US supremacists’

THE University of Cambridge has been accused of “pandering to mad Americans” after it removed the term Anglosaxon from a world-leading medieval journal.

The University Press said it was “delighted” to reveal its Anglo-saxon England journal had been given the new name Early Medieval England and its Neighbours during a relaunch announcement on Monday.

The journal has been running since the 1970s, but the university said the change represented the “international, interdisciplinary and rapidly evolving nature of research in this field”.

However, Dominic Sandbrook, a prominent historian, said the university was pandering to a “handful of mad Americans” with the change.

The term Anglo-saxon is often viewed differently in the US, having been appropriated by white-supremacists to describe white people of British origin. “Be honest,” he said. “You changed the title because you are total drips and didn’t have the courage to say no to a handful of mad Americans.”

Wanjiru Njoya, a former lecturer at Oxford and Exeter, now an academic in the US, also addressed the change.

“Now Cambridge has changed the name of their journal from ‘Anglosaxon’ to ‘Early Medieval’,” she said on social media, while sharing a previous news story that described how the term was being addressed at Cambridge to make its teaching “anti-racist".

The term Anglo-saxon has recently become embroiled in controversy, with some academics claiming the term has been used by racists – particularly in the US – to support the idea of an ancient white English identity.