IN SEPTEMBER 2020, ADMINISTRATORS at the University of Edinburgh decided that David Hume Tower should be renamed 40 George Street. According to a statement, Hume’s disparaging comments about non-white intelligence, “though not uncommon at the time, rightly cause distress today”.
The affair provided an illuminating insight into the atmosphere of the university, and the climate of British cultural life. There was no attempt to make an overall assessment of the work of one of Britain’s most renowned philosophers. There was no attempt to place his life and work in its proper historical context. A few comments on the outermost peripheries of his expansive oeuvre consigned him to the realms of the unspeakable.
This was one of several incidents in Edinburgh which have made the city an extremely vivid case of left-wing institutional capture. Any thought or deed — historical or contemporary — which seems to defy the strict precepts of “social justice” demands exclusion, both because of student activism and because of academics and politicians.
Take the case of Dr Neil Thin. The respected anthropologist was subjected to a campaign of furious abuse by anonymous Edinburgh University students on the basis of allegedly posting “racist” tweets. His crimes? Well, he had the startling audacity to post “civilisation is for all”.
You’re horrified, I’m sure. Thin also stood accused of defending J.K. Rowling from accusations of transphobia and
