Academic community fights appointment of ‘racist’ fellow at St Edmund’s

Over 200 academics from Cambridge, Oxford and other universities have recently signed an open letter in protest of a new fellow appointment at St Edmund's College.

The fellow in question, Noah Carl, was awarded the Toby Jackman Newton Trust Research Fellowship but academics are dismayed that he has been accepted into Cambridge's community. This is because of his work and other publicly held views.

His work is based on discredited and morally questionable "race sciences" and in the open letter it is said that many feel his publications "seem nothing more than an expression of opinion on various social matters."

He links "race", "criminality" and "genetic intelligence" in his work and has been known to attend, as well as defend, the London Conference on Intelligence which has been widely refuted due to the presentation of racist and pseudo-scientific work. His work has been used by xenophobic and far right wing groups.

The open letter calls on the university, the college and the trust responsible to release statements that disassociates themselves with the pseudo-science that aims to link criminality and intelligence with race. It also calls into question the rigour and research that went in to making such an appointment and calls on the university to open an investigation to understand how this was allowed to happen.

None so far have made a comment and the fellow, described as having "diverse research interests", is still present on the St Edmund's College's list of staff.