Edinburgh University’s recently published Decolonised Transformations: Confronting the University of Edinburgh’s History and Legacies of Enslavement and Colonialism (henceforward, the Review) is an examination of racist and colonialist beliefs and attitudes at the university from the eighteenth century to the present. It purportedly exposes racist practices over the course of three centuries and claims that, though the form racism takes has changed, Edinburgh University continues to heavily discriminate against black people, especially black students and scholars. Edinburgh is among the world’s top research universities, yet the Review implies that racism remains as venomous as ever, and that support for colonialism is alive and well there. In the past, write the authors, the university was “a haven for professors and alumni who developed theories of racial inferiority”—indeed, they claim, it still is. 

The bout of paranoia about racism at Edinburgh University that led to the commissioning of the Review dates back to 2020. In September of that year, students drew attention to a footnote that the philosopher David Hume added to the 1753–54 edition of his essay “Of National Characters.” In the note, Hume writes: 

I am apt to suspect the negroes to be naturally inferior to the whites. There scarcely ever was a civilized nation of that complexion, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites, such as the ancient Germans, the present Tartars, have still something eminent about them, in their valour, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction between these breeds of men. Not to mention our colonies, there are Negroe slaves dispersed all over Europe, of whom none ever discovered any symptoms of ingenuity; though low people, without education, will start up amongst us, and distinguish themselves in every profession. In Jamaica, indeed, they talk of one negroe as a man of parts and learning; but it is likely he is admired for slender accomplishments, like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly.

Hume was expressing a common sentiment of the time, although it was not one that was universally shared, even by his own contemporaries. James Beattie provides a thoroughgoing rebuttal of this passage in his 1770 book, An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth:

That a negroe-slave, who can neither read nor write, nor speak any European language, who is not permitted to do any thing but what his master commands, and who has not a single friend on earth, but is universally considered and treated as if he were of a species inferior to the human;—that such a creature should so distinguish himself among Europeans, as to be talked of through the world for a man of genius, is surely no reasonable expectation.

As a result of the footnote becoming generally known, a section of the student body demanded that the university’s David Hume Tower be renamed. The Vice Chancellor, Sir Peter Mathieson, immediately acquiesced, apparently without consulting the faculty but with the support of activists. To add to the horror of the footnote, a PhD student named Felix Waldmann discovered a letter of 1766, in which he believes that Hume encouraged his patron, Lord Hertford, to buy slave-worked plantations in Grenada. Waldmann, by then a Cambridge academic, wrote a commentary in the Scotsman under the headline, “David Hume was a brilliant philosopher, but also a racist involved in slavery.”

Dr David Ashton and Professor Peter Hutton have argued that this is a misrepresentation of Hume. In his letter to Hertford, they write, Hume was simply acting as an intermediary, passing on a message from a mutual acquaintance, rather than making a recommendation. They argue that there is no evidence that Hume supported slavery. In fact, he was committed to the idea that all human beings are equally worthy of rights and freedoms. They write, 

Modern definitions of racism have at their core a justification for a disparity in power … but it is precisely this disparity in power to which Hume was implacably opposed. … Hume’s achievements on behalf of humanity—defending ideals of tolerance, humanity, justice, culture, and liberty—have been of incalculable influence.