Imperialism’s long shadow: the UK universities grappling with a colonial past

Nature has published a special issue on racism and science, which includes this article.

In February, the nineteenth-century naturalist Thomas Henry Huxley, escaped — in the eyes of some — from ‘cancellation’ at one of London’s most prestigious academic institutions. Huxley, a prominent advocate of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, promoted the racist view that Black people had inferior capabilities compared with white people. A report prepared in November 2021 by a team of faculty members and internal and external advisers at Imperial College London had recommended stripping Huxley’s name from the mathematics and computing department building, and removing his bust from the entrance hall (see go.nature.com/3smu1xf).

But after extensive consultation, the Imperial administrators decided not to accept the recommendation, and are instead now discussing other options: contextualizing Huxley’s status and views, and adding the name of a scientist associated with the college who is from an under-represented ethnic group to the Huxley Building. The decision was largely an attempt to balance the report’s recommendations with the views expressed by the university community in the consultations that followed...