A union has condemned plans to sack the first British person of African heritage to become a professor of history in the UK as “an attack on black academia”.
The University of Chichester is suspending recruitment to its MRes in the history of Africa and the African diaspora, putting Hakim Adi – who founded the degree in 2017 – at risk of redundancy.
Nearly 5,000 people have signed a petition protesting against the cuts, which were first reported by The Guardian.
The University and College Union (UCU) said that, at a time when just 1 per cent of professors in the UK are black, the Chichester course played a vital role in training students of African and Caribbean heritage as historians.
