Edinburgh University has damaged its global reputation by caving in to a campaign that branded one of the world’s great philosophers a racist before establishing the facts, two experts have claimed.
David Ashton and Professor Peter Hutton said university authorities had been wrong to capitulate to a student petition in 2020 that alleged David Hume was guilty of making racist remarks and that he “championed white supremacy”.
The petition followed an article by Felix Waldmann, a fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge, and the author of Further Letters of David Hume, which branded Hume “an unashamed racist, who was directly involved in the slave trade”.
