By Eleanor Harding Education Editor For The Daily Mail
Published: 00:56 BST, 30 April 2019 | Updated: 00:56 BST, 30 April 2019
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Cambridge University is to carry out a two-year inquiry into its links with the slave trade.
It will investigate how the university benefited from the Atlantic trade in Africans in the 18th century, and how its scholars contributed to 'repugnant' views on race.
The project paves the way for the university to follow other public bodies in apologising for their part in the slave era. Students have been campaigning to 'decolonise the curriculum', complaining that it is too dominated by white writers. Cambridge has also been accused of failing to attract enough black students.
Researchers at Cambridge University are to carry out a two-year probe into its links with the slave trade
Vice chancellor Stephen Toope said: 'There is growing public and academic interest in the links between the older British universities and the slave trade, and it is only right that Cambridge should look into its own exposure to the profits of coerced labour during the colonial period. We cannot change the past, but nor should we seek to hide from it.
'I hope this process will help the university understand and acknowledge its role during that dark phase of human history.'
The inquiry will explore university archives and records elsewhere to uncover how Cambridge may have 'gained from slavery and the exploitation of labour'.
