View
comments
Scientists have urged a university not to cut ties with one of its founding fathers after accusations of ‘scientific racism’ were made by an independent history group.
Imperial College is facing calls to remove a bust of 19th century biologist Thomas Huxley and rename a building named in his honour.
But some of the country’s leading scientific figures including Prof Richard Dawkins and Nobel laureate Sir Prof Paul Nurse have taken up the baton to defend Huxley’s reputation as a dedicated abolitionist against slavery, The Telegraph reports.
The move comes after a report was published in October by an independent history group, formed in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, which has examined Imperial college’s links to colonialism.
Their report argued that Huxley wrote an essay which ‘espouses a racial hierarchy of intelligence, a belief system of “scientific racism” that fed the dangerous and false ideology of eugenics’.
Thomas Huxley (1825-1895) was a famed English biologist and a founder of the Royal College of Science, later Imperial College, the institution which is now examining its links with him
