Scotland’s first black professor has accused fellow academics of discrimination after an explosive row over Edinburgh’s links with slavery prompted calls for him to quit as chair of two groups re-examining the city’s history.

Our History/Our Slavery: Here is another example where my biased attacker Sir Tom Devine, omitted our history, apologised then said that slavery made Scotland rich. This is similar to him saying Dundas delayed abolition and was thanked by slavers, but later, don’t blame Dundas... pic.twitter.com/6kO1dNvkyl

— Sir Geoff Palmer (@SirGeoffPalmer) January 22, 2022

Sir Geoff Palmer, who is leading two separate reviews into the city and university's involvement in the slave trade, denounced Jonathan Hearn and Sir Tom Devine, current and emeritus professors at Edinburgh University, as members of an "academic racist gang" after Hearn published an article in The Spectator suggesting the city council review risked being "historically superficial" and Devine stepped in to defend him.

Palmer chastised Hearn and Divine in a series of tweets, focusing on their views on Sir Henry Dundas, a controversial figure whose monument in Edinburgh was vandalized during a Black Lives Matter protest in June 2020.

Leader of Edinburgh council hits out at 'racists' as slavery review ends https://t.co/a0hHav1419

— Sir Geoff Palmer (@SirGeoffPalmer) January 20, 2022

He and others believe Dundas, Scotland's leading Whig politician in the late 18th century, has been unfairly credited with fighting slavery in Scotland when he delayed abolition for a generation in parliament, and a revised plaque explaining this background was erected at the monument last year.

However, Hearn argued in a recent article that historians were still debating whether Dundas delayed abolition and that there was "plenty of evidence to suggest that Dundas's gradualist approach to abolition was the only approach which would be politically successful at the time."

Following Palmer's tweets, Devine demanded that he be removed from the review groups, accusing him of "appalling slurs of racism against those whose only fault was to have a different view than his own."

Jonathan Hearn and Sir Tom Devine, current and emeritus professors at @EdinburghUni: members of “an academic racist gang” #slaveryarchive #twitterstorians https://t.co/5yUcjQ9p5I

— Ana Lucia Araujo, PhD (@analuciaraujo_) January 21, 2022

"I have been making the same arguments for a long time," Palmer told The Guardian, "but I think this timing has to do with this project, the fact that this work is gaining significance but some historians are unhappy that they are not involved." 

“This is a public debate and if some people are demanding my dismissal without providing any evidence for it then that is discrimination. If they can provide evidence that I am incompetent and biased then I will step down.”

Devine is said to be seeking legal counsel, but another prominent academic figure in the city, the UK's first professor of black male studies, Tommy J Curry, said the row exemplified a naivety in Scottish culture regarding race discussions.

Hearn stated that, while he stood by his Spectator article, he harbored "no ill will" toward Palmer and would be "happy to engage in civil, face-to-face public discussions about our disagreements... My main concern in this is that inquiries into public history be conducted openly and respectfully, with regard for differing points of view."

Read more: Kyle Rittenhouse: The White-Only American Dream (Part I)

Rightwing sabotage 

As the public consultation on the city review comes to a close this week, council leader Adam McVey revealed that it had elicited thousands of "blatantly racist" responses from supporters of rightwing organizations seeking to sabotage the process, saying, "The personal targeting of Geoff that I've seen is appalling."

"I've seen groups with nothing to do with Edinburgh hurl abuse and scaremonger about a process they clearly don't understand."

He went on to say that the review group, led by Palmer, would now digest the thousands of responses to the consultation in a "considered and mature response," with the goal of "telling our city's history more honestly."

Curry, an Edinburgh University professor, said Palmer's response revealed "a naivety of Scottish culture that wants to have the debate but is not used to having arguments about race where black people themselves have the power to name racism in society."

“This isn’t a difference of opinion,” he said, “it’s about whether history should change based on fact. We’ve acknowledged that Dundas didn’t abolish slavery and did participate in the trade.”

Reassessments like this one have been happening for decades, according to Curry, "but there is also a well-established pattern of UK scholars with no knowledge of black or brown scholars' work in a global context, so everything reads like a political threat, with their only lens of understanding being the woke culture of BLM."

Read more: Kyle Rittenhouse: The White-Only American Dream (Part II)