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May 13 2025 - 1:00pm
The University of Edinburgh has become an international laughing stock for its “woke” excesses, such as renaming David Hume Tower in 2020 on the grounds that Scotland’s greatest philosopher had written a racist footnote to an essay in the 18th century. It also suspended a lecturer for ridiculing an anti-racism convention on campus that banned white people from asking questions. Gender-critical feminists have been barracked and abused for refusing to use the approved LGBT speech codes.
So it perhaps comes as no surprise that this institution has become the first in the UK to introduce accent bias training for staff. According to Vice-Principal Professor Colm Harmon, the university will “embed” Scottishness into the curriculum to “counter a culture of snobbery and prejudice against students from north of the border”. Scottish students who have experienced these behaviors are being asked to report them, while Harmon has added: “Discrimination of any kind has no place here.”
This is very much directed at English students, who have been accused of ridiculing and “othering” students from Scotland. The university is even considering special courses on Scottishness to curb the braying of Home Counties Hooray Henrys and Henriettas, who are accused of drowning out the more reserved Scots. Undergraduates currently earn extra credits for taking optional courses on race and gender. So I suppose it is a step forward to recognize class discrimination for once, albeit in a typically crass way.
But are Scottish students really being “inadvertently or deliberately shamed”? In my experience, as both an alumnus and former rector of the University of Edinburgh, intra-Scottish snobbery was at least as much of a problem as the English variety. Rough-hewn students from Glasgow were more likely to lash out at snooty Edinburgh types in the student union bars — and vice versa. I recall English students of a studious disposition being pilloried and mimicked for their “plummy” accents, while there has long been an undertone of Anglophobia from the many Scottish nationalist students on campus.
Scottish students tend to be less forthcoming in seminars. But in my day, that was largely because they didn’t want to appear like the public school “pillocks” showing off.
No one defends snobbery and class discrimination. But it’s hard to see this initiative as anything other than an additional dimension of identity politics, now that Black Lives Matter no longer matters so much.
And when it comes to checking your privilege, more might be expected of Scottish students, who have the immense privilege of free tuition. They don’t incur the life-changing debts with which English students graduate — yet this doesn’t seem to cause overt resentment.
Perhaps the university should be more worried about alienating these “snobby” English who make up 70% of the UK student body. It needs them more than ever now that Edinburgh has been losing high-paying international students. Principal Peter Mathieson has even warned about cuts to staffing and courses. Perhaps the bias training initiatives should be the first to go.
Iain Macwhirter was political commentator for The Herald between 1999 and 2022, and is the author of Disunited Kingdom: How Westminster Won a Referendum But Lost Scotland. He was Rector of the University of Edinburgh from 2009-12.
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