Racial Row at the University of Leeds

Frank Ellis, a professor of Russian and Slavonic studies at the University of Leeds in Britain, recently wrote some racially charged comments in the student newspaper which has caused an uproar on campus. Some students are calling for his ouster but the university, so far at least, has supported the professor’s right to freedom of expression.

In the article Ellis called himself “an unrepentant Powellite.” He was referring to the late Tory politician Enoch Powell who warned that England rivers would run red with blood if the government did not take steps to control immigration of racial minorities. Ellis also wrote that he supported the thesis in The Bell Curve that white people were generally more intelligent than blacks.

It is somewhat remarkable that the controversy has simmered under the surface for so long. Professor Ellis’ views have been widely published and available on the Internet for many years. In 2000 he spoke at the American Renaissance conference in Virginia, a biennial gathering of academic racialists.

That same year, in an article published in the conservative London political magazine Right Now!, Ellis wrote, “It is considered politically incorrect to say so, but were one to take the ‘white’ and the ‘male’ out of science and technology, one would have no science, just witchcraft, third world squalor, misery and mega-incompetence.”

Copyright © 2006. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.