From Camilla Turner’s article for London’s Daily Telegraph:
They are said to be the founding fathers of Western philosophy, whose ideas underpin civilised society.
But students at a prestigious London university are demanding that figures such as Plato, Descartes and Immanuel Kant should be largely dropped from the curriculum because they are white.
The student union at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) insists that when studying philosophy “the majority of philosophers on our courses” should be from Africa and Asia.
The union said it is part of wider campaign to “decolonise” the university, as it seeks to “address the structural and epistemological legacy of colonialism”.
It comes after education leaders warned that universities will be forced to pander to the demands of “snowflake” students, however unreasonable they might be.
Sir Roger Scruton, the philosopher, said the demands suggest “ignorance”. “You can’t rule out a whole area of intellectual endeavour without having investigated it and clearly they haven’t investigated what they mean by white philosophy,” he told The Mail on Sunday.
“If they think there is a colonial context from which Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason arose, I would like to hear it.’
My question is, if you are not looking to people like Plato, Descartes and Kant – not to mention Aristotle and Socrates, for philosophy, who are you looking to?
