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Open letter to staff and students at the CCSR
We were deeply disappointed to learn that the CCSR research centre plans to welcome a known anti-immigration apostle and eugenicist as a keynote speaker to one of its conferences.
The Cathy Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research (CCSR), in the School of Social Sciences, has earned itself a first-class name for its commitment to foster a climate of integration and understanding in Manchester’s multicultural society. The invitation to Prof David Coleman of Oxford University turns this commitment on its head.
Coleman is the co-founder of the anti-immigration pressure group Migration Watch and prominent member of the Eugenics Society (now more tactfully named Galton Institute). Coleman’s demographical statistics have provided the background to numerous Daily Mail articles and other tabloids’ smear campaigns against refugees and asylum seekers. His research has also been picked up by the BNP, who describe staff at Migration Watch as “friends” and Coleman as a “demographer whom we trust”.
Coleman is due to speak at a conference on “Segregation or Integration” on 17 May. He will present data that shows Britain at the peril of over-crowding from “foreign-origin populations” due to mass-immigration. The conference is organised by the Population and Places research group at the CCSR.
We see this invitation to speak as a direct affront to the culturally diverse student population in Manchester. There are thousands of international students at the University of Manchester alone, with many more coming from immigrant backgrounds. Coleman’s, the Daily Mail’s and the BNP’s message of over-crowding is a provocation of those students whishing to stay in Manchester after the completion of their degrees. And in the current political climate of fear and mistrust of the culturally-different, this message turns into a very real threat!
The CCSR is a renowned centre for quantitative research. It has thus an interest in the collection and analysis of “hard” empirical data. Coleman’s research too is grounded in the field of “hard science”. However, his predictions and models have been repeatedly challenged by other research, and even by the Labour government. We are in no position to make a claim of knowing the “true” figures. However, we do know that the “true” figures obtained by the likes of the Daily Mail have been proven wrong more than once. The interpretation of empirical data always has a social and political component. And with due respect, Professor Coleman’s political credits are not worth a second thought.
Coleman has time and again defended his “freedom of speech” against a campaign by his students at Oxford University to have his professorship reviewed. His attacks on Oxford’s Student Action for Refugees group have been supported by other right-wing academics working for Conservative and Labour governments, by the tabloid press and of course by the BNP. To us it seems that liberal concepts such as “freedom of expression” have time and again been abused to make way for racist and anti-Semitic ideology. While we respect and defend the right of academics to conduct research without external pressure or repercussions, we also appeal to the responsibility that academics face when their work is being used to stimulate hate and violence. Professor Coleman has consistently failed to distance himself from attempts to use demographics as a political weapon against those fleeing war, persecution, famine, poverty or ecological disaster.
Coleman’s invitation by the CCSR cannot be excused by pure ignorance of his controversial position in academia. We do not want to speculate that the invite was a conscious act of providing a platform to a eugenicist ideologue. We do however want to warn the conference organisers and staff at the CCSR that flirting with the ideas of the far Right will only serve to bring the research centre into further disrepute.
Having said that, we would welcome your very own participation in a demonstration against eugenics and scientific racism on 17 May, 11.30pm, outside the Student’s Union.
Respectfully,
the signatories
_________
letter circulated via email amongst Manchester University students