Letter from Frank Ellis

“What sort of an education can you get from a professor who is scared stiff of losing his job?” — Alexander Solzhenitsyn, First Circle

Once I had left the University of Leeds for good, I intended to write a detailed account of the events that led to my suspension, but other priorities have asserted themselves. Once they are resolved I shall seek a publisher and write my account of what happened. I can promise AR readers that they will find it very interesting. For the moment, I can offer this brief summary.

At 14:00 hrs. on Thursday, March 23, 2006, I was suspended by the University of Leeds. I was suspended because I had attacked, among other things, the cult of multiculturalism. I was not attacked, and demands were not made that I be dismissed because I was wrong. No, I was closer to the truth than my attackers — they knew it — and that is why they sought my removal. I stand by everything I have said and written, with one exception: In the uncensored version of the article I sent to the Leeds Student for publication, I referred to the average IQ of 70 in sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, as Richard Lynn’s analysis of the most recent data shows, the average IQ is actually 67.

Unable to reply to my criticism of multiculturalism, the university resorted to bureaucratic and administrative countermeasures. My suspension was intended as a grand gesture that would propitiate mobs on- and off-campus as well as, of course, the fanatics at the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE). Nevertheless, having suspended me, the university then realized it faced formidable legal, intellectual and moral challenges in trying to eliminate a dissident who was not prepared to go quietly. A very large number of academics and scientists, as well as representatives from several non-governmental organizations would have appeared as witnesses for the defense if there had been a hearing.

As it happens, back in February 2005, the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, in which I taught, was in dire financial straits, and asked for five volunteers to take early retirement. By this time, disillusioned with the relentless bureaucratization of university life, and tired of spoon-feeding too many lazy students, I volunteered. To my astonishment my application was denied. The school wanted to keep me because of my high research profile, which it found useful. One year later the university was pleased to revisit this option, and I have now taken the early retirement I was denied a year ago.

In suspending me and trying to make a case against me the university has done serious damage to academic freedom and free speech in this country. Who now in a British university, having seen what happened to me, will attack feminism, multiculturalism or racial issues? There will be some, possible many in British universities, who will rejoice in what Leeds did. These are the people who would have burned Galileo at the stake. In the nineteenth century, they would have cast Darwin into jail or stoned him. In Nazi Germany, they would have squealed with joy as the books burned on May 10, 1933. During Stalin’s purges and Mao’s Cultural Revolution, they would have approved the most savage measures against any form of dissent, real or imagined. Such are the people who control British universities today.

Modern liberalism is truly depraved. Even now I am staggered by its boundless capacity for hypocrisy and lying — perhaps after all this I should not be, but I am. I know members of the Leeds faculty who share my objections to the cult of multiculturalism, but they remained silent. When I visited the university none could look me in the eye. I shall not name and shame them but they know who they are; they have disgraced themselves.

You do not really know people until there is a crisis. One of the most depressing things in this world is to discover that people, who you thought had some reserves of moral courage (physical courage is not the same thing), actually have the soul of a terrified apparatchik. I feel no anger towards these people; more disgust I would say. Another lesson — a very obvious one — is that universities in Britain are emphatically not devoted to academic freedom.

Outside the university, however, all is not doom and gloom. More and more white people are standing up and saying enough is enough. I suspect many liberals realize that the game is up for the cult of multiculturalism. It is the awareness of this looming defeat that makes them all the more vicious, though the time when these people could automatically silence an opponent with screams of “racism” and “fascism” is gone.

As a Slavist, I take great encouragement from Solzhenitsyn who saw Communism could not endure forever: “And I sat there and I thought: if the first tiny droplet of truth has exploded like a psychological bomb, what then will happen in our country when whole waterfalls of Truth burst forth? And they will burst forth. It has to happen.” (Gulag Archipelago, Vol. 1, p. 298).