Cambridge is right: you can’t take pride in the past and ignore the horror of slavery | Gaby Hinsliff

The university’s inquiry into its links to the slave trade is an admirable attempt to grapple with the whole truth of its history

There is almost nothing Oxbridge people enjoy more than a really intense, no holds barred argument about themselves.

So it’s perhaps not surprising that the University of Cambridge’s decision to launch an inquiry into its links to the slave trade has prompted some soul searching. On the one hand is a student body increasingly vocal about the legacy of colonialism and academics arguing – as Prof Martin Millett, the archaeologist chairing a panel overseeing the work, does – that Cambridge must confront its own role in a shameful episode of history. On the other is a handful of academics grumbling about rewriting history and, no doubt, some unspoken fears about what all this is going to cost both financially and in curricular terms. After investigation invariably comes reparation.

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from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2DG4K8H