A peer has issued an eerie free speech warning in a damning slapdown of universities' decisions to cough up slave trade reparations.
Sitting down with GB News's Emma Trimble, Nigel Biggar, a British Anglican priest, theologian and professor, hit out at "desperate", yet high-flying academics demanding Britain give away staggering sums to make up for historic injustices.
The University of Glasgow is one of the UK's top universities accosting a 20-year-long "reparative justice" programme, partnered with the University of the West Indies.
The hefty payout of £20million was triggered by a report revealing the institution received cash linked to the slave trade. Now, the university will support the "Glasgow-Caribbean Centre for Development Research" research, as well as student scholarships.
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The University of Bristol has a similar system for a "Reparative Futures" programme to amend historic systemic injustices at the sum of £10million across a decade.
While the University of Cambridge responded in 2022 to inquiries over its historic entanglement in slave trade deals, the world-renowned institution has not yet committed to such an initiative.
The then-Vice Chancellor Professor Stephen Toope said at the time: "It is not in our gift to right historic wrongs, but we can begin by acknowledging them.
"Having unearthed our university’s links to an appalling history of abuse, the report encourages us to work even harder to address current inequalities – particularly those related to the experiences of Black communities."
Baron Biggar dubbed the educators 'desperate' and 'historically wrong'
|GB NEWS
But Baron Biggar hit out at university leaders for the mere thought of paying out financial sums retrospectively.
He told GB News: "In the course of 400 years spread over the globe, some British people did bad things. Sometimes very bad things.
"Name me a state in the history of the world of that lens of which that isn't true.
"And the current narrative that has been swallowed wholesale, mainly so by so many of the people who are in charge of our institutions, that the Empire is nothing but a litany of racism, oppression and exploitation is just historically wrong.
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The University of Glasgow promised to pour £20million into a 20-year-long 'reparative justice' programme
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"And the reason that has dominated our institutions is, first of all, the educated people in charge of our institutions know nothing about history, and they don't care to know anything about it.
"They are desperate," he bluntly said.
"Many of them are not to be called racist and desperate to signal their virtue so that people around their dinner parties in north London will ostracise them.
He further argued such "woke idolatry", identified by ideologies about trends, race or decolonisation are "dominating" Britons.
He added: "If those ideologies are false and distorted and they dominate us, we all suffer. We need to be able to call them out.
"And we can't do it unless we can have free dialogue. And I'm appalled at the way in which too many people in universities and too many institutional leaders have failed to recognise what's at stake."
But British universities are not alone in their apparent quest to pay reparations, with world-leading Harvard University committing $100million to a "Legacy of Slavery Fund" back in 2022.
The pool of funds seeks to address educational, social, and economic disparities felt by the nation's historic ties to slavery.
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