Daily Mail accused of 'starting race war' after over Cambridge University ethnicity row

A senior lecturer at Cambridge University has accused the Daily Mail of attempting to start a ‘race war’ after a student at the prestigious institution was wrongly accused of forcing the university to add black and ethnic minority writers to the English Literature Curriculum.

Yesterday, the front page of the Daily Telegraph featured a picture of student Lola Olufemi below the headline ‘Student forces Cambridge to drop white authors’.

Olufemi has since confirmed that the article is ‘factually inaccurate’ as no changes have been made. The Telegraph publish an apology on Thursday morning correcting their mistake.

A similar report published on MailOnline claimed that Olufemi was attempting to ‘decolonise’ the English Literature Syllabus.

Now, Dr Priyamvada Gopal, a Teaching Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge, has accused the publisher of attempting to ‘incite a race war’.

‘To me, it is actually staggering irresponsibility by the Telegraph and the Daily Mail to take a small-scale matter for the English department to consider and turn it into, what to me looks like incitement to race war,’ she told BuzzFeed:

After defending Olufemi on Twitter, she also claims to have been sent messages of racial abuse.

Cambridge University has also confirmed that Olufemi is not responsible for changing the syllabus and has instead merely wrote a letter with suggestions of change.

‘While we can confirm a letter was received from a group of students taking the postcolonial paper, academic discussions are at a very early stage to look at how postcolonial literature is taught’, a Cambridge statement confirmed.

‘Changes will not lead to any one author being dropped in favour of others – that is not the way the system works at Cambridge. There is no set curriculum as tutors individually lead the studies of their group of students and recommend their reading lists – those reading lists can include any author.

‘The Teaching Forum is a body which has no decision making powers and its decision points are questions to be discussed by the faculty. The Education Committee in the faculty will look at those points in a robust academic debate.

‘Post-colonialism is taught at the moment in a non-compulsory paper – the faculty constantly looks at what papers will be compulsory. We condemn the related harassment directed towards our students on social media as a result of the recent coverage.’

A spokesperson for the Mail Online said: “The proposal that Cambridge University should alter its English Literature curriculum to accommodate more black and minority ethnic authors is a perfectly legitimate story of considerable public interest to students at all universities, and those at school hoping to study English at Cambridge.

“As we accurately reported, the proposal was put forward in an open letter written by Cambridge Student Union’s womens’ officer Lola Olufemi, signed by 150 students, and reported by the university newspaper Varsity, which quoted Ms Olufemi.

“We are aware many academics have little understanding of what free speech means, but Dr Gopal’s suggestion that reporting this proposal is ‘stirring up a racial panic’, ‘incitement to race war’ and a ‘very ugly radicalised story’ would be outrageous, were it not so preposterous.”