There’s no doubt that David Lammy is an incredibly bright and astute guy, having been awarded a First from SOAS at the University of London.

However, David Lammy’s anti-Oxbridge article in the Guardian’s “Comment is Free”, “The Oxbridge Whitewash“, does not nothing to help decades of work that has been happening at the University of Cambridge to encourage applications from ethnic minorities. GEEMA, the Group to Encourage Ethnic Minority Applications, was set up in 1989 to ensure that talented UK black and minority ethnic (BME) students were not deterred from applying to the University of Cambridge. Since GEEMA was founded the number of UK BME undergraduate students studying at Cambridge has increased considerably. They were certainly alive and well I went up as a British Asian undergraduate in 1993 to Cambridge. Further details about GEEMA are on this website. It was utterly irresponsible of Lammy to make no reference to this, therefore grossly distorting the whole argument, giving out the impression, “If you’re a black schoolkid, don’t bother applying to Cambridge”. Apart from the fact that Lammy did not go to Oxbridge, this smacks of a worst kind of loony-left “pull the ladder from underneath you” mentality which I find disturbing.

David Lammy claims,

“You will not find these figures on the Oxford or Cambridge websites. Our proudest universities were obstructive in responding to my inquiries”

I completely disagree. I readily found out from Old Schools and the statistics office from Cambridge (my alma mater) that anyone can get these statistics by sending an email to the communications at the University of Cambridge; the person I spoke to was very pleasant, a guy called Stuart, and far from obstructive.

It turns out that Cambridge has been collecting its statistics, but as yet doesn’t do anything with them. This is because the General Board and the Strategic Board, under the Vice-Chancellor, have not invoked any strategic policy of upping the number of Black lecturers, readers or professors indiscriminately. I actually approve of this strongly, as Cambridge has been famous for appointing the very best in the world, regardless of ethnic background. Take for example Prof Amarytna Sen who won the Nobel Prize for Economics, and became Master of Trinity.

His most offensive accusation in my opinion is,

“Cambridge doesn’t employ a single black academic. “

I do not doubt the accuracy of his statistics as a result of his Freedom of Information request. However, this statement undeniably will be insulting to the following two people in the University of Cambridge Law Faculty.

Dr Okeoghene Odudu

Indeed, Dr Odudu appears to have a glittering reputation of his own.

“Dr Odudu returned to Cambridge in September 2006 as Herchel Smith Lecturer and Fellow in Law at Emmanuel College. He is also Deputy Director of CELS. From September 2004 to September 2006 he was Lecturer in Competition Law at the Centre of European Law, King’s College London, teaching EC Competition Law and US Antitrust, having previously been Fellow in Law at Downing College, Cambridge. He read law as an undergraduate at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and received an MA in Criminology from Keele University (funded by the ESRC), before moving to Keble College, Oxford, to engage in competition law research”

And I’m sure Dr Justice Tankebe, likewise, is not particularly amused, an academic, whose academic qualifications are likewise immaculate: BA (Ghana), MPhil (Cantab), PhD (Cantab).

I found the rhetoric of David Lammy fuming and perjorative, and actually full of innuendo that Cambridge was in some sort of hate campaign against black Academics. I am proud to have supervised Natural Sciences Tripos finals at the University of Cambridge in 1997-1999, and I can categorically state from my personal experience that Cambridge is not anti BME-academics. To state otherwise is extremely offensive, insulting and dangerous.

(c) Dr Shibley Rahman Queen’s Scholar, BA (1st Class Honours), MA, MB, BChir, PhD (all from Cambridge), LLB(Hons), FRSA, MSB