Don’t cancel the Free Black University - Inaya Folarin Iman

The Free Black University (FBU) is a project that emerged during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. Founded by Melz Owusu, a PhD candidate in Epistemic Justice at the University of Cambridge, the FBU is an educational initiative that aims to “redistribute knowledge and act as a space of incubation for the creation of transformative knowledge in the black community”. The FBU vows to "produce knowledge that cuts through the epistemic veil that sits across a world built upon the foundations of white supremacy (also known as Enlightenment thought)" and "end the standpoint from which colonialism makes sense". 

I have been following the development of this project for a couple of years now. In mid-2020, I wrote in Spiked about the way in which the FBU, rather than seeking to transcend race, sought to institutionalise it. 

In the past, I have been quick to call out projects like the FBU, viewing them as promoting racial division. But more recently, I’ve felt differently. Rather than merely condemn, we have to also ask, what are the conditions which make the growth of ideas like this more likely? Are we confident in articulating the value of liberal ideals in a way that renders initiatives like the FBU absurd? In a pluralist democracy, one that values moral autonomy, how do we negotiate radically different, seemingly conflicting, moral outlooks?

The FBU is unapologetic in its monocausal, race-centric approach to understanding the world. Owusu has stated that the university was partly founded as "payback" for slavery and colonialism. In Owosu’s view, British universities are “built on colonisation – the money, buildings, architecture – everything is colonial”. Today, the initiative is offering its first course in "knowledge production". According to the website, "[they] are only inviting applications from people racialised as Black or mixed-Black.". On their Course Overview, the title of Week 2 is "Burn Shit Down" and Week 3 explores how "colonialism produced the concept of time itself". Week 4 "will hold a grief ritual for the process of leaving what we have known in terms of the rationalist and evidence-based knowledge system behind." 

But, this initiative raises some very curious questions. If “everything is colonial” then surely any effort to “decolonise” is futile as it would be impossible to produce anything or accurately judge anything to be outside of the colonial framework? Note that the FBU syllabus is in English. If rationalism and evidence-based knowledge are “white” then are irrationality and ignorance, “black”? Was it not the arguments of the Enlightenment that discredited racism and colonialism too? What do you say to the revolutionary Haitians in the 18th century or the non-violent black civil rights activists of the 1960s, who used the ideals of the Enlightenment as a mirror, calling upon the sources of their oppression to live up to their stated ideals? Are you not forwarding the very thing you claim to oppose, white Eurocentrism, where you assume some of the most significant gains of humanity (Enlightenment thought) are solely products of white European forces?  I would argue that non-European people were involved and essential to the development and articulation of concepts such as reason, human agency, and freedom (in the liberal sense). 

Given that systems of oppression and domination (colonial or otherwise) existed prior to modern European imperialism, colonialism and racism, how do you judge those? Isn’t your romanticisation of non-European, pre-colonial society another form of orientalism? Why is your conception of blackness any more authentic and representative than black individuals who embrace and champion Enlightenment ideals? Can you oppose colonialism (in its true sense: the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically) whilst also recognising that the spread of the English language enabled subjects of colonialism to exchange ideas, communicate, share strategies in freeing themselves from colonial rule? 

History and human relations, even relations of domination are complex and rarely can be understood in such a singular, unidirectional manner. Whilst the FBU seeks to delegitimise the foundational notions of liberal democracy, do they not see the irony in how our society (rightly) tolerates their freedom of speech and freedom of association to organise around ideas that are hostile to it? Ironically, in many non-Western societies, professed disbelief in the dominant value system is punishable by death. I could go on.

So, this article is not so much a defence of the FBU, but an attempt to demonstrate that their arguments can be addressed in a way that doesn’t compromise our ideals. Rather than seek to cancel them, we can argue against their ideas in a civilised way. This is important, because, in the wake of a Telegraph report recently, which revealed that the project does not have permission to use the official university title, I provided a comment about what I regarded as the corrosive approach to education that underpins the FBU. I stated: 

“This isn’t a university, it is an indoctrination camp which seeks to delegitimise the foundational ideas of Western civilisation and promote a narrative of cultural self-loathing. Far from supporting black students, it harms them by forwarding an anti-educational, anti-science, grievance-based politics. Racialism and segregation is being promoted in the name of anti-racism.”

I was troubled to see the amount of abuse in the comments of the article and how the FBU had made its website temporarily private following the publication of the article.  I suspect this was because they were receiving a lot of hate mail. This made me reflect on whether I expressed my disagreements in the most considered and thoughtful terms and I do not think I did.

While I am sure that many are extremely offended by such a project, no one should receive hate and abuse for exercising their freedom to share their ideas and invite people to voluntarily engage with them. I strongly disagree with the aims of the FBU, but I defend their right to freedom of conscience, freedom of speech and freedom of association. 

Finally, the FBU raises a legitimate question. Is there something about how our society is currently organised that leaves sections of the population, black or otherwise, spiritually malnourished, morally-disorientated, untethered from the past, and alienated from themselves and their fellow man? They seem to think so, and I tend to agree. Is the answer to re-racialise our society and do away with Enlightenment rationalism and empiricism? No.

I would argue that our estrangement towards notions such as the sacred, goodness, beauty, duty, honour, heroism, truth, imagination, home, patience, temperance, and the divine is leaving many of us lost, afraid and alone. Does our lack of respect for these ideas contribute to a crisis of meaning that facilitates the conditions for more hardline ideas to arise? Perhaps. Therefore, it is incumbent on all of us, regardless of race to work out how we give renewed meaning to these essential notions. This involves rediscovering and connecting to the many tools of our ancestors, that includes reason and the ecstatic, imaginative experience. It means cherishing the gains of the past but figuring out what’s new and different about the present. So don’t cancel the FBU, let’s understand it.