‘The real issue is change’: Edinburgh University’s first Black philosophy professor on racism and reform

Prof Tommy Curry of the University of Edinburgh. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

For Tommy J Curry the question about Edinburgh University’s institutional racism, or its debts around transatlantic slavery and scientific racism, can be captured by one simple fact: he is the first Black philosophy professor in its 440-year history.

As the Louisiana-born academic who helped lead the university’s self-critical inquiry into its extensive links to transatlantic slavery and the construction of racist theories of human biology, that sharply captures the challenge it faces.