Academic sues Cambridge over sacking

AN ACADEMIC sacked by Cambridge over allegations he published racist research is taking the university to court for unfair dismissal, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Noah Carl, a social scientist, was dropped from a prestigious research fellowship at St Edmund’s College in part because he was said to have ‘collaborated’ with people ‘known to hold extremist views’.

The researcher’s writing on the link between IQ and genes caused 586 academics and 874 students to sign a letter to St Edmund’s accusing him of ‘racist pseudoscience’.

The letter sparked an investigation by the college, which sacked Mr Carl as a result of its findings.

But the academic, writing in today’s MoS, reveals he has now filed an employment tribunal claim against St Edmund’s for ‘unfair dismissal, discrimination because of religion or belief and breach of contract’. A crowd-funding campaign to fund the legal action, set up by a US software developer with links to the conservative Right, raised over $100,000 (£82,000) from more than 1,000 donors.

Mr Carl gave a speech after his sacking in which he set out evidence of over-representation of Left-wing views among British academics. He said studies in 1960 showed about a third of academics supported the Conservative Party and 45 per cent Labour, but by 2015 it was 11 per cent who supported the Tories and about 70 per cent Labour.

Cambridge University declined to comment due to the ongoing legal case but in a statement following Mr Carl’s sacking, Matthew Bullock, the master of St Edmund’s, said that Mr Carl’s appointment could have led to the ‘college being used as a platform to promote views that could incite racial or religious hatred’.

In March Cambridge University rescinded its offer of a visiting fellowship to controversial Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson after he was pictured next to a man in a T- shirt reading ‘ I’m a proud Islamophobe’.