A fiery clash ensued on GB News’ Dan Wootton Tonight over Cambridge University’s U-turn on their plan to block white people from applying for postgraduate degrees.
It comes after a report claimed the university’s School of Arts and Humanities advertised an “exciting new widening participation project” to “give an opportunity for students from under-represented groups to experience postgraduate research at Cambridge”.
The announcement sparked fury after the Sunday Telegraph reported the programme was advertised for “second or third year undergraduate students from Black, Black British, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or British-Pakistani, British-Bangladeshi students”.
While the university has since reversed the scheme following concerns raised by many in the institution’s community, actress Narinder Kaur argued this does not hide the notion that leading universities are for “rich, middle-class white children”.
Speaking on GB News, Kaur said: “In a report by the Daily Telegraph in 2021, the majority who applied for post graduate schemes were white regardless of their class.
“We do need ethnic minority representation, we can’t always be underrepresented.
“We’ve got to remember that these elite universities have a history of classism and racism.
“Let’s not use that as a smokescreen for the real problem, that these elite universities are actually for the rich, middle-class, white children.”
A fiery clash ensued on GB News' Dan Wootton Tonight over the matter of white students at elite universities
Image: GB News
Journalist and ex-Cambridge University student Emma Webb hit back at the claim, saying: “The statistics are very clear.
“The most disadvantaged group when it comes to higher education in this country are white, working class boys.
“Narinder misrepresented the statistics there, whilst there is a larger number of applications from white backgrounds to postgraduate courses, they are actually ranked third in those that are successful.
“This is just a misrepresentation of the statistics, and we know that in higher education, white, working class boys are the most disadvantaged.”
Narinder Kaur argued that Webb’s statistics “can’t be pointed at racism”.
The debate took place on GB News' Dan Wootton Tonight
Image: GB News
She stated: “That might be because of their work ethic, it can’t be pointed at racism.
“Can we agree that these universities do favour middle-class, white students, as opposed to working class, black, brown or white?”
Co-founder of the Men and Boys Coalition, Mark Brooks, says the case shows we have a “long way to go” when it comes to everyone in society being treated equally.
He told GB News: ‘In trying to reset some dial, you move it so far the other way you end up discriminating against others.
Cambridge University is embroiled in a race row
Joe Giddens
“It’s not fit for purpose and it’s not what we’re trying to create for this society.”
The decision to reverse the scheme has been praised by professors at Cambridge, including Prof David Abulafia from Gonville and Caius College, who told the Sunday Telegraph: “It’s good that the programme has been recalibrated so that the criterion is disadvantage rather than race.
“The racial criterion seemed to assume non-white students are automatically disadvantaged.
“Isn’t that a little bit racist?”
Watch Dan Wootton Tonight, Monday - Thursday at 9pm, only on GB News.
