The taxpayer money will be used to make folk music “more accessible”
Around £1.5 million (c.$1.9 million) in taxpayer funding has been awarded to an academic research project aimed at “decolonizing” the British folk music tradition.
Researchers at the University of Sheffield will “take an unflinching look at the white-centricity of folk music repertory, performers and audience by conducting fieldwork to shed light on long-standing vernacular singing practices of ethnic minority cultures in England,” according to Britain’s Daily Telegraph.
The project will also aim to “increase accessibility to the folk club scene and take the first step in a process of decolonisation within the folk music canon.”
News of the project was greeted with a mixture of anger and derision. Professor Dennis Hayes, director of the organization Academics for Academic Freedom, told The Telegraph,
“Journalists will be pleased to know that there will be an endless supply of stories about disciplines being told by universities to ‘decolonise’ and of money being spent on studies of ‘whiteness’ in any and every conceivable subject.
“The reason for this is institutional groupthink in universities. Universities have adopted the need for decolonisation, and the victim hierarchy of intersectional theory, as essential to upholding their inclusive values. This groupthink is a threat to academic freedom. It silences almost all opposition as academics fear being charged with racism if they speak up against being told what to think.”
Professor Hayes said that “the only solution is for academics to speak up” and then put in “time-consuming work” in the university bureaucracy to prevent such projects being funded.
He added that academics who speak up would soon discover that “they are not alone.”
Joanna Marchong, investigations campaign manager of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said that taxpayers are “fed up” with research councils funding these kinds of projects with taxpayer money.
“Time and time again, these institutions force hard-pressed households to pay millions for academics to rewrite history and achieve minute goals in return.”
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