Are Students Being Forced to Believe That Tolkien Was a Racist?

I recently encountered an article called Students shall not pass unless they accept Lord of the Rings is offensive. Claims that Tolkien was racist are not new but imposing this belief on students is new.

When I hear claims like this, my first question is not “How do we fight this?” but “Is it true?”

The article appears on the Telegraph website, a news organization that is known for being politically conservative. That does not make the story true or false, but their general position is worth keeping in mind.

So what is true in this story?

• The University of Nottingham offered a history module called Decolonising Tolkien at al.

• The scholar, Dr. Onyeka Nubia, argues that Middle-earth is about fair skinned (good guys) against dark skinned (bad guys).

• A text in the course describes the treatment of orcs and others “ethnic chauvinism.”

Before responding to the claims of this module, I want to make a completely different point.

The purpose of university is to share new ideas and stretch concepts in order to make students think. The fact that a professor or a textbook makes a statement is not necessarily an official position of a university or the forcing of a worldview on students.

This course would have been an elective and would have been voluntarily taken by students. I have seen no evidence that the teacher failed students for not agreeing with their position.

The real story here is how the Telegraph presents what is an otherwise boring story about an obscure course. Instead of seeing this as another example of a long line of fringe views being taught in a university, they see this as another battle in the culture war.

The Telegraph has an interest in making conservatives look good and liberals look bad. This story has the potential to do that and by the outrage I am seeing from some of my conservative friends, it is working.

We have seen from a number of examples in the United States that universities are being seen as a key battleground in the culture war. Conservatives and liberals are fighting for the hearts and minds of young people and we must choose a side.

Or do we?

We can choose to not take a course that we think looks like rubbish. We can interact in a respectful and scholarly way to demonstrate that the thesis has some major weaknesses.

But what is easier is to frame the story in such a way as to make the liberals look dangerous.

Conservatives and liberals are fully focused on demonizing each other. I am pretty sick of it myself. I would rather look at ideas on their own merit and not how they support either the conservative or liberal sides.

But was Tolkien a racist and should we toss our copies of Lord of the Rings?

I really do not know if Tolkien was racist as I never met him and never asked him. I have seen no evidence of it myself.

I dive deeper into this in my post Was J.R.R. Tolkien a Racist?

But more important that is that it is essential for us to read articles much more critically and not just assent because it helps our side. Look at the title that is presented. Does the data in the article actually support the claims in the title? What is the article trying to accomplish.