More academic folly

The recent decision by the University of Nottingham to re-name some Masters courses to exclude the phrase ‘Anglo-Saxon’ was reported by the Daily Telegraph at University cancels Anglo-Saxon ‘to decolonise’ the curriculum

This appears to be another instance of the actions of a certain type of modern academic who, either influenced, or indeed inflamed, by their own ‘political correctness’ or, maybe worse, those who are too frightened to resist the current zeitgeist in such matters, changing things for the sake of conciliating tiny but regrettably vocal groups who go around seeing matters to offend them everywhere.

A previous discussion of this topic of contention had produced in May an excellent response in the same newspaper by Prof. David Abulafia which can be seen at ‘Anglo-Saxon’ isn’t racist. It’s a source of English pride. There is more about the matter at Cambridge journal ‘pandering to mad Americans’ by ditching Anglo-Saxon from title arising from CUP changing a journal title.

This nonsense about not calling the Anglo-Saxons ‘Anglo-Saxons’ comes indeed from the US. I first encountered it a few years ago at a meeting in Oxford when a loquacious but strangely inarticulate female US student mystified the rest of us by going on at length about the term. Amongst the most bewildered by this was a specialist in Anglo-Saxon from one of the leading colleges, who valiantly tried to point out that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ referred to the history, literature, indeed art, created by Anglo-Saxons in the period between the end of Roman Britain and the Norman Conquest. Nothing less, but also nothing more. 

I have no intellectual or historical problem about using terms such as Early Medieval or Early England/English or even Early Medieval Britain  - which does comprehend the Romano-British, the Vikings, and, as they emerge and engage one with another, the Welsh, the Scots, and the Picts - as a time reverence or categorisation. That can be useful and indeed neutral phraseology, and broaden historical as well as geographical horizons. 

That said there is no good reason whatsoever to abandon such a very long-established term as ‘Anglo-Saxon’. If  certain Generation Z US students do not understand it that it is their problem, not mine. They need to get over it. I not going to be told I cannot refer to Anglo-Saxon things as ‘Anglo-Saxon’ because someone who is following a silly fad in the US might be offended. Are we expected to change the titles of the works of Clapham, Stenton, Campbell and innumerable others to satisfy such nonsense? Perhaps we should censor Bede when he refers to Angles, Saxons and Jutes? Was he being ‘racist’ when he so denominated them?

It really tempts one to respond in choice Anglo-Saxon……