PhD Student Quits Cambridge as Non-Black Lecturer Permitted to Read N-word Aloud

Cambridge University PhD student Indiana Seresin has ditched her academic programme after a non-black lecturer was permitted to read the N-word aloud in the premises of the 800-year-old institute of higher education.

While claiming that she as a white student “benefitted from the structural racism” there, she asserted in the online statement that it had been “imperative to leave” due to an accumulation “of racist episodes” while she was studying there.

To illustrate her conclusions, the 26-year-old, who had been working on her doctorate thesis in contemporary literature, recalled a particular incident during a seminar, where a lecturer repeatedly read out the N-word when speaking to attending students.

Ms. Seresin went on to bring up a similar incident with a black friend of hers, who, on hearing the politically incorrect word uttered by the same professor, wrote to the lecturer explaining that the word caused her to be uncomfortable; the academic is said to have responded, telling her patronisingly that she perhaps didn’t quite understand the context.

Seresin noted that the situation hadn’t, to her regret, struck a nerve with all the rest of students and academics, as it became obvious during “multiple meetings” with the head of the English faculty as well as the Teaching Forum. The woman went on to say that not only had they turned a deaf ear to their arguments, but showed “hostility,” adding her views on how quitting was a privilege.

“Many of those present seemed simply unable to comprehend the difference between a black writer reclaiming the n-word and a non-black Cambridge lecturer or student saying it aloud in class,” Seresin stated resolutely.

She claimed that she could tolerate it no longer when Ghanaian scholar Akosua Adomako Ampofo was given the floor to lecture on the way the anti-blackness approach makes itself obvious in academia, but the department head called her talk controversial and provocative as he moderated the gathering.

“This method of veiling racism through a performance of faux humility and bumbling foolishness, which is something of a tradition among the British elite classes, served to undermine the simple and important point Prof. Ampofo was making,” the doctorate student claimed, stressing that academia “takes one step forward only to take two steps back”.

Netizens have shared mixed feelings on Twitter, with one saying the only issue in the “tale of woe” is that the woman is white, suggesting it is a kind of racist of her to drop out of the programme:

Another wondered she had taken the education grant “in the first place”, given her complaints about having been beneficiary of “structural racism:”

Scepticism aside, there was also applause, with a Texas Tech University representative even formally inviting Seresin to join them:

There was also a response to the offer, not from Ms Seresin, though: