First they came for Professor Hakim Adi,
at the University of Chichester in 2023,
and with him went a programme in the History of Africa and the African Diaspora.
I watched the course close and told myself
it was only one department.
Then they came for Professor Robert Beckford,
at the University of Winchester in 2024,
a scholar of Black Theology, Climate and Social Justice,
and I told myself
that universities were facing difficult times.
Then they came for Professor Deirdre Osborne,
at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2024,
her work gave voice to Black British Literature
and helped build a place for those stories to be studied.
Alongside Professor Joan Anim-Addo,
she helped create the pioneering MA in Black British Literature,
a field long neglected, yet rich with histories,
languages, memories, and resistance.
Together they made space
for voices too often left off the reading list,
and for students who finally found themselves in the curriculum.
I said nothing,
because the course itself survived.
Yet a programme can remain on paper
while the people who imagined it, nurtured it,
and gave it life are gone.
Then they came for Professor Kehinde Andrews,
at Birmingham City University in 2026,
the United Kingdom's first Professor of Black Studies,
as Black Studies programmes were dismantled
and Black scholars were placed at risk.
I told myself
surely someone else would speak.
One by one,
the fields grew smaller:
African History.
Black Theology.
Black British Literature.
Black Studies.One by one,
the lecture theatres lost their custodians,
the doctoral students lost their mentors,
the archives lost their champions.
The names were different.
The institutions were different.
The years were different.
But the story began to sound the same.Then they came not with redundancy papers,
but with headlines, columns, speculation,
and a thousand judgments delivered at speed.
And Professor Jason Arday,
scholar of Sociology of Education, Race and Social Justice,
whose journey reached the University of Cambridge in 2023,
found his life examined line by line,
his story weighed,
his character contested,
his humanity too often forgotten.Some said it was scrutiny.
Some said it was accountability.
Others saw a spectacle,
a frenzy that demanded more and more
from a man already carrying the burden
of being one of so few Black professors
to reach such heights.
And when news came of his death
in 2026,
the arguments continued,
but his voice did not.
By then the lesson was no longer about
one scholar,
one university,
one discipline,
or one year.
It was about what happens
when institutions celebrate symbols,
but fail to protect its people.
It was about what is lost when Black scholarship is diminished,
Black mentors are removed,
Black voices are exhausted,
and we discover too late
that every absence leaves the whole academy poorer.
IMPERIAL AS ONE
Inspired by "First They Came" by Pastor Martin Niemöller