Unis hire race-hate tsars despite next to no cases

UNIVERSITIES are appointing fulltime ‘hate crime and racism investigators’ despite receiving only a handful of race complaints.

Campus officers and advisers are being paid more than £30,000 a year to wait for students and staff to report allegations.

Salford University, which has 20,000 students, is advertising for a £28,756 to £33,309 a year ‘hate crime and racism investigator’ to examine complaints of racism and ‘micro-aggression’. Since 2017, fewer than five student racism cases a year have been reported there.

Universities argue hate-crime officers are needed despite the low number of reported incidents to encourage victims to come forward after a 2019 report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission accused universities of ignoring endemic racism.

This was despite only 585 students reporting to it that they had experienced racial harassment.

Academics last night warned anti-racism advisers might have to reclassify the ‘normal conflicts of campus life’ as hate crimes to justify their jobs.

Frank Furedi, emeritus professor at Kent University, said: ‘Higher education has become a caricature of itself. Instead of dealing with the real problems that confront it, it needs to invent fantasy crimes.’