Mick Hartley

From the Times:

An anarchist professor who warned that bankers would be “hanging from lampposts” during next week’s G20 protests was tonight suspended by his university.

Chris Knight, a professor of anthropology at the University of East London, will be investigated over alleged misconduct after he appeared to incite violence.

Mr Knight, who is organising protests under the banner G20 Meltdown, told BBC Radio 4’s PM on Wednesday night: “We are going to be hanging a lot of people like Fred the Shred from lampposts on April Fool’s Day and I can only say let’s hope they are just effigies.

“To be honest, if he winds us up any more I’m afraid there will be real bankers hanging from lampposts and let’s hope that that doesn’t actually have to happen.”

The university initially distanced itself from Mr Knight’s remarks but did not take action against him.

However after a day of discussions a spokesman said: “Professor Chris Knight has been suspended from his duties at the University of East London, pending investigation. In order not to prejudice this process we cannot make any further comment.”

For Rupa Huq at the Guardian's CiF, it just goes to show how intolerant universities have become:

I was with a colleague from the University of East London when I learned that the university's professor of psychology, Chris Knight, had been relieved of his responsibilities for publicly voicing anti-G20 sentiments. The news that the professor who predicted bankers hanging from lamp posts on Radio 4 was himself suspended for his actions flashed across my pal's Blackberry. While the specifics of the case are more tangled than might appear – the individual was in dispute with his paymasters about other matters – the incident is symptomatic of how university management culture has changed.

I'm not sure to what extent the incident is an indication of new and tighter restrictions on academic freedom. I don't have strong feelings about this one way or the other – Knight doesn't openly advocate violence, though he comes pretty close - but it's surely no surprise to see the university taking some action. And, in the circumstances, suspending him is nicely appropriate. It'd be good if these writers'd get their facts straight, though. Contra Huq, Chris Knight is a professor of anthropology, not psychology; and if he's an anarchist, as the Times claim, then he's certainly changed since he wrote his magnum opus, Blood Relations: Menstruation and the Origins of Culture.  

Back then – 1991, though the paperback edition came out in 1995 – he was a self-styled revolutionary Marxist. Indeed his Marxism was central to the book, to such an extent that during my reading, at least at the start, I was tempted  a few times to pack it in. I kept going because not only did he eschew any jargon, and refused to rely on fixed ideological positions, but his analysis was in fact unfailingly interesting and intelligent. He didn't, for instance, dismiss sociobiology out of hand. From the introduction:

Central to Blood Relations is the firm belief that sociobiology's achievements are to a modern Marxist analysis of sociality what the constructs of classical pre-Marxist political economy were to Marx himself. They are the corrosive acid which eats away at all illusions, all cosy assumptions about "the welfare of the community" or "the brotherhood of man", all unexamined prejudices about how "natural" it is for humans to co-operate with one another for the good of all. There is much that is useful in this.

And he acknowledged a debt to Elaine Morgan – her of the aquatic ape hypothesis:

I was fortunately able to discuss and correspond with Elaine Morgan over the past ten years, an experience which led me to realise with ever-increasing astonishment the precariousness of the prevailing savannah hypothesis of hominid origins. Close familiarity with the aquatic hypothesis as it developed helped to give evolutionary depth to my initial suspicion that tidal synchronicity may have been involved in both the biological and sociopolitical dimensions of cultural origins.

In other words, it's a fascinating book (ooh look, I'm quoted here) and he is, genuinely, an interesting writer. He doesn't reckon much to Chomsky, either.

So I think in this case I'm prepared to, as it were, cut him some slack. Hanging bankers? The whole wunch, as far as I'm concerned.