The Wellcome Trust, named after pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome, is the UK’s largest non-governmental funder of scientific research. And it’s the third wealthiest charitable foundation in the world, just behind the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2021, Wellcome’s endowment topped $38 billion – making it richer than most British universities combined.
You’d expect an organisation with such a vast endowment to be a serious affair – to be run by serious people with a serious agenda. But as with so many organisations nowadays, this appears not to be the case.
On August 10th, a notice appeared on the organisation’s website titled ‘An update on Wellcome’s anti-racism programme’. It was written by the organisation’s director. (You can probably see where this is going.)
“Two years ago,” the notice begins, “Wellcome made a statement recognising that we have perpetuated racism, and made a commitment to becoming an anti-racist organisation. We committed to developing anti-racist principles and an anti-racist programme, and to an external evaluation of our progress.”
How exactly had the organisation “perpetuated racism”? We are told that black staff are less likely to describe it as “inclusive”, black applicants are less likely to be awarded research grants, and the museum collections reflect a history “that has its roots in imperial and colonial power structures”.
In other words, Wellcome had not done anything remotely racist. But they felt the need to admit to being racist because doing so became fashionable in the summer of 2020 – following the death of George Floyd.
Back to the recent notice, which continues: “This evaluation of our work to become an anti-racist funder and employer has now reported. It has found that Wellcome is still an institutionally racist organisation, and that we have yet to act on this with the urgency required.”
So in 2020, Wellcome admitted to being “institutionally racist”. Two years later, after developing “anti-racist principles” and an “anti-racist programme”, the organisation is still “institutionally racist”. They can’t catch a break!
The notice links to an official-looking report prepared by the Social Investment Consultancy and the Better Org – two consultancies that make money by telling organisations that they are racist. I can’t claim to have read the full report, which is 85 pages long. But the fact that “diversity” appears 64 times, and “inclusive” appears 92 times, tells me everything I need to know.
After accepting the report’s conclusion, Wellcome’s Director apologises for “the pain and disappointment it has led to”. (You can’t make this up.)
The identify of Wellcome’s Director may interest you. It’s Jeremy Farrar. He’s the pro-lockdown scientist who dismissed the lab leak as a “conspiracy theory”, and then later wrote a book stating he initially believed there was a 50% chance the virus leaked from a lab.
If organisations like the Labour Party want to engage in phoney self-flagellation around racism, that’s fine – they should be free to do so. But the Wellcome Trust is meant to be concerned with science. It’s a scandal that money needed for important research is being wasted on fake ‘anti-racism’ reports, and the organisation’s director takes them seriously.
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