From: punditster@gmail.com   
      
   On 2/23/2026 10:54 AM, Noah Sombrero wrote:   
   > On Mon, 23 Feb 2026 09:53:03 -0800, Dude  wrote:   
   >   
   >> On 2/22/2026 7:46 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:   
   >>> On Sun, 22 Feb 2026 18:25:37 -0800, Dude  wrote:   
   >>>   
   >>>> On 2/21/2026 8:46 AM, Noah Sombrero wrote:   
   >>>>> On Sat, 21 Feb 2026 16:22:54 +0000, Julian    
   >>>>> wrote:   
   >>>>>   
   >>>>>> Earlier this month, an SOS dropped into my inbox. It came from a student   
   >>>>>> at the University of Sussex. Lest her repressive professors punish her   
   >>>>>> for what I am about to report, let’s call her ‘Emma’. ‘I am in   
   a mild   
   >>>>>> state of despair,’ she wrote.   
   >>>>>   
   >>>>> You must feel sorry for those poor conservatives, they feel despair.   
   >>>>>   
   >>>> Not sorry. There are only two biological genders: male or female.   
   >>>   
   >>> I say that your and my beliefs in the matter do not influence what   
   >>> other people believe.   
   >>>   
   >> Some people are highly susceptible to suggestion and are very prone to   
   >> suggestibility. They sometimes believe things they read on social media.   
   >>   
   >   
   > But you and I know better than to do that, don't we?   
   >   
   Most of the things I know I learned in elementary school starting in   
   grade three. Two genders. Then, later in Biology 101: Anatomy and   
   Physiology. Two geners confirmed.   
    >   
   >> Your data is all over the internet. Good work!   
   >   
   >>>>> Kathleen Stock resigned from the University of Sussex in 2021   
   >> following   
   >>>> intense backlash, protests, and accusations of transphobia regarding her   
   >>>> published views on gender identity and biological sex.   
   >>>>   
   >>>> She argued that biological sex is immutable and not synonymous with   
   >>>> gender identity, particularly in the contexts of law, policy, and   
   >>>> women-only spaces.   
   >>>>>   
   >>>>>> "This week alone I have been told that the history of kinship theory has   
   >>>>>> been, up until now, ‘Eurocentric and cisgendered’, and another   
   >>>>>> anthropology module must be viewed through a ‘queer and trans   
   lens’. The   
   >>>>>> word ‘decolonisation’ comes up in almost every lecture. If   
   university   
   >>>>>> campuses represent a microcosm of the greater society, then I fear we   
   >>>>>> are doomed."   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>>> I’m not surprised. After all, Sussex was the university that so failed   
   >>>>>> to protect the coolly reasonable, gender-critical philosopher Kathleen   
   >>>>>> Stock from a sustained campaign of vilification by students, aided and   
   >>>>>> abetted by some colleagues, that it destroyed her faith in academia and   
   >>>>>> drove her to resign. While the university was fulsome in its posthumous   
   >>>>>> regret at her leaving, it has yet to give any explanation – no matter,   
   >>>>>> make a confession – of its own astonishing failure to defend her.   
   >>>>>> Indeed, it’s currently litigating against a fine imposed by the Office   
   >>>>>> for Students for failures to uphold free speech.   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>>> Sussex had moved onto my radar before Emma’s email for two other   
   >>>>>> reasons. One is Alan Lester, the professor of historical geography who   
   >>>>>> has made it his mission in life to discredit me, lest anyone should be   
   >>>>>> seduced by my utterly moderate views of Britain’s colonial record. He   
   it   
   >>>>>> was who wrote a 15,000-word takedown of my book, Colonialism: A Moral   
   >>>>>> Reckoning, in which he could find nothing positive to say either about   
   >>>>>> me or the British Empire. Zilch. Nada. He then organised the   
   >>>>>> counter-publication of a collection of essays; every one of them   
   >>>>>> targeted at me. Emma reports that, judging by the amount of classroom   
   >>>>>> time he devotes to debunking me, I now live ‘rent-free in his head’.   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>>> The other instance of Sussex I’d encountered is Gurminder Bhambra, a   
   >>>>>> professor of social theory. Two weeks ago, she was on the other side of   
   >>>>>> the table in a recorded discussion about empire staged by the Doha   
   >>>>>> Debates in Qatar.   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>>> Like Lester, Gurminder simply cannot credit the British Empire with any   
   >>>>>> positive achievement. When the moderator put the topic of the Empire’s   
   >>>>>> benefits on the table, she immediately issued the rhetorical challenge:   
   >>>>>> ‘What benefits?’   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>>> Flying in the face of obvious historical data, this is a main symptom of   
   >>>>>> the ideological character of her view. Her thinking is determined by a   
   >>>>>> theoretical axiom – that empire and colonial rule are totally unjust   
   –   
   >>>>>> that will not countenance any contrary evidence. Not the fact that the   
   >>>>>> British Empire was among the first states in the world’s history to   
   >>>>>> abolish slavery and then led the world in suppressing it from Brazil to   
   >>>>>> New Zealand. Nor that it introduced liberal institutions of a free   
   >>>>>> press, independent judiciary, and representative government to parts of   
   >>>>>> the world that had never experienced them.   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>>> Similarly, nor that it made India the largest producer of steel outside   
   >>>>>> of North America, Europe, and Japan by 1935, and gave her 47,000 miles   
   >>>>>> of railway against China’s 17,000 by 1947. Nor that, between May 1940   
   >>>>>> and June 1941, it offered the massively murderous racist regime in Nazi   
   >>>>>> Berlin the only military opposition – with the sole exception of   
   Greece.   
   >>>>>> In Gurminder’s eyes – implausibly – none of this counts for   
   anything.   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>>> Behind this stubborn defiance of historical fact lies a more basic   
   >>>>>> axiom, namely, that colonialism was fundamentally about economic   
   >>>>>> ‘extraction’. In support, Gurminder invoked the argument that, since   
   >>>>>> India produced 25 per cent of world output in 1800 but only 2 to 4 per   
   >>>>>> cent in 1900, it follows that the British had plundered the country. Not   
   >>>>>> at all.   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>>> It only shows that industrial productivity in the West increased four to   
   >>>>>> six times during that period, reducing India’s share of global GDP.   
   The   
   >>>>>> same fate befell uncolonised China. The neo-Marxist view that   
   >>>>>> colonialism was essentially about the predatory extraction of colonial   
   >>>>>> surplus owes much more to dogma than empirical data.   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>>> Over 25 years ago, the leading historian of imperial economics, David   
   >>>>>> Fieldhouse, endorsed Rudolf von Albertini’s conclusion, based on an   
   >>>>>> exhaustive examination of the literature on most parts of the colonial   
   >>>>>> world to 1940, that colonial economics ‘cannot be understood through   
   >>>>>> concepts such as plunder … and exploitation’. Recently, Tirthankar   
   Roy,   
      
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