'Racist' Brand loses dismissal appeal

Chris Brand, the self-styled "scientific racist" fired from Edinburgh University for gross misconduct last August, has lost an internal appeal against dismissal.

Scottish QC Gordon Coutts has blamed Mr Brand as the architect of his own dismissal, stressing that the appeal has not raised any question of academic freedom. Mr Brand lost his job not because of his views but because his behaviour made it impossible for him to work in a university.

Mr Brand was the centre of controversy two years ago when the academic publisher John Wiley withdrew his book The g Factor the day before publication following his comments on IQ and race.

The university upheld Mr Brand's right to publicise his researched conclusions. But he was later sacked after publishing an Internet newsletter questioning paedophilia charges against Nobel prizewinner Daniel Gajdusek, and suggesting that non-violent paedophilia with a consenting partner over the age of 12 was not harmful so long as both partners had an above-average IQ.

Mr Coutts said Mr Brand had not considered the university in pursuit of his own ends, publicity for his book and in the way he expressed dismay when Wiley effectively censored it.

When The THES contacted Mr Brand, he said: "Don't you follow my website? You people are amazingly incompetent. You've done precisely nothing, so goodbye."

An Internet newsletter by Mr Brand, headed "Appeal at Edinburgh Looneyversity", pledges to "reveal in full the mindlessness of PeeCee (political correctness) into which a once great university has fallen. You don't need to be a clapped-out Marxist or feminazie deconstructivist to take to PC. It creeps up on anyone who does not rejoice in freedom."

The university said it was fully prepared to justify its actions in court or at an industrial tribunal if Mr Brand chose to pursue the matter further.