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Recent allegations surrounding the appointment of a prominent academic at the University of Cambridge leave me with four questions:

How did we get here? Why did this go so far? If the concerns now being raised could have been identified through proper academic scrutiny, why were they not identified during the appointment process? And, ultimately, who has won and who has lost?

Regardless of how these allegations are ultimately resolved, I believe they expose a deeper problem within the University of Cambridge: performative liberalism.

By performative liberalism, I mean an institutional culture that places greater value on appearing progressive than on confronting difficult institutional realities. It is diversity as branding rather than diversity as practice.

Cambridge portrays itself as a leader in diversity and inclusion. Browse its websites, prospectuses or social media, and you see an institution that appears welcoming and diverse. Yet, in my view, that carefully curated image sits uneasily alongside the experiences described by many Black students, who continue to speak about racism, exclusion, microaggressions and a persistent feeling that they do not fully belong.

The danger of performative liberalism is not simply that it is hypocritical. Its real danger is that it changes institutional incentives.

When an institution becomes heavily invested in projecting a particular image of itself, criticism becomes inconvenient, uncomfortable questions become easier to avoid, and protecting institutional reputation can begin to compete with institutional accountability. Diversity risks becoming something to display rather than something to practise.

That brings us back to the present controversy.

Cambridge is one of the world’s leading universities. Professorial appointments are expected to involve rigorous academic scrutiny. If the concerns now being raised should reasonably have been identified during that process, then legitimate questions arise about institutional procedures and oversight. If they could not reasonably have been identified, then the University should be prepared to explain why. Either way, this should not be viewed solely as a question about one individual. It is also a question about institutional governance.

Ironically, the people most likely to bear the consequences are not university leaders or appointment committees.

They are Black students.

Many already feel they must work twice as hard as their peers simply to be viewed as equally capable. Many describe feeling that they must continually prove that they belong. If high-profile controversies contribute to greater scepticism towards Black academics more broadly, that burden will fall upon students and scholars who had no part in creating the situation.

That is why this debate matters.

The issue is not whether universities should pursue diversity. They should.

The issue is whether diversity is understood as representation alone or as a commitment to examining institutional culture with the same honesty and rigour expected of academic scholarship itself.

A university cannot claim to value critical inquiry while becoming uncomfortable with criticism directed at its own institutions.

Regardless of how the current controversy is ultimately resolved, Cambridge should use this moment to reflect on a broader question: has diversity become something to market rather than something to practise?

Explain why or why not.

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