Extinction Rebellion spray graffiti on Cambridge Uni building, demand removal of memorial to ‘racist’ academic (PHOTOS)

Climate change activist group Extinction Rebellion (XR) has targeted Cambridge University, spray-painting the wall and door of one college, in protest at the memorial window of “racist” statistician Ronald Fisher.

The youth wing of XR Cambridge took to Twitter on Friday morning to reveal that they had targeted the Gate of Honour at Gonville and Caius College the night before, to demand Fisher’s stained glass window be taken down.

The group, who describe themselves as “Antifa,” posted photos of the graffiti and of an individual busily trying to remove the paint on Friday morning.

Caius College were very eager to remove any suggestion that they're platforming a eugenicist and racist.

The British academic won a scholarship to study Mathematics at Cambridge in 1909 and went on to become regarded by many in his field as the “the single most important figure in 20th century statistics.” However, his views on race were highly controversial.

Fisher had strong feelings on eugenics (the supposed ‘improvement’ of the human race by selective breeding). Notably, he was founder of the Cambridge Eugenics Society and famously wrote that civilizations fail because people of “low genetic value” have more children than people with “high genetic value.”

A petition calling for the window to be taken down had garnered about 1,000 signatures on Wednesday.

The protest action comes after numerous statues and other monuments were targeted by Black Lives Matter and other anti-racism groups for removal, in demonstrations sparked by the death of 46 year-old black American George Floyd in Minneapolis. Critics of the action in the UK have accused protesters of trying to erase British culture and history.

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