Geographers call for journal to take action over ‘racist’ paper

Academics have raised concerns about a paper published in the journal of the Royal Geographic Society that they say relies on “antisemitic tropes” and conspiracy theories.

The paper explores the causes behind the UK’s far-right riots in 2024, when migrants and British Muslims were attacked.

It links the disturbances with wider support for Israel, and claims that white supremacy is “at the heart of the Zionist project”. It also claims that the “transnational Zionist movement” is one of the “five pillars of Islamophobia”, and that “Zionist Israeli” financiers are funding anti-Muslim rhetoric. 

“There is therefore a sort of strategic consensus between Zionist groups and fascist groups…against a common enemy that is Islam and Muslims,” the article, published in the RGS’ The Geographical Journal, says.

The row threatens to overshadow the organisation’s annual conference on inequality, which gets under way today.  

George Holmes, professor of conservation and society at the University of Leeds, told Times Higher Education that on reading the article he “genuinely thought” that the journal had been “hacked”.

“I thought it was some sort of hack. It’s clearly just crude racism,” he said, adding that the article relied on “decades old” antisemitic conspiracy theories that “Jews control the media and politics”, as well as relying on tropes about Jewish financiers. “It’s not subtle,” he said. 

He has complained to the RGS but the article remains live on its website. He also raised concerns that sources referred to in the paper include posts on X and YouTube videos, which he said was a “standard of evidence literally below what we would expect for a first-year undergraduate essay”. 

Holmes is due to have a formal response published in The Geographical Journal over the coming months but he believes this does not adequately address the issues at hand.  

The RGS is set to host its annual conference, this year themed “Geographies of Inequalities” this week. But Holmes has called on the conference chair and editor of the article, Peter Hopkins, a professor at Newcastle University, to step down over his involvement in the article’s publication. Hopkins was contacted for comment.

A spokesperson for the RGS said that the article had been through a double-blind peer review process with two reviewers involved, overseen by a journal editor. They said that it had requested a correction from the article’s author following complaints to address a “factual error” in the text.

“All complaints and concerns voiced to the Society are taken seriously. We routinely review our journal practices, and these are regularly considered in both Editor and Research and Higher Education committee meetings at the RGS-IBG,” they said.  

“We continue to welcome responses to content published in our journals, and one response to the commentary in question has been accepted to The Geographical Journal and will soon be published online.”

The article’s author, Kawtar Najib, lecturer in human geography at the University of Liverpool, said that she would be “preparing a formal academic response and submitting this for review to The Geographical Journal”.

juliette.rowsell@timeshighereducation.com