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I teach African and Islamic archaeology, and I find Mark Christian's tone worryingly racist and segregationist. If his views had been espoused by a white academic, action would rightly be taken.

Some of us are working to diversify the higher education curriculum and embed non-European studies and perspectives in the mainstream. Christian's attitude, which reduces everything to race (that is, skin colour), is not useful, is retrograde and, conversely, fails to recognise diversity.

Timothy Insoll
Manchester University