A ROW has broken out over a university's decision to invite a controversial guest speaker who has been accused of exploring "eugenics". 

Gregory Clark, professor of economics at the University of California, was due to deliver a seminar at the University of Glasgow last week on the effect of genetics on social outcomes. 

However, the Adam Smith business school event - titled For Whom the Bell Curve Tolls: A Lineage of 400,000 Individuals 1750-2020 Shows Genetics Determines Most Social Outcomes - has since been postponed following backlash from students.

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The historian and author Niall Ferguson, who was born in Glasgow, tweeted: “As if to illustrate my warnings about wokeism at UK universities, Greg Clark’s talk at the University of Glasgow was just ‘postponed’ because of objections to the title.”

The title is a reference to The Bell Curve, a controversial 1994 book which claimed black and Latino genetics are linked to intellectual inferiority. 

Ferguson, a senior fellow of Stanford University in California, dismissed criticism of Clark on campus, claiming that it had originated from “woke elements in the sociology department”. 

Hitting back at a report from a university newspaper, he added: “To call Greg Clark a ‘eugenicist’ is grotesque." 

Clark's visit coincided with the release of a report into racism the UofG's campus, which found more than half of students surveyed had been subjected to abuse. 

Glasgow Times: Historian Niall Ferguson hit back at the decision to cancel the visit Historian Niall Ferguson hit back at the decision to cancel the visit

Clark has claimed that efforts to make societies more egalitarian are largely futile, writing: “We have to be resigned to living in a world where social outcomes are substantially determined at birth.”

He has also said that “200 years from now the descendants of enslaved African-Americans will still be under-represented”.

A spokeswoman for the Adam Smith school said: “We have not cancelled this event. 

"It was postponed due to a high degree of interest beyond what could be accommodated in a seminar. 

"We will continue to be in discussions with the economist Professor Gregory Clark on whether we can provide a suitable event to discuss his data modelling as part of our applied economics series.”