Richard Lynn is the University of Ulster’s dirty secret. He is Professor of Psychology at the university’s Coleraine campus. The authorities there hope that he will go away quietly when his tenure ends next year. But members of the Anti-Nazi League are determined to drag the questions raised by his activities out into the open, and they are right.

Lynn is involved in a network of academics on both sides of the Atlantic who supply racist organisations with “respectable” arguments for campaigns of hate. The network is subsidised by a New York-based foundation, the Pioneer Fund, which was founded in the ’30s to promote “eugenics” – the project for producing a “master race” which reached its highest expression in Germany under Hitler. Lynn has received vast sums from the Pioneer Fund towards his “research” at Coleraine.

Lynn is no closet academic remote from the practical implications of his work. He eagerly seeks mainstream outlets for his views, and appears to have little difficulty finding takers. His most recent broadside appeared in the Irish Independent on November 1st, reprinted from the London Times.