Students Shall Not Pass Unless They Accept Lord of the Rings Is Offensive
17th October 2025
A university is teaching students that JRR Tolkien demonises “people of colour” in the Lord of the Rings books.
A history module called Decolonising Tolkien et al, taught at the University of Nottingham, uses a text that says orcs and other dark-skinned characters in the trilogy are the victims of “ethnic chauvinism”.
Dr Onyeka Nubia, a historian and writer who leads the module, argues that eastern races in the fictional realm of Middle Earth are depicted as evil while fairer-skinned peoples of the west are shown as virtuous.
In academia, “decolonising” usually means re-examining or moving away from white, western viewpoints.
In the module’s core text, Dr Onyeka writes that maligned peoples include Easterlings, Southrons and men from Harad. The trilogy also features the dark-skinned orcs, evil creatures that do the bidding of Sauron, known as the “Dark Lord”.
Carl Benjamin (“Sargon of Akkad”) has some fun with this.