‘Perceiving the Temperature of the Water’: the Swarthmore Lecture, 2022

Lecture by Helen Minnis. Report by Joseph Jones.

by Joseph Jones 10th June 2022

Before getting to her title, Helen Minnis, a professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Glasgow, wanted to get something off her chest: ‘I’ll be honest, my response to being asked to do the Swarthmore lecture was mixed… Despite having written more than 100 scientific papers on child psychiatry, what was I being asked to talk about? Racism.’ Her daughter had laughed at the idea of Friends scanning Meeting rooms with binoculars, looking for a person of colour.