[6] Prior to his appointment to the St Edmund's College, Cambridge fellowship, Carl received media attention for papers on the link between artistic tastes and views on Brexit,[7] the reasons why London pubs are disappearing,[8] and a study for Adam Smith Institute which found that conservatives were heavily underrepresented among academics at British universities.
[15] According to an article in the New Statesman from February 2018, Carl had also published two papers on whether larger Muslim populations make terrorism more likely and one suggesting that British stereotypes about immigrants are "largely accurate".
More than 500 academics signed a letter opposing Carl's appointment to the fellowship, stating their "deep concern" that "racist pseudoscience is being legitimised through association with the University of Cambridge.
"[1][18] Clément Mouhot, one of the letter's organizers, was quoted in The Guardian as saying that Carl's work relied on "selective use of data and unsound statistical methods which have been used to legitimise racist stereotypes about groups".
[19] The St Edmund's Combination Room also produced a statement arguing that Carl's work "demonstrated poor scholarship, promoted extreme right-wing views and incited racial and religious hatred.
"[4] An internal investigation at St Edmund's concluded that Carl's work demonstrated "poor scholarship" and "did not comply with established criteria for research ethics and integrity", and that it fell outside the normal protections for academic free speech as a result.
[32] Varsity reported that this campaign was coordinated by a company created by a developer named Conner Douglass who had provided similar services to white nationalist Richard Spencer and other neo-Nazis involved in the 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.