A university course is being slammed for suggesting that works by CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien, the authors behind the much-loved works of The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings need to be “decolonized.” The University of Nottingham offers a course last year entitled “Imagining ‘Britain’: Decolonising Tolkien et al” taught by professor Onyeka Nubia. The course aims to “explore British mythology and, where necessary, decolonise and repopulate the narrative of British mythmaking.” This year’s course is by the same professor is entitled “Imagining Britain: Decolonising and Repopulating the Mythology of the British Isles.”

The Telegraph reports that the course accuses Tolkien’s work of “ethnic chauvinism” against dark-skinned characters in the books, such as the orcs in the novels. “It adds that Tolkien’s treatment of the fictional races shares in a tradition of ‘anti-African antipathy,’ in which people from Africa are painted as ‘the natural enemy of the white man,’” asserted The Telegraph.

Tolkien’s critics were quick to defend his works, which have been widely read throughout the world and beloved by people on opposite ends of the political spectrum such as the very liberal Stephen Colbert and Vice President JD Vance. Writing for That Park Place, Marvin Montanaro ripped into modern literary criticism, which seeks to inject modern identities and values into classic works. “The truth is simpler: Tolkien’s good-versus-evil dichotomy mirrors the moral universe of ancient myth, not modern identity politics. Light and darkness are spiritual metaphors — not racial descriptors,” argued Montanaro. “His monsters are monstrous because they embody corruption, not because they have darker skin tones. And yet, modern academia keeps trying to drag Middle-earth into its cultural crossfire. It’s not enough to debate Tolkien’s worldbuilding or moral themes — now, professors want to ‘decolonize’ the very concept of myth.”

Although Tolkien has periodically been accused of racism because of supposed racist undertones in his work, his defenders have often pointed out how he famously pushed back at German publishers for his book, The Hobbit, after German publishers in World War II tried to confirm he wasn’t Jewish. “But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject—which should be sufficient,” Tolkien wrote to the publisher. “I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.” The Hobbit would not be published in German until 1957.