The Economist- Academic freedom in British universities is under threat

October 15th 2021

Study philosophy at Sussex University and, in your first year, you may read John Locke. The Enlightenment thinker is celebrated today for his “Letter Concerning Toleration”, in which he argued that to compel men “by fire and sword to profess certain doctrines” was not only immoral but pointless: the only true persuasion is the “inward persuasion of the mind”. If the students and staff denouncing Kathleen Stock, a professor in the philosophy department, are familiar with Locke’s argument, they seem unmoved by it.

Since term began protesters in balaclavas and masks have been denouncing Professor Stock’s “transphobia”. They have let off flares next to signs saying “Stock Out” and put up posters reading “We’re not paying £9,250 [$12,600] a year for transphobia—fire Kathleen Stock”. One group stated that: “Our demand is simple: fire Kathleen Stock. Until then, you’ll see us around.” Police have advised her to install cctv cameras at home and implied that she may need security guards to return to campus.

For years, a debate has rumbled over whether there is a problem with free speech in British universities. Those who say there is not deny that “cancel culture” is a real thing and regard those who disagree with them, wherever they sit on the political spectrum, as reactionaries borrowing talking points from the American right. Their opponents point out that silencing is by its nature hard to detect: silence doesn’t make much noise. For them Professor Stock is not merely a persecuted woman. She is proof, personified.

As any good academic would point out, one is a poor sample size. But there is other evidence that free speech is at risk in British universities. A report by the University and College Union (ucu) in 2017 ranked Britain 27th out of the (then) 28 members of the European Union for the legal protection of academic freedom. A study from Policy Exchange, a right-leaning think-tank, found that 32% of academics who identified as politically right-leaning, and 15% of those who identified as centrist, practised self-censorship. Speak to academics and many will tell you that there is a problem—and tell you not to quote them.

Few academics (generally a leftie lot) will shed many tears over the silencing of more right-wing colleagues. What makes Professor Stock’s case so illustrative, then, is that her credentials (liberal, lesbian, feminist, obe) are so impeccable and her claims so vanilla. She is being vilified because she has said, and written in a recent book, “Material Girls”, that biological sex exists and should in some circumstances take precedence over self-declared gender identity, and that therefore some female-only spaces (women’s changing rooms, sports, prisons) should be off-limits to trans women, that is, males who identify as women. That accords closely with most Britons’ opinions, and with British law.

But activists who oppose her argue that such views should not be taught uncritically in universities. Lecturers might teach biological sex as a historical artefact, says one, just as they would teach that people used to believe “toxic things about the priority of white people”. But just as universities would not teach eugenics, so the immutable, binary nature of sex should not be promoted “as an ideology that is real."

To believe that biology is bunkum may be novel, but students have always been a rum bunch. In the 19th century they set fire to effigies to protest against degrees for women. In the 20th, they embraced communism. But when students turned Trot, vice-chancellors did not don boilersuits and salute their comrades. Modern academia has been less stalwart.

In January more than 600 academics signed an open letter protesting against Professor Stock being awarded an obe. Rather than condemning the attacks against her, the Sussex branch of the ucu urged a university-wide investigation into “institutional transphobia” and warned that “appeals to both employment rights and academic freedom are often instrumentlised” (in other words, used as cover for bigotry). Shereen Benjamin, a sociologist at Edinburgh University, has long suffered harassment for similar views. In 2019, when students who agree with her put up stickers around campus saying that “Female is a biological reality”, the principal called them “offensive” and said those responsible would be disciplined.

Just how much dissenting views are being stifled on campus was thrown into sharp relief last year when Cambridge University tried to change its policy on freedom of speech to demand that staff “be respectful of the differing opinions of others”. Arif Ahmed, a philosophy lecturer, objected, saying that “not all views are equally deserving of respect”. He wanted “respect” amended to “tolerate”. To have his amendment voted upon, he needed 25 academics’ signatures. He struggled to get them, despite approaching more than 100 people. Many said they backed him privately but would not do so publicly: they feared for jobs, promotions and contracts. Eventually, he succeeded, and when votes were cast in late 2020, 86.9% were in favour of changing “respect” to “tolerate”.

With hindsight, that may have been the moment when the tide turned against campus silencing. After the Sussex row started to make the headlines Lady Falkner, a cross-bench peer who is head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, an official watchdog, and is married to an academic, wrote a letter to the Times saying that “university is a place where we are exposed to ideas and learn to debate with each other”. Students, she says, “do not have a right not to be made uncomfortable. They can’t say that because they feel uncomfortable, someone should be fired.”

The leadership of Sussex University, too, is finding its voice. In recent days Adam Tickell, its vice-chancellor, wrote to all staff saying that “we cannot and will not tolerate threats to cherished academic freedoms”. The stir that provoked alarmed him, he says. “The degree of interest in me speaking out in support of academic freedom…is a concern to me, because it should be no more news than [saying] the Pope is Catholic.” Universities might admit the pope’s catholicity. They have been less willing to celebrate their own.