The academics muzzled by cancel culture

Telegraph

4 days ago

'You should expect to face views you might find shocking or offensive, and you should be aware that's part of the process of education,' said Arif Ahmed, a Cambridge philosophy lecturer and the Government's 'free speech tsar'.
Ahmed is the director of freedom of speech and academic freedom at the Office for Students (OFS), the university regulator. His remarks were addressed to students last week as the body published new guidance on protecting free speech at universities, ahead of incoming legislation which will take effect in August.
For the students, academics and support staff who have found themselves caught up in academia's battle with intolerance, they were welcome words. But for others they were too little, too late.
Alongside the guidance, the OFS commissioned a YouGov poll which found that one in five academics does not feel 'free' to discuss challenging subjects, while nearly a quarter fear they could be physically attacked for broaching controversial topics, including transgender ideology.
'Higher-education providers and constituent institutions should have a high tolerance for all kinds of lawful speech,' states the new guidance, which provides examples of how institutions should respond to scenarios such as protests, the investigation of staff and student complaints and ensuring speakers are not prevented from expressing their opinions. 'There should be a very strong presumption in favour of permitting lawful speech.'
Academics have welcomed the changes, which they hope will provide some much-needed clarity in a notoriously difficult area.
Edward Skidelsky, a philosophy lecturer at the University of Exeter and the director of the Committee for Academic Freedom, is one of them.
He praised the 'reassuringly robust' new guidance, which makes it clear that students and academics will not be punished for speaking their mind.
'Students feel very constrained when it comes to certain topics,' he tells The Telegraph. 'I teach sexual ethics as part of one of my courses and it is difficult to get a discussion going. They clam up. I discuss Catholic views of homosexuality, and I'll often say, 'Does anyone want to defend these views?' because I think everything should be up for debate. But no one ever does.
'Even though I'm sure there are people in the class who agree with those views, they won't defend them publicly, mainly because they are frightened of what other students might think of them. Some will talk to me privately and be more open, but they feel constricted in front of other students. They worry they'll be cut out of social networks and friendship groups. People won't want to talk to them in the bar. They'll be ostracised.'
Skidelsky says he has seen a marked change since his own time as an undergraduate, when identity politics was much less fraught.
'When I was an undergrad in the 1990s, politics didn't really matter. You didn't choose your friends according to their political views. It was something you talked about out of interest but it wasn't integral to your identity in the way it's become now. That's the big difference. People really divide into groups according to whether they are conservatives or liberals.'
Modern university culture has been influenced by the desire to create more equitable spaces for students, who come from a wider variety of backgrounds. But the desire for tolerance has spilt over into intolerance of arguments that are seen to run counter to the prevailing progressive views.
In the latest such case, the University of Bristol was on Monday accused of failing to protect one of its own professors after he was falsely accused of Islamophobia. Professor Steven Greer had taught at the institution for 36 years when he was said to have insulted Islam and the Koran during a discussion with students about the Islamist attacks on France's Charlie Hebdo magazine in 2015.
Six months later, a student who had not attended the discussion lodged a complaint about alleged Islamophobia, which the university then acted on, launching a five-month inquiry which ultimately wholly ­exonerated Greer. Despite this, the university scrapped the module in question, ­titled 'Islam, China and the Far East'.
Greer was meanwhile subject to a campaign of abuse that resulted in him temporarily leaving his home due to concerns for his safety. He ultimately resigned and has since accused the university of endangering his life to avoid being seen as ­anti-Muslim, warning his case could have a chilling effect on freedom of speech.
Remi Adekoya, who teaches politics at the University of York, says that, ironically, it can be ethnic minorities who feel the chill most powerfully.
Indeed, the YouGov poll commissioned by the OFS found the percentage of those who do not feel free to broach controversial topics rises to a third for academics from ethnic minority backgrounds.
'Students said they felt afraid of offending someone,' says Adekoya. 'One interesting answer came from an ethnic minority student, who said, 'The reason I don't want to discuss issues around race and colonialism is because very often I am the only ethnic minority in the classroom, and I feel anything I say about race the class will simply agree with me because that's what they have to do. That doesn't make sense to me.' Students don't like to sense people are walking on eggshells around them.
'In other societies I've lived in, people have public opinions and private opinions,' he adds. 'In the UK, people have public opinions, private opinions and secret opinions. There are some things which people won't say even in a room full of colleagues.'
With regard to the new guidance, he says: 'Any move towards entrenching academic freedom in UK universities is a good thing.'
The new guidance was issued after requests from universities for clarity on how they could uphold freedom of speech. In March, the University of Sussex was fined £585,000 after its policy on trans and non-binary equality was ruled to have had a chilling effect on free speech. Kathleen Stock, a prominent gender-critical academic, had previously resigned over its policies. (The university is appealing against the decision.)
For academics who have fallen foul of the intolerance in British academia in recent years, however, the shift is too little, too late. In January, Martin Speake, a renowned saxophonist, resigned from his teaching position at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in Greenwich after he said the college had made his position 'untenable'.
The row began in early 2024, when he replied to an email from the principal of the conservatoire stating that there was racial inequality in jazz music and supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. The principal invited feedback.
'I shared my experience, which was nothing like what he mentioned,' Speake says. In his email, he wrote that he wanted to discuss the broader issue and that 'black musicians in jazz and many other styles of music are definitely not under-represented in the UK' and in fact 'have far more opportunities than many others'. For him, he wrote, 'opportunity is about class, not skin colour'.
Speake never had a direct reply to his email, but he showed it to a student, who read it to 'three or four' other classmates. Word started to get out. Speake's classes were suspended. The day after a fractious meeting of the students to discuss the case, Speake says the director of music told him: 'I fear for your safety.' As anger spread in the student body, Speake was signed off sick. Venues cancelled his gigs and a record label refused to put his album out.
'It was very, very disturbing and stressful,' he says. 'Nobody would talk to me in the corridor. I'd say hello, some students would ignore me, others would say hello.' Other teaching work at the Guildhall and the Royal Academy of Music dried up, too. 'The students have changed,' he says. 'Mainly it's to do with fees, but it's also to do with the ideology people call woke.' Speake is bringing a case for unfair dismissal against Trinity Laban.
'The main thing is betrayal,' he says. 'I feel huge betrayal by the institutions, the students, and old friends and musicians. I'm stronger because of it, but it's very sad. I've lost a lot.'
(Trinity Laban was approached for comment. The institution has previously contested Speake's version of events. A spokesman stated that 'no disciplinary actions were taken against Mr Speake on the basis of his personal views'.)
For other academics, the issue has not been their personal views but the curriculum. Almut Gadow taught law at the Open University for nearly a decade before she was summarily dismissed in 2022 for misconduct. She had posted messages on a university noticeboard critical of changes to the law curriculum, which she said would 'indoctrinate students in gender ideology theory'.
'The discussion started around the fact that for one law tutorial they had created a fictitious scenario, which was supposed to be around GBH, where the perpetrator identified as gender-neutral, so 'they/them' pronouns were supposed to be used,' Gadow recalls. 'I asked why. The law does not recognise a third gender, so why should I, a trained lawyer, recognise a third gender. This was a criminal law scenario where you pretended to be a prosecutor. The role of a prosecutor in court is to present fact. The sex of the offender and victim might be relevant; the gender identity is not. It is not the role of the prosecutor or court to affirm the defendant's gender identity.'
Her posts in question were removed before she was dismissed for violating inclusivity policies. The university initially countered that Gadow had made 'offensive and spurious allegations online which we reject in the strongest of terms', but settled the case in March for an undisclosed amount.
'It was tremendously unfair,' she says. 'It flies in the face of everything a university should be. You shouldn't be sacked from your university for not wanting to promote particular social and political ideologies in your classroom. That's not how free universities in free countries work.' With German and Peruvian heritage, Gadow is aware of the risks of using universities for ideological ends.
'I was told that [the gender issue] was not relevant to the teaching of law but helps achieve broader aims of liberating the curriculum,' she says. 'I replied that including things that aren't relevant to the subject because it helps achieve broader ideological objectives is something that might be very familiar to people who hail from totalitarian regimes.'
A spokesman for the Open University said: 'We don't comment on cases post-settlement, preferring instead to be mindful of the confidentiality of that settlement and the privacy of the individual involved.'
The YouGov survey makes startling reading. More than a quarter of respondents said their university had become less tolerant of a range of viewpoints during their tenure. Less than half think their university would prioritise freedom of speech over not causing offence. And two thirds believe their university would prioritise staff and/or students feeling safe over freedom of speech.
But despite the sense of gloom, there have been signs that the mood might be changing already. Adekoya says things are 'improving' in terms of 'a slightly freer atmosphere for academic debate'.
On gender, in particular, Skidelsky says the Cass Review in April last year and the Supreme Court ruling in April have helped reopen debate. 'There has been a big push-back on [the transgender issue],' he says. 'People are more free to speak their minds than they were a few years ago. People do feel safer to say that trans women are not real women.'
But he warns that there is plenty of work left to do in other areas.
'I'm not sure if the general direction of travel is back towards liberalism,' he says. 'On DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion], universities are pushing that even harder as a reaction to the Trump presidency.
'It damages universities' authority with the public as they're seen as bastions of wokery, they're not trusted by people in the way they used to be. I think it makes them less attractive to students, so they're struggling to maintain numbers. Students are deciding they're better off not going at all. And it interferes with the core purpose of universities, which is to discover the truth. If people are always being judged on their allegiance to ideology, they're not free to pursue the truth.'
Under the new legislation, the OFS will be able to sanction universities, with the potential for fines to run into millions of pounds, if they are found to have failed to uphold freedom of speech.
But even if academics feel more relaxed as a result, any renewed sense of freedom will take a while to filter down to students. In the social media era, the threat of social censure remains just as potent. They may be allowed to speak their mind, but that is not the same thing as doing it.