Academic Freedom: (Still) Under Threat?

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Saturday 19th October, 2024 Part of the Battle of Ideas Festival Speakers: Bryn Harris, Michelle Shipworth, Helen Joyce, Graham Stringer MP, Akua Reindorf KC, Chair: Jan Macvarish

Only three weeks after taking office, Labour Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson quietly kiboshed the protections for free speech promised by the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act. If implemented, this much-debated legislation – that eventually achieved cross-party support – would have given sharper teeth to universities’ existing free speech duties. HE institutions would become dutybound to actively promote free speech on campus and academics, students and visiting speakers would gain recourse to the law should they have invitations to speak on campuses overturned. A ‘free speech czar’ within the Office for Students was to be granted powers to investigate breaches of these free speech protections. All this has been thrown up in the air with the announcement that the Act has been ‘paused’ and may well be repealed. The Free Speech Union has threatened the government with Judicial Review, claiming that overturning legislation by ministerial fiat is unlawful. We must wait to see if this forces the government to account for its decision – and even creates the impetus for the Act to be implemented. But what should we make of the decision to renege on a democratically established law to pursue free speech in universities? One stated reason for halting the act was relieving universities of a ‘burdensome’ duty to protect free speech. As even supporters of the law change were concerned at it being reduced to an overly bureaucratic time-consuming exercise by half-hearted Vice chancellors and administrators, does this objection ring true? Announcing the act would be paused, Phillipson said that if continued it would ‘expose students to harm and appalling hate speech on campuses’. How can we counter that point given that the legislation was designed to work within existing law on hate and harms, which themselves are often subjective and contested categories. Was it only a matter of time before the free speech act unravelled, leading to tit for tat accusations of harm and hate and endless lawfare? More sinisterly, some say that in the context of many universities struggling financially, powerful college managements successfully lobbied Government to protect partnerships with countries like China, which are hostile to free speech and require appeasing in order to secure overseas campus developments, lucrative research partnerships and permissions to send international students to the UK. Is free speech on campus being sacrificed to create cosy relationships with authoritarian regimes? Regardless, while few believed the free speech law by itself would turn the tide of cancellations, conformity and intolerance that has plagued academic life, the political push for intellectual openness alerted many to the free speech crisis in UK universities. How can this momentum be built upon further? What now for those who are concerned about securing intellectual diversity and heteroge