Concern about threats to free speech in universities is commonly dismissed by the Left as a Right-wing distraction. So, last month, Tony Blair and Andrew Adonis wrote that the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, which had its second reading in the Commons yesterday, is “a reform in search of a problem since free speech is hardly a key issue on university campuses”.
This is wrong. There is widespread empirical evidence that the freedom to speak and research of university students and teachers in the UK is being inhibited. Those affected range from conservatives to feminist critics of transgender ideology. And the evidence comprises not just anecdotes, but social scientific data. Four years ago, a poll of members of the University and Colleges Union revealed that 35.5 per cent of respondents admitted to self-censorship, mainly of their political views. It also found that, by European comparison, the UK’s legal protection for academic freedom was “negligible”.
The Government’s Bill will go a long way toward thawing the chill. By requiring universities to promote free speech, it will provide an internal counterweight to the “equality-and-diversity” industrial complex. By creating a new post of director for freedom of speech, it will enable the Office for Students to focus on analysing the problems into a set of solutions that will establish sector-wide norms. By authorising the director to recommend redress, it will encourage vice-chancellors to push the issue up their agendas. By allowing staff to appeal beyond their own institutions, it will support beleaguered individuals. And by extending the duty to secure free speech to student unions, it will caution student leaders against yielding to pressure to stifle dissent.
The Bill has its critics. Some object that legislation cannot change culture, so as to lift the fear of professional ostracism that causes self-censorship. Not so. Legislation can nudge culture in the right direction by reassuring dissidents that an external body stands ready to hold universities to account. And by establishing a set of liberal norms, the new law would help dissipate the climate of fear.
Others object that persuasion would be better than the threat of sanctions. It would be ideal if universities could be persuaded to do what they should, without ever having to pick up the punitive stick. But sight of that stick is often necessary to encourage serious nibbling at the diplomatic carrot.
A third criticism is that the new law would burden universities with even more bureaucracy, requiring the demonstration of compliance, especially in the promotion of free speech and academic freedom, in order to gain or maintain registration. This is so, but, unfortunately, it is also necessary, and the issue is important enough to make it proportionate.
The Government’s Bill promises to go a long way in addressing the problem. But it could go further still. By confining academic freedom to an academic’s “field of expertise”, it fails to protect the freedom of students and academics to voice dissent from politicised curricular change – such as “decolonisation” – without fear of disciplinary action on the grounds of bringing their institution into “disrepute”. In its current form it would also still allow discussion in an academic context to attract allegations of having the effect of “harassment” under the Equality Act 2010.
And it does not yet give staff access to affordable justice via an employment tribunal, in case of being dismissed for speaking or researching freely within the law. Access to a tribunal is relatively straightforward and shields complainants from the threat of having to pay huge costs if they lose. A tribunal can also order reinstatement.
If it were amended, the Bill could make a vital contribution to reducing political polarisation in our country. What is at stake is not merely the liberty of individuals, but the preservation of universities as places where young citizens are educated to discuss controversial ideas that excite fierce passions, and to do so in a civil, rational, and responsible manner – so that light might prevail rather than heat. What is at stake is the future of liberal public culture in Britain.
Nigel Biggar CBE is regius professor of moral and pastoral theology at the University of Oxford. Arif Ahmed MBE is university reader in philosophy at the University of Cambridge
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