When Francis Fukuyama preposterously declared ‘the end of history’ in the 1990s, arguably what he really meant was the end of politics. Following the fall of Soviet communism, neoliberalism would prevail. Tony Blair’s centrist Third Way undermined both Left and Right, casting hitherto common opinions as extreme. Major topics of our time were condensed into simple, uncontested truths: manmade global warming, Britain’s future in the EU, the rules-based international order, and the assertions of race and gender ideology.
The ascent of narrative stifled academe as a bastion for free exchange of ideas. Having lectured at a leading university for the last two decades, I felt the ratchet tighten. In this oppressive atmosphere, the launch of the Free Speech Union three years ago was essential to anyone with a proclivity for critical thinking.
On February 28th, FSU founder Toby Young was invited to address the National Conference of University Professors, whose mission statement is “to improve scholarship and preserve core academic values”. The meeting was chaired by renowned academic dissident and Daily Sceptic contributor Roger Watson. Toby’s talk, in the ghoulish setting of the Gordon Museum of Pathology at Guy’s Hospital (we were surrounded by cabinets containing 19th Century pickled brain tumours), was well received by boffins who seemed to agree with everything in principle, but perhaps not in practice. In their Ivory Towers, candid speech has consequences.
The FSU, now having 11,000 members, is particularly active in universities, defending staff and students from puritanical disciplinary proceedings. Proactive efforts include a scheme to award grants to students to revive debating societies. Toby reported that the University of Durham has generated more cases for the FSU than any other university. He described the “bureaucratic Kafkaesque nightmare” that befalls those targeted by the powers-that-be at universities, with interminable process applied as punishment.
People who get into trouble, according to Toby, often have a “naïve regard for the truth”, believing that facts will protect them against an inquisition. This is not how the system works, though. The establishment, to protect its version of truth, is supported by fact-checkers who describe dissenting views as misinformation (unwittingly false), disinformation (knowingly false) and – the most sinister of all – malinformation (true facts used for malign purpose).
Some successes were noted by Toby. One widely reported case involved Professor Tim Luckhurst, who brought controversial Sunday Times columnist Rod Liddle to speak at Durham. Students staged a walkout and accused Luckhurst of endangering their ‘safety’. Absurdly, Luckhurst was placed under investigation by his university, although it didn’t result in him losing his job after the FSU intervened.
Naturally, the FSU has been smeared as ‘far Right’ by people who think any dissent from woke dogma makes you ‘far Right’. Useful in dismissing this smear is the prominent role of the FSU in defending gender-critical feminists (labelled ‘TERFs’ by their opponents). In the shifting sands of woke culture, the status of conservative or traditional beliefs has moved, with the compliant majority shifting ever further to the Left. As the SNP leadership contest shows, gay marriage has become an indisputable right, and gender self-ID will shortly become so.
The decolonisation agenda, purportedly to undo centuries of ‘white supremacy’, demands that course materials in all subjects, from mathematics to marine biology, are changed. Ironically, Toby said, this movement reflects the fact that British universities have become colonised by American critical race theorists. The FSU, protecting its members against such imposition, relies on Articles 9 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and the fact that religion and belief are protected characteristics under the Equality Act.
Despite all the cases taken up by the FSU, university administrators and politically correct academic leaders scoff at the notion of a free speech crisis in academe. That’s because their own ideas are now the dominant ones so no one attempts to silence them. As Aleksander Solzhenitsyn wrote in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, “How can you expect a man who is warm to understand a man who is cold?”
Ideological bias is rampant. As Toby said, the number of no-platforming cases is only the tip of the iceberg. In a survey in 2017 by the UCU, 35.5% of academic staff admitted to self-censoring. The Legatum Institute found that lecturers of conservative bent were twice as likely to tighten their lips. Left-wing lecturers have less to fear because they are basically on the same side as their political masters on everything from Net Zero to seeing evidence of racism everywhere. A Remainer tilts at windmills; a Brexiteer blasphemes.
In his article ‘The Woke revolution is far from over’ in Quadrant, N.S. Lyons states that most employers “do not force their employees into lectures about their unconscious racial bias because they are necessarily converts to Critical Race Theory; likely they are primarily trying to protect themselves from being sued for failing to take sufficient action to prevent racial discrimination”. But universities are different: they attract and promote the most zealous exponents of woke dogma, regarding themselves as the vanguard of radical social change.
The most important part of Toby’s speech was on legislative measures – for better or worse. A law to protect freedom of speech in English universities is working its way through Parliament, but may be much diluted by the time it becomes law. Toby then issued a warning about a profound legal change that few people seem to be aware of: the Worker Protection Bill. This private member’s bill by a Lib Dem is supported by the Government. The intent is to protect employees from harassment by members of the public – not just sexual harassment, but all forms of ‘unwanted conduct’. It will undoubtedly have a chilling effect on free speech.
The compliance culture, which has grown like Topsy to include unconscious bias in mandatory training and lanyards proclaiming preferred pronouns, will become overwhelming if this Bill is passed. It will mean that a member of staff who overhears colleagues chatting and finds something offensive can sue the employer – for example, a pub landlord would be liable if a barmaid overhears saucy banter among the pub’s customers.
When the University of Essex no-platformed two feminists professors due to the supposed risk that they might offend to transgender staff and student, it was, according to Toby, misinterpreting the Equality Act since universities aren’t under an obligation to protect staff from third-party harassment. But the Worker Protection Bill would allow universities to invoke precisely the same argument to stop controversial people from speaking in future – though the definition of who is and isn’t ‘controversial’ will, of course, not include trans rights activists or critical race theorists.
From the audience came a question about balance. Shouldn’t freedom of speech be tempered by consideration of others? While Toby endorsed social etiquette, he eschewed carrying out a cost-benefit analysis to calculate whether the effect of allowing someone to speak would be net positive. Consequentialism, Toby opined, is a poor philosophical guide. Even if your only goal is to maximise free speech, there would still be circumstances in which that standard could be invoked to stop someone speaking – for instance, you could argue that stopping ‘cishet’ white males from participating in a discussion will allow more people from marginal groups to speak up. The right to free speech should be sacrosanct, he argued, not subject to a utilitarian calculus.
Toby’s talk focused on the academic milieu, but we don’t just need debating societies in universities. We need society to start debating.
You can hear Toby’s speech in full here.
Dr. Niall McCrae is a former university lecturer who now works for the Workers of England Union.
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