A Labour Government source has dismissed the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act as a “hate speech charter”. Free speech in Britain has rarely been in more peril, says Professor David Abulafia in the Spectator. Here’s an excerpt.
In an extraordinary outburst, a Government source has described the new Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, introduced by the Conservatives, as a “hate-speech charter”. This is an outrageous distortion of the new laws that aim to guarantee free speech within universities. The best that can be said about that phrase is that, so long as we retain free speech, people are free to describe it that way. But doing so raises worrying doubts about what the new Government thinks free speech means. …
Th[e] steep decline in the ability of universities to act as places of open debate, apolitical in character, where people do feel happy to say out loud that they supported Brexit or that they sympathise with Israel, has made ever more urgent the implementation of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, signed into law last year by King Charles. In a manoeuvre that has astonished the more than 500 academics who signed a letter to the Secretary of State for Education, the Government has “paused” its implementation a matter of days before its provisions were to click into place. Unlike the letters about Gaza or just stopping oil, the signatories are real academics, many of them very senior, not post-docs and graduate students with little real clout. …
Now the DfE has, in a move of dubious legitimacy, decided not to put the act into effect. Bizarrely, the DfE is supported by the Union of Jewish Students and the Board of Deputies of British Jews. It is asserted that the Act would somehow unleash a torrent of antisemitic abuse, even Holocaust denial, on campus. This is a total misunderstanding of what is permissible. Under the Equality Act of 2010 and other legislation speech conducive to hatred and violence is unlawful. Expressing support for Hamas is unlawful. The expression of Neo-Nazi views is unlawful. And the torrent has already been unleashed in demonstrations that have included calls for the extirpation of the State of Israel. The Act would not and should not prevent people from arguing publicly in support of the Palestinians, for instance condemning the Jewish settlers on the West Bank in strong terms. But it would also ensure that events supportive of Israel and the trauma it suffered last October can go ahead with security paid for by the relevant university. It provides mechanisms by which no-cost complaints can be made if these conditions are not fulfilled, and enables sanctions to be imposed on universities or student unions that have failed to comply with the act. In short, the Act would greatly improve a situation for Jewish students which has turned from difficult to atrocious since October 7th.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The Free Speech Union is bringing a legal challenge against Bridget Phillipson, whom it believes acted unlawfully when she ‘paused’ the Act. You can help pay the FSU’s legal costs by donating to this CrowdJustice fundraiser here.
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