Baroness Royall’s desire to have Somerville College students score 100% in a test they all had to take following an unconscious bias training course threatens to undermine her bid for Chancellor. The Times has more.
One of the frontrunners to become the next chancellor of Oxford University has been accused of failing to stand up for free speech, after trying to make students undergo an online course in unconscious biases.
The former leader of the House of Lords, Baroness Royall of Blaisdon, had told students at Somerville College that there was “irrefutable evidence” of a link between racism and transphobia and unconscious bias.
She also said that all undergraduates should take an “unconscious bias training course” to make the college a “more inclusive community”.
But her directive, made three years ago, is now threatening to undermine her campaign to succeed Lord Patten of Barnes as the chancellor in an election of all staff, students and graduates being held this autumn.
Free speech campaigners claim that her move is evidence that she is less committed to the principle of free speech than other candidates. They said this after writing to all the candidates and asking for their views on freedom of speech.
William Mackesy, of the group Alumni for Free Speech, said too many of the answers had contained “breezy generalities”, adding: “If you dig down into what a number of the candidates say, you will find breezy generalities about the importance of free speech, but a lot of skirting round the realities and causes of the problem, such as the unlawful enforcement of contested activist agendas,” he said.
“A striking example of this is Royall, who avoids questions about her having required students to take ‘unconscious bias’ training and get 100 per cent in a test, an obvious free speech no-no and probably unlawful to boot.
“Oxford voters need to think carefully when casting their ballot what kind of chancellor they want as the figurehead of the institution. We believe it needs to be someone who cares passionately about free speech, and understands what it takes to defend it.”
Worth reading in full.
In the article, Baroness Royall defends herself by pointing out the unconscious bias training course was proposed by the Junior Common Room “at the time of the Black Lives Matter protests”, as if doing something in the heat of a moral panic to placate a bunch of woke activists is an example of wise leadership. She also doesn’t address the key point, which is not that she introduced this course – she’s not alone among Oxford heads of houses in doing that – but that she went further, insisting not only that every student take it, but that they score 100% in the post-course assessment. Incidentally, one of the questions in that assessment was:
Acknowledging your person feelings about particular groups or individuals is a useful starting point in overcoming unconscious bias.
Is this productive or unproductive in addressing your personal biases?
Presumably, the ‘correct’ answer – the answer students were required to give to score 100% – was ‘Yes’. That is, you were required to answer ‘yes’ even if you were familiar with the overwhelming social science evidence that such courses not only do nothing to reduce discriminatory behaviour, but may even have the opposite of their intended effect.
After the Free Speech Union wrote to her, pointing out that this was an example of compelled speech and, therefore, a breach of the Human Rights Act, she withdrew her insistence that all members of the college score 100% in the post-course exam. However, as far as I know she did not drop her insistence that every student had to take this pointless course, as spelt out in her original letter to students that was passed to the FSU. “[W]e are requiring all our students to undertake a short online unconscious bias training course,” she wrote. That makes her claim in today’s Times – “Those students who did not wish to do the course were not required to complete the training” – somewhat misleading.
You can read the FSU’s exchange of letters with Baroness Royall in 2021 here.
Stop Press: The Times has published a leader, highlighting the free speech crisis in our universities and criticising Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, for torpedoing the Freedom of Speech Act:
Widespread dysfunction calls for a general, rather than piecemeal, remedy. The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, passed into law by the last government, was supposed to provide that. The act created a duty on universities and student unions to secure the speech rights of invited speakers, along with a mechanism by which the Office for Students, the university regulator, could fine them for failing to do so.
Despite the need for the act, one of Bridget Phillipson’s first decisions as education secretary was to indefinitely suspend its implementation. That decision was a complacent misstep, and now faces a judicial review.
In recent weeks, hundreds of academics, including seven Nobel prizewinners, have signed an open letter calling on Ms Phillipson to think again. Similar concerns have prompted academics and campaigners to question the suitability of Baroness Royall to be among those in the race to succeed Lord Patten as chancellor of Oxford University: they cite her criticism of the Higher Education Act, as well as her record of forcing students to undergo dubious “unconscious bias” training in her current university role.
Academics are entirely right to call out politicians for such ill-conceived stances on free speech. The government should listen, learn, and compel universities to comply with their legal duties.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press 2: A new opinion poll suggests Bridget Phillipson would lose her seat in Sunderland South to Reform if an election was called tomorrow:
— Stats for Lefties
NEW: Poll suggests Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson would lose her Sunderland seat to Reform.
REF 36.31% (+7.2)
LAB 36.26% (-10.8)
CON 16.73% (+3.0)
Reform GAIN from Labour (9% swing) pic.twitter.com/kydAihdSZU(@LeftieStats) October 13, 2024
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
“Unconscious bias” is an interesting component of contemporary madleft anti-whitism. It’s founded on the Kafka-trap idea that if a white person thinks he’s not a “racist” then that’s proof that he is. And you have to admire the sheer bovine effrontery of the people who promote such nonsense. But why are white people promoting anti-whitism? It can only be because they’re decadent (in Nietzsche’s sense of a people or individual choosing the thing that will destroy them). Also, when a person gives up on in-group preference, love of one’s own people, love of one’s culture and civilisation, yet is still paid to influence public policy, then that person becomes a danger to those of who haven’t given up these things. In other words, creatures like Baronnes Royall are a danger to our people and our country.
“ then that person becomes a danger to those of who haven’t given up these things”
You can throw in Starmer, most of Parliament & Whitehall into the mix.
Re’ your first three lines. I wonder if Joseph Heller realised he was writing an instruction manual for the ‘woke’ when he penned ‘Catch-22’?
“But why are white people promoting anti-whitism?”
To prove they do not have unconscious bias, but by their own reasoning (such as it is) it shows they are unconscious racists because they are over-compensating trying to prove they are not.
As you say Kafkaesque. In fact mentally ill, I would say.
”….there was “irrefutable evidence” of a link between racism and transphobia and unconscious bias.”
Total cobblers. Not least because ”transphobia” is another made-up nonsense word pushed by the odious Leftards. Meanwhile, maybe the silly woman thinks the security guards that slung five men pretending to be women from the female loos at Butlin’s are racist and deserved to be suspended, simply for protecting women and sticking up for their female sex-based rights;
”Butlin’s has faced backlash after security guards allegedly forcibly removed five transgender women from the women’s toilets.
This took place during a music event at their Skegness resort on October 5.
The security staff are said to have “violently dragged” the individuals from the lavatories, prompting Butlin’s to remove the guards from duty and reaffirm its commitment to being an “inclusive business.”
The removal of the guards has led to criticism, including from author J.K. Rowling, who called on Butlin’s to clarify its stance on women-only spaces.
In a tweet, Rowling said: “Does Butlins think the desire of cross-dressing men to enter women-only spaces is more important than women’s and girls’ right to privacy and dignity?
“Hopefully Butlins will explain their policy, so women and families can make an informed choice about where to go on holiday.”
According to Jae Roberts, one of the trans women involved, the altercation began when a security guard confronted a person with facial hair in the women’s toilet instructing them to leave on the grounds that they were a man.”
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1960396/butlins-security-guards-suspended-trans-row
Because the security guard went away and returned with 10 colleagues to turf out these impostors, presumably because they wouldn’t leave when asked, I also agree with comments online that there’s more to this than what the MSM are reporting. As somebody says, if these men lie about their sex then what else are they lying about? It’d be interesting to hear from the suspended security team members for their side of the story. These security guards were absolutely in the right. Men do not go to the toilets in groups, so I’ll bet they were having one of their ‘sausage parties’ or perving on women or something, either before or after doing their make-up. It’s autogynephilic men getting their fetishist kicks from invading women’s spaces. Gay men don’t have any interest in entering female toilets. I know what this person’s referring to because there was loads of footage during Pride ( especially from the U.S and Canada ) posted on Twitter but it was too graphic to post on DS;
”Listen.
PRIDE in NYC this year was some of the craziest shit that I have ever seen, and I was born and raised in this shithole city.
That is why I know there is more to this story than these men just wanting to “pee.”
On West 4th this year during PRIDE, MEN were literally fu*cking each other in the street, and NOTHING could be done to stop them.
That is what PRIDE is now.
MEN are doing the most, but NOW…MEN are allowed to do the most in Women’s spaces, and they all get off on it.
Why do you think every gay man in NYC is NOW identifying as a “Trans Woman”?
Every gay man in NYC identifies as Trans and they are doing it because the city gives them full permission to get away with murder.
There was a brawl in the Starbucks on 14th, and it was a Trans Identified Male and a Woman, and he beat the shit out of her in the STREET.
No one said a WORD.
The LAW behind them makes them even more wild than they were 10 years ago.
There is def more to this story.
MEN and SEX.
MEN and SEX.
It is always about SEX with these MEN.
They just want to normalize it so that we all have to get used to seeing them screw each other in the street.
They want bathhouses back.”
Disturbing. A very serious case of the mind derangement virus spreading.
It is disturbing but autogynephilia is quite intriguing actually, once you start reading about it. Though I’m pretty interested in what makes people tick anyway, especially the weirdos;
”Two different types of men change their sex. To anyone who examines them closely, they are quite dissimilar, in their histories, their motivations, their degree of femininity, their demographics, and even the way they look. We know little about the causes of either type of transsexualism (though we have some good hunches about one type). But I am certain that when we finally do understand, the causes of the two types will be completely different.
To anyone who has seen members of both types and who has learned to ask the right kinds of questions, it is easy to tell them apart. Yet the difference has eluded virtually everyone who cares about transsexuals: talk show hosts, journalists, most people who evaluate and treat them, and even most academics who have studied them. One reason is that the superficial similarity of the two types is so striking – both are men, usually dressed and attempting to act like women, who want to replace their penises with vaginas – that it prevents us from noticing more subtle, though also more fundamental, differences. Another reason is that the two types of transsexuals rarely show up side by side, where they would be easily distinguishable… The most interesting reason why most people do not realize that there are two types of transsexuals is that members of one type sometimes misrepresent themselves as members of the other. I will get more specific later, but for now, it is enough to say that they are often silent about their true motivation and instead tell stories about themselves that are misleading and, in important respects, false.
From soon after birth, the homosexual male-to-female transsexual behaves and feels like a girl. Unlike most feminine boys… these transsexuals do not outgrow, or learn to hide, their femininity. Instead, they decide that the drastic step of changing their sex is preferable. They unambiguously desire and love men, especially heterosexual men, whom they can attract only as women… one type of transsexual man is a kind of homosexual man…
Honest and open autogynephilic transsexuals reveal a much different pattern. They were not especially feminine boys. The first overt manifestation of what led to their transsexualism was typically during early adolescence, when they secretly dressed in their mothers’ or sisters’ lingerie, looked at themselves in the mirror, and masturbated. This activity continued into adulthood, and sexual fantasies became increasingly transsexual – especially the fantasy of having a vulva, perhaps being penetrated by a penis. Autogynephilic transsexuals might declare attraction to women or men, to both, or to neither. But their primary attraction is to the women that they would become.”
https://feministwiki.org/wiki/Autogynephilia
It’s notable that people with “irrefutable evidence” never present it. (See: climate change).
”Irrefutable” bestows in of itself verity, so that scrutiny, testing if the evidence is superfluous.
“Irrefutable” usually means “I possess Wise and Numinous Knowledge” (W.A.N.K. for short) “and you people from the lower orders better obey me”.
The common factor in all this Leftie/Wokerie nonsense, is its claims and assertions are unfalsifiable, which follows on from them being unprovable.
If bias is unconscious, therefore not deliberate, then intent cannot be proven, nor its manifestation be identified, and so cannot be falsified.
So-called Man-made climate change cannot be proven, nor can the causal relationship between C02 and temperature. All weather events, too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, normal are attributed as being consistent with climate change. Hot weather confirms climate change, but cooler weather not only doesn’t refute it, it is evidence too of climate change. So this cannot be falsified.
It’s safe ground to make claims and assertions that cannot be proven. The stock answer in defence is: Well you can’t prove me wrong. That’s is not proof they are right.
When a claim rests on non-evidence based belief, ideology becomes dogma, no amount of contrary evidence will be accepted as falsifying that claim.
And as Jonathan Swift commented: you cannot reason a man out of something which he hadn’t reasoned himself into.
An exam that shows full allegiance to the cult, much like the tape recording you submit to when you join the Scientologists. This corrupt divisive PoS and her bovine cabal need to be buried by history.
Presumably, the ‘correct’ answer – the answer students were required to give to score 100% – was ‘Yes’.
Being perverse, I’d answer ‘Yes’ to that question which covers both alternatives.
My real frustration in running my own businesses is that the opportinuty to attend an unconscious bias training course and really enjoy the ‘sport’ is not going to happen !
Hatchet-faced Harpie.
I’d be astonished if more than a tiny percentage of senior University staff/leaders actually believe in freedom of speech.
Read her Wiki bio. The most depressing sort of political mediocrity. Read Spanish at a dismal uni somewhere. Worked as a flower importer and did a secretarial. Then into politics courtesy of the Kinnocks.Failed in every election she stood in.
Swam through the pc world of low ability committees and has been rewarded for just being a loyal apparatchik. Now hoping to run Oxford.
Toby, if I could, I would give you decibels. All power to you, my friend.