Kathleen Stock’s departure from Sussex University in October 2021 was a totemic moment in Britain’s campus free-speech crisis.
Stock, then a professor of philosophy, had argued that self-identification as a woman is not sufficient to make one so, and that women-only spaces should be organised by biological sex rather than gender identity. For this she became, in the now familiar pattern, not merely contested but marked. There was ostracism, intimidation, harassment, masked protesters on campus, internal campaigns for her dismissal, and, from Sussex’s leadership, lip service to academic freedom.
Shortly after Stock’s resignation, the Office for Students, England’s higher education regulator, opened an investigation into Sussex. Since the OfS had no remit to act on behalf of an individual, the inquiry focused instead on whether the university had complied with its registration conditions. These require, among other things, that a university’s “governing documents” uphold a range of public interest principles, including freedom of speech and academic freedom, and that the institution has effective governance arrangements to secure those principles in practice.
Three and a half years later, the OfS published its final decision. Sussex, it found, had breached these conditions by adopting in 2018 a Trans and Non-Binary Equality Policy Statement whose requirements — including that teaching materials positively represent trans lives — created a chilling effect on free speech and academic freedom. It also found that Sussex had adopted relevant policies without proper delegated authority. The penalty was £585,000, with a warning to the sector: the fine had been heavily discounted, and future breaches could cost far more.
Sussex responded with fury, launching a judicial review that challenged the decision on almost every conceivable public-law ground. Over three days in February this year, counsel for Sussex and the OfS put their cases before Dame Nathalie Lieven in the High Court.
The judgment was handed down on April 29th, and Sussex won. The court agreed with the university that “governing documents” means only documents that set out its constitution and formal governance arrangements. Since its trans policy did not fall within that category, the breach finding will be set aside.
However, the court dismissed Sussex’s claim that, as a Royal Charter university, only the Crown could interpret its internal delegation rules. It also rejected Sussex’s argument that the OfS acted unfairly by not disclosing Professor Stock’s second witness statement.
The court criticised the OfS for approaching the investigation with a “closed mind”. But it dismissed allegations of bias against Arif Ahmed, the OfS’s director for freedom of speech and academic freedom, noting that the die had “already been well cast” by the time he joined the investigation and that he was not the final decision-maker.
Sussex will no doubt present the court’s ruling on “governing documents” as a rebuke to regulatory overreach. But the real problem lies elsewhere. The Higher Education and Research Act 2017 (HERA), which created the OfS and set out its powers, never defined the term. Faced with that gap, the OfS adopted a functional definition. Governing documents, as its counsel, Monica Carss-Frisk put it, are “documents that govern”: not just charters and statutes, but also policies that set out institutional objectives, values or powers. The court has now held that HERA did not give the OfS enough power to create this definition.
If this interpretation stands, Parliament should fix the mistake it made in 2017: amend HERA to define “governing documents” in a way that reflects how universities actually govern speech. If universities can regulate speech through policy while escaping scrutiny because those policies are not, technically, “governing documents”, then the law is misaligned with reality.
Mrs Justice Lieven also took a narrower view than the OfS of what it means for governing documents to uphold “freedom of speech within the law” and academic freedom. Yet whether or not that legal conclusion is right, the broader principle remains hard to deny. As Carss-Frisk powerfully argued, academic freedom cannot be reduced to the bare proposition that no dismissal occurs. In the real world of university employment, the very prospect of disciplinary proceedings creates a chilling effect on teaching, research and wider expression.
But the deeper significance of this judgment lies elsewhere. It shows that the existing regulatory protections for academic freedom are too narrow, too high-stakes, and too contestable. Protecting free speech and academic freedom through the language of “governing documents” was always an awkward fit; this judgment comes close to disabling that route altogether.
Critics will ask: if the OfS lost key grounds, why give it stronger powers by commencing the dormant clauses of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 (HEFSA)? The answer is that this case shows precisely why the old powers were inadequate. It arose because a university failed to uphold Kathleen Stock’s academic freedom, then chose to fight accountability through every procedural and legal channel. That choice is revealing.
Universities cannot be trusted to self-regulate on academic freedom when ideology, risk-management and activist pressure point the other way.
That is why the enforcement mechanisms in HEFSA are now needed more than ever: broader where it matters, more agile in operation, and offering a lower-stakes route to accountability than the blunt instrument of judicial review.
HEFSA, introduced in response to the very crisis exemplified by Stock’s departure, requires universities to take all reasonably practicable steps to secure and promote freedom of speech within the law. Those duties have been in force since last August, but the machinery needed to enforce them still lies dormant. That machinery consists of a complaints scheme allowing individuals to go to the OfS when universities fail to protect their free speech and academic freedom, and a new registration condition mandating compliance with HEFSA duties, with fines for universities that fail to do so.
As the regulatory theorists Ian Ayres and John Braithwaite famously argued, regulators are better able to “speak softly” when they carry not only “big sticks” but “a hierarchy of lesser sanctions”. The hierarchy of sanctions provided by the complaints scheme and the registration condition is therefore essential to protecting free speech.
Having already delayed the Act’s implementation by a year, the government announced on April 20th that the complaints scheme will begin in September 2026, with the registration condition following in April 2027. Until then, universities can disregard these duties with little practical consequence.
Kathleen Stock was hounded out of her university. The next academic must not be left to stand alone.
Abhishek Saha is a professor of mathematics at Queen Mary University of London. He is a founder member of the London Universities Council for Academic Freedom and an advisory board member of the Committee for Academic Freedom.
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The uniparty and their chums in the courts will do anything to stifle contrary opinions on trans matters and any other sacred cows. (I mean real cows, not bulls with or without fake udders pretending to be cows.)
The Supreme Court ruling was an anomaly and unlikely to be implemented.
Most universities are run by and populated with communists. There is no such thing as freedom of speech in the educarion sector because of this, and the wider environment of communist mindset of the educational establishment.
It must all be brought down and harsh measures imposed on the communism that infests our country.
Reform the Tories will not achieve it because Nige and his Muhammadan mates won’t want to.
One of the signs being held in the picture:
Safe? Prof Stock did not make you unsafe. You were safe you moron. Now you’re still safe but a lot less well educated.
They never consider how safe their weird, homosexuality will be when the Muhammadans gain more power and kinetic influence over our country? I doubt there are many Trans men in Lebanon.
And in the mean while the supreme court had ruled that what Prof Stock said, is erm.. the law.
Thi is a ridiculous decision.
Bunch of clowns. And communists.
In fact being governed by clowns would be less bad than this.
Agreed, this judge has history as a Labour councillor in a Labour-controlled council. I’m sure that this did not affect her judgement in this case.
The babies in that cover photo should be at home suckling, they are so pathetic I’m ashamed they are my countrymen.
Where the hell did this “covid mask” thing start for lefty protesters? Some have commented it’s to stop them being identified but it surely can’t be that – they are far too easily visible and it’s not like the “antifa” hooded thug look. Is it to signal their “be kindness” because they wear their masks to help others?
It’s because they’re incredibly thick and are susceptible to all the nonsensical performative crap that the Leftwaffe are so invested in.
I’m not sure I’d use the word “thick”.
What message are they trying to send? A decent journalist might ask them.
No. They are intellectually weak and should never be near a university. The whole nui thing is a property ownership and rent seeking scam for university staff.
Then you and I have very different understandings of the word “thick”. In my view, my understanding of that word is closer to the commonly used meaning than yours. Thick would mean in my view having well below average IQ, not the ability to perform complex mental gymnastics believe in contradictory things at the same time, or the ability to ignore the evidence before your eyes.
Agree with you about Unis.
That was my takeaway too.
Presumably they don’t know why they’re doing it apart from the fact one or two of the group does it and they have to conform to the “norm” for that group.
Maybe. I am fascinated to know what they’d say if asked.
I do think it’s to deter identification. If I were interviewing one of these fools for a job I’d be interested in whether they’d been mentioned in the press.
Of course, if they were convinced that they had the moral high-ground they should be proud to claim it. I dare say other hypothetical employers might take a different view.
They are pretty visible though. I expect for many of them, the employers they end up at would applaud it.
I think it indicates that they are not certain they have the moral high-ground in many other’s eyes
Perhaps
I do find the clear link to extremist covidianism fascinating
I wondered if it was taken on ‘dress like a tramp day’.
We have allowed low intellect people to go to university. Only the top 10% of our A level students should ever be allowed to attend. Of cours, that would mean hardly any ‘people of colour’ and women going, which would confirm reality but upset the leftist communist fools who have run this country since 1945.
But the picture illustrates one of the biggest problems with the UK, doesn’t it. Somehow, we have to deal with a generation that’s full of pathetic grievances over nothing that would have bothered their grandparents.
They and their ‘teachers’ need toughening up with some serious reality checks like a lengthy period of defunding.
Layer upon layer of legislation, regulators, quangos, taxpayer money, designed to give the illusion we have free speech.
We either have free speech or we don’t.
And we don’t.
I wonder how free speech is enforced in USA universities. Perhaps you just take them to court for violating your 1st Amendment rights.
Don’t you think we’re surrounded by free speech frauds, though? All around us, across all contexts, in real life as well as the online sphere. The ”Free speech for me but not for thee” hypocrites, showcasing their schizophrenic behaviour, double standards and ignorance regarding the meaning of reciprocity within this context. A big giveaway is how individuals react when they are confronted with views which they don’t agree with.
Do they behave as you’d expect a reasonable, emotionally mature adult to behave and bring reasoned counter-arguments or evidence to the table that contradicts the other person’s viewpoint?
Or do they behave in an intolerant, disrespectful manner, demonstrating their inability to ‘play the ball not the man’, relying heavily on ad hominem, smears and abuse, as they proceed with their aggressive, shouty, unilateral toddler tantrum, because they lack the emotional maturity, intelligence, or both, to react in any other way? Then there’s the people who take you to task for daring to express opinions which they find offensive. Somebody should tell them it’s taken, never given. Then there’s the people who just cancel you, as per Kathleen Stock, but also Katharine Birbalsingh and Carl Benjamin at the Oxford Union.
I’ve much… Read more »
Yes, actual people might well learn something but the Leftwaffe never will.
Sadly, Kathleen Stock is a dyed in the wool lefty who was hoist by her own communist minded Petard. Look up the meaning if you do not know it.
I bet she’s still left-minded despite all her pain and suffering.