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Seven Nobel Prize Winners Join Campaign to Save University Free Speech Act

by Will Jones
12 September 2024 1:34 PM

Seven British Nobel prize winner have joined the backlash from academics over plans to scrap free speech laws tackling cancel culture at universities. The Times has the story.

In one of her first acts as Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson indefinitely suspended legislation that would have forced universities to protect the right of legal free speech on campus or face sanctions.

Her decision has provoked a backlash from lecturers who have warned it will stifle academic freedom in controversial areas such as transgender rights. They have now been backed by seven Nobel laureates including Sir John Gurdon, whose pioneering work in cloning led to the creation of Dolly the sheep.

Phillipson is also facing a legal challenge against the decision amid claims that she exceeded her authority by indefinitely suspending an Act of Parliament. Amid signs of a potential rethink, Phillipson told MPs this week that she wanted to listen to a “range of views” on the issue.

“I take having strong freedom of expression in our universities, and students being exposed to a range of views — some of which they might find difficult or disagree with — extremely seriously,” she said.

She has previously said that she suspended the act because she was worried about the burden it would place on universities to investigate complaints at a time of financial strain. She also warned that it “could expose students to harm and appalling hate speech”.

But more than 600 academics have signed a letter to Phillipson calling on her to reconsider the decision, warning that a failure to act would allow staff and students to be “hounded, censured and silenced” for holding legitimate, legal views.

Alongside Gurdon they include other Nobel prizewinners such as Sir Peter Ratcliffe, professor of clinical medicine at Oxford University and Sir Gregory Winter, the biologist whose work on monoclonal antibodies has led to the development of treatments for diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis.

Backing the campaign, Lord Sumption said:

The distinguished academics who have endorsed the campaign have widely differing views on many current controversies but are united in their defence of the right to speak out without undermining their careers.

The last decade has seen too many cases of academics hounded, marginalised, threatened with disciplinary proceedings, forced into self-censorship and even sacked because of their refusal to accept standard tropes about issues which are matters of legitimate debate, like gender identity, imperialism, slavery, racial discrimination and many others. These wars against those who step out of line mark the narrowing of our intellectual world and a betrayal of the vocation of our universities.

Worth reading in full.

Tags: Bridget PhillipsonCancel CultureFree SpeechFree speech crisisHigher Education (Freedom of Speech) ActLabourUniversities

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8 Comments
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Mogwai
Mogwai
8 months ago

It’s not just at Uni that free speech is being censored though. This account from a 13yr old boy. What’s particularly disgusting is that teachers even instigated and encouraged the bullying. I wonder what his parents did when they heard what was happening;

”One of my followers @ReformCharlie Simpson, 13, stood for the Midlands Youth Parliament on a Reform Party UK ticket & was elected. Due to abuse & intimidation he has resigned after intense bullying, at his school, some encouraged by teachers. This is his story.”

“Could you post this? My situation in the education system due to my support for Reform UK & because I hold centre-right views.

“**Experiences at School Regarding Support for Reform UK & Right-Wing Ideology**

“Since I began actively engaging in politics about six months ago, I have faced significant hostility from both teachers & students.

“It is important to note that young people at my school initially appreciated the idea of Reform UK. However, certain teachers began whispering to my friends, suggesting that I had been “groomed” by Nigel Farage & Lee Anderson MP.
One teacher even claimed that I had been radicalized. My friends went home, researched this, and the next day, they stopped talking to me.

“One particular teacher has a graph in her classroom that places political figures alongside each other, with Nigel Farage positioned next to Hitler. This teacher actively promoted the idea that Reform UK is a racist party, which has affected me negatively.

“Additionally, another teacher advised students not to vote for Charlie Simpson in the school election, stating that he supports Reform UK and is associated with racism. This teacher also told students that I was racist.

“I have also had a situation where a member of staff at my school has actively encouraged verbal abuse towards me this is being investigated & I have reported this since my school is looking into this as a matter of “Urgency”.

“I have not reported the other incidents as they occurred last school year and I’m committed to leaving it in the past but this new recent situation occurred on my first day back on Thursday.

“So this is what I have been through as a right wing thinker.”

https://x.com/DaveAtherton20/status/1833918074237415873

7
-1
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
8 months ago
Reply to  Mogwai

These teachers need to be issued with P45’s and for bullying children should also see them doing porridge time.

5
0
Mogwai
Mogwai
8 months ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Yes it’s disgraceful. I’d be playing hell up at the school if this were my kid, plus I’d be naming names too. Get the buggers named and shamed across social media and if any local press pick up the story too. Teachers should be leaving their political views at the school entrance, this is a given. Otherwise all bets are off across the board aren’t they? This is how schools have been able to take kids out protesting during school hours with the pro-Hamas marches, it’s how they can teach Critical Race Theory and other toxic garbage, such as how there’s 321 genders and how they can refer to themselves as boy, girl, cat or pot plant, depending on their mood on any given day, and woe betide any teacher or kid that doesn’t play along and affirm this fantasy nonsense. The politics and the ideologies are brain rot to kids because they’re so susceptible at this young age, that’s why all of that crapola should be banned outright.
Kids go to school to learn facts, objective reality, not subjective reality and all of the associated claptrap so that they come out the other end as some indoctrinated automaton, awaiting further instruction on what to do, think or feel, incapable of independent thought and scared to question or challenge anything fed to them by authority figures. Sounds like the Hitler Youth. I’m sure teachers weren’t like this when I was at school. 🙁

3
0
varmint
varmint
8 months ago
Reply to  Mogwai

This has been the case for a long time. The idea is for the Progressive Left to sit in their little castles on top of the moral high ground and de-legitimise right of centre opinion and infact go even further than that and criminalise it. —-They are getting away with this tyranny and the Liberal progressive virus has spread all over the western world. —–Maybe Astra Zeneca can come up with a vaccine.

1
0
iconoclast
iconoclast
8 months ago
Reply to  Mogwai

Direct evidence of indoctrination of schoolchildren by UK schools and teachers and of cancel culture in schools and by teachers of political views they want crushed and evidence of the damage this causes.

0
0
Marque1
Marque1
8 months ago

They all seem to be insufferably well pleased with themselves, except for the Stain-on-the-family-escutcheon who looks unsure of what a human being is, but knows he isn’t, because Daddy made a tool and doesn’t know what it is for.

4
0
minkybink
minkybink
8 months ago

In the picture above Bridget Phillipson looks so pleased with herself, something she has in common with all of her colleagues.

2
0
EppingBlogger
EppingBlogger
8 months ago

Meanwhile Essex County Council continues to fund the Anglo European School which is highly Pareto San in relations with the EU and our membership of it.

1
0

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