Maybe sex realists really are winning the gender wars. But for every two steps we take forward we are relentlessly pushed at least one back. The most recent victory in the war against common sense has seen the University of Sussex dodge a £585,000 fine over their free speech policies. The fine was awarded after Professor Kathleen Stock was hounded out of her job five years ago following sustained protests over her views on transgender rights and gender identity.
At one point, just to do her job, Stock had to appoint private security.
The Office for Students (OfS) spent three and a half years investigating the circumstances that led to Stock’s departure. Their final report is damning. It notes that the university’s ‘Trans and Non-Binary Equality Statement’ requires ‘any materials within relevant courses and modules [to] positively represent trans people and trans lives’ and makes vague statements such as ‘transphobic propaganda … will not be tolerated’. These requirements all effectively censored course materials and created a culture in which any expression of gender-critical thought was believed by many to be a disciplinary offence.
In the OfS’s own words, ‘a chilling effect was created because the university indicated, through these restrictions, that the expression of certain lawful speech and views was not acceptable at the university’. The result of this policy was obvious to anyone who followed Kathleen Stock’s final years at Sussex. She was harassed by masked students protesting outside her lectures, ‘Stock out’ posters were plastered across the university, flares were set off, and many of her own colleagues signed an open letter condemning her ‘harmful rhetoric’. At one point, just to do her job, Stock had to appoint private security.
Her crime? Writing a book in which she claimed gender identity should not supplant biological sex. Sussex University did little to nothing to defend Stock from the abuse. The Vice-Chancellor at the time, Adam Tickell, seemed more interested in pursuing his new equality, diversity and inclusion strategy, which included the goal of getting Sussex University into the Stonewall ‘Top 100’ (few other awards more perfectly encapsulate the total antithesis of a badge of honour). This is almost certainly why the university hurriedly adopted an absurd ‘trans and non-binary’ policy based on a template from Advance HE, a charity running a membership scheme for higher education institutions.
The conclusion of the investigation and resulting fine could have been the end of a dark period in the university’s history. It was celebrated by many as a turning point for free speech in British universities. By the time the OfS issued its verdict, the university had a new Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sasha Roseneil. She was free to apologies for the actions of her predecessor and review Sussex’s free speech policies. Could things be looking up? Of course not.
Roseneil accused the OfS of pursuing a ‘vindictive and unreasonable’ campaign and of holding to an ‘absolutist definition’ of free speech. It is not clear what definition she would have preferred – free speech is a relatively binary thing. It is either absolute or we exist under some form of censorship. The latter seemed to be Roseneil’s preferred approach. Otherwise, she complained, Sussex was ‘powerless to prevent bullying and harassment’ (something the university seemed pretty disinterested in preventing when it was leveraged against Stock).
On Wednesday, Roseneil won. Not because Sussex’s policies were remotely reasonable, but because the policy was not actually a ‘governing document’ (despite the fact it very much seemed to be governing practice at the university) and on the basis that Sussex had eventually (mildly) amended its policy. The judge also concluded that the OfS ‘wrongly adopted an absolutist approach to freedom of speech (thinking that the University could never restrict lawful speech)’, effectively enshrining in law a university’s ability to censor completely legal ideas and perspectives.
For a short time, it seemed like we had a regulator able to enforce free speech in higher education. Other universities that adopted the ridiculous Advance HE policy knew they needed to change their approach to academic freedom or risk a fine. The censorious tendencies of small groups of activist students could have been reined in. No platforming, at least in universities, seemed briefly to be on the decline.
But in one fell swoop, the High Court has defanged the regulator. A judge has endorsed Sussex’s refusal to learn lessons from the whole ordeal and ensured that future academics can and will face the same abuse that Kathleen Stock did. On Wednesday, we took more than one step back.
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