University of Sussex fined £585,000 by Office for Students

There will most likely be research grants from some big U.S based charity.......such as the George Soros 'Open Society' foundation, or similar.

Was it a Stonewall template I wonder?

Could not be more delighted!

@Meanacademic You say (and I agree that ) 'This did not happen on the current VC’s watch, and in any case, VCs generally do not get involved in the day-to-day running of faculties and departments.' However academics who have been active researchers in an area who then become VC don't suddenly become neutral and uninterested in the area they spent their academic lives in.

This is not a situation where the VC is making some limp-wristed 'the previous VC did it' argument. This is a 'we were right side of history' with a call to arms feel about it aimed at other universities. Three things that are interesting about this VC and her response ...

This is someone whose previous job was as first Pro-Provost for Equity and Inclusion at UCL. She has not just an academic interest in the gender wars, she is someone who was in charge of operations as recently as 2021.

The imposition of fines came in January (source BBC article, not checked). So there was no threat of this scale of fine until very recently. But there was a three year investigation coming to a close by the time of the speech captured on YouTube. It definitely feels like window dressing.

That speech offers no reflection on the bullying of Dr Stocks or the policies in place that prevented free speech about gender identity on campus. I don't think this is accidental. This VC tells us her views in her response to the fine.

This is doing irreparable damage to the university of Sussex.

What person in their right mind would ever encourage their dc to ever study there now?? They will be PAYING £9000 a year for pure brainwashing, and being muzzled and made to self-censor.

It is a ludicrous, untenable situation, and they are still unrepentant.

I found this particularly chilling the university accused the regular of:

‘Entrenching an extreme libertarian free speech position’

Otherwise known as bog standard free speech in a democracy to the rest of us. What the actual hell? It’s utterly mind blowing.

Well we know big pharma in the US are making a fortune from it, they’re guaranteed patients for life aren’t they, even just from the hormones that are being prescribed, let alone the butchery surgery that is carried out? It’s always about money in the end.

Agreed, I always look out for these things and they sometimes read like a parody! Such a mealy mouthed way of trying to link things that aren't necessarily linked.

It may not be the current VC’s issue but she’s doubling down on it and by the sound of it completely agrees with what went on.

We have to hope that the penny will drop for these people at some point, the amount of money they’re wasting on this unnecessary litigation is certainly not helping their students is it?

I would presume she ment that gc people saying twam and should use the men's facilities with other men not the women's would fit that bill.
Along with anyone pointing out that men who enter and use female changing facilities are committing the crimes of voyeurism and indecent exposure regardless of their gender identity

Brilliant news, well done Kathleen Stock for fighting back. Another nail in the coffin of No Debate. 😀👏

I mean, this is the really scary question, isn't it?

Why?

Why are they pretending to believe in this nonsense? What's in it for them?

Someone very rich and powerful must be pushing this agenda.

And yet those with their houses built on those crumbling foundations aren’t looking to move somewhere safer and rebuild. They’re standing shaking their fists as the stones and bricks tumble around them.

Glad to see the fine is significant. Sad (and honestly bizarre) that the university still refuses to see reason.

It rather begs the question, how much are they getting paid to push gender ideology such that even a sizeable fine doesn’t cause a moment of reflection?

This is an extraordinary outcome. But it is important to think carefully about the timeline here. This did not happen on the current VC’s watch, and in any case, VCs generally do not get involved in the day-to-day running of faculties and departments.

The questions one should be asking are: who was Stock’s line manager at the time? Who was running the Faculty? Heads of Department have limited power, it is Schools and Faculties that matter, the next level up. The bullying started well before the pandemic, in 2018 or 2019 when Stock first intervened in the debate.

Were any of the employees that bullied Stock ever disciplined? There were plenty who posted abusive messages online. Who at Sussex UCU wrote this appalling statement? Who wrote the trans policy? This is not VC-level stuff.

Finally, if we can learn anything from various GC cases at universities, it is that the role of staff networks is crucial. They are essentially activist interest groups that are given resources by universities to push for policies that may actually not be in the interest of the organisation as a whole. Sussex, being in Brighton, must have had a very active trans and non-binary staff network. Who led this network? And were there any links to local activist groups? Was the university under pressure from these groups, threatened, for example, to be excluded from events such as Brighton Pride? Brighton has always been the ground zero of trans extremism in the UK, so this is surely relevant.

I hate what happened to Stock but this wasn’t the current VC’s doing and she now has to defend a huge mess that others made. She seems unlikely to want to sack some senior people who were in positions of responsibility at the time but perhaps she should consider it.

Largest fine - that’s a stand and a line drawn. Phillipson sounds blistering too. I hope other universities take note.

Every week another bit of the dodgy foundations crumble away showing that it really is turtles all the way down.

I suspect it is an organisation that is now known to distance itself from its advice and declare that any organisation needs to take independent legal advice to make sure that the organisation is acting legally and that their suggestions (tied to their champions programme) are just suggestions. Ie. an organisation that gives advice that needs a legal second opinion (preferrably from a top anti-discrimination specialist) .

Edited to add: this is in response to a post by Tobee, which I quoted but then spent too long tried to compose my response and the quote vanished.

An article published by the University of Sussex in February 2022 welcoming Sasha Roseneil as the new vice chancellor included the following paragraph:

“I will focus the energy and resources of the University on realising the full potential of its ground-breaking research, thought leadership and transformational education in the service of the common good. .."

As there is no such thing as thought leadership, I conclude that the word that was misspelled should have read "through".

Unless, what we are looking at is the imposition of limitations (reasonable limitations of course) on free speech at the university through judiciously applied "thought leadership"?

But no, it's a boring typo, and that comment about the "unreasonably absolutist definition of free speech" was a truthful (if extreme) expression of frustration by the VC venting fury at the office for students allowing people to say what they think, and the "free speech" in question having the full backing of the law behind it.

"A template did it, and ran away,"

Beautifully put!

So, this naughty template ... Where did it come from? Who found it? Was it down the back of the sofa?

The chicken in question.

"free speech absolutism"

What the fuck does that mean wrt this? What is Roseneil saying here?

There was a change of VC at Sussex between 2021 and now, it appears.

The university is investigating the incidents, and will take disciplinary action if necessary, Vice Chancellor Prof Adam Tickell told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Friday. [2021]

That seems like a reasonable response, and he expressed support for Dr Stock.
"It's absolutely clear that all of our staff have an untrammelled right to say and believe what they think, so we take it very seriously if people try to prevent that right from being exercised"

The current VC took office in 2022, and appears to have adopted a very different approach.

There might have been a different outcome to the investigation if Tickell had stayed in post.

Agree. It was also refreshing to see that the BBC report did not drag in a gratuitous reference to Trump or Vance!

This article was below the BBC report 😬

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyv3jn92d4o

About the University having to cut jobs.

Which led me to this from 2021 and just before Doc Stocks's resignation

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-58841887

An Instagram account apparently linked to the campaign posted a "mission statement" calling for Professor Stock to be fired, alongside photos of the protest.
The statement claimed to be from "an anonymous, unaffiliated group of queer, trans and non-binary students who will not allow our community to be slandered and harmed by someone who's [sic] salary comes from our pockets".

That apostrophe! I'm embarrassed for them.

Well, that is refreshing. I was half expecting the government to oust Arif Ahmed from his role at the OfS after this.

I’ll bet that they paid that organisation a lot of money for its “advice” too.