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

I found this on the Sussex website:
INCLUSIVE SUSSEX - EQUALITY, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION STRATEGY 2018-2025
file.php

I did my usual thing of doing a word search for various terms, starting with 'transgender'. Zero. LBGTQ? Zero. Women? Zero. Lesbian? Zero. Gay? Zero.
Some good stuff about disability, 'non-traditional' and BAME inclusion. No hierarchy, no special cases, no favouritism.

It was so non-genderwoo that I suspected it had been rushed out in the wake of the current situation.

In fact it was published in July 2022.
The current VC took up office in August 2022.

If the OfS had reason to believe that the reality of academic life in Sussex was in fact in compliance with this document, I think they'd have been happy enough.

It's apparent though that there was a captured counter-current making up pro-trans policies - beyond their remit in many cases - which in no way reflected this strategy document. In view of what actually happened to KS right in the middle of the timeframe of this strategy document, it reads like counterfactual fiction. That was during the tenure of the previous VC.

The current VC maintains that the fine is unfair because changes were already being made, but have the changes been in accordance with the uni's own strategy document?

Exactly.

The article from the Committee for Academic Freedom on the previous page says this which fits with this:

Two things should be noted regarding these statements. First, the OfS specified that these policies were not in themselves in breach of the regulatory framework. The violations arose because Sussex had no “effective safeguards” that “adequately protected the expression of certain legally protected beliefs” in its other governing documents.

This means that universities can adopt quite restrictive trans-inclusion policies like the one above, as long as they make clear in their governing documents that lawful beliefs, including gender-critical beliefs, can be expressed.

One of the key points Kathleen Stock was making was that replacing sex with gender, removes protections from lesbians. It renders the meaning of homosexual meaningless and replaces it with homogender.

I go further than this and say there is rampant homophobia present within this.

Theres this little phrase on wiki about homophobia I keep coming back to:
Recognized types of homophobia include institutionalized homophobia, e.g. religious homophobia and state-sponsored homophobia, and internalized homophobia, experienced by people who have same-sex attractions, regardless of how they identify.

Universities replacing sex with gender and failing to recognise the protections of homosexuals in the rush to promote transgender policies are institutionally homophobic.

As pointed out, on these pages, many many times is the point that lesbians have not just one protected characteristics but two. Both of which are completely invisible in these guidelines which put trans above all else in a hierachical system rather than one based on equality of protections.

In other words we are now at a position where its recognised that sex MUST be acknowledge IN ADDITION TO gender identity rather than gender being used INSTEAD OF sex. This hasn't changed in law. The law has stayed the same. The difference is that we are seeing how this hasn't been done.

This is why these universities are continuing to fall down.

Academically speaking, a philosphical idea of gender CAN NOT replace sex for many many good reasons. Or it becomes nonsense. Cos reality. You lose all credibility overwise. If you have a legitimate reason to exclude trans you can. Its all about the legitimate aim. You can't dismiss negative stereotypes in academia - they may be stereotypes for a scientific or sociological reason which remains relevant to the functioning of society or an issue. The key is that research and use has that 'legitimate' element. Thus if you have an hypothesis you can explore it, as long as your methods are unbiased and there is a legitimate reason to discuss that issue. This is not harassment.

The problem central to this, is that some activists believe recognising sex instead of replacing it is harassment not legitimate aim as protected in law. Thats what has to stop.

Certainly, being a lesbian and feeling marginalised or coerced by males falls under this - the legitimate interest is to protect lesbians, it is NOT to marginalise or negatively stereotype or otherwise smear transwomen. We are centring lesbians in this scenario by focusing on harms to them as a group. This is allowed and an essential part of the law. Equally dictates that if one group are behaving in a way that is negatively impacting another protected group, then there needs to be awareness of this so it can be dealt with. It not only merits discussion, it means a discussion is necessary and essential for the good running of an organisation and to ensure academic standards.

Stonewall's betrayal of lesbians is at the very core of everything.

For those worried about the backlash, I think gender ideology as distinct from actual transpeople has already made a lot of trans people's lives harder. Remember when Miranda Yardley - long term transsexual - was sued for transphobia? It's such a reality denying cult this was apparently not entirely ludicrous and yes, he won but the process is the punishment as we all know - an actual trans person put under immense stress and being harassed for his legally held views. There have been a number of prominent trans people who've spoken up against gender ideology and usually paid a fairly hefty price for doing so. (as well as being factual, and normal English usage, and based on MY perception of Miranda, these are also the pronouns Miranda prefers)

As far as LGB goes, I agree with @MarieDeGournay - the LGB people i know are absolutely nothing like the way the 'LGBTQ+ community' is represented at Pride or on TV these days. They're just normal people going about normal lives who happen to be married to / in a relationship with someone of the same sex. And the faster LGB✂T the better, and the less likely any backlash relating to gender ideology will affect LGB.

I know someone who was once on an Athena Swan committee. Who hilariously was once asked to attend a meeting at short notice when they were expected to pick up a child from school. Which kind of sums up that it's about virtue signalling not actually make it easier for real women with real caring responsibilities and children to stay in academic jobs. Said it was a complete and utter waste of their time and took time away from actually helping female students by sitting in useless meetings.

I'm not too worried about the consequences for lesbian and gay people when the T is at last crowbarred away from LGBTQ++++++

It is very damaging to us to be lumped in to the same acronym - my go-to example of that is the photo of an absolutely grotesque drag queen being used to illustrate the Gay Pride events in a small regional town in Ireland - what young lesbian or gay man in the area is going to feel represented by that? And worse still, they'll feel discouraged from coming out as gay if that's the only image of 'a gay person' their family and friends and neighbours are seeing.

We seem to be reaching and hopefully soon passing Peak Drag and increasingly, in the UK, Peak Pandering to Unreasonable Trans Demands in the Workplace, and I feel hopeful that when that fad passes, lesbian and gay people will be able to go back to being unremarkable members of our communities, who neither need nor want flags and days and parades and special treatment.

(All that would have been nice when we were actually denied our civil rights, and would be nice in countries where it still is dangerous to be lesbian or gay, but most of the the flags came out after the battles were won..)

Equality will suffice, and I don't think there's any threat of lesbians and gays losing our rights, as a consequence of removing privileges which go beyond rights from transpeople.

For example, if Sussex and other unis are required to stop ringfencing trans people for special treatment in teaching materials, I don't see how LGB people would get 'caught up in it' - we weren't benefitting from those policies anyway so we'd lose nothing if they were done away with.

LGB✂T

@Solrock agree 💯

What I can't believe is how the university are sticking to their guns after this ruling!

Basically they are arrogant self important tools who think they are more important and intellectually superior to mere mortals. So entrenched by their own self righteousness they've become detached from the rest of society.

Somehow they still seem to still be able to have offspring despite philosophically no longer believing in sex.

Its 100% a class issue.

And that's also why swearing at Trump and Co doesn't work. Again a class issue. Trump and Co don't below to the working class but they also don't belong to this country management class either.

It's essentially something of a proletariat revolt in progress, but these numpties (hello Norovirus media) can't see it because so many identify as working class...

That’s one of the most frustrating aspects of all this. Women on FWR have been saying for years that one of the issues of the forced teaming of TQ with LGB is that when the backlash inevitably came because you can only centre a reality denying sacred caste for so long, LGB ppl would be caught up in it & could lose everything they fought do hard for just because entitled men with a fetish couldn’t bear to keep it for their private life.

Early on in the thread I posted:

The policy at the heart of the investigation had been adapted from a template, according to the university, and had since been changed.
So they didn't actually write the policy that got them into so much trouble themselves, they just cut and pasted a template, and they have since ditched it?

Which sounds very like 'A template did it, and ran away'!

and we all thought the template was likely to be Stonewall, so it's interesting that it came from another source, AdvanceHE.

Thanks Theeyeballsinthesky for this link about AdvanceHE

https://x.com/johnarmstrong5/status/1905690062899343383?s=46

It says that AdvanceHE runs the 'Athena Swan' programme 'which was meant to promote women in science and now promotes tampons in the gents' .

Thanks also for https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/profile/david-bass
I haven't read that yet, because I'm still laughing at 'meant to promote women in science and now promotes tampons in the gents' .😄
Well when I say 'laughing'... only at the witty words, not the content, obvs.

I note the CAF report linked upthread says they found multiple other universities following the same template as Sussex - but all the ones they listed have the same (or remarkably similar) OfS criticised clauses b to d. (Don't rely on stereotypes; no anti-trans propaganda; no harassment.)

Those aren't in themselves bad principles - provided they apply to all groups, not only trans people; and they use reasonable definitions of propaganda and harassment. The problem is if they are applied to one group and not others, or are unreasonably restrictive.

What they don't mention is finding other universities with OfC criticised clause a (use only positive examples in course materials). And that's the one that is inherently problematic. So I'm not clear whether that came from the HE template but other universities spotted that it was nonsense and left it out, or is Sussex's own preposterous invention.

With universities there is a fairly simple explanation: academics have been conditioned to believe that they represent the intellectual avant garde. They are pioneers in thought, they represent the future of the world, they are far more sophisticated than the rest of us. And the more we criticise them, the more they believe that they are correct in their beliefs.

The reality is that many of the beliefs and approaches to the world promoted by modern universities are intellectual dead ends, like the Lysenkoism of the Soviet Union. Similar to Lysenkoism, the notional academic truths have such an ideological grounding so as to render them worthless.

This is, of course, only part of the issue - I could write a whole book on what is wrong with universities - but a good example of why academics double-down on their positions when criticisms arise.

For all my joy at the bricks of the GI movement being steadily dismantled, I worry that when the wider backlash comes it will look like a reset that benefits traditional white males. Women won’t benefit (naturally) and vulnerable people are likely to suffer further. I’m actually quite fearful for the younger - likely autistic - gender questioners who will also be impacted by reduced school budgets and cuts to disability benefits.

I’m also concerned about LGB people as companies step run away from rainbow displays of corporate solidarity. Most of it wasn’t all that genuine anyway. Again, I imagine the blokes will mostly be OK, but will gender non-conforming women find it harder to be recruited or promoted?

For all the shit that detractors throw at GC women, most of us are liberal at heart and want people to live as they choose, as long as it doesn’t affect others. I hope we don’t get to a situation where difference is discouraged.

No one knows the question

"But why?" anymore.

The only answers allowed are

"Because thats the way we've always done it" or "Because I say so".

Both of which are wholly unsatifactory.

The only ones championing the two little words that matter (with mixed success I might add) have been Musk and our own beloved Dominic Cummings (boo hiss).

Now this is where I do think they have merit. But I also have extreme reservations about both in terms of their visions about who they wanted to replace people who were obstructive / unquestioning in this way. It seems to be about replacing them with their own stooges who say yes to the correct ideas and people rather than people who actually ask "but why?".

We are seeing a rise in conspirary theories because we are failing to recognise this issue. Because we aren't offering other sane explanations to those who have become disillusioned and have started asking "but why?", people with nefarious agendas have filled this void.

Theres a real need to get to grips with this and to clear out people who say "because thats the way we've always done it" or "because I say so" with people who say "we've done it this way because it solved this problem but didn't have the adverse problem of this, but I'm open to new ways to improve on the concept"

Musk's problem is at times hes encouraged the redesigning of things from the ground up, without taking on some of the knowledge of why things WEREN'T done in this way for good reason (effectively hes not listening to people he doesn't want to and thats a flaw. He not identifying where they do add value). Thats not to say that a redesign wasn't needed. A lot of our issues with tech is where they have been designed on old systems and then patched which makes them creak and become expensive to run and need specialists to maintain the old system because no one was willing to invest at the right time in a new one thats got a decent lifespan ahead of it and is fit for the demands of the time. There is a time and place for ripping out and starting from scratch. Cummings phrased it as effectively burning the house down and starting again but this approach is too crude and too off the cuff and carries significant risk. You can't employ a 'rip a plaster off' approach to vulnerable groups.

And Cummings ran into the problem that so many people who recognised the same problem ran into. The civil service entrenchment, resistence to change and a closing of ranks to prevent him for doing what he wanted. This is partly because Cummings managed to get them off side from the start and had a bad attitude which alienated them before he began. This may well, yet be the problem that Musk eventually runs into in the US with DOGE but maybe not - because Cummings still remained more rational and less reckless than Musk is.

But make no mistake, there is going to be the same push and demand for this 'clear out' to happen in the UK. Partly because scandals are getting bigger and the rational sane quarters re starting to wake up to the very real problems being created and how we will be impacted due to wholesale incompetence and lack of due diligence. And partly because we have ideologues watching the US who will push on this too for their own agendas and so they can install their own into these positions.

We need to recognise whats happening and fill the void with competence rather than just a different type of ideologue.

But there are two camps - we need to keep repeating this - its not an either/or choice. The leftie nutjobs wanting to smear the sane only serve to further the agenda of the right wing nutjobs. We need to be asking "but why?" ourselves - the whole thing about pronoun use is a prime example - why are you using wrong sex pronouns? The answer is always 'because I've been taught I'm supposed to if I want to be kind' or 'because I've been forced to'. No one is asking 'but why is it kind? but how does this improve things for all parties?'. Instead you get mindless 'it doesn't hurt to' type responses who have no response when you reply 'but thats simply not true, you haven't taken the time to actually think about this have you? you are just repeating what you think you should say'.

I loathe what is happening because I can see whats happening and why and it feels like a car crash in slow motion thats completely unavoidable, but instead of slamming on the breaks these institutions double down and decide to press the accellerator citing that the other party should be the one to move. It feels like the ship / lighthouse urban myth in action - we are the reality of the lighthouse:

Americans: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision.
Canadians: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.
Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.
Canadians: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course.
Americans: This is the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, the second largest ship in the United States' Atlantic fleet. We are accompanied by three destroyers, three cruisers and numerous support vessels. I demand that YOU change your course 15 degrees north, that's one five degrees north, or countermeasures will be undertaken to ensure the safety of this ship.
Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

@thenoisiesttermagant No one expects engineering grads to be the finished job and they have years of post grad training to get qualified. The problem is they lack the general skill to think what is the best design for the issue. The key for employers is to sort out who can do this as opposed to forever relying on others. Team players are useful but flair seems to be in short supply.

Degree apprenticeships are interesting. There’s very very few available when compared to degrees. They are hugely competitive. This of course isn’t the same as universities bullying staff and a curriculum that’s irrelevant but the UK has allowed minorities to have too much influence. It’s time thing to respect minorities but quite another to allow their views to infiltrate the curriculum in wholly unrelated areas.

I used to work in a job where we treated to take on grads who had done a course related to the job we did. To say they lacked basic knowledge was an understatement. It was just about the most basic stuff in doing it on a practical level in any workplace. It made them virtually unemployable because they were so clueless and had no idea whatsoever about the concept of customers or deadlines. It was fascinating and infuriating. This was over a decade ago now, so its been going on for some years.

Yet a lawyer tells me that while previously senior managers preferred to lose a tribunal case than have a showdown with their vengeful LGBT staff

This seems a reasonable explanation as to why the tide hasn't turned fast enough...despite the case against the OU.

I have a dc at Uni who is GC but wouldn't make views known because of the risk of backlash and bullying. The DEI policies are impacting the academic reputation of UK universities and I think there will be a decline in world wide rankings, in a generation this period will be noted for when the decline started. Given the publicity about bullying staff who would go into this sector?

It's really worrying, isn't it? I hope they are learning these skills once they get into the workplace, but it seems a fairly easy win for any university (including in other countries than the UK/US) to actual teach some degree of real world problem solving engineering skills to ensure their graduates can obtain the best real world jobs. Presumably employers are desperate for employees who can do so from the start and aren't terrified of speaking up if they spot a critical design flaw in case they upset someone.

@thenoisiesttermagant I meant to add: engineering grads cannot do those things already. Mainly because it’s maths heavy but critical thinking and problem solving is knocked out of grads. Many need others to initiate the design by solving the problems and they sit at a computer joining up the dots. Look at the HS2 design in the hoof. Ok I’m being rude, but in general who needs stupid projects at university like this?

Doing some further digging. This is David bass head of EDI at advance HE

https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/profile/david-bass

Seems David headed up the diversity in governance programme in Scotland where of course they are famously not at all captured in anyway…

Even in this country there are enough of us who know what's happening and can see some Uni degrees do the very opposite of prepare for the real world and will be very, very choosy if we decide to support our children going to Uni. I know more and more who aren't but are doing high level apprenticeships (e.g. with an accountancy firm).

Anyone who isn't fabulously wealthy can fall on hard times, we can all be in the position of having to do a job we don't like for the money, students from these places will be unable to cope with this. It's not kind to instil this lack of resilience and magical thinking and it's really mentally unhealthy to be unable to cope with people who have different views. Especially when those people are in the majority in the real world.

Universities are becoming echo chambers and the opposite of what they're supposed to be.

@thenoisiesttermagant £100,000??? You are surely having a laugh!!!? The previous VC was on around £290,000. No VC would get out of bed for £100,000.

One issue universities have is promoting from professors for top jobs who then don’t have any business expertise in terms of employment law. Anyone who inherited this mess from the previous overpaid incumbent would have made it a no 1 priority to deal with the bullies and clean up the mess. Instead she’s doubled down and has made Sussex look foolish and poorly run. The appointees also didn’t see it as important to change their ways either. Unfortunately self serving people are embedded and seem incapable of taking advice or even understanding the problem.

The inability to tell the difference between an expert and an activist is quite the thing.

We live in a world of disinformation. Sourcing and examination of agents and tackling bias are core skills in many many subjects at university level.

If management are inept at this, it begs a whole pile of questions about educational standards.

Critical thinking should be the aim. If your university culture is to kill this, your degrees are worth shit.

The article @fromorbit posted a little up thread is excellent at explaining what the template is that universities have been using and why it's a problem