Michael Foran has had to cancel the remaining lectures on Sex, GI and the law.....

Oh and the Department of Biology conducted a witch hunt against Dr North with whole department struggle session emails denouncing him and threatening his employment (until the Free Speech Union stepped in and pointed out all the laws this broke) for putting up quotes from Orwell and other famous authors....

Orwell himself would probably have said he couldn't have made it up.

I hope to be able to attend if it's open to all. However what the announcement does not cover is the published intention to harass and dox attendees of these lectures. Surely this comes under whatever bullying or harassment policies the University has? What's being done about this aspect? This was partly why MF cancelled IIRC. The threats.

Then again they don't see anything wrong with Biggus Tittus fake porn breasts making the workplace uncomfortable for young women, so they're obviously not very good as a workplace in general. Can't imagine what it must be like being a young woman in that environment.

The announcement says IIRC "early in the Michaelmas term" (how suitable!). That's the first term of the academic year so it's likely to be October or November.

Forgive me if I'm being blind but although he says it's been rescheduled, and they say it will be rescheduled, there doesn't actually seem to be a published date yet?

Good.

I did slightly hope that William Hague might not be a complete wet lettuce on this. He seemed really quite cross.

Good news. The lecture has been rescheduled:

I’m very happy to be able to announce that the University of Oxford’s Faculty of Law has rescheduled my lecture on Freedom of Expression in the Sex and Gender Debate.

https://x.com/michaelpforan/status/2070156752348205485

https://nitter.net/michaelpforan/status/2070156752348205485

eta: "We have worked together to include an opportunity for critical engagement and dissent, within the appropriate limits of academic engagement. All participants will be expected to engage respectfully, to focus on the issues, and to ensure the event can proceed without disruption."

I am forever grateful to the person on X who captioned that picture:

"Oh not AGAIN, Salome..."

Wikipedia is lamentably captured.

Wikipedia only has a page for someone if someone chooses to create one - and if it doesn't get removed as non-notable or similar. The latter may be a problem for gc people - Wikipedia has pretty good principles that should eliminate bias against them, but based on a few observations I wouldn't be confident in how those principles get applied (there's a vote involved if there's dispute, and you know what people are like in cases where they don't feel deeply involved but know which is TRSOH)! At any rate, if anyone is experienced with Wikipedia's rules and how to write a page that will not get removed, I'd encourage them to go for it - a book, use of his work in the Supreme Court, his prizes and a lectureship at Oxford ought to do it, but it should be done irreproachably, or it will be reproached.

Very pleased to see quite a few Irish signatures on there. Brave enough to sign from a number of Irish universities. Until today I’d no idea Michael Foran was Irish. Oddly his name does not come up on Wiki. Also pleased the UK university two of my children attended has a few signatures, it’s well known as a “captured” place.

Unfortunately the insulting term “pregnant people” came up this week in an exam in the Irish equivalent of the A levels.

Well, expulsion is/was known as being sent down, so there's another one for you!

That's sounds such an old-fashioned phrase. Straight out of Endeavour!

Do the Deans of colleges (the bad people deans, not the holy ones) still have the power to rusticate students (i.e. send them home till the end of term)? If they won't expel, they should at least do this.

Thank you @fanOfBen I have signed. Now come on Oxford. Threatening attendees and disrupting lectures is not free speech.

PMSL at the toddler tantrum

Re the die-in: I will never not laugh at this photo, where KS and her interlocutor look like weary parents waiting for the tantrum to pass. Also the disembodied head aspect is funny separately.

Thanks for this link.

I wonder how many views there have already been of the two which have been put up on line. There may have been as many as sixty or eighty students attending those lectures in the flesh, so if more than a hundred have watched them as recordings that's a win for free speech, isn't it.

I don't think it is entirely that. Until the 1940s most students were paying customers esp Oxbridge, but the universities still told them what they could and could not do and punished them if they did not conform to those rules. It's more to do with thinking that people have the right to do as they wish without consequence and that universities are now run as businesses, which was very much the fear in the 30s that if business men (sorry, it was the 30s) got involved in running a university then they would treat students as customers who were to be catered for and only 'sell' degrees that had 'relevance'. This is where we are now and universities, instead of acting as bastions of learning and research, are behaving like department stores where customer services resolve all complaints in favour of the customer as long as it costs the store no money. That would be the same were the students still on grants, because of the change in attitude and how universities are run.

😂

A die in would also give him the opportunity at the end of the lecture to ask whether there are any questions from the floor.

Although he may be too much of a gentleman to take advantage of it.

Ooh @fanOfBen thanks for the link!

William Hague seems blissfully unaware of:

(a) The parallel campaign of social media intimidation being run by the TRAs, involving such imperatives as ‘Record every single one of the bigots, especially students attending these events, and make sure to go after them too’ [ie ‘go after’ Oxford University students and Dr Foran]’. Are the students engaging in the online campaign also Oxford University students? They are creating a hostile environment.

(b) The behaviour of the Proctors. They were inside the lecture theatre, having given permission for the disruption to occur - disruption which involved insulting the lecturer, demanding the audience walk out, and that ‘no platforming’ occur. They too are creating a hostile environment as part of a pattern. I suspect Point (b) is what caused Dr Foran to cancel the rest of the lecture series.

William Hague is now part of the problem if he cannot recognise the pattern of conduct for what it is. Proctors cannot give students permission to break the law, just as we have seen that Stonewall cannot give employers permission to break the law. He is at the head of the organisation that is failing in its duty of care toward employee Michael Foran and those students being targeted. If the University doesn’t train its Proctors properly, then the University is also failing the Proctors.

William Hague hasn’t replied to my first letter, so I shall write again to a different address with additional points.

This isn’t going away. There are plenty of pissed off academics, as we have seen, absolutely sick of the hostility to exchanges of ideas. I may need to have a nice watch of Monty Python.

A die in would be brilliant. Everyone can see their toddler tantrum, disruption is minimal, and they might actually learn something while lying there.

Agree with Amaryllis, especially about it being a good idea for students to have a silent die-in...

Academics (with ORCID for verification) might like to consider adding their names to the open letter to the VC (already published in the Times) here:
https://johnarmstrongmaths.com/openletters/letter.php?campaign=michael_foran_letter