This is absolutely crucial truth-telling from the Times.
These factual examples are very very important to get into the wider public understanding- that academics in 2018 are being silenced from doing important research on issues that affect everyday normal people like all of us and any of us. women and children in particular.
This is deeply sinister- whether you give a shit about gender or the trans narrative or not. It might be the trans narrative today that is the political focus but what next will academics be pressured not to look at?
Academics are being silenced from doing this work, silenced from getting funded to do this work, refused from getting the necessary ethical approval to do this work with research participants (if they need to interview people who have detransiitoned, say- a vital and under-researched group to hear from), then silenced from publishing widely and talking about it if they have already done the work and their work reached conclusions that don’t suit the TRA narrative or even which just ask questions about the status quo or suggest the need for more research. Assaults on academic freedom like this are an assault on all of us, academics or not.
Could add to the list James Caspian at Bath Spa University who was refused ethical approval to interview detransitioned people about their experiences and needs.
Thank you 
congratulations to all of you principled academics who are out and proud gender critical. I absolutely get how brave you are and the risks you are taking and thank you for doing this.
All the academics who are lurking- you’re not alone, lots of your students agree with you and the vast majority of the general public too from any poll I have seen.
This dogma is making is a complete attack on academic freedom to ask questions which are for the benefit of everyone- ironically, including for the benefit of people who transition.
There is nothing transphobic in doing this type of research work. It’s arguably transphobic NOT for it not to be done (or for people to actively BLOCK 
) this type academic research work just because they personally feel that a political orthodoxy which they value must trump reality.
Ignoring reality for the sake of political ideals, regardless of when others don’t share that value AND may be disadvantaged by those ideals (regardless of what they values they hold) is wrong and dangerous. We have been down this road before.
Turkey is another country where academics are being silenced right now. Is this what we want for the UK too?
Where does this anti-research dogma leave all trans people, all women and children - everyone? We ALL rely on facts as the basis for securing our safety, dignity and whatever medical or psychological care we need. How does this silencing agenda make those who promote this dogma any different from any other authoritarian promoter of any other political or religious authoritarian regime throughout history?
Everyone who relies on research findings and official statistics for our health care (ie all of us who use the NHS or other public services like schools, prisons) should be resisting this dogma because it is antithetical to reality-based living and essential services including health care, for all of us.
Transwomen are transwomen, transmen are transmen. Women are women, men are men. Present however you want, absolutely, but there are only two sexes, these are determined at conception, observed and recorded at birth and anobody can change sex in reality. Anything else is not giving ALL OF US the rights, protections, healthcare and public services that we need.
No respectable political dogma or religious belief (or amount of being well-meaning and wanting to be polite or kind to men) should be trying to take those things away from all of us, why is that OK? And while people must be free to believe in whatever they want, nobody else’s authoritarian, dogmatic views should be allowed to take those things away from all of us.
Yet this is happening (and without the support of the law behind it) so we need to speak up NOW in whatever way we can - while we still have the legal freedom to challenge this authoritarian dogma and this silencing behaviour around it.