From today's Sunday Times
www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/academic-faces-sack-for-letter-to-sunday-times-that-criticised-trans-training-gnbr8gxgm
Academic faces sack for letter to Sunday Times that criticised training on trans issues
Sian Griffiths and Ewan Somerville
A lecturer who signed an open letter to The Sunday Times criticising LGBT training in universities has been threatened with being sacked as an editor of an academic journal unless she recants.
Sarah Honeychurch, a fellow in the Adam Smith Business School at Glasgow University, was among more than 30 academics who signed the letter in last week’s Sunday Times. It registered “disquiet” over a programme run by the charity Stonewall in which “anti-scientific claims are presented . . . as objective fact”.
The guidance includes instructing academics on using gender neutral pronouns such as “zie” and “ey”, as well as insisting that “one in 100 are born with an intersex trait” and that trans women should be allowed to use female changing rooms.
The letter was organised by Kathleen Stock, a professor at Sussex University. Many lecturers believe academic freedom to debate trans issues is being stifled on campus.
Last week Honeychurch, an editor of the journal Hybrid Pedagogy, received a formal email from Chris Friend, the managing editor, stating: “Unless I have misunderstood the intentions of the letter or the convictions of your signature, I must ask that you resign your position as editor for HPJ.”
Honeychurch said she had been branded a transphobe by students for signing the letter and was worried that her academic contract might not be renewed at Glasgow. But she was not going to back down.
“I’m not going to recant — I signed that letter after hard thought because people get so much abuse simply for wanting discussion,” she said.
Another signatory of the Sunday Times letter, Michele Moore, honorary professor at Essex University, who has edited the journal Disability & Society for many years, is also facing calls to resign after warning that autistic and other children might be harmed if they are wrongly encouraged to question their gender, which could lead to taking hormones and later surgery.
A petition from 750 colleagues calls on her to step down. She said her career hung in the balance because of the campaign, but the journal’s publishers and people from around the world were being supportive.
She added: “Somebody has to say we will talk about the potential harm of transgenderism of children, as many with autism or other social learning problems are being caught up in this.”
Stock said any academic who examined gender identity critically faced intense hostility.
Today more than 1,000 academics have signed a counter letter to The Sunday Times denying that the Stonewall “diversity champions” programme is a threat to academic freedom.