Happy to see this, and a government saying they recognise both the importance of protecting freedom of speech and democratic values WITHIN academia, but also a government saying that they value the contribution academia can make to upholding of fundamental democratic values that protect all of us, by teaching critical thinking, supporting new ideas generation and therefore offering ideas of how we can create new social protections and mapping out new routes to everyone’s life enhancement that academia should (if not fettered by authoritarians) be able to contribute for EVERYONE IN SOCIETY’s benefit. There has been a long nasty anti intellectual streak in the Tories (Gove saying the public have had enough of experts)
www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/michael-gove-trouble-experts
www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/no-evidence-public-have-had-enough-of-experts-1.846832
Universities have been just seen as a public liability to be funded by increasing self funding by students, while at the same time widening access to less advantaged kids (..hows that supposed to work financially?) while marketing to so as to hopefully raking in vast sums to support themselves from overseas students, along with constantly dwindling public investment in the sector, which doesn’t seem sustainable.
I know this position is not consistent with government behaviour to protect democracy in general (we’re still waiting for that government report into potential Russian interference in UK elections aren’t we www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-50366956) but i so very agree with the overall direction of travel of what’s being said.
I particularly welcome the idea that in day to day research, publication and teaching, the bread and butter work of university life that freedom of speech needs protection as this is also the bread and butter of generating new ideas, new research and new researchers to provide evidence.
However the devil will be in the detail as always: genuine government support for free speech would ALSO need to include thoughts on tackling no-platforming, on tackling regulatory capture at university administration and departments level (the short bit I read about what Gavin Williamson said seemed to view the problem primarily as authoritarian student voice fettering an otherwise free institution scenario, yet the chilling effect is WAY more widespread than that), also tackling orthodoxy-led right think at major funders of academic work like research councils and the other big charitable funders of academic work, also tackling where there is not regulatory capture the simple fear of TRA pile on and unjustified reputation loss. (Like that ethics committee at bath spa uni who turned down research into detransitioned people, citing fear of loss of reputation IIRC). The government should establish a fighting fund for universities to use when they get lawsuits from students and academics about this which they will. That is another major deterrent to genuinely committing to freedom of speech, the fear of litigation, financial cost and reputation. Making that all that feasible would require the regulatory capture deprogramming of organisations like the EHRC too.
I think there will also be a whole host of unintended consequences to be guarded against with all this, it is a very nuanced area to get right, so it will have to be carefully thought through independently, not by politicians but with expert advisors, and not as the end point to leave universities to sort this out on their own because the situation is already too fucked for that and they have already shown themselves incapable to resist creeping incursions on to free thought.