Letter to Minister for Education concerning intimidation campaign against Cardiff academics

[ItsLateHumpty]

Wow! This is a bleak sign of the times.
I remember doing walk outs, and sit downs, and vigils in protest. I never thought it appropriate to threaten kneecapping anyone, let alone people I knew.

freespeechunion.org/letter-to-jeremy-miles-ms-minister-for-education-and-welsh-language-concerning-a-campaign-of-violent-threats-and-harassment-against-several-of-our-members-who-are-all-academics-at-cardiff-universit/

FSU Free Speech Union 22nd February 2022
We’ve written to Jeremy Miles MS, Minister for Education, urging him to intervene in the situation at Cardiff University where several of our members and their colleagues, all academic staff, have been targeted by trans activists in a long-running campaign of intimidation. It began in June 2021 after the academics urged Cardiff to reconsider its continuing participation in the Stonewall Diversity Champion scheme. Following this, a leaflet was distributed on campus picturing a woman holding a gun, the names and pictures of the signatories, and the caption “ACT NOW”. A student whistleblower then revealed violent threats being made on the Facebook page of the Cardiff LGBT+ Society. This evidence was all presented to the University and the police, but neither Cardiff University authorities nor the police responded robustly to protect these academics. The University failed to conduct a thorough investigation in a timely manner and misplaced evidence. It defended messages referring to academics as an ”ignorant fuckface” and a call to kneecap them as legitimate expressions of free speech, even after one of the signatories had his car window smashed.

This is Cardiff Uni, number 7 in Stonewall Workplace Equality Index.

#bekind
#besilient

And they arrest a women for a tweet with suffragette ribbons in Scotland…. While in Wales the police think actual hate speech and threats of physical violence is fine.

If I tweeted that the Cardiff Chancellor and Head of local police were F faces and I’d like to kneecap them would I be arrested.

One of the academics might like to try that and see how the University and police react. Do it on their Twitter feed.

Cardiff University’s student behaviour policy:

www.cardiff.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/215621/3.02-Student-Behaviour-Procedure.pdf

It’s clear these students have breached it, so why aren’t they being held to account?

… so why aren’t they being held to account?

If there was proof…. (there was, including Facebook and CCTV)
we passed everything on to the police
it wasn’t us
it doesn’t exist now
we never saw it
it never happened

In January 2022, nine of the original fifteen signatories wrote to the Deputy Vice-Chancellor expressing their dissatisfaction with the handling of this matter.
This letter stated that the University had overlooked crucial evidence, most particularly the 25 June email identifying the distributor of the leaflet. Yet this evidence did not feature in the University’s brief investigation.
The signatories also identified links between members of the public involved in the campaign and Cardiff staff/students. But none of these individuals were interviewed as witnesses. The University also appears to have failed to review CCTV footage of the protest. The signatories asked about this issue, but received no response. Seemingly no attempt was made to identify the authors of the violent and aggressive Facebook posts, despite the fact that the whistleblower’s evidence included names and photos and asserted that the authors of the posts were Cardiff students and members of the LGBTQ+ Society. Indeed, the signatories’ own research quickly established the identities of several individuals.

Thread here:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4489794-Spiked-Ella-Whelan-Universities-captured-by-Stonewall

There is now a petition to the Welsh Government about this.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/petitions_noticeboard/4523787-Petition-in-support-of-investigation-into-scandal-at-Cardiff-University-Please-sign