40 Oxford dons sign letter in support of Kathleen Stock

[ArabeIIaScott]

This seems pretty significant.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/16/free-speech-oxford-university-trans-row-kathleen-stock/

'Oxford dons have warned students that freedom of speech is at risk as a trans row engulfs the university.
More than 40 academics - including Prof Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, and Prof Nigel Biggar, the theologian - have intervened in support of a planned appearance at the Oxford Union by Prof Kathleen Stock, a leading feminist, in a letter to The Telegraph.'

...

Letter includes:

'“Professor Stock believes that biological sex in humans is real and socially salient, a view which until recently would have been so commonplace as to hardly merit asserting.
“Whether or not one agrees with Professor Stock’s views, there is no plausible and attractive ideal of academic freedom, or of free speech more generally, which would condemn their expression as outside the bounds of permissible discourse.”'

Pleased to see my old college well represented there. I was beginning to despair of the university.

Well that is fabulous. Well done them

Feeling like the grown ups have come back to Oxford - and saying there is no reason for these views not to be heard just sounds like common sense

Oh good goody good! 😃

If 40 are willing to sign it, I'd bet that ten times that number would, if brave enough. With a bit of cajoling, this could be the trickle to burst the dam.

Behind a paywall. Who has signed it? Any big names other than Dawkins? Thank Sorry to be negative but only 40? Given the size of the university that’s not many.

About time.

interesting that the lecturers are in support of this. They’ve been taking the blame for indoctrinating students - so in my opinion it looks like it’s more the student leaders and activists coupled with social media.

Am glad this has come out.

im sure there a few gender studies lecturers seething somewhere - but frankly - as an employer and parent, I’d dismiss those degrees as not being worth the paper.

https://twitter.com/Adrian_Hilton/status/1658730258890211329

Full list of signatories attached to this tweet

I know academics at Oxford and they'd never heard of this letter until I emailed them about it today - they are GC (well, they'd probably say they're realists and believe in scientific evidence rather than GC) though not open about it as not really seeing the relevance for their work (although IMO they should regarding the free speech aspect - I'm just reflecting their opinion).

It'll be people who know each other, or are on a mailing list or something. Not all academics at Oxford know each other and they don't all know what's going on with this sort of thing - they are busy with other things.

It's a shame it doesn't appear to be a letter people can add their name to as I'm sure more would, given the opportunity.

Overwhelmingly male list which reflects that women get such a terrible backlash they're less inclined to speak up. But very positive.

Dr Julius Grower, Faculty of Law and St Hugh’s College
Dr Michael Biggs, Department of Sociology and St Cross College
Dr Roger Teichmann, St Hilda’s College
Professor Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology, Faculty of Theology
Professor Jeff McMahan, Sekyra and White's Professor of Moral Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy and Corpus Christi College
Dr Edward Howell, Department of Politics and International Relations and New College
Dr Marie Kawthar Daouda, Oriel College
Dr Jonathan Price, Faculty of Law and St Cross College
Colin Mills, Department of Sociology and Nuffield College
John Maier, Balliol College
Dr Alexander Morrison, Faculty of History and New College
Dr Richard Gipps, Blackfriars Hall
Professor Carl Heneghan, Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine
Kathryn Webb, Oxford Institute of Clinical Psychology Training and Research and Harris Manchester College
Dr Tim Mawson, St Peter’s College
Edward Hadas, Blackfriars Hall
Professor Richard Dawkins, New College
Professor Jonathan Jones, Department of Physics and Brasenose College
Professor Lawrence Goldman, Emeritus Fellow, St Peter’s College
Professor James Binney, Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics and Merton College
James Forder, Balliol College
Clive Hambler, Lecturer in Biology and Human Sciences, Hertford College
Daniel Villar, Department of Biology
Yuan Yi Zhu, Research Fellow, Harris Manchester College, and Nuffield College
Professor Richard Ekins KC (Hon), Professor of Law and Constitutional Government, St John’s College
Professor Julian Savulescu, Uehiro Chair of Practical Ethics, Faculty of Philosophy
David Carpenter, Faculty of History
Professor Timothy Williamson, Wykeham Professor of Logic, Faculty of Philosophy
Daniel Kodsi, Trinity College
Professor Susan Bright, Professor of Land Law, Faculty of Law
Professor Joel David Hamkins, Professor of Logic, Associate Faculty Member, Faculty of Philosophy
Dr Ruth Dixon, College Lecturer, the Queen’s College
Professor John Tasioulas, Professor of Ethics and Legal Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy and Balliol College
Xenofon Kalogeropoulos, Faculty of Classics and St Anne’s College
Jane Cooper, All Souls College
Dr Abhijit Sarkar, Faculty of History
Professor Edward Harcourt, Professor of Philosophy, Keble College
Professor Michael Bentley, Senior Research Fellow, St Hugh’s College
Professor Catharine Abell, Faculty of Philosophy and the Queen’s College
Professor John Chalker, Department of Physics and St Hugh’s College
Dr Sophie Allen, Faculty of Philosophy and St Peter’s College
Professor Volker Halbach, Professor of Philosophy, New College
Sir Noel Malcolm, All Souls College
Aftab Mallick, Brasenose College

Yes I'm sure that will be the case, I would have expected to see Professor Selina Todd's name for example.

I think the threats and oppressiveness of the atmosphere have created a situation where everyone is too afraid to stand up, and so everyone thinks that everyone else probably supports the orthodoxy. Silent majority, as seems to increasingly be the case.

Suppression of speech and threat and intimidation really works.

Good to see that a fair number of philosophers have signed it, and a fair number of professors.

Yes, I'm glad to see Kathleen Stock at last get some public support. Fucksake, it's taken long enough.

This is good news. I hope more people will be willing to speak out.

Thank you JulesJules.

Just to add, I have a fair few academic friends and I've been pointing out the implications of wholesale adoption of GI for free speech and science for AGES.

There's been a lot of 'not my fight, tiny minority, of course it's all anti-scientific nonsense and I agree with you, fight it from the inside, I don't need to stand up and be counted, best not to make a statement either way' and I've been telling them they SHOULD stand up and be counted, that they're bloody lucky to be in the position they are and if enough of them stand up then it won't be a brave act to say biology exists and is important. It's an argument we have often. So I'm quite annoyed there seems to be no obvious way to add your name to this list because I would be urging the Oxford ones to if I could.

Aye, freedom of speech seems like a nice luxury right up until the point you realise you've lost it.

And for me as for many it's THAT that is the crux of it, not even so much the impact on women's rights (although that is a biggie) or children's wellbeing (another big reason to fight it). If we cannot question or criticise or counter an orthodoxy we are in big trouble. Politically, culturally, socially.

Just the fact that so many people are afraid to voice anything other than bland assent should be rining allllll the alarm bells and raising alllll the red flags.

But we are also accustomed to rationalising and excusing our reasons not to stand up and speak out. Of course we are, most of us want a quiet life.

Sometimes a 'quiet' life becomes a 'silenced' life, though.

Yes, I think academics are in a very comfortable position and are willing to trade a lot of things to keep that comfort.

Academia is an inherently patriarchal system, the women that are successful within it have to sign up to a whole load of unwritten rules that generally don't benefit women as a class within wider society IMO. Very much a pulling the ladder up behind you and a lot of blindness to that because it benefits them to be blind.

It's captured in all kinds of ways and not just in terms of GI although GI is so obviously contrary to so many other principles (e.g. within the sciences) that it shows just how very far the whole system has departed from the supposed aims and reasons for it's existence.

I think it's notable that there's more free speech at Let Women Speak events than in the lecture rooms of our most distinguished Universities. And I'd argue, sometimes, more insightful analysis too.

ArabellaScott

Sometimes a 'quiet' life becomes a 'silenced' life, though.

Yes, I think that people are seeing things beginning to crumble and where before, they were fearful, having seen what happens when people say something entirely reasonable, see the end of a petty dictatorship.

It’s good to see support of freedom of speech and British Values!

Yes, science and philosophy well represented.

Yep. Things are tipping, and as more light is shone on every area that has been subject to this ideological - IDK if I'd even say capture, because I think true believers are very few - it's suppression, that's all - as more light is shone, it becomes very clear that the majority are not at all on board with sex being mutable and irrelevant and subordinate to 'gender'.