Labour to scrap Freedom of Speech Act

[Signalbox]

Free Speech Union is threatening to bring Judicial Review proceedings.
This does feel pretty undemocratic. Is this a sign of things to come?

https://x.com/SpeechUnion/status/1816771547215835345

Statement from Bridgett Phillipson...

Lastly, I have written to colleagues separately about my decision to stop further commencement of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, in order to consider options, including its repeal. I am aware of concerns that the Act would be burdensome on providers and on the OfS, and I will confirm my long term plans as soon as possible. To enable students to thrive in higher education, I welcome the OfS’s plans to introduce strengthened protections for students facing harassment and sexual misconduct, including relating to the use of non-disclosure agreements in such cases by universities and colleges.

https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-statements/detail/2024-07-26/hcws26

If an academic has a reason to invite a Holocaust denier to speak at the university - which seems unlikely, but you never know - that is very much within the remit of what universities do.

This should never ever have become an accepted reason to allow curtail of free discussion of ideas in a university setting.

You can challenge anything in a scholarly setting, be it the nature of gravitation or who wrote Hamlet - or the nature of historical events. That's what it's for. It doesn't work otherwise.

The Free Speech Union are threatening legal action

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/02/scrap-law-tackle-cancel-culture-university-legal-challenge/

https://archive.ph/meKIP click for free read action

This’ll be interesting. Don’t you have to apply for permission to bring a JR? Presumably if the rules are as straightforwardly unambiguous as PlanetJanet has stated then they won’t get permission to bring a case at all.

I can’t see how it’s a reviewable decision. The courts can’t strike down Acts of Parliament, and they certainly can’t overturn decisions not to commence an Act.

Worryingly authoritarian. The easiest way to combat Holocaust denial is to discuss it openly as it's not backed by the evidence, not hide it from view.

Of course there are other ideologies which evidence doesn't back that Labour wants to compel the population to accept.

It's all a bit 1984.

It's about a piece of legislation that hasn't even been enacted yet hardly a big loss

It has been enacted. It hasn’t been ‘commenced’.

May sound like pedantry, but it’s legally and constitutionally significant.

Fine. It's still not a change if it gets repealed before it's "commenced".
And I don't know why it would surprise anyone that a government would repeal legislation they were staunchly opposed to in opposition.

It such a non-story it's untrue

It was great to see that Laura Favaro won her case. A shame that now universities will be able to continue to act like this knowing that most students / academics / staff won't have the wherewithal to challenge them.

"In the wake of its publication in September 2022, Dr Favaro’s article was praised for exposing persecution faced by gender-critical scholars but was also criticised as an “attack on trans people”. Senior scholars interviewed anonymously for the study broke cover to express their anger, claiming that Dr Favaro had breached ethical rules – claims she said were dismissed as “baseless” by a City investigation.

The Spanish academic claimed she was offered no support by her employer, which withdrew line management support and blocked access to her research database. According to her employment tribunal claim, for which she has crowdfunded more than £95,000, she was made redundant when her “fixed-term contract had expired – despite the fact that I have a permanent contract”.

https://freespeechunion.org/city-university-london-settles-dr-laura-favaros-gender-critical-silencing-tribunal-claim/

Hopefully other universities will follow suit...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/08/07/cambridge-university-freedom-speech-code-conduct-mirrors/

Helen Joyce in the Times on the Free Speech Act…

https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/ditching-this-free-speech-act-is-a-green-light-to-campus-bullies-v2wtjjptd

Archive…

https://archive.ph/fsV81

Academics for Academic Freedom have published an open letter to Bridget Phillipson, urging the government to implement the Act. Any UK-based academic (active or emeritus) can add their name to the 500+ signatures.
https://www.afaf.org.uk/sign-this-open-letter-to-bridget-phillipson/

This is great. Thanks for sharing. This bit is particularly relevant to some of the claims made in this thread that the Act would force universities to platform Holocaust deniers...

Second, the Department for Education has expressed concerns that HEFOSA “could protect those using hate speech on campuses, and that it could also push providers to overlook the safety and well-being of minority groups, including Jewish students”. This concern is understandable, but misplaced. English law already provides strong protections against harassment and incitement to hatred, which override free speech rights. And it is hard to see how the Act could threaten the safety of minority groups, unless “safety” is understood as an inner feeling of security, in which sense it cannot, morally or in law, override the right to free speech. Incidentally, the Act does not oblige universities to tolerate anti-Semites or to give a platform to Holocaust deniers, as has frequently been claimed. It does, however, protect freedoms which Jewish staff and students have particular reason to appreciate. “At a time when Jewish students have been experiencing increasing hostility on campus”, writes Prof. David Abulafia, “the Act offers the guarantee they need that universities will recover their role as the home of civilised debate in which they and their invited guests can express their own opinions without fear of intimidation.”

Signalbox · Today 09:05

Helen Joyce in the Times on the Free Speech Act…

Holy Shit, imagine shutting down teaching about human rights abuses and slavery in a country, because their government complained about it.

Thanks for posting the link to the HJ article.

Shocking but not surprising.

“The only way to keep the show on the road is to lure in ever more foreign students — and that leaves universities beholden to governments for whom free speech is not even on the agenda. Above all, that means China, which sends the largest number of students to the UK: 150,000 at any one time. “Many British universities would be looking at bankruptcy within a matter of years if they lost their Chinese students and didn’t manage to replace them,” says Sam Dunning, director of UK China Transparency, a think tank. “So they are desperate to have a good relationship with the Chinese government.”
^^
“The Chinese Communist Party influences what can be said on UK campuses in three ways. It supplies direct funding, much of it for Confucius Institutes staffed largely by Chinese nationals it selects. It denies visas to foreign scholars of China who hold non-approved opinions. Most importantly, the students it permits to study abroad know their future careers and families’ wellbeing depend upon them countering criticism of China during their courses and reporting back on fellow students who step out of line.

“To see how seriously UK university managers take any threat to the inflow of Chinese students, consider the case of Michelle Shipworth, an associate professor at University College London. Almost a quarter of all the institution’s students are from China, the largest Chinese cohort in the UK. For the past decade Shipworth has taught a module on data to master’s students in which she discusses a statistical ranking from 2014.
^^
“The ranking puts China in second place globally for the number of its people in forced labour. It is based on shoddy data and uncovering its failings is the point of the exercise. Even so, earlier this year one of her Chinese students complained that the example was “provocative”. First students and then colleagues reported her for “anti-Chinese prejudice”, citing her teaching and her diligence in uncovering cheating, for which two of her Chinese students were expelled.

“The allegations were dismissed but colleagues forced her to stop using the slavery example, before her head of department took the course away from her. “[In] order to be commercially viable,” he told her in an email, “our MSc courses need to retain a good reputation amongst future Chinese applicants.”

Universities are bloated and need to shed a lot of their physical assets.

It's to the point now where I am seeing more and more "regular" people who just don't see much value in a university degree. It's an accreditation, and an expensive one, rather than something that people see as a way to become educated, or a place to think about important ideas.

Good. I know the FSU well, they're the Heritage Foundation in short pants. It was entirely about protecting the right to rightwing speech, policing not only University courses but individuals.

They're not a Union, they don't support free speech & they shouldn't have been anywhere government.

bylinetimes.com/2024/04/11/the-free-speech-unions-key-role-in-developing-government-legislation/

I know a few of the founders of the FSU, ex Marxists turned rightwing libertarians. All nasty mysogynist bullies in their professional lives.

Jo Phoenix interviewed on free speech and bullying in universities. Phoenix deals with a lot of the types of misinformation (re the free speech legislation) seen upthread...

“Bullying Culture Has Thrived At Universities” Calls To Reenact Protection Of Free Speech Law.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/08/24/british-universities-lobbied-drop-free-speech/

An article in the Spectator

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-governments-latest-attack-on-academic-free-speech/

Edited to add

Archive link to Telegraph article just above

https://archive.ph/HWfUW

Thats deeply disturbing.

A bit more from Toby Young on the proposed JR. It does appear they are going to pursue this...

Akua Reindorf in The Times HE also dismissing the idea that universities would be required to platform holocaust deniers under the free speech laws.

“Holocaust denial – understandably top of Dabby-Joory’s concerns – is not itself unlawful, but it attracts no protection in free speech law. It does not get off article 10’s starting blocks. Universities have no obligation to permit it, and HEFSA would make no difference to that.”

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blocking-tories-free-speech-law-will-not-help-protect-jewish-students

Archive version…

https://archive.ph/ebv2F

Sonia Sodha in the Observer…

“Step in the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act. Ushered through by Conservative ministers before the election, this legislation sets out an enforcement mechanism to give teeth to existing free speech law as it applies to universities (and extends free speech duties to student unions). The act has been met with considerable backlash by those who don’t seem to understand that it does not create new legal obligations for universities; it simply makes existing ECHR rights enforceable through a complaints scheme operated by the Office of Students.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/sep/01/academic-free-speech-law-labour?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/nobel-laureates-join-campaign-to-save-university-free-speech-act-2g7dqxf3t

Archive…

https://archive.ph/pQGsi

“The last decade has seen too many cases of academics hounded, marginalised, threatened with disciplinary proceedings, forced into self-censorship and even sacked because of their refusal to accept standard tropes about issues which are matters of legitimate debate, like gender identity, imperialism, slavery, racial discrimination and many others. These wars against those who step out of line mark the narrowing of our intellectual world and a betrayal of the vocation of our universities.”