University of Sussex fined £585,000 by Office for Students

[OhBuggerandArse]

The inquiry in the wake of Kathleen Stock's experience has finally been completed:

'An English university is set to be fined a record £585,000 over allegations it failed to uphold free speech and academic freedom, in a landmark ruling in the debate over student rights on campus. England’s higher education regulator found “significant and serious breaches” of free speech and governance issues at the University of Sussex, according to a draft press release seen by the Financial Times. The Office for Students press release, to be published on Wednesday, said policies intended to prevent abuse or harassment of certain groups on campus had created “a chilling effect” that might cause staff and students to “self-censor”.'

Sussex 'has reacted furiously...'

https://www.ft.com/content/d39f0db7-877a-4cf3-8c12-dd5581eecd0b?fbclid=IwY2xjawJP_1RleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHVWF1ZXM3cKbxGAvtKfecgeMyAXNae5933M9a3dru0zohKTe7Vk24foIeA_aem_HpdtsUQc6ipMGY9J5AGFWQ

“I think there’s contempt in universities for ordinary people’s attitudes … on race, immigration or feminism.”

Stock disagrees with critics who have called the Trump administration transphobic.

Stock is unpredictable in her views. She differs from many mainstream feminists and thinks that there are “hard-wired differences” between male and female brains.

While many feminists have no time for Jordan Peterson, Stock — who has two sons and a daughter — almost defends him. “He was quite good for boys — an acceptable father figure,” she says.

Her next book will be opposing assisted dying. “It’s going to be a disaster,” she says of Kim Leadbeater’s bill. “It’s like a spidey-sense — you just know.

Blimey, I think that is the first time I've read an article by anyone where I agree with the gist of every word.

Unfortunately, I have to agree that a lot of academics are arrogant and self-important (not all, by any means, but far too many). IME a lot of historians roundly despise 'amateur historians' regardless of the accuracy and thoroughness of their work. I had one start to snigger at the title of a book by a despised 'amateur', until I pointed out to him that it was a very apposite quote that anyone with a decent knowledge of the topic would recognise.

At the same time they want on about 'subaltern voices' (what the plebs say) and 'speaking truth to power', by feeling very threatened by both when presented with them in reality.

NAAALT, obviously. Just a sizeable proportion, often with glossy woke credentials. Military historians, not so much.

ETA, 'norovirus media' 🤣🤣🤣

My particular passions in history are the development of American Liberalism and a passion for military history (I don't like battle orders etc I like the social history side of it - think more band of brothers than generals) as well as learning family history and the lived lives of my various ancestors (and of friends). It's a great leveller in understanding people and who you are and where you come from and how you can't actually escape it.

I also love politics and part of my media degree was about recognising propaganda.

So I was completely fucked from the beginning on what I was ever going to think on this subject as a whole!

Dear oh dear ... there are 2 quotes that are more that a bit of an indication of not much background knowledge of feminism. (Which isn't to say I dont respect her, but there is a real danger when the media allows someone who has got a public face, to then somehow be the all purpose go to person)

She differs from many mainstream feminists and thinks that there are “hard-wired differences” between male and female brains. “It’s a middle-class fantasy that we can just soft-power boys into being versions of girls, but boys aren’t just naughty versions of girls that need to read more books,” she says. “On average, they’re quite aggressive. They have bursts of testosterone.”

Whoever does she mingle with?! Such an insult to all the women who have spent years campaigning around male violence. And have done and are still doing work on this

She would like feminists eventually to move on from the trans fight into issues such as surrogacy or prostitution. “There are lots of ways women are being systematically oppressed,” she says. “I’d prefer to see some of the energy going into other areas.”

Doesn't she see how at the very least how rude this makes her seem in totally ignoring the number of activists and groups already doing this.

Maybe as someone who has spent all their life in academia it has all passed her by.

And of course if the reported had done research they would have challenged her.

But I now see it is Rosamund Irwin who has been around long enough to know better.

She’s not wrong though!

People who are activists are not necessarily correct. It’s beliefs vs the truth in many cases. People can campaign for what they want but it doesn’t make it the full truth. There are nuances in every debate.

I do know what you mean @IwantToRetire that part jarred with me as well. We’d all love to move on and focus on other things but atm despite the various victories, the reality is this pernicious ideology has taken hold at multiple levels across multiple public, private & charitable organisations. We’re not focusing on it because we’re unaware of other issues, women are focusing on it because it feels if we take a step back it will all flood back again

It seems obvious campaigning on other issues affecting women when the definition of women includes men with lady feelings is exactly the bloody problem!

And she's also entitled to her opinion. So much energy is taken up with fighting to keep fundamental rights that the capacity to tackle new areas is compromised (not that this means nothing is happening) so I do see her point on that. I can also see her point on the brains, in that plenty of us have opposed the gender ideology line of there being "male brains" and "female brains" and it being used to argue that someone with a "female brain" born in a male body is trans and therefore that should be accommodated. But we all know that male bodies and female bodies are different, and that includes hormones. So I agree with her on that, and that those differences aren't always taken into consideration with children.

And, of course, whatever she said has been filtered through a journalist wanting people to read and share their article. The Times have been better than most on the women's rights issue, but they're still wanting to sell papers/ads etc.

I'm also uncomfortable with the slight "anti academic" vibe that's coming through on this thread. Sure, some do meet the stereotype of a "head in the clouds" type who can't be let outside their labs for their own safety (I've genuinely known a few like this!). Some are incredibly arrogant and think that no-one knows their subject like they do, especially not non-academics/muggles, and are most disparaging of any opinion other than their own. But the vast majority are just perfectly normalish people who are passionate about their chosen field. Sure, it can make you quite narrowly focused but that doesn't make you a bad person.

Academia, by definition, requires you to express an opinion, so we can't be surprised when someone does!

I had the same reaction as IwantToRetire.
I also disagree profoundly not just with her opinion on assisted dying, which she is 100% entitled to, but with the way she force-teams supporters of assisted dying with ultra-liberalism and gender ideologues:
Half the time [its supporters] are the same people as the gender stuff: rich liberals living in north London going, ‘It’d be nice to have a service that can off me in my penthouse.’ It’s the same basic impulse: hyper-liberalism and control of the body.”

KS and everybody else is fully entitled to disagree with the many people who have, for decades (long before 'the gender stuff'), campaigned for assisted dying, often because of their personal experience of seeing a loved one suffer avoidably. I don't know why she has chosen to disrespect sincere, genuine people who have come to a different conclusion about assisted dying. It's disappointing.

I also find it odd that she thinks that by opposing issues such as surrogacy and prostitution, we are in some way ignoring other issues:
“I’d prefer to see some of the energy going into other areas.”

Feminists are capable of thinking about more than one thing at a time - I can oppose surrogacy, prostitution AND, for instance, the shameful persecution of Dr Stock at Sussex, it's not either/or, and it's all part of the same thing: sexism.

But this is a good example of how it's possible to admire someone greatly, as I do KS, and I also think she's cool AF, but also to disagree with them on some points. It puts some constraints on my admiration for her, but there are no limits to my support for her and her right to think and teach and write whatever she wants, and no limits to my outrage at how she was treated at Sussex.

I don't have a problem with academia. I value it. Very much.

I have a problem with academic arrogance and institutionalisation and a lack of academic open mindedness that comes with that.

Academia needs to recognise issues with those who value education and those that don't and that both are valuable to society and still have equally valid points to make. There's been a massive shift to looking down on the uneducated in the last few years - you HAVE to have a degree an if you don't you are somehow a failure. This isn't healthy.

We should be able to talk about uncomfortable issues. This does not mean we are 'anti' anything. We shouldn't fall into this trap of thinking that because there is considerable critism that its a 'them v us' situation. Its a desire to 'sort this shit out, cos it needs dealing with' not a 'we hate them'. Issues not individuals. Don't take it personally - its a systematic problem.

Tell me, theres not this attitude coming from a lot of middle class quarters. Tell me, that those who work in education don't have some of the worst attitudes on this. Tell me, there isn't an overwhelming trend on this. Read MN...

Unfortunately the industrialisation of education as well as the sharping rigidity of education into academy rather than through 'learning on the job' has placed power to universities that didn't have this level of influence before and I do think its showing and they are ill equipped to deal with it.

Debate is healthy.

We are not having enough of it.

We are having a push to 'right think' and 'wrong think' which is at the heart of everything though and is killing debate.

@RedToothBrush You will see academic arrogance all the time on the HE board! Saying posters should not comment because they are not academics is common. Belittling people who are not academics is also common. Saying views have no validity because they aren’t in an Academic paper. Finding fault with people who actually run a business and have far more experience in the world of work (or just varied experience of life) than they do is common too. It’s like a world of its own and there needs to be more common sense whilst listening to other opinions and far less strutting and quoting of degrees held. It’s makes some people unbelievably myopic and unable to see another point of view. It seems to be that research is God. It knows no wrong. Sadly students have to put up with this and some of it is very poor.

Academia needs to recognise issues with those who value education and those that don't and that both are valuable to society and still have equally valid points to make. There's been a massive shift to looking down on the uneducated in the last few years - you HAVE to have a degree an if you don't you are somehow a failure. This isn't healthy.

It's not healthy, but neither is the shift to "all opinions are equal" which does lend itself to the opinion of someone who actually has a lot of expertise in an area being treated as being on a par with someone who "read something on FB". That's a rather hyperbolic example, I know, but all opinions are not always equal. You absolutely don't need to have a degree to have an opinion or to be educated/intelligent/have read widely on a subject (after all, a degree/any qualification is just proof of those things) but opinions are often expressed on the basis of "I heard" or "I just think" with no critical thinking or

We should be able to talk about uncomfortable issues. This does not mean we are 'anti' anything. We shouldn't fall into this trap of thinking that because there is considerable criticism that its a 'them v us' situation.

Of course we should address uncomfortable issues and I've long since held the views that universities are inherently inward looking because they are (generally) such large organisations that they don't need to see the outside world or engage with it that much. It's very easy to stay in an academic bubble and there should be more outwards engagement, if only for context (e.g. the pensions dispute). But I don't think it deserves the "considerable criticism" it encounters. it's not wrong to value being educated or an intellectual, it's not wrong to have an opinion (or even to think you're right!) and it's not wrong to value more highly the view of someone who has spent their entire career studying a particular area.

I consider myself a fighter for women's rights, but I have never been sure whether I am a feminist or not. I came on these threads, like many others, to seek an explanation for gender ideology that was logically coherent and that justified the sacrifice of women's rights. However, as a side benefit, I hoped to discover if I could call myself a feminist. My conclusion is that I don't think I can. There seems to be a set of beliefs that you have to subscribe to, whereas I was hoping for something more open to a variety of views and opinions with a commitment to discuss freely, always with a focus on what might be best for women as a sex-class.

That’s pretty much how I see myself too, @withthegreatestrespectand I do refer to myself as a feminist. No one has a copyright on the label and it doesn’t have to be academic. If you are a woman who stands up for women and girls in my view you are a feminist.

Agree 100% with these criticisms of Stock's take here but I think it's also that she's coming from an academic viewpoint and academics seem to always want to focus on individual issues, as that lends itself to deep dive research.

It's my observation that most academics are really really crap at understanding safeguarding in the real world, which should apply to more than one single issue to protect the most vulnerable.

Ideally, you could have an assisted dying bill where safeguarding (proper enforced safeguarding laws which are monitored and regulated) ensures the law is not abused.

The problem is on gender woo and on other issues, safeguarding -even for children in schools - has been undermined, compromised and there is never any accountability for this. So people are rightly extremely sceptical of the ability to safeguard in reality.

Compelled wrong sex pronouns enforced in schools ALREADY breaches KCSIE, the statutory safeguarding guidance for schools. It's emotional abuse as defined in the existing (and previous) guidance and yet is there any accountability for where this has happened? No. And that's before you even get to mixed sex toilets. Illegal, yet no consequences for breaking the law because staff in schools are able to redefine the meaning of words apparently at will.

We hear again and again of horrendous things happening to children and then there's a lot of handwringing but it's not as if the law and framework isn't there. It is. What is needed is better enforcement and accountability and some firings when things go wrong. But this never seems to happen.

When it comes to the impacts of taking the ideological position that men can become women if they self identify as such, the most vulnerable ARE the experts. Because the impacts happen to them. But unlike academics, they don't have the money and security to have a voice.

The thing I blame academics for the most is that they have allowed women and children to be harmed in order to retain their cosy bubble and lives where they're not directly affected.

Edited to add: With notable exceptions such as Jo Phoenix who has been a very rare and much needed voice for those most vulnerable in academia, such as the women locked in prisons with male sex offenders.

@IwantToRetire Dear oh dear ... there are 2 quotes that are more that a bit of an indication of not much background knowledge of feminism.

Where is this 'background knowledge of feminism'? Is there a sort of 'Bible' that all feminists have agreed on? Do I have to dedicate years of my life to reading a 'correct' booklist before I can decide if I am a feminist? Do I have to defer to an academic feminist or someone who has been 'doing feminism' since the 1960s? Genuine questions

No you don’t.

What happens in academia is also what the funders will fund and there's probably a political agenda there too.

@thenoisiesttermagant Does that explain the issues in the CofE then? Too academic to understand real lives and arguing about issues that affect them and not the victims?

Maybe, it's partly a class issue too as the late lamented LangCleg would point out. Academics are just really, really insulated from reality.

I have lots of academic friends and they have so many blind spots about reality. I find it increasingly irritating to be honest and it's not just on gender woo.

No, you absolutely don’t. One of the things I’ve always valued about this subforum is the plurality of views and that it’s generally accepted that there is no prescribed way to be a feminist.

You don't have to defer, no. But that academic background isn't what the point is about - it was about grassroots knowledge of what feminists in the wider world are concerned about and campaigning on.

For example surrogacy - spend half an hour looking fairly casually at this board and you'd know that lots of feminists are concerned about surrogacy. With a little more focus, and maybe use of the search function, you'd know that there have been letters written, consultations promoted and engaged with, MPs and their canvassers collared on doorsteps, news stories directed, regulations in different countries discussed, and the social and individual harms endlessly analysed.

So to say 'feminists are concerned about trans issues to the exclusion of surrogacy' is to show you've a incredibly narrow view. Her 3 friends all working on the same set of academic papers about trans issies may not have noticed surrogacy, but lots of other women have - and MVAWG, and the pay gap, and street harassment, and the glass ceiling, and the glass cliff, and unequal division of unpaid labour within and outside the home, and Iran, and Afganistan, and Roe v Wade, and the recent Irish referendum, and rapes in schools, and, and, and ....

That's the background she seems (from that interview) to lack. It's not about having read the complete works of Dworkin.

If you are a good researcher the default question first questions are 'what might this research miss?' 'does this research potentially have a bias?' 'what other ways might the research be flawed - eg the design of the research, who and why might you miss people/views from research, has the way the research been worded coloured the outcome of the research?'

White hat bias is a known phenomen.

I remember seeing one such astonishing case of white hat bias. It was a research paper into ELCS by the WHO. The conclusion of the report detailed that they found that attempted natural birth was safer. But when a number of people looked at the methodology and results that were published as part of the same document, it transpired that the actual data showed a very marginal benefit in having an ELCS. Now this was one report and I think this is an area where there are a huge number of variables, so my point isn't about what is safer here. My point here is this study had a conclusion that said something different to the actual data because that was the official position of the WHO at the time and they clearly had an ideological bias.

There are numerous other examples. We should be mindful there is actually whole industries who use research in a way thats not necessarily transparent nor unbiased. Ben Goldacre very much highlighted the problem that research is Not God. So did Margaret McCartney.

We also have an issue with so many people not understanding things like statistics and risk. Even people who deal with it for a living or have to explain it. Because they don't actually understand the data they are sharing and what it means. This includes very intelligent people and people who work with data.

There was a link to an telegraph article over the weekend with comment from Prof Alice Stewart (data scientist) who stated that

"that when it comes to liberating public bodies from institutional capture by trans activists and highlighting the dangerous lunacy of conflating sex with gender, our doughtiest defence is data."
She said many people in a great many organisations don't understand data collection as a discipline and have been taking advice from other people who don't understand it either; the result is a mess. We need - have a responsibility -to record both sex and gender identity.

I think this is the heart of my point (and actually one, I've been commenting on since I very first started on MN in 2008/9). People don't understand data collection as a discipline and don't look at the quality of data often enough. Its automatically assumed as reliable and its rarely the case that a skeptical eye is cast over anything.

(I think this is partly why one of the current political rising trends is starting to be growing discontent in the US about medical research which started since covid - its not about covid but a wider problem within the data industry and a problem with the commercial nature of health care in the US).

It is VERY easy to fall into this trap. Even if educated and experienced. Pretending its not a huge issue, is exceptional naive and depending on your job, potentially negligent.

Its frustrating. Often its a closing ranks thing thats the biggest issue though. This is the way we believe it should be / it has always been and if we change course there are massive implications... usually financial.

Another problem is that one propaganda technique is precisely to use a position of authority to squash criticism. This is another way that language matters - word saladism closes debate automatically and creates a hierachy based on status on who is 'allowed' to comment. Its no coincidence the level of language that Trump speaks at, and how it has actively helped him. Its about participation in debate and therefore in power. Its why I always encourage looking beyond phrasing and asking WHY people are saying things and to try to look for motivations because people don't turn to conspiracy theories etc for no reason. They will pick up on certain issues because of a real world ressonance and the grains of truth which have been areas neglected by establishment - if you understand this, you start to understand certain parts of extremism and parts of conspiracy theories. NO ONE does anything for no reason. And for the most part I think humans do things because they have good intentions - its just they prioritise and value different things; keeping in mind that the key drivers are the very basics - food, shelter, water, basic security (physical and financial). They aren't into high minded ideals, concepts and ideology as a priority, these are secondary to their main concerns. To put it another way - we forget that Hitler came to power on the slogan 'Arbeit und Brot' (Work and Bread) not 'Kill the Jews' and came after a period of significant economic hardships and hyperinflation. And more generally we forget that revolutions are always connected with high levels of young men being unemployed.

Right now we have the perfect storm, thats missing lots of these points - we have data and systems to disguise and distort employment levels. We have language which shuts people out of political debates that involve them. We have a lack of public accountability. Critical thought is only the preverse of those who are qualified, rather than being a proper discipline which actually involves the whole of society.

Modern democracy has failed so many people because they have been deemed as unimportant, irrelevant or worthy of being ignored in various ways thus undermining the intergrity of democracy itself because it has nothing to offer those outside positions of authority anymore because they are no longer part of decision making or accountability or social concensus making on ANY level because they've been actively and deliberately shut out in some way. Thats the real danger of censorship and cancellation - this alienation process.

We have to remember that everyone has a point some of the time and no one is always right - and thats the central core of democracy. The right to be wrong, but still be able to be wrong because you might be right when it really counts.

Finally: but neither is the shift to "It's not healthy, but neither is the shift to "all opinions are equal". One of the problems with this has been the issue that we can no longer tell the difference between opinion and fact and we have growing issues with the integrity of facts: this is where sex as a reality sits as a problem.

We have those who champion and value 'fact' actively promoting the idea of sex as a concept rather than a fact. This undermines all other facts and data intigrity. It becomes a question of trust. And this is where we refer back to people of all levels and their observable reality being important and unignorable regardless of language. Fact only holds weight when its integrity is clear. When you have massive PR operations to surpress realities an protect reputations of those with elevated status, facts are no longer trusted sources of information (For good reason - not enough critical examination is going on from People Who Should Know Better). This creates the vacuum. The rise of opinion has filled the void of accountability - remember that journalism was about checking the accuracy of facts and as this as a discipline has collapsed because opinions are cheaper. Newspapers stopped being written by journalists - and instead are full of opinion pieces. And too often these opinions are presented as 'facts'. So now no one can trust facts, and everyone has an opinion. Its not about 'all opinions being equal'. Its about the lack of integrity of fact, the presentation of opinions as fact and the lack of accountability when facts are demostrated to be flawed. Which goes back to the start of this thread. The BBC (as an example) has got itself into a right mess with this, because on the one had it has 'fact checking' but on the other has championed gender replacing sex and continually has headlines along the lines of 'Anti-trans JKR' which frames things in a totally biased way - and still can't present a single example of where JKR isn't being within the lawful space of the protected characteristic of observable sex and its valid exemptions and is in fact demonstrably 'anti-trans'. These blurred boundaries are hugely problemtic for an institution thats credibly is based on its reputation for 'seeking the truth and representing facts accurately in line with true ethical and unbiased journalistic principles' precisely because its fallen down an idealogical rabbit hole and suddenly thinks its about actively pushing these values. The BBC should be about reflecting and observing and shouldn't have an agenda beyond this - its guiding principle is accuracy and openness not 'progressive values' in a liberal democratic society. I do think the two concepts have been widely confused...

It comes back to this: academics (amongst others) need to get their heads out their arses and stop being arrogant pricks and learn how they are priviledged and how they are omitting huge issues and elements through their failure to be self aware and hyper self critical which the position of power they hold requires. The institutionalisation they demonstrate by failing to recognise this is effectively a form of massive corruption. You need public consensus and approval for justice and law to work, when its undermined, you lose public trust and you produce civil discontent and unrest. Ultimately though the rot had to be there to start with, for all these strains of discontent to have risen, and this is another one of those pesky 'ultimate truths' thats not going to go away all by itself. It needs to be acknowledged as a first step.

Again this is why and how 'sex is not real' logic has so many implications that go way past the subject itself.

Narrow thinking leads to narrow minds in all senses and in all quarters.

(And breathe)