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

@NoBinturongsHereMate

Thanks you've articulated why I felt pissed off on reading that KS quote.

I care about sex realism, but I also care about - and campaign on - surrogacy. I also care about and am asking questions about assisted dying and the impact on people (particularly women) with dementia in care homes.

So do most people on MN. So she's just wrong. She might be right about female academics, but she's not about MN users and there's probably more of us.

SOME academics are insulated from reality, no argument there!🙄

But many academics are struggling to hold the line for scientific reality against an onslaught of post-factual anti-intellectualism that claims to know all about everything from sex being a spectrum to MMR vaccines causing autism to the moon landing[s] being faked.

Many academics are struggling in a climate where some random bloke on the internet can confidently dismiss the Cass Review as wrong because Hilary Cass* is underqualified and inexperienced and probably transphobic as well.

In many cases academics are subjected to abuse and even death threats.

*Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Fellow of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, who is or has been chair of the British Academy of Childhood Disability, established the Rett Clinic for children, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, consultant at Great Ormond Street Hospital for 15 years and honorary physician in paediatric disability at the Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust.
So no match for some random bloke on the internet.

I'd like to think, for brevity her quote, came across as more absolute than it was? Only the Sith deal in absolutes 😁 It is, on the face of it, nuts that anyone should have to waste any energy on the harms and idiocy that have arisen from gender ideology. Imo I see it as Venn diagrams with, currently, a chunk of the feminist time, money & energy circle overlapping 'trans nonsense' and, necessarily, making the amounts available for 'prostitution', 'surragacy', etc. smaller. Or perhaps it's a pie chart.

But on the whole and unavoidable reading it through my own interpretation I agreed with the article. It's like Doc Stock is me, but taller, thinner, smarter, braver, better dressed....

Academia always thinks it's right. Judith Butler thinks she gets to trounce JK Rowling on gender issues because of her academic credentials. But the world is changing. And academics, who used to hold all the power, are furious that ordinary people, whose views used to be restricted to letters to the editor,care now being heard.

K Stock is probably no different from Judith Butler or the VC of Sussex in this regard.

Gender critics have KJK and JKR as potential gurus/spokespeople/leaders - the academics have a role to play but they are not necessarily driving the debate in the way they want/think.

I have a foot in both camps, being involved in academia and outside work. It always surprises me how far removed the conversations within the university are from issues and conversations in the practitioner or third-sector spheres. Or the political sphere. This is in an applied social science. Why are academic conferences so separate from practitioner conferences? Both are using the same evidence base after all. Both are hoping to influence policy makers. Why not integrate these activities?

Why do universities witter on about impact but keep themselves at such a critical distance from real life work?

Even more alarming is that a small proportion of the seminar topics that I see circulated on university email are verging on incomprehensible, nay, even nonsensical. If these were described in the tabloids, there would be a field day!

I am aware of the threads on surrogacy and pornography and prostitution and have learnt a lot from them.

I do wonder if KS maybe meant academic feminists need to move on, but I agree the wording is clumsy. I think I read something fairly recently (Twix?) that suggests she is tired and has had enough, which is understandable after what she has been through.

However, I agree with her on boys/girls, for example. When the reaction to that is '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' I feel that tone is directed to me as well as KS. I don't like being spoken to like that and my reaction is 'oh well, another reason why I am not a feminist'. It's not the discussions as such, it's the dismissive, haughty tones employed.

At Sussex, ONE fellow academic supported Stock.

ONE.

This is problematic.

It is indeed. And it speaks to the culture inside universities of not wanting to be cancelled, of not wanting to find yourself on a UCU blacklist (I'm thinking here of their previous efforts to "hunt down" GC staff) or find yourself at the receiving end of a terrifying, career-ending student protest, like Stock did.

A separate point is the one @MarieDeGournay made about how "fake facts" and all sorts of shite peddled on the internet are taken as being just as valid as peer-reviewed good quality research*. It's inclusivity taken to the extreme.

(*And yes, I am aware of all the flaws of published research. I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head but there is a website that tracks all the papers that are later quietly retracted. It's quite the eyeopener.)

Stock is clearly still upset about what happened to her and rightly so. But I seem to recall that in an earlier piece she spoke about administrators supporting her, and there was also an article in the New Statesman for which some of her colleagues in philosophy were interviewed who said they had no problem with her work. I may be misremembering but I think they even used her work on gender identity as an impact case study.

That’s perhaps not ‘public support’ but the people with the power to discipline the students and colleagues who bullied her were the higher ups. To my mind, the problem is with the way academia is (mis)managed. We still need universities and research, saying we can burn it all down seems counterproductive.

Sadly Pastor Martin Niemöller applies here.

The complicency itself is problematic.

Hiliary Cass isn't just an academic, she's actually practiced and still practices (I think, or did until recently) front line medicine. And she spoke up against the consensus, loudly. Backed up by evidence.

Obviously death threats are actually criminal and should be prosecuted.

However, I can see why academics are automatically dismissed now by many people. Because what they say, and often what they research, is all about being in an ivory tower and cushy lifestyle that most people in the real world can only dream of. And people suffer real world harms that are just not being acknowledged. As MaybeDoctor says why not join up with practitioners? I think Jo P tried to do that for prisons, saying look at the real world consequences and there have been NO REPURCUSSIONS for how she was treated by colleagues for trying to do that.

I've been in academia myself and I just don't trust academics anymore. Now I work more closely with frontline harms - particularly those experienced by children and I'm really, really angry. For the children mainly but also for the low paid, minimum wage staff trying to pick up the pieces of the harm caused, like TAs. The people without a voice and themselves victim to sacking if they speak up, even when they're speaking up for safeguarding (many, many cases of this), unlike academics who seemingly don't get fired even when found to have bullied a colleague in a court of law.

I'm sorry but dealing with the consequences in reality just doesn't compare to having to argue with tin foil hatters or other captured academics and those academics who've stayed silent should hang their heads with shame because they could have spoken up and chose not to.

I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head but there is a website that tracks all the papers that are later quietly retracted. It's quite the eyeopener

Retraction Watch. Knew that information was somewhere in the recesses of my mind!

I was merely pointing out conflicting statements also in the public domain. Ultimately, we may never know the full story as I can’t imagine any Sussex academics will talk publicly now that their employer is appealing the judgment.

There are how many other academic institutions cross the country to whom this STILL remains a HUGE issue.

There should be a damn burst moment on this if academics really see their entire integrity at risk.

Hard to say … it’s all turning into a big showdown between the OfS and ‘EDI academia’. To really bring it all down you would have to get rid of Advance HE and its various charter mark schemes, and you would probably also have to engage with Universities UK. This isn’t so much about individual academics but about structures.

Re KS and assisted dying. I’m a nurse who has worked in end of life and palliative care for a good chunk of my career. I’m broadly in favour of the idea of assisted suicide, but it needs to be thought through extremely carefully. I’m concerned by the current proposed legislation and by those who are so keen to bring it in without sufficient parliamentary scrutiny. The moist eyed noisy activists might think they are on the right side of history, but they really don’t like being asked for the details about how it will work in practice. Can anyone see any parallels?

'The moist eyed noisy activists '

'rich liberals living in north London going, ‘It’d be nice to have a service that can off me in my penthouse.'

What is it with opponents of assisted dying that they feel the need to be so sneery about those who support it?

I respect that you, CarefulN0w, and KS have a different perspective on this difficult issue, and you are 100% entitled to your opinion, but how about reciprocating that respect?

Tbh I have seen a sizeable amount of emotional abuse thrown at people who have concerns about this being pushed through by better off people without concerns to proper safeguarding of the disabled, old, mentality ill and the poor (there are concerning examples of this in Canada). It's brushed away as being cruel to let people not have the decision, with no further comments about safeguarding apart from 'it will be fine and we will stop coercion'.

Unfortunately since the police, the justice system and the NHS already have great difficulty in recognising coercive behaviour and there's little effort being paid to tackle this lack of awareness (contrast with the big push for awareness of LGBT issues).

So I do think there a lack of trust going on (again) which is forming part of a pattern and there is a lack of self awareness from activists trying to push assisted dying through - who perversely are demonstrating emotional blackmail tactics to do so whilst also claiming emotional blackmail will not be used to coerce people into assisted suicide.

The optics aren't great and when put into the context of the wider political landscape, I'm hardly surprised frustration at the tone deafness from better off quarters is coming out.

I don't think saying someone is 'sneering' for making that observation is much better if I'm perfectly honest.

@RedToothBrush No activist is as entrenched as the Church and many doctors. The voices for assisted dying have long been drowned out. The sad thing is the private members’ bill is the wrong vehicle and it should have been a properly thought through bill.

It's not about drowning anyone out.

If the idea is good enough and well thought out enough then the church and doctors are irrelevant because the case will be well thought out and articulated. And there will be good counter arguments to concerns.

What's fascinating in this sense is that it's not being put forward by the Labour Cabinet as a bill. Why?

If the argument is compelling enough.

What's fascinating in this sense is that it's not being put forward by the Labour Cabinet as a bill. Why?

Perhaps for the same reasons that the 1967 Abortion Act was also a private members’ bill?

Or because they know it's a bit of a car crash as it stands.

@RedToothBrush The Times was asking that question on its leader page last week. The Bill isn’t good enough for its limited purpose and their view is that Starmer promised Dame Esther that it would happen and then chickened out. They then persuaded Kim L to run with it. Very few PMBs now affect contentious areas of legislation. The government is better placed to do it and can do after a PMB doesn’t become law. Most don’t. The PMB is frequently a “stalking horse” to gauge opinion. A government is far better placed to write a robust piece of legislation and get it into the statute books.

I was thinking more that it's contentious social legislation that the government would give a free vote anyway so prfers not to get involved with the controversy.

The 1968 Abortion Act was a private members bill introduced by David Steel.

The Wolfenden Committee reported in 1960 recommending legalisation but the Macmillan government that had commissioned the report refused to implement it.
The 1967 Sexual Offences Act that legalised male homosexuality in private for over-21s was introduced in the Lords as a private members bill.

It's so that mps can vote by conscience instead of being whipped, i think.