Sussex University faces a record fine of £585,000 over claims that it failed to uphold free speech and academic freedom, according to the Financial Times.
The FT said that the fine is expected to be imposed by the higher education regulator the Office for Students (OfS) after a three-year inquiry.
The investigation was prompted by the departure of Kathleen Stock who was a professor of philosophy at the university until 2021.
She became the subject of protests at the university’s Falmer campus and quit, saying that she felt unable to return to work, having been subject to bullying and harassment.
According to the FT, the regulator found “significant and serious breaches” of free speech and governance issues at Sussex University.
The news publisher quoted the OfS saying that a policy 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”.
The FT also quoted Sasha Roseneil, the university’s vice-chancellor, saying that the regulator had decreed “free speech absolutism as the fundamental principle” for universities.
Professor Roseneil claimed that the regulator had “refused to speak to us”, according to the FT, and she said the fine was “wholly disproportionate”.
The university had defended Professor Stock’s right to pursue her academic work and express her “lawful beliefs”, the vice-chancellor said.
She added that the ruling made it “virtually impossible for universities to prevent abuse, harassment or bullying, to protect groups subject to harmful propaganda or to determine that stereotyped assumptions should not be relied upon in the university curriculum”.
Stock was at the centre of a row about gender identification and transgender rights and said that there was a toxic environment at the university.
Some students objected to Stock’s involvement with the LGB Alliance, an advocacy organisation that opposes “the idea that gender, the way you feel or dress, is more important than biological sex”.
According to the FT, the regulator’s inquiry focused on the university’s compliance with regulations rather than Professor Stock’s specific case.
But it found “no evidence to suggest that Professor Stock’s speech during her employment at the university was unlawful”. The academic’s work covered issues of sex, gender and individual rights.
Sussex said that universities would now be exposed to regulatory risk if they had policies to protect staff and students from homophobic, racist, islamophobic, anti-semitic or other abuse.
In a first-person piece for the Politics Home website, Professor Roseneil wrote: “Sussex will not be the last to face the challenge of a debate on gender, sex and identity that has become toxic.
“Universities across England are grappling with claims and counterclaims about academic freedom and freedom of speech regarding issues of equality, identity and inclusion.
“As the protests against the war in Gaza have shown, universities will continue to be a frontline for society’s most contentious issues.”
Surely the chilling effect is that the aggressive, bigoted, authoritarian, trans ideologues and their allies have been able to create such an oppressive environment that anyone with a different view is silenced, deemed transphobic, terfs, ‘vile women’, etc.etc. And this has been going on for years. Leading to harm to individuals like Kathleen Stock who dared to (rightly and lawfully) say sex matters and got hounded out of her job for it, to our children and young people who are being fed harmful beliefs leading to harmful medical interventions; to our women, girls and society as a whole because truth and reality (including sex) matters and no amount of compelled thought or oppression changes that; and to our institutions including ones that should know better like our universities and education system, our health and care system, and our criminal justice system. Finally the tide seems to be turning on this trans ideology madness, and wider lessons need to be learnt too.
Hear hear….
It turns out that pandering to the likes of Tom Pashby and his ilk is very unprofitable both financially and in terms of reputation.
Not sure what the tariff for tick-box offences is but the Sussex University deserves all that it gets. And the trade union should get a kick up the bum too.
A win for common sense and a good news story. You may not agree with all Kathleen Stock says but in a free and fair society she should have the right to say it. Universities should be the ideal venue for proper academic debate not censorship.
It seems very strange that Ms Stock’s free speech seems to be protected but the free speech of the students objecting to her pronouncements is not. Any true “free speech absolutist” would want all free speech to be protected. The response from the university is also interesting- how would this case have been handled if a professor was making racist statements and harassing black students? Would everyone have leapt to her defence if she was discriminating against a different minority group?
But this is NOT about a Professor making racist statements and harrasing black students. That would be totally different.
As someone who would be classed as a mature student these days.
There is now a whole plethora industries based around gender politics, racial issues and any subjective cause that can generate a revenue stream. In other words “ists”, “obes” and “isms” are a money spinner. I’m not suggesting Professor Stock is or was on that bandwagon.
The problem with universities and social science subjects are they are not a science. At present the tail is wagging the dog in respect to fiction trumping fact. A lot of these subjects are pseudoscientific, unprovable and unquantifiable. Often taught by academics who really don’t seem to have a grasp on the real world and could probably be accused of magical thinking.
My graduate degree was mechanical engineering (applied science) in which things are provable and quantifiable. You can see the end result.
Some academics and students are for want of a better word “Intellectual Morons” who probably couldn’t tie their shoelaces without an instructions manual?
Free speech doesn’t entitle people to make another persons life so intolerable that they have to have a security guard in attendance and ultimately have to leave their employment. That to me equates to hate speech.
I think the fine ought to concentrate minds a little bit. I travel on the bus in Lewes Road and sometimes hear social sciences students talking about coursework. It’s full of buzzwords and gobbledygook but no real meaning.
This news makes me sick. Of course universities should create a culture and policies of resepecting vulnerable people, including people who are trangender, and their human rights.
Inevitably media coverage has talked about academic freedom and public speaking as if they are the same thing when hey are not.
But this was not about a lack of respect for ‘vulnerable’ people. It was about the use of cancel culture to silence and harass an academic who is generally held in high esteem purely because they hold different views. If such views hurt the feelings of those who the likes of you deem to be ‘vulnerable’, then tough!
the end of free speech where the BBC can edit delete and cancel opinions while being paid by the licence payers
1984 – written by Eric Blair in 1948 has come true.
dont equate not believing in made up gender ideologies with racism