Our Remainer Universities (Pt II)
As yet more evidence of anti-Brexit bias emerges...
Universities faced more allegations of anti-Brexit bias last night as it was claimed a student graduation ceremony was ruined by a professor using it to warn about leaving the EU.
in another example of pro-remain bias, the master of Downing College, Cambridge used his position to urge students to campaign for a second referendum to overturn the Leave vote.
And a history graduate from the University of Warwick put vote Leave posters up on campus but they were pulled down within hours with students branding them ‘racist’.
the revelations follow the furore over the decision by tory whip Chris Heaton-Harris to send a letter to higher education institutions asking what they are teaching about the UK’s departure from the EU.
since last year’s referendum, lecturers have been caught handing out pro-EU pamphlets and inviting students to meetings held by the pro-single market group Open Britain.
the Daily Mail can reveal that this week, a professor who has received EU funding towards his work described the letter as a ‘witch hunt’ which bore the hallmarks of an authoritarian regime.
Professor Laurent Pech, ‘Jean Monnet chair’ in EU public law at Middlesex University, has previously described Brexit as being akin to ‘jumping off a building’ and accused the Leave campaign of ‘dishonesty on an industrial scale’.
in another message, Professor Pech wrote: ‘ You can expect more Brexit-driven witch-hunts to distract from [referendum] broken promises.’
Many lecturers receive EU funding for research from the Jean Monnet programme, which enables them to describe themselves as a ‘Jean Monnet chair’.
they receive up to 50,000 euros (£44,260) over three years and are expected to carry out research, hold outreach programmes and publish books into aspects of the EU.
On the day of the referendum, Professor Pech warned of the ‘perils’ of direct democracy and said the electorate was not ‘well-informed and engaged’.
A Middlesex University spokesman said Professor Pech had ‘academic freedom to express his views’.
Opinion polls have shown more than eight in ten academics voted to stay in the EU. And figures showed British universities receive more than £ 1billion in research funding each year.
tory MPs have demanded universities do more to ‘ present a factual account of Brexit’. And yesterday Andrea Leadsom, the Leader of the House of Commons, offered some support for Mr Heaton- Harris. she told MPs: ‘Our universities are total bastions of free speech, and they should welcome exploration of all sides of an argument.’ More examples of pro-remain senti- ment at Britain’s universities emerged yesterday.
Melanie Jennings, 55, said that at her daughter’s graduation ceremony at University College London last year, the provost Michael Arthur used his speech to warn about Brexit. UCL apologised that the family felt offended by the speech, saying the university ‘ would never try to influence the political views of our students or staff’.