‘Free speech is being stifled at universities’

UNIVERSITIES risk creating a generation of conformist students who are “taught to see themselves as vulnerable” by stifling free speech, a parliamentary committee has been told.

Academics told the Joint Human Rights Committee of their concern that policies drawn up by university management and student unions to ban “offensive” speech on grounds of sexual discrimination, homophobia or transphobia were having a chilling effect on debate and discussion among students.

But Prof Colin Riordan, vice-chancellor of Cardiff University, said it was “ridiculous” to suggest that universities were unjustifiably interfering with free speech, insisting they upheld the principle of open debate so far as was possible under the law.

Harriet Harman, the committee’s chair and Labour’s former deputy leader, hit back by asking: “Isn’t it empowering women for them to be able to shut up misogynist men?”

Joanna Williams, of the University of Kent’s unit for the enhancement of learning and teaching, told the committee of MPS and peers that free speech was “under threat in universities”.

She said: “They are taught to see themselves as vulnerable. They are taught that they might see some things as offensive. They are taught that the political point is more important than arriving at a concept of truth.”