‘Ignore students’ discomfort’

STUDENTS should be made to feel “uncomfortable”, the incoming chairman of the Office for Students has said, as he insisted that the new watchdog would not curtail free speech.

Sir Michael Barber, who will head the new higher education regulator, has warned that those who try to limit debate for fear of offending their peers are embarking on a “slippery slope”.

He said that the OFS would adopt “the widest possible definition of freedom of speech: namely anything within the law”, and urged all universities to follow suit. Writing in the Times Higher Education magazine, he said: “Ideally, we will never have to intervene, but if we do, it will be to widen freedom of speech rather than restrict it.”

Sir Michael recounted a conversation he had had with a student who agreed free speech was important but who also raised concerns that the discussion of identity issues could make some students feel uncomfortable.

Sir Michael said: “Comfortable is the start of a slippery slope towards ‘complacent’ or ‘self-satisfied’. And doesn’t much of the most profound learning require discomfort?”