Britain needs a university of dangerous ideas too

But new US anti-woke institution doesn’t mean we should give up on fixing the existing bodies

Higher education is in a sorry state. While the Latin mottos of Yale, LSE and other universities proclaim truth to be their highest calling, this mission has increasingly been superseded by the rise of “woke” ideology, namely the redistribution of status, power and resources from “privileged” to historically victimised groups. In these institutions, the subjective feelings of the most sensitive member of such a group, or of an activist claiming to represent them, override the freedom of academics and students to research, teach and express their thoughts.

In this context, I am pleased to be part of a network of scholars associated with a much-needed new venture, the University of Austin. Announced this week, it is one of very few universities that are explicitly dedicated to the principles of academic freedom and Enlightenment reason. Unlike others that have gone before, such as Ralston College in the US or Buckingham University in Britain, it has attracted a truly glittering roster of academics and journalists.

The cancellation of high-profile academics such as Kathleen Stock and the US philosopher Peter Boghossian, both University of Austin associates, is just the tip of a vast iceberg of illiberalism. The two arms of campus authoritarianism are punishment and political discrimination. These induce a chilling effect among nonconformists, resulting in self-censorship. This, in turn, keeps dissenters out while ejecting heretics.

A University and College Union survey in 2017 found that 11 per cent of British academics had been disciplined or threatened with disciplinary action for academic speech. Thirty-five per cent of them self-censored. The situation is even worse for political minorities such as conservatives. In a series of surveys, I found that one in three US conservative academics and graduate students in the social sciences and humanities had been disciplined or threatened with discipline, with seven in 10 self-censoring. In Britain, the equivalent figure is one in two.

The University of Austin is being established by refugees from mainstream academia and journalism. One of its goals is to provide a home for contentious scholars, allowing them a conduit through which they can transmit heretical findings to a new generation. Questions such as whether being female is a matter of will or biology, whether cultural beliefs affect differences in group outcomes, or whether diversity can impair organisational performance, are too hot to handle in contemporary academia. Here, the University of Austin’s mission is critical, and will succeed.

However, it is unlikely to be enough to fix academia on its own. Some in the University of Austin movement believe that the project will spawn a raft of new entrants, make existing universities look bad, and kickstart a process of creative destruction in which reason drives out dogma. But I still think there is a place for intervention to fix the existing institutions. This approach is epitomised by the UK’S Academic Freedom Bill, which seeks to regulate universities so that they uphold their legal obligation to protect and promote academic freedom. Ultimately, state regulation of the existing system is vital.

Why? First, higher education is not a free market. Like the Qwerty keyboard or Google, existing institutions are protected from new entrants by so-called network effects. Established reputations, endowments and alumni all entrench the current hierarchy of elite universities. They are unlikely to be toppled by new entrants.

Second, there are various tiers of truth restricted at universities. The platinum tier involves challenges to sacred woke values around diversity, which will get you cancelled. The gold tier involves ideas that won’t get you cancelled, but are nearly impossible to publish. Silver-tier ideas are difficult to air, but not impossible – for instance, that genes greatly shape academic performance. Finally, bronze-tier ideas are not contentious, just unfashionable. Military history or classical architecture receive little funding and few posts, while race and gender studies expand by leaps and bounds.

The role of the University of Austin is to offer a haven for discussion of the platinum and gold tiers. We desperately need a new university to step up to this role here in Britain. It may yet be a niche that the University of Buckingham manages to fill.

Still, this won’t have much impact on everything else, which can only be addressed by broad-based change. The principal force for driving such change is state regulation. The Academic Freedom Bill creates an office of director of academic freedom. This will put a stop to the activist-driven punishment regime that partly accounts for chilling speech, but won’t tackle political discrimination. Here universities must underscore that it is illegal to politically discriminate, and must adopt the Kalven Report principle of political neutrality.

So, yes, we need new universities. But reform of the current system remains our best hope for saving higher education.