Welsh university defends its free speech record
CARDIFF University Vice Chancellor Colin Riordan has defended his institution against claims it is a “hostile environment for free speech”.
The university was given a “red ranking” in the Free Speech University Rankings organised by Spiked Magazine, a journal which champions “intellectual risk-taking”.
Professor Riordan appeared alongside figures linked to the magazine in the UK Parliament to give evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights as part of an investigation into freedom of speech in universities.
Spiked stated in its write-up about the institution: “Cardiff University and Cardiff University Students’ Union collectively create a hostile environment for free speech.”
It said the university “restricts offensive speech and operates an outright ban on homophobic speech” and in the section on the students’ union highlighted opposition in 2015 to prominent feminist Germaine Greer delivering a lecture.
A petition calling for her not to get to speak because of opinions that were considered offensive to transgender people gathered international attention.
But Prof Riordan argued the university’s refusal to back down demonstrated the university’s commitment to free speech.
Setting out the backdrop to the controversy, he said: “We have a prestigious lecture that’s delivered by a distinguished speaker...
“Germaine Greer was working on a book about women in power, effectively the history of feminism and essentially how it’s failed actually, which is a quite interesting topic to debate. As soon as that went public we discovered there was a petition brought by [the] women’s officer in our students’ union petitioning us to disinvite her and not allow her to speak.
“Now, for a host of reasons I felt that wouldn’t be right. I couldn’t see any justification for rescinding that invitation.
“It was on the grounds of her views on transgender issues which she wasn’t actually going to talk about anyway and I felt, well, if there is an issue there, surely that is exactly what we should be debating... I would hold that up as an example that says we actually do value these things, that we do protect academic freedom and it’s not right to say as university managers we either don’t care [about] free speech or we don’t do enough or we discourage it or we’re excessively cautious.”
Mr Riordan said the university authorities took “every step it could within the law” to ensure free speech is upheld.
Tom Slater, deputy editor of Spiked, defended the ranking, saying: “One of Cardiff’s policies operates an outright ban on homophobic propaganda in the forms of written materials, graffiti, songs or speeches. Now, I’m sure no-one in this room would think that that kind of viewpoint is acceptable – they would want to challenge it.
“But surely university is a space where somebody who wants to give a homophobic speech should be invited and then challenged and then taken to task for their ideas and there is nothing in the Equality Act which says there must be an outright ban on all forms of homophobic speech, racist, whatever.”