Law professor lives in fear of transgender activist threats

University beefs up security amid concern for safety of academic who has been ‘gender critical’

WHEN Prof Rosa Freedman went to check her pigeon-hole last week, she found something unexpected. It was not a letter of support, nor was it hate mail. It was a panic alarm.

Such is the concern among Reading University chiefs for the academic’s safety that they conducted a full security review, which included checking CCTV coverage – she has been followed around campus – and installing an entry phone in her office.

As an expert in international human rights law, Prof Freedman has worked in conflict zones around the world, but nowhere has she felt so under attack as at her own university.

“There is a sense of dread coming on to campus,” she told The Daily Telegraph. “It is quite unsettling to know that even something as basic as picking up my post from my pigeon-hole can leave me feeling on edge.

“It makes it quite difficult walking into a coffee shop or around campus when I know people are monitoring where I am and watching me.”

Prof Freedman is one of a growing number of “gender critical” academics, who firmly believe that sex should not be conflated with gender and that women’s spaces – such as changing rooms, prisons, sports teams and shortlists – should be protected.

She decided to speak out on the matter last summer, as part of a government consultation on proposed reforms to the Gender Recognition Act, which would make it easier for transgender people to get “legal recognition” for the gender they feel they identify with, rather than having to undergo a sex change. Under existing laws, a trans person has to undergo a two-year waiting period, a review or appearance before a specialist panel, as well as paying £140 before being able to change their gender legally.

Over the past year, Prof Freedman says she has faced death threats, intimidation and harassment – including having urine poured on her office door – and there have been repeated attempts to get her sacked from her post.

Prof Kathleen Stock, an expert in analytic philosophy at Sussex University, felt compelled to intervene in the debate at a similar time and has faced a no-platforming campaign and plenty of online abuse for her views.

“I was immensely frustrated by what I saw was the shameful silence of philosophers,” she said. “The position that ‘you are who you say you are’ simply doesn’t fit with most of Western philosophy.

“It was clear that people were frightened

‘There is a sense of dread coming on to campus. [Even] picking up my post ... can leave me feeling on edge’

to speak out. I thought we need to break cover and get this conversation started.”

Prof Stock has started compiling a dossier of cases where fellow academics have had to self-censor for fear of a backlash from the transgender lobby, or even from their own colleagues.

Dr Jane Hamlin, president of the Beaumont Society, an organisation that supports transgender people, agreed that the debate has become strained at times. “I think people feel threatened and that’s the trouble,” she said.

“People feel their right to exist is threatened, probably on both sides, and that perhaps makes people more aggressive. We do believe that people should treat us with respect and recognise that we are a vulnerable group.”