Vice-chancellors must promote free speech

VICE-CHANCELLORS have been told they must actively promote, not just protect, freedom of speech as the universities minister warns them “not to be on the wrong side of history”.

Michelle Donelan said campus chiefs would no longer be allowed to “shy away” from the “real threat” to academic freedom now that ministers are tackling it “like never before”.

Instead, they must create “a culture change” to end the increase “in physical threats and complete intolerance of opposing ideas”, which she said was endangering democracy and risked Britain tumbling down world university rankings.

Universities and students’ unions face fines of £500,000, or 2 per cent of their income, if they fail to uphold free speech duties in the Government’s new academic freedom Bill, which is in an advanced stage in Parliament.

The minister warned that “warm words and gentle prodding hasn’t worked so far, so that’s why we need legislative action” to ensure universities are a “fortress of ideas”.

Ms Donelan said “too often, university leadership turns a blind eye” to an “intolerant mob”, singling out the “deplorable” campaign against Prof Kathleen Stock, who quit Sussex University last year in a trans row, and LSE students who hounded the Israeli ambassador.

“This intolerant few have decided that protecting people from offence is more important than advancing human knowledge … Let me take a moment to inform the intolerant few – their brief period of power is over,” she added.

Addressing vice-chancellors and staff, Ms Donelan told a Policy Exchange event in London yesterday: “Do not be on the wrong side of history. Do not allow the history books to record your name as part of the small cabal of the intolerant.”

She said “universities won’t just have to protect free speech, they will have to promote it”, and will receive extensive guidance from a new free speech champion in the Office for Students, the regulator, to stop debate being “whittled away by wokery”.

The new Bill will give academics and students a direct route for compensation if they are censored or silenced, through a new legal tort, which has been welcomed by scholars.