‘Cancelled’ academics must be able to sue, says minister
“CANCELLED” academics must be able to sue universities, the minister leading the Government’s war on woke campuses has warned vice-chancellors.
The Government will “make sure that academics and speakers who have their free speech rights wrongly infringed” will “have the right to go to court for compensation”, said Claire Coutinho, the education minister.
The MP is spearheading a fightback against vice-chancellors and peers who have sought to scrap a planned tort in the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill that will give academics and students the power to sue universities for breaching their free speech rights.
As the Bill returns to the Commons today, Ms Coutinho told The Daily Telegraph the law was necessary to secure “cultural change” on campus.
She said that in recent years there had been “a disturbing trend of forcing people into silence if they dare to go against what has become a progressive monoculture”. She added: “Speaking invitations have been cancelled, visiting fellowships have been withdrawn, and academics have been subject to intimidation for taking part in debates on controversial issues.
“Even more worrying is the chilling creep of self-censorship. One in three academics in the UK report that they self-censor because they worry about the negative consequences that might come from speaking their mind. The tort provides a legal backstop for the duties in this legislation.”
The legislation follows incidents in which academics have been “cancelled” over their opinions, including Prof Kathleen Stock, who resigned from Sussex University after what she described as a “witch-hunt” because of her views on transgender issues.
The University of Warwick students’ union has quit the National Union of Students (NUS) over its anti-semitism scandal. It cited how the NUS had been “condemned...for anti-semitism” and had “become a divisive union increasingly disregarded by lawmakers from parties across the political spectrum”.