Free speech is at risk in trans row, Oxford dons tell students

Academics intervene over attempts to block an appearance at university by gender-critical feminist

OXFORD dons have warned students that freedom of speech is at risk as a transgender row engulfs the university.

More than 40 academics, including Prof Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, and Prof Nigel Biggar, the theologian, have intervened, in a letter to The Daily Telegraph, backing a planned appearance at the Oxford Union by Kathleen Stock, a leading feminist.

In the biggest row to erupt at the university since Rhodes Must Fall, students have tried to cancel Dr Stock’s talk, claiming that she is transphobic for her view that it is fiction to claim that “trans women are women”.

The controversy comes amid a spate of free speech clashes at universities featuring speakers with gender-critical views, including attempts by the University of Bristol to ban the public from a feminist society talk, and activists at the University of Edinburgh preventing the screening of a women’s rights documentary.

The letter from the Oxford dons is one of the most significant interventions by academics in the debate over free speech on campus.

The academics say they possess “a range of different political beliefs, Left and Right”, but are united in their belief that “universities exist, among other things, to promote free inquiry and the disinterested pursuit of the truth by means of reasoned argument”.

The letter adds: “Professor Stock believes that biological sex in humans is real and socially salient, a view which until recently would have been so commonplace as to hardly merit asserting. Whether or not one agrees with Professor Stock’s views, there is no plausible and attractive ideal of academic freedom, or of free speech more generally, which would condemn their expression as outside the bounds of permissible discourse.”

The row at Oxford first erupted in April when the LGBTQ+ society said that it was “dismayed and appalled” that the debating society had “decided to platform the transphobic and trans exclusionary speaker Kathleen Stock”.

It accused the Union of “disregarding the welfare of its LGBTQ+ members under the guise of free speech”.

The Junior Common Rooms of Christ Church, St Edmund Hall, St Anne’s and St Hilda’s have backed the LGBTQ+ society and passed motions calling for her invitation “to be rescinded in support of the trans community”.

The dispute grew last week when Oxford’s Student Union (SU) voted to sever ties with the 200-year-old debating society, saying it had a “toxic culture of bullying and harassment”. The move would prevent the Union from having a stall at the freshers’ fair, which is an important source of membership signups that provide it with funds.

In a statement, the SU said “the motion was unrelated to Dr Stock’s intended talk” and said that the professor was not discussed at the meeting.

It said that it was “committed to freedom of expression and freedom of speech, and will defend the right of people to have controversial and unpopular ideas debated as an integral part of university life and the university experience”.

However, dons criticised the SU’S decision to cut ties with the Union. They said that threatening the Union’s financial model by trying to prevent it

from having a stall at freshers’ fairs is “dangerous territory” and resorting to “coercion and financial threats when unable to secure one’s preferred outcome in debate would represent a profound failure to live up to” ideals such as the disinterested pursuit of truth.

Dr Stock told The Telegraph that she was pleased that some academics had recognised the value of the Oxford Union defending free speech. She said: “It’s heartening to see their commitment to standing up in public against authoritarian tendencies, both in the student body and amongst faculty, who think they have a right to control what everyone else hears.”

The academics were backed last night by Claire Coutinho, the education minister. She said: “Student debaters shouldn’t be punished for encouraging the free exchange of ideas. Our newly passed Freedom of Speech Act will make sure that universities promote free speech and that those who have their free speech rights unlawfully restricted on campus can seek redress.”

The Union has said that the talk with Dr Stock will go ahead, despite planned protests.