Academics at Exeter University say they feel coerced into supporting a Stonewall-influenced “inclusive practitioners commitment” agenda — the online document, produced by the institution’s “LGBTQ+ colleague and student” group, asks staff to make six pledges and prove they are “the kind of person that LGBTQ+ people can confide in and feel safe around” (Mail, Telegraph).
Among the pledges is a promise to “affirm trans staff and students” by using their chosen names and pronouns. Another pledge commits academics to seeking out LGBTQ+ people’s contributions to their teaching subject.
Lecturers must also agree to “educate” themselves about how anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment can be perpetuated through “micro-aggressions, dog whistles and talking points”. Additionally, they have promise to firmly oppose transphobia, bi-erasure, acephobia (discrimination against asexual people) and intersexism (a term for prejudice against people with variations in their sex characteristics).
However, academics at the prestigious Russell Group institution have criticised the document, describing it as a tool to crush dissent against gender ideology. Rather than promoting inclusion, they say the pledge seeks to coerce staff into adopting a certain set of beliefs.
Speaking under condition of anonymity, one academic who refused to sign the pledge expressed fears of potential repercussions: “If I am noticed, someone will complain about me and the university will try to sack me,” they said. “Even if they don’t succeed, the process will be brutal – the disciplinary process is itself a brutal punishment.”
Commenting on Exeter’s plans, Dr Edward Skidelsky, a philosophy lecturer who is also a director of the Committee for Academic Freedom, said: “Schemes like this are coercive and intended to put pressure on people who are gender critical”.
“You will be made visible if you sign up because a badge will be displayed on your staff profile. So, if you don’t sign it can be easily identified and mean you will possibly targeted by student activists.”
Exeter University is part of the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index, which ranks employers on how LGBTQ+-friendly their working environments are. It is also a member of the charity’s controversial Diversity Champions Scheme, which has been criticised for encouraging employers to stifle free speech and debate concerning trans issues.
News of Exeter’s new LGTBQ+ initiative comes just months after it emerged that King’s College London (KCL) – another prestigious Russell Group institution – may be breaking equality law having decided to bar staff from promotion if they don’t agree to support its pro-trans diversity policy.
Dr John Armstrong, a reader in financial mathematics at the institution, first raised concerns about the EDI policy internally back in 2022. When nothing happened, he approached the gender-critical campaign group Sex Matters to ask whether the rule was lawful.
Sex Matters then commissioned a barrister to look at the case, and she found KCL’s policy was potentially in breach of the Equality Act 2010 and the Employment Act, and that if KCL persists in placing a requirement upon applications for promotion that they demonstrate their support of the institution’s EDI ambitions, it could find itself in breach of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, which is expected to come into force later this year.
The legal opinion, by Akua Reindorf KC, found that KCL’s “various policies, training materials and guidance relating to the protected characteristics of sex and gender reassignment are incorrect, as a matter of law, in several substantial respects”.
Speaking to the Telegraph in the wake of this bombshell legal opinion, FSU General Secretary Toby Young said: “At the FSU, we are constantly having to remind universities that their understanding of equality law is based on poor advice from activist organisations and the Equality Act does not, in fact, impose a legal obligation on them to enforce gender identity ideology or critical race theory.”
He added: “When this first started happening, I gave organisations like Stonewall the benefit of the doubt, assuming that the lawyers they employed just weren’t very good. But I now suspect that they are deliberately misrepresenting equality law in an effort to persuade universities – and not just universities – that any departure from their ideological agenda is unlawful.”
