Universities must put academic freedom above their commercial interests, the government’s free speech tsar has said.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Professor Arif Ahmed said vice-chancellors must “show backbone” by upholding their commitment to free speech even when it jeopardises lucrative contracts. Here’s an extract:
Prof Ahmed, the director of freedom of speech and academic freedom at the Office for Students (OfS), suggested that many universities are “not doing their due diligence” before entering into research partnerships with foreign states, warning that these arrangements are making them vulnerable to free speech clampdowns.
“Universities need to understand that their reputational interests are less important than academic freedom,” he said.
“If a foreign country tries to threaten a university into suppressing the speech of one of its academics, it’s the job of the vice-chancellor to show backbone in that case.”
His comments come after repeated warnings that China has threatened to remove funding or investment from universities if they do not clamp down on academics critical of Beijing.
Asked whether he was particularly concerned about China, the free speech tsar said there were fears that some countries may be using academic partnerships as “instruments for spying on or for intimidating or for harassing people in this country”.
“Suppose you have an academic who expresses concerns about the human rights record of Country X, for instance. And then the ambassador of Country X talks to the vice-chancellor and says, ‘well, you know that grant we were going to give you, we might not give it to you now’,” he said.
“Then the vice-chancellor of the university has a word with the academic and says, ‘you better tone it down a bit’, in a vaguely threatening way. That’s contrary to everything university is for.”
It comes after FSU member Michelle Shipworth, an associate professor at University College London (UCL), was forced to drop an entire module on her energy and social sciences course after Chinese students complained about some of its content.
Her head of department at UCL told her he was taking action because “in order to be commercially viable”, the university’s courses “need to retain a good reputation amongst future Chinese applicants”.
Prof Ahmed also warned that Britain is sliding down the Academic Freedom Index, currently ranking 66th on the global free speech chart.
“[The UK’s position] has dropped radically over the past few years, and is behind pretty much every other European country,” he said.
“We think that’s an indicator of the significance of the scale of this issue… It’s a vitally serious issue, and it remains fundamental to democracy.”
Prof Ahmed went on to suggest that universities should consider allowing students to discuss certain topics under Chatham House rules, which prohibit participants from revealing the source of particular comments made during discussions.
“We think that there could be some quite positive things that we can do in that area… Should there be deep listening? Should there be students being encouraged to write essays defending the other side? Should there be Chatham House rules?”
The interview is worth reading in full.
