The FSU helped deliver a significant victory for free speech and academic freedom at a prestigious Russell Group university this week.
When senior administrators at Cardiff University decided an event on ‘Academic Freedom in the UK’ due to be hosted on campus by academic staff members on May 23rd wasn’t “internal”, it left organisers struggling to find £1,500 to pay for security and venue hire. In the face of these costs, the event was placed in jeopardy.
Thankfully, however, the FSU was able to step in, and, via our Mactaggart Programme, fund the venue and security costs to ensure the event can go ahead. (The event is open to academics and non-academics alike, and you can register for tickets here).
One of the invited speakers at this event is Nigel Biggar CBE, Emeritus Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford and author of Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning, a book that was cancelled prior to publication by its original publisher, Bloomsbury, because staff found its overarching conclusion – that colonialism wasn’t all bad – to be in poor taste.
Another speaker is Jo Phoenix, Professor of Criminology at the University of Reading, and someone who recently won a claim for unfair dismissal against the Open University having suffered victimisation and harassment over her gender critical beliefs.
It remains unclear what first attracted the university to categorising in the way that it did a campus event involving an academic who dissents from critical race theory, and a gender critical feminist scholar who refuses to accept the basic tenets of gender ideology. We certainly saw no clear rationale for the decision while assisting Cardiff Academic Freedom Association, the group behind the event.
To our case and legal teams, which deal with event cancellations on a regular basis, it looked a lot like an attempt to make the event unfeasible.
Sadly, this isn’t the first time we’ve had to intervene in this way.
In April 2023 university bosses ordered Bristol’s Feminist Society to contribute to the security costs for a panel discussion on “advocating, litigating and protecting women’s rights”, and the event nearly fell through.
One of the invited external speakers was Akua Reindorf KC, a barrister ranked in Tier 1 of the Legal 500 2023 for ‘Employment’, and, since 2022, also a Commissioner for the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). You might think Ms Reindorf is exactly the type of high-profile, high calibre external speaker that a prestigious Russell Group university like Bristol would be proud to welcome onto campus.
Except, of course, that the employment, discrimination, and human rights law specialist had previously drawn the ire of transgender activists having criticised Stonewall in a report for the University of Essex on the no-platforming of two feminist law professors. And once that fact became known, senior administrators panicked themselves into imposing a series of strict conditions on the event, including that it “be limited to staff and students only on the grounds of health and safety and the deterrence of public disorder”. The feminist society was also ordered to pay £340 towards security costs, which left the group on the brink of axing the event.
Thanks to our Mactaggart Programme we were able to strike a blow against this knee-jerk safetyism by funding a new venue off campus.
The Mactaggart Programme was quickly pressed into action again a few months later, when St John’s College Cambridge demanded that undergraduate Charlie Bentley-Astor pay all the security costs arising from a film screening that had attracted the wrath of student activists.
Ms Bentley-Astor had invited the film’s director, Stephen Shaw, to discuss Birthgap, which explores why the birthrate is falling in so many Western countries, with students as part of the screening, which was due to take place on May 12th.
Student activists busied themselves with block booking tickets under false names and threatening loud protests outside – all because Shaw had previously appeared on Dr Jordan Peterson’s podcast, which, in the eyes of the students, make him “alt-Right adjacent”.
In addition to being attacked by student activists, Ms Bentley-Astor had to contend with increasingly onerous stipulations from St John’s officials, including a demand that she pay all the security costs related to the event.
As she was unable to cover these costs, the FSU stepped and offered to pay the sum of £528 via the Mactaggart Programme. (You can read our letter to St John’s College here.)
Sadly, these aren’t the only instances where the ostensibly neutral language of “security costs” has been invoked for altogether more political purposes.
A student society previously faced a £500 security bill from Bristol University’s students’ union to allow Mark Regev, then the Israeli Ambassador, to give a talk, while charging nothing to allow his Palestinian counterpart to do the same. The Jewish Society at Lancaster University was also asked to pay £1,500 towards ‘security costs’ as a condition of inviting Mark Regev. Because the Society couldn’t afford this, the event was cancelled.
However, we’re optimistic that English universities won’t use the ‘security costs’ excuse in an effort to cancel student events in future.
That’s because during the passage of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill through Parliament last year, the government accepted an amendment to the legislation that the FSU had been campaigning for that will make it harder for English universities and students’ unions to pass on security costs to student societies other than in exceptional circumstances.
You can read FSU General Secretary Toby Young’s letter to the then Higher Education Minister and Education Secretary thanking them for introducing the amendment, and the Education Secretary’s subsequent reply, here.)
