We’ve written to Professor Karen O’Brien, the new Vice-Chancellor of Durham University, objecting to a requirement that those applying for the role of Assistant Professor in Durham’s International Relations department provide a statement affirming their commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. We are concerned that requiring applicants to profess their fealty to a particular belief system could be a breach of the Equality Act 2010, as well as Article 10

We have written to Professor Martin Jones, Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive of Staffordshire University, in defence of our member Professor James Treadwell, a criminologist. He has been placed under investigation by the University after he engaged in the debate over gender self-identification and the risk it poses to female inmates in women’s prisons, following a complaint about his comments from trans activists.

We have written to Professor Peter Mathieson, the Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Edinburgh, to complain about the University’s inadequate defence of Professor Emeritus Sir Tom Devine and Jonathan Hearn, Professor of Historical Sociology, both of whom have been smeared as “racists” by Sir Geoff Palmer, Chancellor of Heriot-Watt University and Chair of the Edinburgh Slavery and Colonialism Legacy Review Group. Sir Geoff’s comments were in response to criticisms raised about

We’ve written to Dr Michael Spence, the Vice-Chancellor of UCL, about the requirement that anyone in a grade 8 job at the University, or applying for one, has to remove ‘dead white able-bodied European men’ from reading lists, ‘check their privilege’ and ‘acknowledge the prejudice baked into their field’ – a requirement of UCL’s ‘Liberating the Curriculum’ policy. We think this is an infringement of their right to free speech

We’ve written to Lord Wharton, the Chair of the Office for Students, asking him to pay close attention to the current investigation of Tim Luckhurst, the Principal of South College, Durham who is subject to a witch-hunt at the University following his invitation to Rod Liddle to give an after-dinner speech on Friday 3 December. Following his receipt of this letter, Lord Wharton gave an interview to the Telegraph in

We have written to Mr Alan Bookbinder, the Master of Downing College, Cambridge about its new ‘Report Racism Guidance‘ which replicates many of the legally questionable aspects of the University’s controversial ‘Report + Support’ policy which was withdrawn by the Vice-Chancellor last May after the Free Speech Union wrote to him to complain about it. You can read about this letter, and why we’re concerned about Downing’s new guidance, in

We’ve written to Professor Sally Mapstone, the Vice-Chancellor of St Andrews, about the University’s insistence that all incoming students should receive diversity training and then provide the ‘correct’ answers in a ‘quiz’ following the training before they are allowed to proceed with their studies. For instance, they’re asked to agree with the following statement: ‘Acknowledging your personal guilt is a useful start point in overcoming unconscious bias.’ In our letter,

We were contacted anonymously by a student at Aston University in Birmingham after he’d been handed a guidance document by the School of Social Sciences and Humanities that contained a long list of banned words and phrases. They included ‘mankind’, ‘native’ and ‘mixed race’. We have written to the Vice-Chancellor objecting to this and asking for his assurance that any students using the proscribed language will not be penalised in

We have written to Professor David Maguire, interim Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sussex, about the disgraceful attempt by campus activists to bully Professor Kathleen Stock into silence. When Prof Stock returned to work earlier this week she was confronted with stickers outside her office demanding she be fired for being a ‘transphobe’ and a ‘terf’. We have asked Prof Maguire to assure us that action will be taken, both

David Isaac, the former Chair of Stonewall and now Provost of Worcester College, Oxford, recently issued an apology on behalf of the College for hosting an event earlier this month for the Wilberforce Academy, which is part of Christian Concern. In a letter to students and staff, he said booking the event “was a serious failure that has caused significant distress” to students who discovered a leaflet from the event