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In the Media

Articles That Mention the Free Speech Union

Lecturers face backlash as report could encourage silencing of gender-critical speakers on campus

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Dr Bryn Harris, chief legal counsel at the Free Speech Union, told The Telegraph: “This paper ought to come with a prominent disclaimer, ideally along the lines of ‘Ignore this paper – it’s largely wrong’. It focuses on harassment but refuses to engage with the relevant statutory test – when is it reasonable in an academic context to perceive conduct as harassment? ‘Very rarely’ is the likely answer. It is comically ungenerous in its depiction of gender-critical beliefs.”

Ewan Somerville, The Telegraph, 10th December 2022.

Freedom of speech at universities dealt a blow by Lords rebellion

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Toby Young, founder of the Free Speech Union, said: “The Government amended the Bill to defang the statutory tort in the hope of winning round its critics in the Lords. Plainly, that hasn’t worked, so I very much hope the Government will restore the statutory tort in its original form when the Bill returns to the Commons.
“One thing is clear from today’s defeat: universities really don’t want students and academics to be able to sue universities if their speech rights are violated. Why? Because it would force them to put their house in order. To my mind, that’s the best argument for restoring the tort.”

Louisa Clarence-Smith, The Telegraph, 7th December 2022.

Legal action a “last resort” as campus free speech bill redrawn

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But Bryn Harris, chief legal counsel at the Free Speech Union, described the amendment as “disappointing”.
“The purpose of the tort is not to make university disputes costlier and nastier, but to prevent disputes arising in the first place by creating an adequate risk factor that deters heavy-handedness. That risk factor will be significantly decreased if universities will have multiple opportunities to run down the clock,” he said.

Tom Williams, Times Higher Education, 2nd December 2022.

British Government Replaces Online Safety Bill’s “Legal but Harmful” Duties

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The Free Speech Union has been lobbying the government about the impacts of the bill on freedom of expression.
FSU founder Toby Young wrote in The Spectator that the new version of “the Online Safety Bill seems, on the face of it, to be an improvement on the previous one” but that “the devil will be in the detail.”
“Another objection to the previous version is that, according to its provisions, the list of legal content that was harmful to adults was going to be included in a statutory instrument and not in the bill itself,” a Free Speech Union spokesman told The Epoch Times by email. “One concern free speech groups had is that after this list had been drawn up it could easily be added to by another statutory instrument, whether by this government or the next, creating an anti-free speech ratchet effect,” he said. “That would have been a hostage to fortune,” he added.

Owen Evans, The Epoch Times, 30th November 2022.

The good, the bad and the ugly of the new Online Safety Bill

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The new version of the Online Safety Bill seems, on the face of it, to be an improvement on the previous one. We’ll know more when it’s published – all we have to go on for now is a DCMS press release and some amendments moved by Michelle Donelan, the Digital Secretary and architect of the new Bill. The devil will be in the detail.
Let’s start with something that hasn’t got much coverage today, but which I think is important. Plans to introduce a new harmful communications offence in England and Wales, making it a crime punishable by up to two years in jail to send or post a message with the intention of causing ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’, have been scrapped.

Toby Young, The Spectator, 29th November 2022.

Peers oppose free speech bill’s prospect of “endless litigation”

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Eric Kaufmann, professor of politics at Birkbeck, University of London, co-author of a report for the Policy Exchange thinktank that was the source for the key elements of the bill including the statutory tort, and a member of the Free Speech Union’s advisory board, said: “We are concerned, but I think things are still very much in play.” He added: “Regrettably the risk of being sued tends to be required to concentrate institutional minds on upholding the law since the more proximal and frequent pressure on administrators comes from the anti-[free] speech side.”

John Morgan, Times Higher Education, 28th November 2022.

Government urged not to U-turn on free speech rights at universities

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In the letter, co-ordinated by the Free Speech Union, the academics said that critics of the Bill “underestimate the scale of the free speech crisis in our universities”. They said that critics, “for the most part” are “ideologically aligned with the enforcers of intellectual orthodoxy and therefore have not had to self-censor or contend with prolonged investigations merely for expressing their opinions, let alone the bullying and intimidation faced by academics who challenge the prevailing wisdom on campus about trans rights”. They said that “as academics who have swum against the tide, we know just how little tolerance there can be for genuinely dissenting points of view”.

Louisa Clarence-Smith, The Telegraph, 21st November 2022.

Oxford thinks woke culture has gone too far

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Speaking on proposition was Founder of the Free Speech Union (FSU) and Associate Editor of the Spectator Toby Young. Young argued that “Wanting to reduce prejudice and discrimination and improve outcomes for historically disadvantaged groups is an admirable goal…the objection to woke culture is not the end but the means used to achieve it.” In his speech Young cited examples of legitimate free speech crises around the world from the Uyghurs in China to women in Iran to Kathleen Stock who in his eyes “was essentially hounded off the Sussex University campus”.

Anvee Bhutani, The Oxford Student, 20th November 2022.

Durham University’s free speech crisis, as left-wing students look to shut down Jeremy Vine’s old student paper, shows how far it has fallen

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Universities should be places where students are exposed to a range of opinions and given an opportunity to test ideas in open discussion and debate. If students are told there’s only one acceptable view on hot topics such as gender identity and Britain’s colonial past they might as well be at a madrasa. Instead of being taught how to think, they’re being taught what to think. I’m afraid Durham is becoming such a place. The unstinting efforts of the students’ union to shut down the print version of Palatinate – for no better reason, according to its supporters, than because it subjects the union’s hard-Left officers to scrutiny – is just one example of how far this institution has fallen.

Toby Young, Mail on Sunday, 12th November 2022.

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