It’s little more than two months since the FSU’s grant-giving project, the Mactaggart Programme, was established, and it’s already helping to fund the free speech fightback at UK universities. Administered by the FSU, the Mactaggart Programme exists to provide grants to individuals, societies and other groups that wish to provide opportunities for debate, open discussion and intellectual exploration.
As many members and supporters will be aware, when university bosses recently ordered Bristol’s Feminist Society to contribute £340 towards the security costs for a panel discussion on “advocating, litigating and protecting women’s rights” , the event nearly fell through. But in an important victory for free speech, the FSU was able to meet these costs thanks to the Mactaggart Programme. (For more on this story, see this article in the Telegraph.)
Then, earlier this month, 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, the FSU stepped in and offered to pay the sum of £528 via the Mactaggart Programme.
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 in.
Having met this demand, she was then asked to provide a risk assessment and to control any protest that might take place against her own event.
This Kafkaesque exchange became even more absurd when Ms Bentley-Astor duly submitted the risk assessment, only to be told that it had “further highlighted the large scale of the planned protest for this event and the disruption it would inevitably cause” and that the event would therefore have to be “postponed”.
In our letter to St John’s and the University of Cambridge, we point out that this bureaucratic decision-making process fails to uphold the College’s duties with respect to freedom of speech, or to observe University regulations on the same. (You can read our letter here). We also sought assurance that the event could go ahead and reiterated our commitment to meeting all relevant security costs.
As it happens, Ms Bentley-Astor was able to put together a much-curtailed version of the event, with 25 of the 160 originally registered attendees managing to squeeze themselves into the offices of a Fellow at another college who was so outraged at the cancellation that they offered up their rooms at the last minute. Although there wasn’t space or equipment for a screening to take place, the impromptu event did at least give students a valuable opportunity to discuss the film with its director.
If you’d like (or need) to apply to the Mactaggart Programme please contact us here – students, student societies and academics are all eligible.
