In a major victory for free speech on campus, the Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, signed the orders to commence most of the outstanding clauses of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act on 28th April 2025.
The FSU campaigned for this Act for four years. We lobbied for the Bill when the Government was weighing up whether it was needed, advised the Government on what to include in it, defended it from critics in the House of Commons and the House of Lords, helped to amend it and, finally, mobilised our allies in Parliament to get it over the line.
Yet that wasn’t enough. When the General Election was called last year, the Act’s most important clauses still hadn’t come in to force – they were due to be commenced on 1st August 2024 – and Bridget Phillipson revoked the commencement orders, effectively killing the Act. We challenged her decision in the High Court and, just before a hearing was due to take place in January, Phillipson announced she would implement most of the Act after all.
The Bill does two things that will help secure academic freedom.
First, it will impose a new legal duty on higher education providers (HEPs) to uphold and promote free speech.
Second, it will create a new enforcement mechanism, so HEPs aren’t able to ignore this duty. A Director of Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom, Dr Arif Ahmed, has been appointed to the Office for Students (OfS) whom academics can complain to if they believe their speech rights under the 2023 have been breached. This new ‘free speech tsar’ will have the power to fine HEPs if he finds them at fault.
Taken together, this package of measures will go some way towards addressing the free speech crisis in our universities. About 20% of the 3,750+ cases we’ve dealt with in the past five years have involved universities, and we believe that in almost every one the student or academic who’s got into trouble would have been in a stronger position if this new law had been on the statute books.
