The long story of the University of Sussex’s dispute with Professor Kathleen Stock looks set to run for a while yet.
This week, the Office for Students (OfS) fined Sussex £585,000 – 15 times more than any previous penalty it’s levied – for “serious and significant” free speech failings in its treatment of Prof Stock. Accused of ‘transphobia’ for her gender-critical views, she was forced out of the university in 2021 after a three-year campaign of bullying and character assassination.
The fine was accompanied by a devastating report in which the OfS denounced Sussex’s “trans and non-binary equality” statement for undermining academic freedom and creating a “chilling effect”. The report went on:
An example of this effect in practice is the experience of Professor Stock. There were some views she did not feel able to express, and therefore teach, despite those views being lawful. Other staff and students may have felt similarly unable to express these, or other, lawful views.
This, you might think, was a fair cop. Sussex Vice-Chancellor Sasha Roseneil, however, does not. This week, she wrote a furious piece for Politics Home that begins with the words “The Office for Students’ so-called investigation into the University I represent was flawed and politically motivated” – and doesn’t get any less combative after that. Now she’s announced that the university will take legal action to challenge the size of the fine at a tribunal and the judgement itself through a judicial review.
Not only that, but Ms Roseneil sounds strangely confident of success: “I think our position is extremely strong, and I think they will lose a judicial review. But I’m not surprised that they’ve dug in, because [the OfS] has been so determined to pursue this, and so unwilling to engage.”
Then again, the OfS is pretty sure of its position too. “We are confident in the decisions made in this case and will vigorously defend any legal action,” said a spokesperson.
One of Ms Roseneil’s contentions is that OfS refused to meet the leadership team at Sussex or interview those involved, with the exception of Prof Stock. Instead, it relied on thousands of pages of documents from the university. The Vice-Chancellor said that when she arrived at Sussex in 2022, a year after the investigation of the Prof Stock case began, she’d sought a meeting with OfS executives to discuss it and was turned down.
But Arif Ahmed, the OfS’s Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom Director, defended its methods. While acknowledging “there may have been occasions where [Sussex] wanted to see somebody, and in fact that was done in writing instead”, he maintained that “the engagement would nevertheless have happened in the sense that we communicated with them and they communicated with us”.
In other words, the debate rages on. As well as Ms Roseneil’s piece for Politics Home, there’s been a Times editorial declaring that “the record £585,000 penalty is the price Sussex must pay for failing to uphold that most basic obligation of an academic institution: the protection of free speech”.
The Times also reminds its readers of “the three years of bullying and harassment by trans extremists” that Prof Stock suffered, culminating in her “requiring the protection of a bodyguard when visiting her workplace”. Now “instead of atoning for the treatment of Ms Stock, [Ms Roseneil] has attacked the OfS”.
For her part, Prof Stock has written an article for Unherd that doesn’t pull any punches either – saying of the Vice-Chancellor that “I am afraid it is wishful thinking on her part to say of my time at Sussex that ‘the University has never wavered from its position… that her academic freedom and freedom of speech should be protected’”.
According to Prof Stock, the “trans and non-binary equality” statement referred to in the OfS report “set the tone for nearly everything that would then happen to me over the next few years, emboldening those at the university who were already against me, and enfeebling the morale of the rest”. Alarmingly, she also points out that, although Sussex has since adopted a “more sensible” position, “many of these dim-witted, claustrophobic policies are still in place in universities across the land, right now”.
As for the future, Prof Stock characteristically suggests that “all university managers need to do is stop defining concepts such as ‘abuse’, ‘harassment’, or ‘harmful propaganda’ absurdly loosely, in order to pander to rapidly expanding notions of student victimhood and the crazed demands of moronic campaigners”.
Meanwhile, amid all the clamour, it seems as if one group we’re not supposed to hear from are the people who actually work at Sussex University. On the day the fine was announced, Ms Roseneil emailed all staff urging them not to speak to the media.
Sadly, this hasn’t worked much better than her other attempts to control the story. Speaking to Brighton and Hove News, one staff member said, “Some of us would prefer to feel freely able to express our thoughts about such a big fine and how it will affect staff and students” – adding: “One of the risks of sending out an email like this is its potential to reinforce the criticisms made about the nature and extent to which freedom of speech is tolerated here.”
Another was less tactful: “Not everyone believes that the university achieved the right and proper balance on this issue and the email from the Vice-Chancellor has only served to reinforce that disbelief.”
Sussex vs Stock really is the story that just won’t go away.
More on the latest developments here.
