In May 2023, the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 came into being after two years of parliamentary debate, media and think tank speculation, and a large serving of consternation from within HE. However, the Act crossed the legislative finishing line largely intact, and the baton (or chalice) is now passed to the Office for Students (OfS) to consult on giving it regulatory force. This blog focusses on freedom of expression at, and around, controversial events involving external speakers on campus.
It argues that academic staff expertise should inform national and institutional policy and practice in this arena. Amplifying the academic voice to inform such evaluations provides an antidote to the caricatural representation of academics as mere mouthpieces for cultural socialism, or its tabloid shorthand – ‘wokeness’. It might also challenge the view that most academic staff are uncritical proponents of leftism, complicit in creating a state of Lackademia, where conservative and right-leaning views are marginalised, to coin a term from the title of a 2017 report.
Upholding free speech in universities can be challenging because they are sites of critical enquiry, not in spite of this. As institutions populated with social and political scientists and scholars in philosophy, intellectual history, human rights, feminisms and queer theory, contentious views should be expressed and debated.
