My chilling decade on the front line of university culture wars

Free speech and academic debate have been stifled, says the master of Selwyn College, Cambridge

The first point at which it became crystal clear that the times were changing was when we marked the 40th anniversary of the admission of women to Selwyn College, Cambridge in 2016.

I was three years into my 12-year stint as master of the college, which ends this autumn. My vice-master, Janet O’Sullivan, told students that we were inviting the women of the college to a group photograph at 2pm and then, because we were celebrating co-education, men were welcome to join us for refreshments afterwards. She received an immediate reprimand from a young man: what about people who were non-binary or those who identified as a different gender? At this point, I was not even sure what non-binary meant – and it had never been a topic at any college meeting.

Only three years later, though, a revolution had taken place. A new gender orthodoxy, based on self-identification rather than biological sex, was firmly established in universities and swathes of the public sector. It was common for students across the University of Cambridge to attend lectures with slogans adorning their laptop computers, proclaiming “trans women are real women.”

A female professor recalls: “I remember thinking when I saw a man brandishing that statement – imagine if I’d displayed a sticker saying the opposite. Would I lose my job? I felt uncomfortable about a man telling me what a woman is, even though as a mother I assumed I might know.”

A distinguished female scientist told me that the worst revelation for her was the need for self-censorship: “The scientific evidence is that biological sex is immutable, and that is scientific orthodoxy, but there was a time when I just didn’t feel that I could say that.”

Required beliefs

These examples represent a phenomenon across all universities – and across sections of society in Britain and around the world – that spread into multiple issues of identity politics and reached its peak in the early 2020s.

Cambridge’s experience was less dramatic than at some other universities, such as Sussex, where Prof Kathleen Stock faced threats of violence for her views and felt forced to leave her job. Michelle Donelan, the universities minister at the time, condemned what she called “the toxic environment at the University of Sussex”, while an academic at Oxford had to attend lectures with security protection to ensure her physical safety. An industrial tribunal found that an Open University academic had been discriminated against and harassed by colleagues and management, and constructively dismissed, because of her gender-critical opinions.

America went through an even more vivid and painful experience on multiple aspects of gender and racial politics, with a further and more recent escalation over the Middle East. Trans rights were only one element of what seemed to become a list of required beliefs for academics.

In 2022, I took part in a webinar on these issues with Arif Ahmed, the Cambridge-based free speech campaigner who is now leading on these matters for the Office for Students. During the discussion, he highlighted some areas where he believed public debate in universities had become difficult, if not impossible. These included questioning the political aims of Black Lives Matter or the so-called decolonisation of the syllabus, criticism of either Israeli settlements or the use of force against Palestinians, and admitting support for Brexit.

This week I asked a number of academics in Cambridge and beyond how they felt during that period. The words some of them used include “afraid”, “frightened” and “isolated”, while one spoke of a “chilling” atmosphere. A student I know felt hostility from an influential senior figure at the university because he had spoken publicly in favour of Brexit. This mattered because the leader was someone who would have determined his academic future and its funding.

Jane Clarke, a recent president of Wolfson College, recalls finding herself “in a poisonous space”, caught between gender-critical feminists and trans activists who fought their wars locally on social media and then in the national press. The challenge to freedom of speech at the university became apparent when students began claiming that “words are violence”, as if disagreement were the equivalent of a physical attack.

Succumbing to pressure

This was compounded by universities seeking to overhaul their complaints procedures in response to pressure from activists who felt they were too weak. Under a previous management team, Cambridge even suggested that the correct response to a microaggression – a generally unintended verbal infelicity – was to dial 999 and ask for the police. The advice was rapidly rescinded, but I came across multiple academics who felt vulnerable to a career-threatening disciplinary process if they got a few words out of place. They were also worried about ostracism if they expressed the “wrong” views. There was an attempt by the central administration, which was defeated, to allow students – and indeed any member of the public – to make anonymous complaints online about named academics, without any ability to check the validity of the allegations.

Critical race theory spread across universities – even though, as a colleague from a more traditional Left-wing background said to me, “it is a theory and not a law.”

No university committee was complete without someone advocating that we should bear in mind “intersectionality” – a spin-off from critical race theory – even though its meaning would have been mysterious to most of the outside world. A senior figure in another college says: “Academics are afraid to offend students, but they are more afraid to offend each other.”

Some of the great figures in the university got caught up in the crossfire of the global culture wars.

Prof Mary Beard told me at a public event earlier this year about her social media experiences: “I did take some nasty hits. Interestingly, a lot of those came from the political left rather than the right. And that was especially hurtful because I felt, ‘Hang on, I’m on your side!’ Sometimes, all it took was saying something mildly off-message, and suddenly I was being treated like a traitor […] But the idea that we all have to sign up to one monolithic cultural viewpoint is stifling.”

And yet, there was always a sense that the bulk of university opinion remained in a rational place, albeit one that required the wearing of a metal helmet. I certainly found that at Selwyn. My views on freedom of speech were well known, and they were never challenged by colleagues on the governing body, and I could not have asked for stronger support from the key college officers. Most students remained phlegmatic too, and we continued to develop talented and engaging young people.

The university still produced astonishing, groundbreaking research. But many of us were wary in university meetings about what we said and to whom. Somehow, we allowed the views of activists on a variety of topics to get a grip across the university, and that was probably in part because of their vehemence. Both sides in the culture wars were responsible for this. There was a zest among some on the right for hurtful attacks on trans people and other minority groups; and one head of a college observes that “both sides of the trans debate (and Israel-Palestine) are far too easily riled up by social media forces.”

But the response – insisting on ideological conformity – had a polarising effect.

This was because many felt shoehorned into a position of either being pro-minority or pro-free speech. It seemed impossible to be both because any questioning of trans rights in particular was automatically seen as transphobic, and it was a policy – endorsed by the lobby group Stonewall – not to be willing to debate those rights.

Silent majority

One of my failures was that I never managed to host an event in which these issues could be discussed rationally, because no trans activist would appear on a platform with anyone they deemed to be a gender-critical feminist.

Instead, what the university witnessed was stormy meetings where – on the rare occasions they were invited – feminists faced demands that their appearances be cancelled or protesters tried to drown out their voices with cacophonous dissent.

But it’s not just a supposition that the protesters were in a minority. A Cambridge vote on free speech among academics and senior staff in 2020 resulted in a thumping majority – 86.9 per cent in favour – for advocates of the position that we should “tolerate” views we disagreed with rather than, as the university preferred, “respect” them.

But Prof Ahmed, who led the campaign for freedom of speech, noted that this was in a secret ballot. He had much more difficulty getting colleagues to put their heads above the parapet to get the referendum launched in the first place.

And it was understandable that the silent majority kept their heads down. A recent alumnus told me: “I’ve come to realise that the university monoculture was really much worse than I appreciated at the time, as most views that would draw opprobrium would be considered quite middle of the road when venturing outside the academic bubble. This results in a narrow band of acceptable views that are extremely out of kilter with the wider country. This narrow band is fast-changing, which serves as another way of enforcing conformity, with new language and terminology to learn, and unspoken rules to memorise.”

Another former student of mine, Christopher Wadibia, is an American who describes himself as “a compassionate conservative”. But when he moved into an early career academic post in Oxford, he felt he had to keep his views to himself for a while.

“When I started at Oxford I made a decision not to express ideas that I knew would be interpreted as conservative because I thought there was a risk that I would be excluded from some teaching, research and public speaking opportunities.”

Soon, however, he settled in and felt better able to say what he thought – and, as proof of his increased confidence, he took to a public platform with me in Cambridge last November to explain why he had voted for Donald Trump in the presidential election. It’s a fair bet that almost nobody in the room would have followed suit.

Recent improvement

All the same, this points to a cheering truth. Times are changing again, and the picture is becoming healthier, as illustrated by last week’s election of Chris Smith as chancellor of Cambridge, after he stood on a platform of promoting and safeguarding free speech.

Some of this, again, is about society. Our undergraduates gave their pronouns when they introduced themselves at student leaders’ dinners in the early 2020s, but for the past couple of years they haven’t.

At Wolfson College, Cambridge, Jane Clarke was pleased that her students, ground down by the internal strife, set up a “Discourse Society” to learn how to share their views peaceably – with lasting consequences. She reports: “We became a college able to hold a series of discussion events which other colleges would not or could not host.”

Recently, I found that it was uncontentious to say two things to incoming students. First, that we were in favour of equality and diversity – which is both the law, the university policy and (as it happens) my own belief too.

But we are also in favour of diverse opinions and free speech, and we would not be doing our job properly if they were not exposed to challenging and even at times upsetting views. Saying we stand firmly for free speech is also a line that brings applause from alumni at reunions.

In the past year of our public events for students at Selwyn, we have, without incident, featured a robust exposition against anti-Semitism; an exchange about allegations of genocide in Palestine; a personal account of a pilgrimage to Mecca; and a wide-ranging analysis of geopolitical hotspots around the globe.

More academics have spoken out – one of them being Prof Stephen O’Rahilly: “For me it was the need to be able to discuss the issue of biological sex and its importance for how we structure medicine, law and society that made me feel I could no longer be simply an observer.

“I am pleased to say that I received no pushback from the university about any public statements I made.”

At a national level, protecting the right to free speech in universities was the subject of legislation by the Conservative administration – and, after some hesitation, it has been substantially endorsed by the Labour government and will come into effect on Friday Aug 1. Every university and college in the land will be required to publish a code of practice as part of a duty to promote freedom of speech in higher education.

And, crucially, many universities had already got the message. New vice-chancellors at Oxford and Cambridge decided that it wasn’t enough to speak the rhetoric of free speech – they needed to show it in their actions.

The Cambridge vice-chancellor, Deborah Prentice, who regards free speech as “the first principle of any academic institution”, launched a series of vice-chancellor’s dialogues on some of the knottier issues of the day, with the express aim of exposing students to a wide range of opinions and learning how to disagree well; and similar initiatives have taken place across the sector.

We had a meeting at Selwyn with academics from Yale to share experiences and coordinate the fightback. Prentice, who was born in California and was previously provost at Princeton University, says: “Practising free speech is a challenge, and not just here in the UK. Having come from the United States, I am concerned that on both sides of the Atlantic free speech is being dampened by spirals of silence – a hesitancy to voice an opinion if we think it might cause offence. Free speech needs constant nurturing and reinforcement. It is a principle that we must uphold.”

A long way to go

There has been an easing of some of the tensions. The pro-Palestinian encampments on campuses, which provoked bitter conflicts especially in the United States, have been better managed in Britain, including in Cambridge, through a tolerance of peaceful protest tempered by the use of injunctions when they became unreasonably disruptive. The truth is that some students are passionately engaged with the conflict in the Middle East, but many aren’t.

“Students are obsessed with the personal politics, not the big issues facing the world,” claims one senior figure.

This disengagement by many, perhaps out of a feeling of impotence, is a sharp contrast to my own student days in the 1970s. It may be the reason why today’s activists are losing their grip.

But a colleague has a wider criticism about the culture across British academia: “The exciting ideas in our country are not in universities. Universities are dominated by liberals, and it has been the Right in wider political discourse which has come up with the new ideas. The problem is that those ideas are not very good, and they lack intellectual coherence. But the clever people in the universities are not in the debate.”

O’Rahilly agrees that “we still have a way to go” to restore health to the dialogue in universities.

He and I were at a dinner a few weeks ago which showed the opportunity but also the remaining challenge. For a couple of hours, Cambridge academics and administrators discussed the recent Supreme Court ruling on biological sex. The people around the table were from a wide range of backgrounds and views, and it was – as Stephen says – a “polite but vigorous” debate. Exactly what you’d hope for in a university.

But at the end of the dinner, one of the participants said, wistfully, that it was a discussion that couldn’t be held in their college.

Why not?

“Because it would tear the place apart.”

But experience shows that not having the discussion is by far the worst option. Views get better if they are tested; and communities, especially universities, are stronger if they are open and free in their thinking. Rights, as we saw with gay marriage, are more powerful if there is public consent.

As I prepare to step down from my role in September, the biggest lesson from more than a decade in Cambridge is about the peril of trying to impose conformity on a university whose driving force should be academic freedom. Britain needs universities to guarantee our future, and they cannot do that if they shackle themselves to the campaigns of the moment.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/9448fcf81d76f9e2