‘Illiberal’ universities risk ‘polarisation tending to civil war’

The chair of the UK’s Free Speech Union has warned of “radical political polarisation tending towards civil war” if “illiberal politics come to dominate our universities”, while a Conservative government adviser posed the question of what could be in a new free speech bill in the event of a “stonking” electoral majority.

The comments were made at an event on free speech hosted by the Politeia thinktank, titled “Taking the Politics out of University Teaching”.

Among the speakers was Nigel Biggar, Regius professor of moral and pastoral theology at the University of Oxford and chair of the Free Speech Union, the organisation applying legal and media pressure to universities in controversies over free speech.

He told the event that there was “a role for government intervention” in the form of the free speech bill, carried over into the current session of Parliament after stalling in the last, given the seriousness of the issue.

There was a rising tendency in universities, he said, “not to argue with the positions but to attack the persons who hold them, smearing them as racist or white supremacist, or transphobic, and clamouring that their research be shut down, and that they be disciplined or even dismissed”.

“In so far as a self-righteous academic zeal dominates academic teaching and research, universities will produce graduates who are incapable of tolerating views different from their own, of restraining their visceral reactions in order to listen and reflect,” he warned.

Professor Biggar added: “If illiberal politics come to dominate our universities, the days of self-restrained liberal culture in Britain shall be numbered and a new era of radical political polarisation tending towards civil war will be with us. I really think the stakes couldn’t be much higher.”

He singled out decolonisation policies in appointments, curricula and reading lists, which he said were handed down by “high-level committees” in universities with “no provision for conscientious objection”.

“The effect is intimidating and the atmosphere is chilled,” said Professor Biggar.

James Price, special adviser to education secretary Nadhim Zahawi, spoke from the audience to pose a question to the panel. The former Oxford Union president said of free speech on campuses: “If, say, a party won with a stonking majority in a couple of years’ time and the panel was asked to help form a new bill in this area, what sort of things would be desirable without treading on academic independence and institutional independence, that would help to address this?”

Professor Biggar replied that he would want to see “a revision of the Equality Act 2010 so that harassment will generally not be understood as being applicable to universities. So that it cannot be argued, normally, that [people holding] a point of view you disagree with is a form of harassment”.

john.morgan@timeshighereducation.com