Can We Talk?

Academia’s betrayal of women, truth and reason

Our fringe event for Autumn Conference 2024, on Saturday 14th September, 8pm, brings together a panel of experts to address the crisis of freedom of speech in academia, as well as in broader liberal society. Helen Joyce, Laura Favaro and Almut Gadow will share with us their experience and expertise, with a particular focus on how the current situation has affected female academics holding gender critical beliefs.

Universities are ordinarily thought of as bastions of free thought, where new ideas can emerge and received wisdom can be challenged. Yet in recent years they have become plagued with incidents of censorship, with efforts to close down speaking events, bully and harass gender critical academics and suppress their research occurring with an alarming frequency.

The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, proposed by the last government, would have introduced new provisions enabling academics to exercise their free speech rights under both Human Rights and Education law. Most notably, it would have set out an enforcement mechanism giving teeth to existing free speech law as it applies to universities (and extending free speech duties to student unions). 

But days before it was due to come into force, the new Education Secretary, Bridgit Phillipson, said she had decided to “stop further commencement of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, in order to consider options, including its repeal”.

Phillipson’s move appears to play into assertions made by opponents of the Bill that claims of censorship in academia were overblown, and that law change was in fact unnecessary. Some of these claims have come from within our party, with Lord Wallace describing it as a “culture war bill”. 

But increasingly, legal cases are shedding light on the way in which Universities have been failing in their responsibility to uphold freedom of speech and also to protect their students and staff from discrimination by their institutions. For example, a recent tribunal upheld Dr Jo Phoenix’s case of unlawful discrimination and constructive dismissal by the Open University.

Sonia Sodha’s recent article in the Observer argued, “Free speech is neither a ‘nice to have’ nor a rightwing project: it is a fundamental tenet of democracy and when it is under threat, it is disempowered minorities who suffer most. Labour needs to stop seeing important free speech protections introduced by Tory ministers as expendable fuel for attacking their predecessors.”

We invite Liberal Democrats to hear for themselves from women directly affected by this situation, and with special expertise in the issues:

Helen Joyce is a former journalist, and author and now a director of the human-rights charity Sex Matters. Her first book Trans: Gender Identity and the New Battle for Women’s Rights” was an instant best seller. 

Laura Favaro is a Spanish sociologist who was invited by City University of London to move to the UK in 2020 as Postdoctoral Research Fellow in their Gender & Sexualities Research Centre to conduct a sociological inquiry into the ‘gender wars’. As she was researching the silencing, discrimination and harassment of female academics who raise questions about gender identity theory, she found herself ostracised, bullied and harassed. She was subjected to false complaints, had her research stopped and her research data taken away from her, and lost her job. She has now settled her case with the University.

Her latest academic publication, Let Us Be Free From ‘Academentia’, critically examines the implementation of queer theory in universities.

Almut Gadow taught law at the Open University for almost 10 years. She was dismissed for questioning new requirements to indoctrinate students in gender identity theory, in ways which in her view were inappropriate and distorted equality law.

Almut’s employment tribunal claim against the Open University is due to be heard early next year.

You can get free tickets here for the online and the live event here.