Freedom of Speech and the University

Part of being a philosopher is appreciating really good sophistry. And, one need not look further for great sophistry than the free speech in universities agenda. Free speech, with the traditional exceptions, is a good thing and universities are, in theory at least, sites of freedom. It’s nice to know that if I ever feel my freedom of speech is being suppressed I no longer need to go to a tribunal but can simply utilise the incoming free speech complaints system. It may even, quite by accident and only in very specific cases, protect academic freedom, a distinct and far more important value for the university lecturer. However, protection for the latter would also mean security of contract, ability to criticise our employers, the liberty to follow our research in whatever direction it takes us regardless of metrics and outputs and how much it costs. Particularly for the latter reason, neither Britain’s government nor its society have any interest in protecting our academic freedom.

Freedom of speech, however, requires far less resource. I just have to be allowed to say what I want in the classroom, and ensure that my students can say what they want “within the law”. There’s nothing wrong with this in principle, although we may disagree on what speech should fall outside the law, the law as it stands today must apply. The complaints procedure is likely to be abused, naturally, by those with frivolous claims, but that is the OfS’s problem, not mine. And the OfS has done nothing to ingratiate itself with or earn trust from university staff, so I won’t lose any sleep over that. Indeed, while this may come from a position of privilege, I fear the OfS far more than my employer when it comes to threats to my freedom of speech. I would therefore like an additional helpline where I can report against the OfS.

The freedom of speech agenda is sophistry because, in a vacuum, the policies being implemented are relatively reasonable: you can’t stop your staff or students making legal speech, you can’t ban a speaker unless it offers a Prevent risk or other legal problem. However, this has not come from a vacuum. Instead, it has come on the back of decades of misinformation and lies about campuses being dominated by politically correct ideologues, who stifle and harass people with minority views. These claims are dubious. If there is a cultural crisis at the heart of the university it is not caused by a tyrannical liberal dogma.

The fact is that my political beliefs and opinions have very little to do with what I teach, even though I do teach political philosophy. University is not a discussion camp, it is about teaching and training students to be able to do something. In the humanities, our role is to teach difficult concepts and material in order to empower them in forming and expressing intelligent and informed beliefs. How we do that depends on the discipline, but for myself the goal is never to guide them to a particular conclusion, but instead help them understand how philosophers have come to their conclusions in the hopes they can learn this skill themselves. Frankly, the right to express my own political views is pretty useless when teaching political philosophy; my role is to teach them the views of others.

The irony is that these new laws, introduced by the Conservatives and mildly tweaked by Labour, make it far easier for me to abuse my position and to use my lectures to preach my opinions, if I wanted to. Freedom of speech breaks constructive alignment, i.e. the principle that what you teach should have something to do with what your curriculum specification says and what you actually assess. Naturally, this is intended by its far right culture warrior proponents to allow academics with fringe, unscientific views a platform to proselytise. It also grants “the woke” the same right and I don’t think this is an accidental by-product, I think it is part of the point. Were I to take up their gauntlet and start my own quack lectures about my various opinions I can’t back up with any expertise or scholarship, I would debase university education itself. This is the true goal of all such attempts to interfere in education: to weaken our institutions so as to weaken our graduates and weaken our citizenry at large.

The demand for legal freedom of speech on campus is not harmful in itself, except against the principle that we do not need special laws to solve problems that don’t exist. It will be abused, and I have no confidence that the OfS will be objective in how it adjudicates these complaints, but that is an issue of implementation. Free speech protections will not help education, however. Education is not about speaking but listening and, most importantly, teaching to listen. I very rarely have a student complete my course agreeing with me. That was not the point. There is an equal joy in reading an excellent essay that attempts to prove something you disagree with as in reading an essay that excellently confirms your own findings. The best students are, in truth, the ones that leave us behind, no longer needing our scaffolding to make their case, having found the necessary confidence and competence to use words in a way that makes free speech worthwhile.

In ‘An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?’,¹ a canonical essay defining and defending freedom of thought and speech, Immanuel Kant distinguishes between public and private reason. Public reason, Kant says, should always be free. However, private use of reason (i.e. when we are subject to existing laws, when we work for a company etc.) should not be free. His point is that we should obey our monarch while being free to publish essays arguing that a republic is the best form of government. As he puts it, ‘Argue as much as you will and about what you will; only obey!’. Teaching operates in such a private use of reason. I obey the law, the regulations of my institution, the curriculum and most importantly basic principles of education. Everything I do as a teacher is in service to my students so as to empower them. I need greater freedom of speech when I write blog posts, not so much when I write lecture notes.

If a freedom is needed to support education, it is academic freedom. The time I have to do research is limited by how I am judged. As long as university funding is collapsing, as long as people are being made redundant in universities that are understaffed, academic freedom is in danger. If the OfS and the culture warriors and the government were really concerned with the threats to education in universities, they would be demanding funding reforms, an increase in staffing, and the end of casualisation in the sector. The free speech complaints system won’t help anyone if their university closes.