Unfiltered Conversations with the Free Speech Union

Academic Freedom: (Still) Under Threat?

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Saturday 19th October, 2024 Part of the Battle of Ideas Festival Speakers: Bryn Harris, Michelle Shipworth, Helen Joyce, Graham Stringer MP, Akua Reindorf KC, Chair: Jan Macvarish
Only three weeks after taking office, Labour Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson quietly kiboshed the protections for free speech promised by the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act. If implemented, this much-debated legislation – that eventually achieved cross-party support – would have given sharper teeth to universities’ existing free speech duties. HE institutions would become dutybound to actively promote free speech on campus and academics, students and visiting speakers would gain recourse to the law should they have invitations to speak on campuses overturned. A ‘free speech czar’ within the Office for Students was to be granted powers to investigate breaches of these free speech protections. All this has been thrown up in the air with the announcement that the Act has been ‘paused’ and may well be repealed. The Free Speech Union has threatened the government with Judicial Review, claiming that overturning legislation by ministerial fiat is unlawful. We must wait to see if this forces the government to account for its decision – and even creates the impetus for the Act to be implemented. But what should we make of the decision to renege on a democratically established law to pursue free speech in universities? One stated reason for halting the act was relieving universities of a ‘burdensome’ duty to protect free speech. As even supporters of the law change were concerned at it being reduced to an overly bureaucratic time-consuming exercise by half-hearted Vice chancellors and administrators, does this objection ring true? Announcing the act would be paused, Phillipson said that if continued it would ‘expose students to harm and appalling hate speech on campuses’. How can we counter that point given that the legislation was designed to work within existing law on hate and harms, which themselves are often subjective and contested categories. Was it only a matter of time before the free speech act unravelled, leading to tit for tat accusations of harm and hate and endless lawfare? More sinisterly, some say that in the context of many universities struggling financially, powerful college managements successfully lobbied Government to protect partnerships with countries like China, which are hostile to free speech and require appeasing in order to secure overseas campus developments, lucrative research partnerships and permissions to send international students to the UK. Is free speech on campus being sacrificed to create cosy relationships with authoritarian regimes? Regardless, while few believed the free speech law by itself would turn the tide of cancellations, conformity and intolerance that has plagued academic life, the political push for intellectual openness alerted many to the free speech crisis in UK universities. How can this momentum be built upon further? What now for those who are concerned about securing intellectual diversity and heterogeneous opinion on campus?

Should Barristers Adopt a Positive Duty to Promote Equality, Diversity and Inclusion?

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Monday 4th November 2024
The Bar Standards Board (BSB) has launched a public consultation on new rules to promote equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) at the Bar. If adopted, barristers would be obliged to ‘act in a way that advances equality, diversity, and inclusion’ when providing legal services and the BSB would assume what it describes as an ‘outcomes focused’ approach to equality. The Free Speech Union hosted a panel of eminent legal experts to grapple with the merits of the Bar Standards Board's proposals. While ‘equality’, ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ appear to be concepts worthy of general support, there is still much to debate about what they mean and whether ‘EDI’ is an appropriate framework for the governance of institutions and professions. Concerned barristers discuss the consequences of changing the core duty that they ‘should not unlawfully discriminate’ to a positive duty to advance a set of values that are highly contested. When similar EDI initiatives have been considered elsewhere, they have been challenged on the grounds that they risk introducing compelled speech and thought.
 
SPEAKERS:
Lord Ken Macdonald KC
Former Director of Public Prosecutions Ken Macdonald is one of the country’s leading criminal, regulatory and international lawyers. In 2007 he was knighted for services to the law and in 2010 appointed to the House of Lords, where he sits as a crossbencher. He was a Visiting Professor of Law at the London School of Economics from 2009-2012 and he has been a member of the University of Oxford Law Faculty since 2012. He is Chair of the Orwell Foundation, President of the Howard League for Penal Reform and was Warden of Wadham College Oxford from 2012 to 2021.
Poornima Karunacadacharan
Poornima Karunacadacharan is the Policy Manager for Equality and Access to Justice at the BSB. She has been leading on the drafting of the Equality Rules, as well as ensuring equality, diversity, and inclusion is embedded in all areas of BSB regulation. She has over 20 years of experience working in the charity sector and as a consultant for public sector organisations on equality and human rights issues. Poornima has expertise in training public, private, and voluntary sector organisations on the Equality Act 2010 and the Public Sector Equality Duty.
Akua Reindorf KC
Akua Reindorf KC is a barrister at Cloisters Chambers specialising in employment, discrimination and human rights law. She is instructed in high-profile trials and investigations involving polarising and contested identity and equality issues, serious harassment, and freedom of speech and belief. She is the author of the ‘Reindorf Report’, an investigation into the alleged no-platforming of two gender-critical external speakers by the University of Essex. She has particular expertise in the higher-education sector and works at the interface between university governance and regulation, duties in equality law, public-sector duties, academic freedom and fundamental rights. Akua was the Legal Business Awards Barrister of the Year in 2023 and the Chambers UK Bar Awards Employment Junior of the Year in 2022. She is a visiting senior fellow at LSE Law School, where she focuses on the law of academic freedom and freedom of speech. She is a commissioner of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and a fee-paid employment judge.
Lisa D.S. Bildy,
JD, BA Lisa Bildy graduated from Western Law School in 1993. In 2017 she launched a campaign to challenge the Law Society of Ontario's compelled Statement of Principles, believing it was not for a regulator to dictate lawyers’ personal principles. Known as StopSOP, the campaign succeeded in getting elected to the Law Society a slate of lawyers who were committed to repealing this new requirement. She then worked at the Calgary-based Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms as a staff lawyer, beginning in 2019, before striking out on her own in the fall of 2021 to further the cause of defending civil liberties and individual freedoms in Canada. Lisa is a member of the Board of Advisors of FAIR, the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, and is an elected bencher (governor) of the Law Society of Ontario.
CHAIR: Bryn Harris
Bryn Harris has worked as chief legal counsel of the Free Speech Union since 2020, participating in some of the UK’s foremost legal cases and policy debates concerning freedom of speech. He was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 2018, and before that he did a doctorate in classics at the University of Oxford. He has a particular interest in the law and practice surrounding academic freedom of speech.

Ben Jones discusses the launch of The Mactaggart Programme

Meet The FSU’s International Sister Organisations

Toby Young hosts the directors of FSU New Zealand and FSU South Africa

Toby Young’s Oxford Union Speech

Toby Young puts forward the position that "woke culture" has gone too far.

The Online Safety Bill’s Threat to Free Speech

A must watch discussion on implications of this highly controversial Government bill

Teaching Tolerance: Understanding Free Speech Issues in Schools

This deep dive discussion raises the question of whether freedom of speech applies in relation to schools.

Is it time to re-visit the equality act?

Dr Anna Loutfi joins us to discuss to case for re-visiting the equality act

Disinformation, Misinformation and the Freedom to Dissent

Toby Young, Peter Hitchens, Silkie Carlo & Timandra Harkness on stage at The Art Workers' Guild

Free Speech and The Right to Protest

We brought together a panel of experts to discuss the complexities around the legal right to protest

Why Free Speech Matters - FSU Scotland Advisory Panel Discussion

Why Free Speech Matters - an FSU advisory council debate at the launch of our Scotland office

Helen Joyce – Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality

The FSU’s Dr Jan Macvarish was joined by journalist, author and campaigner Helen Joyce.