Calling out British institutions for fostering a “complete intolerance of opposing ideas,” Minister of State for Higher and Further Education Michelle Donelan says there is a need for common sense as she pushed forward for legislation “with teeth” for free speech at universities.
“Harry Potter is actually a children’s book. Fundamentally it is probably a multimillion-pound industry that has been franchised into films. To say that we need to protect some of our brightest and our best from the likes of Harry Potter is to not only do our universities a disservice but to do our students a disservice,” said Donelan.
Donelan added that “students have to be able to live in the real world once they graduate university.”
“There are no trigger warnings every day as you operate. I’ve not met students who have called for these trigger warnings either. They are not the issues that students are bringing up to me— they’re bringing up sexual harassment, they’re bringing up antisemitism,” she said.
Donelan said that it also “makes you question whether they are getting their priorities right” as some universities have not yet signed up to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism but have rather focused on trigger warnings on content.
It was also claimed that academics are “self-censoring themselves” in a climate that has seen an “upsurge in physical threats” and a “complete intolerance of opposing ideas” with graduates expected to lose out over the long term.
“Who would you rather employ—an inquisitive, critical, open-minded graduate, or a self-contained cookie-cutter graduate who is afraid to be challenged or confront new ideas?” said Donelan.
Figures provided by Policy Exchange polling showed that 32 percent of academics identifying as right-wing had refrained from airing their views in teaching or research. Fifteen percent identifying as politically centrist or left-wing also reported self-censoring.
Vice-chancellors, academics, and students should not “allow the history books to record your name as part of the small cabal of the intolerant,” she said, adding that professors have been “harangued and hounded just for doing their jobs” and “prominent, well-respected guests no-platformed.”
She added that supporting free speech is “no longer enough” and it is “something that has to be actively defended.”
The Bill has been carried over to the next session of Parliament as the government has run out of time to pass it into law.
“Unless we have legislation with teeth free speech at universities—which is so important—cannot be protected. That is why we are going forward with our Bill,” she said. She added that she expects the House of Lords will have “a lot to say on this subject” but that the Bill is less about what happens in Parliament than “a culture change that will reverberate through the sector.”
