Proposed UK Law to Restrict ‘Heckler’s Veto’ in University Debates

Professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex, Kathleen Stock, poses with her medal after being appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to higher education a investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace, London, on July 14, 2022. Victoria Jones/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Following the treatment of female academics by transgender activists, an amendment to a new free speech bill will attempt to deal with those who try to silence speakers on campuses.

Academics have forwarded an amendment to the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill to deal with the use of the “heckler’s veto” on campuses.

The heckler’s veto refers to attempts to silence the speech of others by drowning out and shouting over speakers with the aim of severely disrupting events.

Lawyer and academic James Murray, alongside professor Alice Sullivan of University College London, drafted the amendment with Labour peers Lord Hunt and Baroness Morris in order to combat the use of the heckler’s veto to “silence legitimate debate and dampen academic freedom on campus.”

They said it was inspired by the treatment of female academics on campus who reject and speak out against radical transgender ideology.

For example, professor Kathleen Stock of the University of Sussex was harassed on campus for years by transgender activists.

She was forced to resign in 2021 for saying that trans women shouldn’t be in spaces such as female dressing rooms “in a completely unrestricted way” because many of them “are still males with male genitalia” and “are sexually attracted to females.”

Protect Freedom of Speech

The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill is a proposed act of Parliament that would impose requirements for universities and students’ unions to protect freedom of speech, tightening existing legislation to make the promotion of it a statutory duty.

This means that if universities fail to uphold free speech, they could be taken to court.

Writing for legal business Taylor Vinters, Murray said that by way of summary, “the amendment explicitly excludes attempts to silence the speech of others from the scope of the core secure duty under the bill, and requires universities to take positive steps to mitigate the effects of those exercising the heckler’s veto without disproportionately affecting the right to lawful protest.”

This could effectively see such speech “switched off,” if shown that such conduct “had both the purpose and effect of restricting another’s lawful speech or academic freedom.”

The amendment and the bill were debated in the Grand Committee of the House of Lords this week.

During the debate on Oct. 31, Hunt said that the government essentially “is seeking to address a failure of leadership in many of our universities by legislation, which, from the amendments we’ve seen today, to me would suggest that this is going to be very very hard to implement.”

The amendments selected by the Lords will be sent back to the House of Commons for further consideration.

“We expect the bill is likely to pass into law in later 2022 or early 2023,” said Murray.

Censoring the Free Speech of the Heckler

Professor Dennis Hayes, president of Academics for Academic Freedom (AFAF), told The Epoch Times by email that there is such a thing as “a well-aimed heckle.”

AFAF maintains a Banned List, which is a list of academics and others who have faced attempts to censor them or ban them from campuses.

“I remember hearing someone shout at an academic who said ‘I don’t believe in truth’ … ‘Is that true?’ Sometimes heckles are not so clever, [like] ‘Rubbish!’ or ‘You are talking garbage!’” said Hayes.

“The issue is, when is a heckler’s shout an example of free speech and when is it a wall of sound aimed at making it impossible to hear a speaker? The latter is not free speech or speech in any sense,” he said.

“The test of the legislation will be in its application,” he said.

“In the current climate in which people are over-sensitive to what they see as offensive, the line is likely to be drawn too close to censoring the free speech of the heckler,” he added.

Eric Kaufmann, professor of politics at BirkBeck College, London, in an undated screenshot from an interview with NTD. Screenshot/NTD

Leading researcher into cancel culture in the world of academia, professor Eric Kaufmann, told The Epoch Times by email, “I think it’s important to restrict the right of people to protest when it interferes with others’ freedom of speech.”

Kaufmann is a professor of politics at Birkbeck College, University of London, and author of “Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities.” He has pioneered the use of surveys to research “authoritarianism and political discrimination” in universities in the United States and the UK.

Kaufmann has argued that cultural socialism, which he calls a “religious form of wokeness,” is dominant among students and younger people.

“My hope is that the bill will put a stop to disruptive actions like the ones that affected Kathleen [Stock]. People have the right to protest, but not to disrupt the speech of others,” said Kaufmann.