Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill (Third sitting)

Gareth Bacon Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

I am going to stop this now and ask Gareth Bacon to ask a question, because we have only three minutes left.

[Gareth Bacon]

Q Thank you very much, Sir Christopher. This is to Professor Goodwin. I graduated from the University of Kent 25 years ago, and my experiences in Canterbury are very different from what you have described. Do you agree that in a free and democratic society, the best way to deal with views you disagree with or, indeed, find repugnant is to be able to openly challenge them, debate them, and expose their weaknesses in an open debate?

Professor Goodwin: I do agree. I would just add on the record that most of the problems I have encountered personally have not come from within the University of Kent, but from within the broader higher education sector.

[Gareth Bacon]

Q My final question—I am conscious of time—is to both witnesses, if I may. Both of you, in common with academics who gave evidence last week, have talked about the chilling effect that is going through academia. If the Government were to drop this Bill and take no action, what do you foresee being the long to medium-term, five to 10-year consequences?

Professor Goodwin: Again, just to revert to personal experience, I would certainly leave academia, and I know that many other of my colleagues would probably come to the same conclusion. I think there are a large number of researchers, junior and senior, who now feel that viewpoint diversity is no longer really in existence or being protected adequately within Britain’s institutions, and that is a very depressing thing for somebody who has spent 20 years building up their academic career to say.

I know for a fact that many of my colleagues no longer feel particularly welcome, safe, secure, or ultimately able to say what they really think, and for every one of me, there are 20 or 30 people behind me who do not feel able to come and speak and voice their concerns as we are doing today. For every Kathleen Stock, there are 50 other gender-critical academics. I had a message from one this morning who is going through a very similar case and is being chased out of a department for reasons similar to those Kathleen raised. The most frustrating thing, just to put this on the record, is for people like me to hear people who are not in higher education say that this is all a myth and that it does not exist. They clearly do not have an understanding of what is happening in higher education.

Professor Kaufmann: To reiterate, I think that what will happen is that the truth-seeking mission of the university will be warped, because many questions that we need to ask will not be asked and many answers that we need are not going to be given, for career reasons.

On Matt’s point about the idea that this is somehow a moral panic or a new thing, a recent paper by a leading Harvard political scientist, Pippa Norris, called “Cancel Culture: Myth or Reality?”, was published in Political Studies a few months ago. She asked three questions: “Have the following got better or worse in the last five years: academic freedom to teach and research; respect for open debate from diverse perspectives; pressures to be politically correct?” The modal answer, even from left-wing academics, was that those things had got worse in the last five years. For those on the right, the percentage was in the 80s. We have a problem, in that people are saying that it has got worse in the last five years, and the King’s surveys of students found similar. If we do not address this, the truth-seeking mission of the university if going to be severely impacted.

[The Chair]

Thank you very much indeed, both of you. We now have to move on to the next session. If any colleagues have complaints about the length of time allocated, I am told that they must be referred to the Whips, as they were the people who dictated that there should be such limited time to hear your expert evidence.

Examination of Witness

Sunder Katwala gave evidence.