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

John Hayes Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

It is, but you are not the one giving the evidence. Dr Ahmed, do you want to say anything on this?

Dr Ahmed: I have relatively little to add to what Kathleen said on that point. The only thing I would add is that I would like to see a situation in which there was a possibility of extremely draconian measures against universities that are not fulfilling their basic function, and in an ideal world they would never be used.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

Q I am going to use this microphone as instructed, Sir Christopher—my apologies for speaking from the wings. I refer members of the Committee and others to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Dr Ahmed, you wrote in your evidence, and you have repeated it today, about self-censorship and how that had changed. Would it be fair to say that the culture in universities has changed quite radically? You mentioned the Equality Act, and you might just as well have mentioned the growth of the internet and the intimidation that is delivered through that. How far does that soft censorship, which you implied a moment ago, affect people’s prospects at universities—the acquisition of fellowships, promotions, funding and so on? What evidence do you have that that has changed in universities, in your academic experience and more widely?

Dr Ahmed: With regard to your point about the internet, I would echo some of the things that Kathleen said in her written evidence, to the effect that Twitter, for instance, allows the mobilisation of mobs, quite quickly, against individual academics. That has been one of the effects. As you said, in addition to the Equality Act, the internet has had an effect on that—by which I mean Twitter.

With regard to self-censorship, my own experience has been that it has changed drastically over the last 10 years. Now, for instance, one would regard it as a typical experience to be in meetings where things are being proposed where I certainly sometimes—rarely, in my own case—bite my tongue. I know that there are people who bite their tongues in the sense that they will not object to certain things that are pointless and stupid, simply because they are afraid of the consequences.

What are those consequences? It is different in different cases. In my own case, I have tenure, fortunately, and I am relatively secure, but for someone who is on a temporary contract, you do not even have to be fired or face disciplinary action. All that needs to happen is that you come to end of your temporary contract, which you would normally expect to be rolled over, which typically does happen in academia, and they will just decide for some reason—as one of your colleagues was saying, it can be quite easy to invent a pretext—“Well, actually, we won’t be needing you any more.”

People in short-term positions are, I think, especially vulnerable and are perhaps the ones who are most likely to self-censor. My own experience is that this is happening a lot more now than in the past. That is from my experience of meetings with decision makers at high and low levels within Cambridge University.

[Sir John Hayes]

Q The implication of what you are saying is that a lot of that will be invisible, because we do not know what people do not say. We do not know who would have been promoted had they said something else, believed something else or taken other stands. Actually, what we may be seeing is the tip of the iceberg. Is that fair? We cannot know how many people are constrained by the culture you have described and by the capacity of the mob to pursue them.

Dr Ahmed: Correct. Of course, you are quite right that it is the tip of the iceberg. The evidence that we have—I am referring again to the UCU survey, which is the largest evidence base that we have—says that 35% of academics self-censor. When you think that that includes people who work in totally uncontroversial fields, such as Diophantine equations, that is a very significant proportion. There is some evidence, but, as you say, it is probably the tip of a huge iceberg.

[The Chair]

Before you go, Sir John, may I ask you to expand on your interests?

[Sir John Hayes]

How long have you got?

[The Chair]

I ask because, obviously, people do not have access to the register.

[Sir John Hayes]

I am a professor at the University of Bolton.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q I have to declare an interest. I am a trustee at the University of Bradford union. I have received donations from the University and College Union. I was the UCU co-ordinator at the University of Sussex and I received money from that university to provide educational opportunities for their students. I would like to think that I work in the sector.

Professor Stock, thank you for your evidence. I must say, actually, that your vice-chancellor did sing your praises to me the last time that I met him and said how excited he was for you to be coming here to show the diversity of views at his university. He was very positive, actually, and I have the email to prove it. That might reassure you. He is leaving anyway, so we will see.

You have raised some really important points about making sure that there is diversity in views at a university. Is there a problem, however, if this is put in legislation, that that becomes too strictly defined as requiring balance? We have debates about the BBC and climate change denial, and the need to have equal airtime for people who disagree and for people who agree. Is there sometimes a necessity for a university to develop a course that is balanced not just numerically but also in terms of where the academic weight is?

Professor Stock: There is a useless way to balance and then there is a productive way to balance. The BBC is a completely different context, because often you have to present both points of view simultaneously, and they just start shouting at each other and nobody’s the wiser. However, on a course that extends through time, and possibly over years, it would be unacceptable not to balance. Balance just means going through lots of different points of view that disagree with each other and trying to work out what you think. It means telling the students that it is their job to work out what they think—that they are not necessarily supposed to agree with you just because you think something, but they are supposed to develop their own points of view.

What is happening at the moment, for me personally, is that—completely extraordinarily, relative to the norms of the sector—whenever I do manage to get an invitation to speak somewhere from some poor, hapless person who does not know my reputation in advance, complaints pile in, and they say, “We’ve got to find a trans person to be on stage with you for balance.” I have had the Francis Bacon keynote at the University of Hertfordshire completely changed in format—until covid meant that it did not happen anyway—just because this idea of balance was required. That is much more like the BBC kind of balance. I do not see why I should have had someone right there when no one else is required to have someone there.