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Campaign news

Update: St Andrews have replied to our Freedom of Information request

(21.03.23) We have received a reply to our Freedom of Information request to St Andrews which can be found here with associated Appendix A here. We note and highlight the following:

St Andrews employs 5 people to make up their core EDI team at an annual cost of £235,189.00 pa. The team consists of the following:

Head of EDI

Deputy Head of EDI

2 x Diversity & Equality Advisors

1 x EDI assistant

As yet, there is no specific free speech employee.  

Whilst St Andrews write that it has allowed its Stonewall Diversity Champions membership to lapse, they are keen to point out that it continues to engage with Stonewall via the Workplace Equality Index. It therefore seems that showing the Stonewall Diversity Champions Scheme the door had nothing to do with free speech concerns that have led others to leave.

The University also says that it is “focused on undertaking work on the renewal of the LGBT Charter over 2022/23-2023/24 which includes staff training within the cost and represented better value”. So, it seems to be a case out of the Stonewall frying pan into the LGBT Charter fire.

St Andrews also confirms that its compulsory online EDI training continues but refuses to disclose the contents.

We are considering our next steps and will keep you informed of what happens.

Foot-dragging over “Adult Human Female” continues at Edinburgh University

(07.03.23) Following the disruption by trans activists (some of whom were members of the University) of the lawful screening of “Adult Human Female” by Academics For Academic Freedom at Edinburgh University on 14 December 2022, we wrote to the Principal, Professor Sir Peter Mathieson. Read our letter here. Following a chaser, we received a short reply from the Principal on 18 January 2023 which can be seen here. Despite the warm words about freedom of expression, however, nothing has been done to identify or discipline University staff or students for their unlawful actions. What is more, it has become clear that, as also reported in the national press, Edinburgh is dragging its feet on rescheduling the screening and has sought to impose unreasonable restrictions. As a result we sent a further letter to Janet Legrand KC (the senior outside member of Edinburgh’s Court) asking her to intervene. Our letter can be seen here. We await any acknowledgment, let alone reply.

What you can do:

  • Share this news with your fellow Edinburgh graduates and suggest they join AFFS – https://affs.uk/join: it is quick and free, and the more members we have, the more pressure we can apply to our universities.
  • We urge Edinburgh alumni to write to the Principal and Janet Legrand KC (copying in the other officers identified below).
  • Please remember: express yourself moderately, and keep to the facts. Alumni care hugely about free speech, but we are not extremists.

Their emails (from public sources):

Professor Sir Peter Mathieson, Principal Principal@ed.ac.uk, 

Janet Legrand KC, Senior Lay Member of Court court@ed.ac.uk

Professor Kim Graham, Provost kim.graham@ed.ac.uk

Chris Cox, Vice Principal Philanthropy and Advancement and Executive Director of Development and Alumni chris.cox@ed.ac.uk

Update: Stonewall-related compliance issues at St Andrews

(22.02.23) AFFS have now received a reply from St Andrews to which we have in turn responded.

To view the reply from St Andrews please click here, to view AFFS’ reply to this response, please click here.

Free speech compliance issues at Sussex

(14.02.23) AFFS have been contacted by someone at Sussex University who is concerned both about a recent decision to put the Head of its EDI Unit in charge of freedom of speech and about specific aspects of its new Freedom of Speech Code.

It is symptomatic of the atmosphere at our universities that the person who raised the issues with us wishes to remain anonymous. AFFS is increasingly worried by the need for self-censorship on the part of those concerned about our universities’ failure to nurture and protect free speech culture on campuses.

AFFS is troubled by the matters raised with this, not least because of what happened to the former Sussex Professor, Kathleen Stock. Sussex is not the only institution where the management’s response to renewed pressure to comply with existing and future free speech obligations has been to seek to treat them as a subordinate aspect of their EDI campaigns.

We have written to Sussex’s new Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sasha Roseneil, asking her to appoint someone independent of its EDI unit to safeguard free speech rights and to revise its Freedom of Speech Code so that it accurately reflects the law.      

See our letter to the Vice-Chancellor of Sussex here.

We’ll let you know what reply we receive. In the meantime:

What you can do:

  • Share this news with your fellow Sussex graduates and suggest they join AFFS – https://affs.uk/join: it is quick and free, and the more members we have, the more pressure we can apply to our universities.
  • We urge Sussex alumni to write to the Vice-Chancellor (copying in the other officers identified below).
  • Please remember: express yourself moderately, and keep to the facts. Alumni care hugely about free speech, but we are not extremists.

Their emails (from public sources):

Professor Sasha Roseneil, Vice-Chancellor (S.Roseneil@sussex.ac.uk)

Professor David Ruebain, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Culture, Equality and Inclusion (D.Ruebain@sussex.ac.uk)

Geraldine Ismail, Interim Head of Legal Services (G.Ishmail@sussex.ac.uk)

Nicola Enston, Senior Legal Counsel (N.Enston@sussex.ac.uk)

Professor Kelly Coate, Pro Vice-Chancellor for Education and Students (K.Coate@sussex.ac.uk)

Stonewall-related compliance issues at St Andrews

(02.02.23) Recently, AFFS director and St Andrews alumnus, Andrew Neish KC, received an email from Professor Clare Peddie, Proctor of St Andrews University, seeking donations to support scholarships.

Andrew’s response raised free speech concerns, including St Andrews’ formal association with controversial lobby groups like Stonewall.   

The Proctor’s reply failed to engage with the issues concerned, instead making generalised statements about the university’s mission to address deep-seated social inequalities whilst paying lip service to its commitment to free speech and academic freedom.

St Andrews has been rated by Civitas as among the worst universities in respect of freedom of speech and appears to have taken no meaningful steps to ensure its compliance with its existing legal obligations to protect free speech and academic freedom of students and staff.   

See our letter to the Proctor of St Andrews here.

What you can do:

  • Share this news with your St Andrews friends and suggest they join AFFS – https://affs.uk/join: it is quick and free and the more members we have, the more pressure we can apply to our universities.
  • We urge St Andrews alumni to write to the Proctor (copying in the other officers identified below).
  • Please remember: express yourself moderately, and keep to the facts. Alumni care hugely about free speech, but we are not extremists.

Their emails (from public sources):

Professor Clare Peddie, Proctor (proctor@st-andrews.ac.uk)

Dame Professor Sally Mapstone, Principal (principal@st-andrews.ac.uk)

Mr Roy Drummond, Chief Legal Officer (chieflegal@st-andrews.ac.uk)

Dr Rebekah Widdowfield, Vice Principal (People and Diversity) (vpdiversity@standrews.ac.uk)
Annual Giving Team (annualgiving@st-andrews.ac.uk)

Susan Donald, Development Officer (Operations) (donate@st-andrews.ac.uk

Best Free Speech Practice 

(27.01.23) We have been developing a sister campaign, Best Free Speech Practice (BFSP), which will work to identify what the law is actually going to require in practice once the current free speech bill becomes law. Its website has just been launched.

BFSP is working on a detailed statement of the law and what it actually requires, which will provide a basis for AFFS’ future campaigning, as it will identify the standards that universities will need to achieve, and actions they will have to take: they are currently way off the mark.

In the meantime, BFSP has issued the following statements:

Protected viewpoints under the Equality Act following the Forstater case

Minimum Requirements for Staff and Student behaviour

Compulsory EDI training

Free Speech Officers

QAA Decolonising the curriculum

Some good news: the OfS is looking a lot more proactive

(20.01.23) In the throes of what at times feels a long and unrewarding slog, it is wonderful to see some good news. The Office for Students issued an extraordinarily positive statement about free speech shortly before Christmas. It signals a much more proactive approach to pushing universities to improve free speech protection. We are very cautious about talk of the tide turning, but this is a very good sign.

Update: Cambridge, Caius College and the Helen Joyce Affair update

(22.12.22) Neither AFFS nor (so far as we know) the public have heard anything material from Cambridge about their apparent free speech contraventions. We have written – again – to Cambridge’s Council to keep the pressure up.

We will be staying on this case. Assuming that there is no change in their approaches, AFFS will report what has happened, and the failures of the management and Council of both institutions, to do anything about it, to the appropriate authorities.

(12.12.22) Neither AFFS nor (so far as we know) the public have heard anything material from Caius about their apparent free speech contraventions.

We have written again to Caius. The longer it does nothing, the worse it looks from a governance point of view, and we are pointing that out.

  

QAA embracing Critical Race Theory and “decolonisation”: free speech aspects 

(06.12.22) The QAA has controversially issued revised Benchmark Statements for university courses which incorporate a “decolonisation” agenda into subjects as unlikely as computer science.  We have published a statement about the free speech legal and compliance implications and risks for universities of implementing these statements. Great care is going to be needed when implementing the revised Benchmark Statements to ensure compliance with these obligations.  

University of Kent: Student and Staff Training Issues

(21.11.22) We spotted some troubling information about what appears to be compulsory student and staff training on EDI issues on Kent’s website. In common with other such so-called training we have seen (including as a condition of matriculation in some cases), the EDI modules state as fact various contested ideological positions (e.g. Critical Race Theory) and then require agreement or acquiescence from students in order to “pass”.

AFFS had already prepared a Briefing Note about the free speech implications of such training for new students which can be found here.

We have written to Professor Karen Cox, the Vice Chancellor at Kent, raising our concerns and enclosing a Freedom of Information Request designed to establish the full facts before we take any further action. See our email here.

What you can do:

  • Share our email and Briefing Note with any Kent alumni you know
  • Join AFFS if you have not already done so
  • If you were at Kent, consider setting-up a Kent University AFFS branch

University of York: Defamation of the Leader of the SDP by student activists

(17.11.22) Defamatory statements were made about Mr William Clouston, the Leader of the SDP, by York University’s LGBTQ+ Network following an invitation for him to speak at the Student Union by the University’s Free Speech Society. Although the meeting went ahead, this sort of behaviour is a worrying trend and certain activists think that their strong personal views about issues of public controversy entitle them to abuse visiting speakers.

We have written to York VC, Professor Charlie Jeffery, both to compliment York’s administrators in not bowing to pressure to cancel the event and to express concern about the behaviour of LBGTQ+ Network. We have also pointed out that, by taking sides on issues where lawful views can widely differ, York may be unwittingly encouraging this sort of behaviour.

AFFS had already prepared Briefing Notes on both student conduct and compulsory EDI training for students.

A copy was among the attachments to our letter to Professor Jeffery.

What you can do:

  • Share our email and Briefing Notes with any York alumni you know
  • Join AFFS if you have not already done so
  • If you were at York, write to Professor Jeffery (at vc@york.ac.uk) expressing your concern in moderate and factual terms
  • If you were at York, consider setting-up a York University AFFS branch

Letter to all Vice-Chancellors

(09.11.22) Following our launch, on 9 November 2022, we wrote to the Vice-Chancellors of English universities to introduce AFFS, explain its work and aims and invite constructive dialogue. See our letter here.

Update: Cambridge and Gonville & Caius free speech problems (November 2022)

Reports say that Caius refused to circulate information on the Helen Joyce talk, which appears to be in effect discriminatory against people who hold the protected characteristic of gender critical views. This is directly attributable to the College, so the question of whether the “private” email should be attributed to the College does not arise in this case. We wrote to the College’s Council about the very real issues regarding free speech protection, and they appear to be doing nothing, or at least saying nothing. This is turning into a governance issue. Are they relying on their being effectively unaccountable? We’ll stay on the case.

Nor have AFFS or the public heard anything material from Cambridge about its apparent free speech contraventions. It has dug itself into an unnecessary hole: by not promptly addressing the issues raised and recognising that that it needs to admit errors and improve its performance as regards free speech protection and communicating that recognition, it is making what could have been a moderate embarrassment into something significantly more damaging, including questions about its governance. We have written to Cambridge’s Council – see our letter here.

If any Cambridge alumni have the energy to write to the Vice-Chancellor, Chairman of the Council or independent members, it would help add some pressure. Their details are here: https://www.governance.cam.ac.uk/committees/council/Pages/members-listing.aspx

Update: Gonville & Caius and its free speech problems (November 2022)

The College has been strangely silent. They sent a bland the statement to (we assume) staff and students as well as alumni.

We are pleased that the content and tone of this further statement are more careful and conciliatory than the original email from the Master and Senior Tutor that sparked the current problems.

Nonetheless, the new statement does not even attempt to engage with the problematic issues created by the original email, and we regard this statement as well below the standards one would hope the College would set itself. The public (including alumni) are extremely concerned about the failures at our universities to protect free speech appropriately, as exemplified by recent events at Caius. They expect the concerns raised to be addressed directly, not avoided.

We think that the College has dug itself into an unnecessary hole by not addressing the issues raised and recognising that that it really needs to improve its performance as regards free speech protection. It should stop digging.

We have issued a detailed statement detailing our concerns (and see the College’s recent statement) here.

See our statement about the Equality Act and the Forstater case here.

Our first intervention: Gonville & Caius and the Sociology Department at Cambridge (October 2022)

The Master and Senior Tutor at Gonville & Caius, Cambridge, recently made ill-advised statements about the views of Dr Helen Joyce, the gender-critical author, and the meeting at the College at which she was due to speak. They said that they consider Dr Joyce’s views to be “hateful to members of our community”. 

Since the landmark Forstater case, Dr Joyce’s views count as ‘protected characteristics’ for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010. 

We believe that, while these statements were presented as having been issued in their private capacities, the statements are likely to have caused the College to act unlawfully, contrary to its Public Sector Equality Duty. Further, by describing these protected views in the way they did, they (a) sent a clear message that holding these views is unacceptable within the College and likely to be subject to negative consequences, with the clear effect of being likely to suppress the expression of those views within the College, and (b) were complicit in the creation of a hostile environment for a visiting speaker with a protected characteristic.

We have written to remonstrate with them, and have urged them to show more care and judgement, and use more moderate language, in their handling of equalities and free speech issues going forward.

See our letter to the Master of Caius here.

Not to be outdone, the Head of Sociology, Prof Manali Desai, issued highly inappropriate statements about the event at Gonville and Caius at which Dr Helen Joyce was due to speak, in which she described information which had been circulated about it as “potentially harmful material” and apologised for circulating it and stated a resolve not to share similar material again.

The clear import of her email was that:

  • She regards certain viewpoints as unacceptable and not appropriate to put in front of her students and other departmental participants, with the clear implication that holding these views is unacceptable within the department. By describing these protected views in the way that she did, she was likely complicit (we accept probably inadvertently so) in the creation of what reports indicate was a very hostile and intimidating environment for a visiting speaker with a protected characteristic, i.e. Dr Joyce.
  • She intends not to share information on upcoming events of certain natures which offend participants within the department, whilst sharing information about other events. This clearly discriminates against people who have unpopular viewpoints or want to put on what would be unpopular events.


Her communication appears to be a doubly unlawful action on the part of the University, as a contravention of its Public Sector Equality Duty and as contrary to the University’s legal duty to secure free speech under the Education (No.2) Act 1986.

We have written to remonstrate with her, and urged her to:

  • issue a statement confirming that she is aware of her contraventions and setting out the measures she will take to set them right and apologising to those who have been disadvantaged by them; and
  • show more care and judgement in her handling of equalities and free speech issues going forward.

See our letter to the Head of Sociology here.

To say that there has been a storm is an understatement. It has been much reported by the press, with our letters quoted from. The Free Speech Union is also raising governance/compliance issues. We are aware of a lot of alumni having written in, some stating plans to cut their support.

What you can do:

  • Share this email with your Cambridge and Caius friends.
  • Join AFFS if you have not already done so – https://affs.uk/join
  • We urge Cambridge – and Gonville & Caius – alumni to write to their institutions to protest. Please remember: express yourself moderately, and keep to the facts. Alumni care hugely about free speech, but we are not extremists.

Their emails (from public sources):

Cambridge

Gonville & Caius