Smell the CofI: Protecting free speech in universities from Corbynistas, right-wing populists and those wanting to smash capitalism?

• In this blog, HEPI Director Nick Hillman takes a look at a book on the contentious issue of free speech inside universities.
• Last week, Nick took part in a panel session at the Advance HE Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Conference in Hull, alongside one of the authors of the book.

During a recent chat on free speech in UK higher education, someone with years of experience in a senior role regulating universities told me to read Freedom of Speech in Universities: Islam, Charities and Counter-terrorism by Alison Scott-Baumann and Simon Perfect.

So I have. It is a short book in the Routledge Focus series and, having now read it, I agree it deserves a wider readership – at the time of writing this piece, it had no reviews at all on Amazon despite being two years old (though it did have one five-star rating).

Smell the CofI

The book separates possible responses to the issue of free speech on campus in four:

1. Libertarian
2. Liberal
3. Guarded liberal
4. No-platforming

The authors back the ‘liberal’ approach, with the goal of ensuring universities develop a Community of Inquiry or CofI: ‘the CofI approach reminds us to find a human bond with others even when we think their ideas are stupid.’ (My emphasis)

They explain this in more detail by saying:

we are convinced by the strong case that societies gain more from open and critical debate about marginal, challenging or offensive views than from their exclusion – whether on the grounds that this is essential for establishing truth, for participating in democracy, or because the consequences of exclusion are worse.

In short, the goal is risk awareness rather than risk aversion. This is a useful framework, as the overarching objective becomes facilitating events rather than blocking anything that feels risky. It also means giving thought to the potential consequences of events before they happen rather than in a crisis at the time.

The approach cannot offer a panacea, however. Excessive focus on risk awareness may not address the chilling effect of bureaucracy on event organisers. Moreover, risk is an average and specific incidences of risk can be exaggerated: you may know events on the Middle East or the rights of trans people can raise tensions, but you do not always know which event will be the one that flares up.

Despite rightly seeing more debate as a way to pick a way through difficult terrain and recognising the central role universities have to play, the book also reflects the divisions that make this policy area so fraught and which tend to pit those in power against others.

Most notably, the authors regard the threats to free speech on campus as coming almost wholly from the right, with lots of discussion about ‘right-wing populism’. We are told, for example, that ‘for right-wing populists in particular, rhetorical appeals to freedom of speech go hand in hand with attacks on minority groups’. (Again, the emphasis is mine.)

If readers doubt the target is the right rather than all those who oppose liberty on both ends of the political spectrum, they should take a look at the book’s Index: under ‘p’, there is one reference to ‘left-wing’ populism but multiple references to ‘right-wing’ populism. The entry for ‘right-wing’ merely states ‘see populism’, implying the terms are synonymous.

Corbyn-mania

There are two problems with this approach. First, from reading the book you would never know that Corbyn-mania, which was a form of left-wing populism that facilitated attacks on one minority group in particular – Jewish people – was concentrated among the middle-class young people who make up the mass of full-time undergraduates.

It is now widely accepted even by his own former party that the form of left-wing populism over which Corbyn presided allowed antisemitism to fester. Two-thirds of students and one-half of staff backed Labour when Corbyn was leader, but he does not get a single mention in the book. Antisemitism gets two.

The authors focus instead on the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), which is sometimes described as ‘neoconservative’ and wants to limit some extremist speech, and Spiked, which tends to be defined as ‘right-libertarian’ and supports more of a free-for-all, before repeatedly criticising ‘Right-wing populists [who] sneak into the gap between these [two] claims’ (see pages 32, 82 and 119).

So the right are portrayed as wrong if they want to limit more extremist speech, wrong if they push for a looser libertarian approach and wrong if they take a position in the space between these two positions. If you’re on the right and you have a view about free speech, it is deemed to be incorrect on sight, which seems unconducive to a reasonable conversation.

At this point, the careful architecture of the authors’ argument starts to crumble, not least because left-wing populists and others (eg the NUS) are in exactly the same ‘gap’, which is really a chasm. 

If you support No-Platforming while opposing Prevent, you are somewhere between wanting a clampdown and a free-for-all just as you are if you oppose No Platforming while supporting Prevent. The authors of the book themselves live in this gap too: they want vibrant, fair and open debate within some limits – ‘Liberal’ not ‘Libertarian’.

Students have typically resided in the same space, backing free speech in theory but offering less robust support when grilled further. In other words, those who want much stricter limits on free speech and those who want a libertarian approach stand out because their positions are untypical, not because most people agree with one or the other.

Smash Capitalism!

The second limitation with the authors’ approach is that, for well over a decade, we have had right-of-centre governments at Westminster. So condemning populism while associating it only with the side of the political spectrum that happens to be in power and ignoring the populist left makes the book appear resolutely anti-government.

That is the prerogative of the authors who are exercising their own freedom of speech. But their stated intention is to influence policy and the lack of balance makes that less likely. Whoever is in office will tend to be sucked in to any culture war that exists, yet this book’s partiality means the lessons are less likely to be digested by those currently in power.

If this sounds overcooked, the section in the book on student unions gives the game away. It recognises there are benefits from the recent tighter regulation of student unions (for example, on governance and financial management). It also marshals evidence to show the Charity Commission may have sometimes overstretched themselves when regulating student union events.

But the authors condemn the common idea that student unions should avoid political campaigning that is not focused on students. They envisage students backing a motion that devotes resources to protesting about a national economic policy and argue ‘we think their students’ union should have at least the possibility of enacting the motion if they so wish.’

This sounds more like finding an excuse to divert charitable funds from their proper use than protecting free speech. If a group of students want to campaign against a national economic policy, there are plenty of existing and legitimate routes for them to do so (including joining a political party) aside from (mis)using their fellow students’ charitable financial resources.

So the book is a useful addition to the canon on free speech in UK universities. Given the expertise of the authors, it may be of particular value to Prevent Leads in higher education institutions. But it needs to be read alongside other material that conveys a greater sense of the full range of attacks on free and fair debate on campus.