Who is stifling whose free speech here?
This blog was kindly authored by Rose Stephenson, Director of Policy and Strategy at the Higher Education Policy Institute.
If you haven’t heard the latest in the free speech wars, let me give you the lowdown. Sarah Pochin, Reform MP for Runcorn and Helsby and Jack Anderton, a Reform Party Advisor, requested that the Debating and Political Society at the University of Bangor host them for a question-and-answer session as part of Anderton’s ‘New Dawn Tour’.
The Debating Society turned them down – more on that in a moment. First, in true debating style, let’s have a Point of Order.
Pochin and Anderton were not ‘banned’ or ‘no-platformed’. They had asked a society to host them, and the society said no. I could email all the university debating societies in the UK and request that they host me to give a Q&A on whatever particular soapbox I am standing on that week (I have many). They are not violating my right to free speech by turning me down; they might simply have more interesting things to do than to listen to me.
However, as a result, the Telegraph quotes Pochin as saying: ‘So much for Free Speech. How can Bangor University’s debating society be afraid of debate?’ and Anderton as stating that the society was not ‘interested in debating’.
I had a look at the Debating Society’s website to see if they are indeed not interested in debating. Debates from the last semester include the following:
- this house would stop apologising for colonialism;
- this house would abolish the Human Rights Act;
- this house believes the Tradwife is feminism’s final boss (fascinating!); and
- this house believes the government has no right to censor pornography.
This seems like a fairly robust interest across several complex topics.
Where this becomes a free speech issue is that the Debating Society put out a rather strong statement turning down the request from Anderton and Pochin, which said:
The Debating & Political Society received a request from Jack Anderton and Sarah Pochin MP of Reform UK to attend Bangor University and give a Q&A to students. In line with our values, this request was refused. We stand by this decision as a committee. We have zero tolerance for any form of racism, transphobia, or homophobia displayed by the members of Reform UK. Their approach to the lives of others is antithetical to the values of welcoming and fair debate that our society has upheld for 177 years. We are proud to be the first of the debating unions to take a stand against Reform UK. We strongly implore our fellow societies to join us in keeping hate out of our universities.
So, they didn’t turn Reform down simply because they weren’t interested; they turned them down due to a clash of values. Let’s remember that this is the debating society’s committee, likely a handful of students, who set out their strong feelings about Reform on Instagram.
Zia Yusuf, Reform’s Head of Policy responded by writing on X:
Bangor University* have banned Reform and called us racist, transphobic and homophobic. Bangor receives £30 million in state funding a year, much of which comes from Reform-voting taxpayers. I am sure they won’t mind losing every penny of state funding under a Reform government. After all, they wouldn’t want a racist’s money, would they?
*it wasn’t the university, it was the committee of one society of the students’ union.
Perhaps I am being naive here. But, if Reform really, really, really believed in promoting free speech at universities, they might have replied to state that their offer continues to stand to the Debating Society and that they hope to engage in the future. Instead, they threatened to withdraw public funding from the only university in north-west Wales and one of the region’s biggest employers.
Yes, the students have a strong opinion here. But surely that opinion itself should be protected as a form of free speech? If public figures have the right to say offensive and harmful things, surely people listening have the right to state that they find these to be offensive and harmful. Instead of taking an approach to work with the society, Reform has dropped an anvil of a threat on the heads of a handful of students.
Pochin continues to have a significant national platform, and Anderton is on tour and according to his website will be visiting The University of Edinburgh , Lancaster University, The University of Cambridge , The University of Exeter, Durham University, and the University of York.
To be clear, when I visit and speak to universities, I am advocating, in the strongest possible terms, that colleagues engage with their local Reform party members and councillors. Further, I explain that they must consider the 27% of the population who hold a medium-level qualification (A-Level or equivalent) and voted for Reform in the last election. To what extent does this group of voters feel like university is a place for them?
I’ve also written extensively on the topic of free speech in universities, and you can find my blogs here. In particular, I have written about the role universities have in promoting free speech:
If we truly want to promote free speech, we have to teach the skills of unlearning: curiosity, open-mindedness, resilience and tolerance. This isn’t to say that all students should change their minds or perceptions. This might happen, but what we also need to develop is the curiosity to understand why someone thinks or believes differently from us. What led them to this belief? Why is it important to them? And, in turn, why do we hold the belief that we do? What led us to that viewpoint and why is it important to us?
And yes, there may well be a place for this at Bangor University. However, I will continue to defend the students’ right to say that something is racist if they believe that this is the case.
So, in this latest episode of the culture wars, there are three important takeaways for me:
- You have the right to free speech, but you don’t have the right to force people to listen.
- You have the right to free speech (within the law) that may be offensive and harmful, and others have the equivalent right to speak out against this. Free speech is a two-way street.
- There is plenty of work to be done in universities to develop curiosity and open engagement with challenging ideas. Perhaps it would be helpful if our politicians also demonstrated these attributes.
Comments
Brooke Storer-Church says:
Thoughtful piece, Rose. I suppose one could argue that the Bangor Debate Society missed an opportunity to engage with those Reform speakers with whom they do disagree to explore that process of unlearning you describe, and therefore to better understand those they feel see the world differently to them– and perhaps to challenge directly those views in a respectful, democratic way. Whatever their response, threats to defund (or other types of threats) are unreasonable and a sign of weakness and control-seeking much like we’ve seen exercised by MAGA speakers in the US. An ongoing issue for us all to watch, no doubt. Thanks for sharing this.
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Jonathan Alltimes says:
More righteous than thou.
So a debating society will only include those in the practice of persuasion through argument with whom they agree and can be persuaded, nonsensical. The reference to the abstract idea of values is a tacit argument from a supposed objective and impartial authority, as if values are a transcendent judge who defines who is admissable, when in fact it the executive of the society who have interpreted the values, decided who is who, decided the rules including values, and who may participate in persuasion about choices.
Yusuf has reflected back to them their own error about questions of identity and worth, as the debating society itself has questions about identity and worth. You point to the reality outside of the university bubble.
Debate is primarily concerned with reasons for why a choice is made and the likelihood of truth, merely stating beliefs which can not be proven can be included in debate but it is not itself debate, so some choices are outside debate, debating itself being a choice. Can you prove associates of Reform UK are rascist?
1. MPs and other people in public office have a duty to listen, as we govern with consent.
2. We are not in the street. One is in a university and the other is in a political party, both are learning about how to live and govern in our nation by learning within a organization. If they want a shouting and slagging match in the street, join a protest march or start a new media channel.
3. MPs are concerned about a lot things, as are their constituents, but MPs are primarily concerned about the laws of our country, how we are governed, and how the executive perform their work.
When we we treat some people as of less social value as other people, that is persecution, we begin down the road of the authoritarian regimes of the past and their secret and dirty wars, which of course students or associates of political parties never engage in.
To date, Reform UK is less than double figures away from a majority in House of Commons. Whose social norms are they representing?
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