Another reason to support the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Student activists in Germany successfully pressured administrators to call off a public lecture by a PhD candidate on the evolution of binary sex at Berlin’s Humboldt University (Times Higher ).

The lecture, titled “Sex, gender and why there are only two sexes in biology” had been programmed as part of an established public science event that has taken place in Germany since 2000. Just two days before the talk, however, it was called off for “security reasons” after staff were alerted to a planned protest – activists from a group called ‘Working Group of Critical Lawyers’ had taken to Twitter to denounce the postdoctoral student’s work as “unscientific, inhuman and hostile to queer and trans people” before then offering the following, thinly veiled threat: “There is no place for queer hostility at our university. See you on the street!”

Humboldt University claims to have set a new date for the lecture, although whether that ever happens is now a moot point. The problem for organisations that cite “security reasons” when bowing to the demands of the mob is that they set a dangerous precedent. Every radical transactivist in Germany will now believe that if Humboldt University hosts a speaker whose views they happen not to like in the future, the threat of protest is all it takes to get the whole thing called off.

Thankfully, our Government recently accepted two amendments to the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill that the Free Speech Union has long been campaigning for, one of which will make it harder for universities or students’ unions in England to cite “security concerns” as a reason to cancel events when faced with the threat of protests. Specifically, the amendment will place a duty on higher education?providers, colleges and student unions not to pass on security costs unless in exceptional circumstances to secure freedom of speech within the law.?

The Free Speech Union backed amendment will therefore make it harder for universities and students’ unions to pursue pre-emptive - or as the government refer to them, 'back door' - cancellations, whereby the ostensibly neutral language of “security costs” is invoked for altogether more political purposes.

As former Universities Minister Michelle Donelan pointed out in the?Commons recently , a student society recently faced a ￡500 security bill from Bristol University student union to allow Mark Regev, then the Israeli Ambassador, to give a talk, while charging nothing to allow his Palestinian counterpart to do the same (Jewish News ). The Jewish Society at Lancaster University was also recently asked to pay ￡1,500 towards “security costs” as a condition of inviting Mark Regev. Because the Society couldn’t afford this, the event was cancelled (Telegraph ).