Cambridge college master refuses to apologise for calling gender-critical speaker “hateful” as alumni threaten to pull funding

The Master of Gonville and Caius who wrote to students calling Helen Joyce’s views “offensive, insulting and hateful to members of our community who live and work here” – this was after she’d been invited to speak at the College by a Fellow – has now written to alumni after furious donors threatened to pull funding (Mail ,?Telegraph ,?Times ).

Author and former?Economist?journalist Dr Helen Joyce had been invited by FSU Advisory Council member Professor Arif Ahmed, a Cambridge philosophy professor, to be interviewed by Sir Partha Dasgupta, in a talk entitled “Criticising gender-identity ideology: what happens when speech is silenced?” Dr Joyce believes biological sex is binary and immutable and has been vocal about her view that men and women are being “redefined” by trans activists, with laws and policies reshaped to privilege gender identity over biological sex.

Given Dr Joyce’s gender-critical stance it was entirely predictable that students would launch protests, with the college’s LGBT reps all claiming to be “unanimously disgusted by the platforming of such views” and tutors opening a "safe space welfare tearoom" for students during the talk ['pass the smelling salts, dearie']. In the days leading up to Dr Joyce’s speaking engagement, the College Master, Professor Pippa Rogerson, and the Senior Tutor, Dr Andrew Spencer, decided to give the incipient mob a quick, coquettish flash of their own pitchforks, emailing all students of the College to tell them how much they disapproved of Dr Joyce’s views (Telegraph ).

No doubt suitably encouraged by Prof Rogerson’s highly suggestive language – some might even call it a ‘dog-whistle’ – around a hundred trans rights protesters, some masked, gathered outside the talk last month chanting “trans rights are human rights” and banging drums. Witnesses claimed a fire door was hit and microphones had to be turned to full volume because Dr Joyce was inaudible. (You can watch Dr Joyce’s address and assess the level of disruption for yourself?here ).

The duo’s intervention led donors to say they were “embarrassed, appalled and absolutely disgusted” and would not give any more to the college without a retraction and an apology (Telegraph ). One of the flurry of alumni to send protest letters was Nick Sallnow-Smith, 72, who graduated from Gonville and Caius in 1973. “I have been extremely upset by the way in which?the master and senior tutor have behaved… it’s absolutely disgraceful,” he said, adding that: “With people like that in charge I will never donate again.”

Writing in the?Telegraph , Douglas Murray describes Professor Rogerson’s subsequent letter to alumni as a “U-turn”. Reading her mea culpa, he said, was “like watching the slowest kid in the class catching up with everybody else and then expecting applause”.

But is there really that much for any self-respecting free speech warrior to be clapping? True, Professor Rogerson’s letter describes free speech as “fundamental”, but it also contains the sort of self-serving justifications for her own recent behaviour that make it difficult to believe she really does value free speech.

There were “difficult and complex discussions” around trans matters, she says. That was why, in their email communication with students condemning Dr Joyce’s talk, she and Dr Spencer had felt it necessary to “express our personal opinions – as is our right”.

Professor Rogerson and Dr Spencer’s email did indeed address students “in our personal capacities, not as Master and Senior Tutor, but as Pippa and Andrew”. Yet as the FSU pointed out in its?letter of complaint ?to the College Council, they fired that address off from Professor Rogerson’s University email address while accessing official and reserved university mailing lists. That’s important because it suggests the letter may have constituted a breach of the College Master’s duty under section 43 of the Education Act 1986 – a provision which obliges every individual and body of persons concerned in the governance of a university to take reasonably practicable steps to secure freedom of speech within the law. Such steps are carefully set out in the University’s Statement on Freedom of Speech and were clearly disregarded by Professor Rogerson.

“Having given the matter a lot of thought,” Professor Rogerson’s apology letter continues, “I disagree with [Dr Joyce’s] views, the way she presents them, and the way in which she responds to those who disagree with her.” Given the context, it’s what you might politely call an ‘indelicate’ remark. Rather than attempting to explain her own behaviour to the college’s wealthy, free speech loving and, up until now, open-handed benefactors, ‘Pippa’ decides instead to draw their attention to another of Dr Joyce’s perceived personal failings that either hadn’t previously occurred to her, or that she forgot to mention during her last publicly delivered character assassination — this dreadful woman isn’t just “offensive, insulting and hateful”, but ill-mannered too.

The more pertinent issue, and one that Professor Rogerson’s letter fails to address, is the appropriateness of her own manner of responding to, as she might put it, “those who disagree with her”. As College Master, she is surely obliged to uphold the College’s Statement on Freedom of speech, which says: “The college expects all Fellows, staff and students to engage with intellectual and ideological challenges in a constructive, questioning and peaceable way, even if they find the viewpoints expressed to be disagreeable, unwelcome or distasteful.”

There was nothing at all “constructive” in mischaracterising Dr Joyce’s views as “offensive, insulting and hateful”, her dismissal of Dr Joyce’s work as “polemics” or her public declaration that she wouldn’t be attending Dr Joyce’s talk. Indeed, does any of that even warrant description as “engaging” with “intellectual and ideological challenges” in the first place? The Master didn’t simply breach the requirements of the Statement – she acted as though it didn’t exist.

According to the?Telegraph , many Cambridge alumni felt much the same way. More have apparently since written in to complain, with others now threatening to pull bequests or urge their own children not to attend the university.

Stop press: It looks as if Professor Rogerson may soon be sitting down to write another letter to irate alumni. Varsity , the?Cambridge?student newspaper, is reporting that it has seen leaked emails from Professor Ahmed to colleagues he believed might support the Joyce event, encouraging them to pass on the details to any of their students who might be interested. He explained that he was making that request because the Master and Senior Tutor had barred him from putting the details on the college intranet. Why? Because “further publicity will only inflame already heightened tensions in college”. Ahmed also said: “They have told me that they do not support the event. (It will go ahead anyway.)”

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