Championing freedom of speech and inclusivity at UK universities

SOAS Director Baroness Valerie Amos CH stressed the importance freedom of speech and inclusivity on campus at the Parliament's Human Rights Committee this month.

Along with the Vice Chancellors from Edinburgh and Sussex, I recently gave evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights on freedom of speech in universities.

In my evidence session, I stressed the importance of free speech on campus and the need to support vigorous and robust debate on difficult and complex issues. I highlighted the challenges that universities face in today’s environment, in particular the impact current legislation, specifically the Government’s counter terrorism legislation, in having a ‘chilling’ effect on students from minority communities.

Referring to the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 – known as Prevent – I said there is a sense on our campus and among a lot of our students that they are operating in an environment where they feel under particular scrutiny. Where students who may be Muslim or come from ethnic minorities or have a particular political view, they are under additional scrutiny as a result of that. I see - and Board of Trustees see – our responsibility as helping to mitigate that sense that students are not able to be open and free – and express their views openly.

When asked about the “chilling effect” on free speech on campus, my response was that there has not been a chilling effect about who is invited and who gets to speak at SOAS. In actual fact, I don't think that in the last ten years or so, there has been anybody who’s been ‘no-platformed’ at SOAS.

But I argued that there is a degree of confusion and contradiction. You can’t speak about free speech without looking at the connection to other issues – certainly at SOAS Prevent is a big element of this.

Given the nature of our student body, given the concerns about the overall political environment in which certainly our students and faculty feel that there is a squeezing of the ability to be open, diverse, inclusive – a whole range of things – how we treat refugees, our visa policies, how Prevent is being implemented. All of these things are having an impact on how young people of colour, Muslims, actually feel in terms of being under additional scrutiny.

As a place that really focuses in looking at Asia, Africa, the Middle East – where in our teaching there are very diverse and different views – we are a very diverse campus but we also want to be an inclusive campus.

Our students care about the world and they care about what is happening in the world – we want people to be able to talk about these things.

Watch the full Committee appearance here.