Seven British Nobel laureates have joined the backlash from academics over plans to scrap laws tackling “cancel culture” on university campuses.
In one of her first acts as education secretary, Bridget Phillipson indefinitely suspended legislation that would have forced universities to protect the right of legal free speech on campus or face sanctions.
Her decision has provoked a backlash from lecturers who have warned it will stifle academic freedom in controversial areas such as transgender rights. They have now been backed by seven Nobel laureates including Sir John Gurdon, whose pioneering work in cloning led to the creation of Dolly the sheep.
Phillipson is also facing a legal challenge against the decision amid claims that she exceeded her authority by indefinitely suspending an act of parliament. Amid signs of a potential rethink, Phillipson told MPs this week that she wanted to listen to a “range of views” on the issue.
“I take having strong freedom of expression in our universities, and students being exposed to a range of views — some of which they might find difficult or disagree with — extremely seriously,” she said.
She has previously said that she suspended the act because she was worried about the burden it would place on universities to investigate complaints at a time of financial strain. She also warned that it “could expose students to harm and appalling hate speech”.
But more than 600 academics have signed a letter to Phillipson calling on her to reconsider the decision, warning that a failure to act would allow staff and students to be “hounded, censured and silenced” for holding legitimate, legal views.
Alongside Gurdon they include other Nobel prizewinners such as Sir Peter Ratcliffe, professor of clinical medicine at Oxford University and Sir Gregory Winter, the biologist whose work on monoclonal antibodies has led to the development of treatments for diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis.
The campaign has also won the backing of the former Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption who warned that dropping the legislation amounted to a “betrayal of the vocation of our universities”. “The distinguished academics who have endorsed the campaign have widely differing views on many current controversies but are united in their defence of the right to speak out without undermining their careers,” he said.
“The last decade has seen too many cases of academics hounded, marginalised, threatened with disciplinary proceedings, forced into self-censorship and even sacked because of their refusal to accept standard tropes about issues which are matters of legitimate debate, like gender identity, imperialism, slavery, racial discrimination and many others. These wars against those who step out of line mark the narrowing of our intellectual world and a betrayal of the vocation of our universities.”
In the letter the academics warned Phillipson that suspending the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act could put academics at risk and suppress learning.
They wrote: “The decision to halt [the act] appears to reflect the view, widespread among opponents, that there is no ‘free speech problem’ in UK universities. Nothing could be more false. Hundreds of academics and students have been hounded, censured, silenced or even sacked over the last 20 years for the expression of legal opinions. This state of affairs has serious consequences for all of us. The suppression of university research into the effects of puberty blockers facilitated one of the great medical scandals of our age, as the Cass Review makes clear.”
Julius Grower, associate professor of law at Oxford who has helped lead the campaign, said the government’s decision had “shocked” many academics who “thought that the issue was finally closed”. He said: “Hundreds of colleagues from a range of institutions and backgrounds have come together to ask the secretary of state to think again. The momentum is growing. People are emailing in every day asking to sign the letter, and what they can do to support the cause.”
However, the move to suspend the legislation has been backed by some Jewish groups who warned that it could “inadvertently provide antisemitic individuals with greater opportunities to use campuses as platforms for spreading hate”.
They said it could severely limit universities’ ability to block “dangerous rhetoric” and jeopardise the “safety and dignity of minority students”.
