King’s College London currently has an advert for the position of lecturer in Music History which includes a requirement to show evidence of support for “equality, diversity and inclusion”. This is highly likely to be a breach of the free speech duties imposed on higher education providers under a recently commenced law.
The job listing in question was posted on 12 August, after the new requirements to protect and promote free speech and academic freedom came into effect at the beginning of the month. As part of applying for the position, applicants must submit a cover letter, an up-to-date CV, and “a separate document a short statement (no longer than 1/3 an A4 page) describing their past/current experience of supporting student welfare and equality, diversity & inclusion in the higher education context.”
It is this last requirement that is likely to land the London-based institution in regulatory trouble. As the Office for Students pointed out in its recently published regulatory guidance, higher education providers must “not require applicants to any academic position to commit (or give evidence of commitment) to a particular viewpoint”.
Indeed, Example 32 of the guidance specifically relates to polices of “requiring a commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion”. Although the example refers to applications for promotion, the guidance applies in the same way to job applications. As the OfS notes, “removing this requirement is…likely to be a reasonably practicable step” for a university to take so as to fulfil their duty to protect free speech.
There is no plausible defence from ignorance here. Sure, the relevant provisions of the Act have only recently commenced, but universities have had more than a year to prepare for this. Moreover, as Abhishek Saha, founding member of the London Universities’ Council for Academic Freedom, pointed out on X, the advert probably also violates the OfS conditions of registration E1 and/or E2. These are the minimum conditions that a higher education provider must fulfil to obtain registration in England, and among other things, they require suitable governance arrangements to protect freedom of speech.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time King’s College has been found to violate its free-speech duties by requiring support for EDI in the recruitment process. In its 2025 report University Recruitment: EDI requirements causing free speech compliance failures, Alumni for Free Speech (AFFS) noted that KCL was among the “most egregious offenders” because “AFFS has previously warned it about such failures and it appears to have done nothing”.
This statement still holds true: KCL has still done nothing to rectify its likely noncompliance with free speech regulations. Nor is this an isolated incident. An academic currently based at Oxford told CAF that a job interview with the London institution had included the question: “What approach would you take to promote EDI?”.
Despite free speech groups like CAF and AFFS repeatedly drawing attention to these problematic policies, there has still been little to no change at KCL. In 2024, the prominent lawyer and human rights expert Akua Reindorf KC wrote a detailed analysis of KCL’s EDI requirement for promotions, concluding that it likely violated several laws, including the Equality Act protection against “philosophical belief discrimination”.
So why have these practices been allowed to continue for this long? No doubt KCL would claim that this is merely an attempt to broader the pool of potential candidates. “We pride ourselves on being inclusive and welcoming”, states the job advertisement. “Through this appointment process, it is our aim to develop candidate pools that include applicants from all backgrounds and communities.
There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting a broad selection of candidates to choose from, but this is the wrong way to go about it. First, there are already several anti-discrimination laws to safeguard people from being disadvantaged based on protected characteristics. Second, there is no guarantee that candidates who have experience of supporting EDI will be more diverse than those who have not. In fact, the only guarantee is that the selected group will be less intellectually diverse.
Requirements of this kind are more likely to narrow than to broaden the pool of applicants. CAF has heard from many academics who feel discouraged from applying for jobs which require them to undergo this sort of litmus test. The KCL advert is the most recent example of this pernicious trend in higher education, but there will surely be more to come in the future, unless universities face real penalties for breaking the rules.
The Office for Students has previously shown a willingness to issue large fines to institutions that fail to uphold their free speech duties. If King’s College London once again refuses to act on the numerous warnings that have been issued to it, the regulator should investigate this and other instances of noncompliance. After all, there is little point in having legal protections if we decline to enforce them.