Professor Arif Ahmed delivered the keynote address at CAF’s Navigating Academic Freedom conference aboard HMS President on Wednesday. In a wide-ranging talk, the Office for Students’ Director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom – or, if you prefer your monikers in the style of the Daily Mail, the government’s “free speech tsar” – reflected on the character and governing idea of the modern university, the challenges it faces despite commencement of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, and the practical steps individual academics can take to help restore a culture of open inquiry on campus.
Ahmed began by outlining three major concerns highlighted in the OfS’s new regulatory guidance on universities’ free-speech duties, all of them widespread in English universities: compelling academics to affirm particular moral or political positions; censuring remarks that might offend overseas governments; and suppressing internal criticism on the grounds of protecting institutional “reputation”.
That latter concern was symptomatic of a deeper cultural drift that, as Arif went on to suggest, could not be reversed by legislation alone. Invoking the work of the philosopher Michael Oakeshott, he traced the development of the modern managerial university, in which corporate concerns increasingly take precedence over intellectual autonomy.
In Oakeshott’s terms, a civil association is bound not by shared ends but by rules of conduct that allow individuals to pursue their own purposes within the limits of law. An enterprise association, by contrast, unites its members around a common goal – moral, political or economic – and demands that they subordinate personal judgement to collective purpose.
Reputation-conscious (and increasingly marketised) English universities, Ahmed argued, have over time moved from the former to the latter model. Once governed by procedural norms that safeguarded independence of thought, they now increasingly define themselves as moral projects, pursuing ‘EDI’, ‘decolonisation’ or ‘social justice’ as institutional missions and thereby enforcing conformity to institutional ‘values’.
For Ahmed, the remedy lies in recovering the older, civil conception of the academy, where the protection of free expression is not a managerial courtesy but a constitutional principle. In part, that is the function of the new law: to support, but never to direct – a handrail, as it were, not a fully automated, strap-in Stannah stairlift decked out in Progress-Pride colours. In another part, however, it will rely on individual academics taking steps to change the culture on campus and protect their lawful speech rights. Here, Ahmed offered two practical suggestions.
First, he urged academics not to wait for others to defend these principles on their behalf, but to consult the Office for Students’ Regulatory Advice 24 and begin raising concerns over possible breaches directly with their universities. Only in this way, he said, could we hope to make the defence of freedom of speech the path of least resistance for senior administrators – who, as he definitely didn’t say, prefer a more tranquil environment in which to enjoy their six-figure salaries.
Finally, he urged scholars to exercise their academic freedom in visible, constructive ways — to assign challenging and controversial texts, for instance, or to invite speakers whose views test prevailing orthodoxies to academic forums and public debates. Doing a passable impression of Václav Havel’s greengrocer from his 1978 essay The Power of the Powerless – who dutifully displayed slogans he no longer believed in his shop window, simply to avoid suspicion following the Soviet-led suppression of the Prague Spring – is no longer necessary, since under the new regulatory regime universities cannot lawfully compel conformity.
By standing firm in defence of free inquiry, Ahmed reminded his audience, academics make it easier for their colleagues to follow in their footsteps.
This article forms part of the Committee for Academic Freedom’s monitoring of developments in UK higher education. To receive monthly updates and analysis on cases affecting academic freedom, subscribe to our newsletter click the link.