Oxford University’s new chancellor, Lord Hague of Richmond, has warned prospective students that they should expect to be confronted by uncomfortable ideas, declaring there will be “no safe spaces” during his tenure.
Speaking at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, the former foreign secretary said there would be no ‘cancel culture’ at Oxford under his leadership and urged other institutions to follow its lead. “It is very important that students arrive at university expecting they will hear things that will upset them, that will offend them,” he said. “There is no point trying to look for a safe space from that, because there’s not going to be many safe spaces in the next 50 years in the world that we are going into. We have to get used to that.”
Hague’s intervention comes amid renewed debate over how universities should navigate the boundary between equality protections and lawful speech, particularly where ‘safe space’ policies are seen to prioritise emotional safety over robust discussion of ideas.
The concept of ‘safe space’ entered campus discourse in the United States during the 1990s and 2000s, initially referring to physical environments for LGBTQ students facing discrimination. In the UK, it gained traction in the 2010s as student unions and societies invoked the term not to prevent physical harassment, but to shield students from lawful ideas that some consider psychologically harmful or offensive.
At Cambridge, the language of safety was explicitly invoked in 2022 during a row over a talk by Helen Joyce, the gender-critical author and former Economist journalist. Joyce had been invited to speak at Gonville and Caius College by a philosophy fellow. Ahead of the event, senior staff emailed students to say her views were “considered offensive, insulting and hateful to members of our community who live and work here”. When it became clear the talk would proceed, the College opened a “safe space welfare tearoom” for LGBTQ students to shelter together while she debated the role of biological sex in policy and law.
The term has also been used to justify identity-based restrictions on participation. In 2023, the University of Westminster’s student union announced that some events would be “reserved for black students to encourage a safe space for discussions and honest conversations”. And following the October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas, Cambridge University’s Amnesty International society promoted a “welfare event” as a safe space “for all supporters of Palestine”, with no reference to Israeli or Jewish students.
In conversation with Labour peer Baroness Hazarika, Hague also endorsed the Labour government’s decision to proceed with implementing key provisions of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, originally introduced under the previous Conservative administration. The legislation, which came into force in August, imposes binding duties on universities to protect lawful freedom of speech and academic freedom. Institutions must take “reasonably practicable steps” to secure open expression, including maintaining a code of practice and ensuring that speaker policies and disciplinary processes do not chill debate.
The Office for Students (OfS) will soon operate a statutory complaints scheme and has been granted investigatory powers under the Act, including the ability to recommend redress, such as compensation, where individuals can demonstrate that they have suffered loss as a result of a breach.
Importantly, the regulator’s guidance makes clear that policies aimed at shielding students from discomfort must not override legal duties to uphold free expression. In one illustrative case – reflecting the logic behind many ‘safe space’ interventions – a university removed a philosophy lecturer from teaching after religious students said her atheist views made them feel “uncomfortable” and “unwelcome”. The lecturer had occasionally described religious belief as irrational, contradictory and potentially harmful to social progress during lectures on epistemology and ethics. Despite an internal investigation finding that her teaching was academically rigorous, relevant and respectful, the university reassigned her to avoid further complaints. The OfS concluded this would likely breach its free speech obligations under the Act.
For Hague, the issue is not only about legal compliance, but epistemic progress. “Freedom of speech and argument,” he said, “are vital to, for example, work out that previously-held views might have been ‘crazy’… there are things we think today that in 50 years we will think we were crazy to believe. How we discover that is through freedom of speech and argument, through listening to others.”
He also stressed that free speech carries responsibilities as well as rights. “Freedom of speech is not the freedom just to scream your views at somebody,” he said. “It carries the obligation to listen as well. There should be debate, not just the stream of things on social media. And that means no cancel culture. That means being ready to hear things that make you feel uncomfortable.”
Hague, who succeeded Lord Patten of Barnes last year, holds a largely ceremonial role as Oxford’s chancellor, presiding over degree ceremonies and official meetings. But his comments are likely to be read as a statement of direction, aligning the university with a broader political push to reassert freedom of expression as a foundational academic principle.