The case of Russell Cherrington, a former senior lecturer in Media and Film at the University of Derby, reaches the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) this week. Cherrington was dismissed without notice in 2024 after complaints about remarks allegedly made during teaching sessions.
The complaints emerged after his Film and High-End TV programme received poor National Student Survey scores, prompting meetings with students about the course. During that process, it was alleged that Cherrington had made remarks about diversity hiring, disability, transgender issues and women in media, often during broader classroom discussions, script reviews and practical teaching exercises. He denied some of the alleged language, argued that his comments had been taken out of context, suggested that students had colluded, and criticised the university for not speaking to students he identified who had not complained about his teaching.
The university nevertheless concluded that several remarks had been made and characterised them as “misogynistic, transphobic and ableist”. An Employment Tribunal later held that his dismissal for gross misconduct was fair and that the complaint of unfair dismissal was not well-founded.
According to lawyers with knowledge of the case, the appeal is expected to centre on whether tribunals should apply more searching scrutiny in dismissal cases involving academic speech, rather than relying solely on ordinary unfair-dismissal principles. Put another way, does it matter that Cherrington was a lecturer speaking in a seminar room, or should the law treat the situation no differently from a window-manufacturing salesman holding forth in the staff room?
That matters because of the way the original tribunal structured its reasoning. In addressing Cherrington’s appeal grounds, it accepted the university’s position that the comments “did not constitute an academic line of conversation and was not part of, or arose from, the teaching material”.
The problem, if that distinction is treated too rigidly, is that universities rarely operate solely through pre-scripted lectures or formally approved curricular material. Much teaching — particularly in seminars, workshops and studio-based disciplines — occurs through exploratory discussion, provocation, improvised examples and the testing of ideas in real time.
The tribunal also found that the university had not acted unreasonably in treating the alleged remarks as something other than the questioning of received wisdom or the expression of controversial or unpopular opinions. Here, it focused on the university’s How We Work policy, which required senior university bodies to protect academics’ ability, “within the law”, to “question and test received wisdom, and to put forward new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions”. According to the judge, this qualifying phrase could encompass the university’s Equality Act obligations to students, including the duty not to discriminate “in the way it provides education to students” – a duty the judgment appears to attribute to section 96 of the Equality Act, though the relevant provision may in fact be section 91.
There is no serious argument that academic freedom protects unlawful discrimination. But one issue likely to arise in the appeal is whether the judgment adequately grappled with how equality-law concepts should operate where the alleged misconduct consists of speech occurring in a teaching context. If “within the law” is read largely through universities’ own assessment of Equality Act risk, and then assessed through retrospective student complaints rather than any contemporaneous record of what was said, in what context, and for what pedagogical purpose, then controversial, intentionally provocative or simply clumsily phrased classroom discussion may increasingly be treated as falling outside academic freedom protection before any demanding analysis of academic freedom has taken place.
The case continues before the EAT.
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, click the link and subscribe to our newsletter.
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