The University of Oxford is facing serious questions over its handling of public talks by Dr Michael Foran, an associate professor of law and tutorial fellow at Keble College, after trans activists interrupted two events linked to his recent work on sex, gender identity and the legal tensions that have emerged between them.
Foran, an expert in equality law whose scholarship was cited in the Supreme Court’s landmark judgment in For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers, had been due to deliver four lectures on themes from his recently published book, Sex, Gender Identity and the Law.
The lectures took place in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling that, for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010, the terms “woman” and “sex” refer to biological sex, with significant implications for the operation of single-sex spaces, services and sporting categories. That ruling, by the highest court in the land, enraged trans activists, with some campaigners claiming it amounts to the wholesale exclusion of trans people from public life, and one Scottish Green MSP denouncing it as rooted in “bigotry, prejudice and hatred”.
Footage circulating online shows Foran being interrupted at two separate events. At the first, activists stood in front of his lectern and portentously informed the audience that he was a “bigot” who “masks his transphobia behind a thin veneer of academia”.
One of the protesters then declared: “If you are here in a critical capacity to challenge his ideas … that is not the same as refusing to platform him. He will not be convinced by your arguments. Please join me in walking out and refusing to platform this bigot.”
At the next lecture, the same two protesters again interrupted proceedings to address the audience. Judging from the footage, their intervention might most politely be described as having received a “mixed” reception. After they eventually left and attendees settled back for the lecture they had actually come to hear, two further protesters continued the disruption from inside the lecture theatre.
Foran had already warned the Proctors – senior University officers responsible for upholding the University’s statutes and regulations, including its rules on freedom of speech and protest – that he would not continue the series if disruption recurred. Despite reportedly being informed that no further protest would be permitted, shortly before the second lecture he was told that a larger on-site protest was expected and that organisers would be prepared to allow a planned “die-in” – a potentially disruptive protest tactic involving participants occupying a space while lying on the ground.
That second event proved to be the last. Not unreasonably, Foran decided to cancel the remaining talks, saying the “escalating disruptive protests” had “undermined the academic nature of this series”. He later added: “In attempting to shame students into de-platforming these lecturers, they manifest the antithesis of what a university stands for.”
It is tempting to docket this as a story of student misconduct: the usual suspects, with all the usual ill-informed grievances, displaying an infantile impulse to silence those with whom they disagree. But then, protesters plainly have certain lawful rights to object to Foran’s views, even if we might look askance at the pooterish way they exercise them.
The subtler, and ultimately more serious, locus of concern is whether Oxford, as an institution, took adequate steps to distinguish between protected protest, which may require facilitation, and conduct foreseeably likely to interfere with the talks themselves, which does not.
CAF Research Manager Freddie Attenborough discusses Oxford’s handling of the affair for The Critic here.
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.