CAF is delighted to announce that it has been accepted as a member of the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition. Membership will strengthen our ability to support academics facing abusive legal threats by connecting our work to a wider network of free-expression organisations, media lawyers, whistleblowing and transparency groups, and specialist routes to legal support.
Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or SLAPPs, are legal actions or threats intended less to win in court than to intimidate, exhaust or silence those speaking out on matters of public importance. Although they are most often associated with journalists and campaigners, academics can also be targeted when their research challenges powerful individuals, companies or institutions.
Having already attended our first Coalition meeting, and heard directly from two journalists currently facing long-running proceedings bearing the hallmarks of a SLAPP, we are in no doubt about the grave threat this form of legal intimidation poses not only to journalism, but to knowledge work more broadly.
Coalition partners have been analysing the increasing number of cases being reported to them, preparing parliamentary briefings, organising roundtables, developing public campaigning, and pressing for meaningful anti-SLAPP legislation. CAF will contribute to that work by bringing our research, policy analysis and media relations expertise into the Coalition’s wider campaign.
One immediate focus will be the second reading of Sir John Whittingdale MP’s Private Member’s Bill in the House of Commons on Friday 27 November. The Bill would create an early dismissal mechanism, allowing courts to dispose of abusive claims before defendants are forced into ruinously expensive proceedings.
For academic freedom, that kind of early knock-out is especially important. Threats of litigation, or even aggressive pre-action correspondence, can chill research, commentary and public-interest criticism long before any case reaches trial.
More insidiously, they can foster risk-aversion within universities themselves. An academic’s ability to pursue critical research may depend on whether their institution is willing to stand behind them – and yet, too often, universities are unable to offer much in the way of insurance, legal review, or other safeguards capable of mitigating the threat of litigation by those with very deep pockets, leaving scholars to shoulder the costs themselves.
Publishers, too, have been known to shift legal exposure to authors or editors, or simply decline to publish research likely to provoke legal action. A cautionary example is the Russia scholar Professor Karen Dawisha, who was dropped by her long-time publisher Cambridge University Press – which had initially agreed to publish her book – after concluding that the libel risk under English law was too high. The manuscript later appeared in the United States as Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?
Indeed, Dawisha’s experience – publishing a “very academic book” deemed too legally perilous for a prestigious British press but readily taken up by a US publisher – serves as a reminder that while SLAPPs are a global problem, England has long been identified as a premier destination for “libel tourism”, owing to the decidedly claimant-friendly character of its defamation laws.
Private Members’ Bills like Sir John’s rarely become law without Government support, so the preparatory lobbying and support work around the Bill is essential. Not only does it keep anti-SLAPP reform firmly before Parliament; it also helps build cross-party pressure and gives ministers a ready-made legislative vehicle if they choose to act.
As well as mucking in however we can, CAF’s role within the Coalition will be to help ensure that academics are not treated as an afterthought in anti-SLAPP reform.
You can find out more about the Coalition’s work here.
CAF Research Manager Freddie Attenborough has written more about the threat SLAPPs pose to academic freedom in The Critic here.
And if you, or anyone you know, has experienced, or thinks they might be experiencing, legal intimidation of this kind, please get in touch at manager@afcomm.org.uk.
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.