In a deeply troubling essay for The Telegraph, Emmy-winning documentary-maker Ric Bienstock describes what happens when universities cease to judge arguments on their merits and instead treat identity as decisive, disagreement as some vaguely defined form of “harm” and dissent as evidence of moral defect.
Her two-part documentary, Speechless, now streaming on BBC iPlayer, is the product of what she calls a “near 10-year journey” across university campuses in North America and the UK. It began at Evergreen State College in 2017, where a student calmly informed her that she was a white supremacist. Did it not matter that she was Jewish and that her mother had survived Auschwitz, Bienstock wondered? But again, the precocious critical-race-theory enthusiast put her right, patiently explaining that, like, whatever, because she, like, totally benefited from an intersectional system of interlocking structures of epistemo-ontic oppression anyways by, like, literally being a white woman, so maybe go educate yourself, OMG this is literally so embarrassing for you right now?
And so it goes, examples of latter-day Maoist struggle sessions piling up as the article unfolds: a black professor of rhetoric denounced for defending the teaching of standard English, and accused of upholding “the language of white supremacy” and suffering from Stockholm syndrome; a faculty director told that proposing a meeting agenda and taking notes amounted to “white-speaking” and “white-splaining”; an English professor required to watch a professional-development video entitled “White Teachers Are a Problem” and warned that “white supremacy manifests itself in language and writing pedagogy”; and a Harvard evolutionary biologist accused of transphobia, and effectively prevented from teaching, after stating that biological sex is binary.
These cases may be American, and shaped by a particularly rigid theoretical interpretation of race, identity and power that has become deeply entrenched in US institutions, but, as Bienstock observes, the underlying patterns of ideological stigmatisation are visible across the Anglosphere. The Committee for Academic Freedom (CAF) would concur. Over the past four years, we have supported students and academics from across the political spectrum who have encountered similar tendencies in UK universities: legitimate criticism of prevailing orthodoxies treated by colleagues as evidence of bigotry; reading or citing unfashionable authors becoming grounds for suspicion; expressions of support for either Palestine or Israel attracting hostility or professional detriment; compulsory participation in contested “decolonisation” initiatives; EDI policies that not only misstate the law but create de facto compelled-speech requirements around the basic tenets of gender identity theory in particular, though not exclusively; ordinary academic disagreement reported as harassment; and institutional procedures used to isolate or silence dissenters.
As Bienstock also recognises, however, the deeper problem is not simply one of securing statutory reform or forcing institutions to align their policies with the resulting protections, but of reconfiguring a stubbornly recalcitrant campus culture which, in remaining conducive to the “othering” of wrongthinkers, inevitably produces self-censorship. So much so, in fact, that the academics whose cases are reported in the press are but the tip of the iceberg. Many others speak in confidence to organisations such as CAF, only to conclude that the safest course is to keep their heads down, avoid formal complaints for fear of professional reprisals, and continue to incant all the permitted slogans with just the right note of evangelical zeal in their voices to pass as true believers.
To be sure, the Equality Act 2010 protects against discrimination and harassment because of protected philosophical beliefs. Gender-critical beliefs, opposition to critical race theory, and opposition to certain elements of “woke” ideology have all been held capable of satisfying the applicable legal test. Likewise, the recently amended Higher Education and Research Act 2017 protects both freedom of speech within the law and academic freedom, expressly including the freedom to “question and test received wisdom” and to “put forward new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions”.
Both regimes attach legal consequences to identifiable duties, acts and detriments: dismissal, disciplinary action, loss of privileges, reduced prospects of promotion or appointment, unlawful harassment and the like. Breaches may result in substantial compensation for those affected and, under the new higher-education regime, significant regulatory sanctions against institutions that fail to discharge their statutory duties.
On paper, this is strong stuff. Muscular liberalism. Millite anti-majoritarianism wielding a large stick. And yet the law is rather better equipped to address formal sanctions, evidentially demonstrable breaches and misstated clauses in policies than the gentler, terribly polite and performatively regretful mechanisms by which members of the professional-managerial class gradually squeeze “problematic” colleagues out.
It is as difficult to fine or sue a university for the apparently spontaneous withdrawal of collegial goodwill as it is for an Employment Judge to place a value on the lectures never given, the research projects never proposed, or the interventions never voiced. Those absences may well leave a trail – but it is one of personal and professional devastation, not paper.
Bienstock’s article is available here, while her documentary, Speechless, can be watched on BBC iPlayer here.
You can also explore CAF’s growing catalogue of case studies documenting these trends in UK higher education, and sign up for our free newsletter here.