English minister’s academic freedom broadside ‘confects conflict’

Those who pretend to be non-ideological are just as ideological as everyone else: it's just pervasive (and complex). Terry Eagleton, _Ideology: An Introduction_.

Universities rarely pressure faculty members directly. They stay vague but clear enough for the message to be understood. In my Department, for example, some senior lecturer circulated an email asking everyone to include more women and BAME authors on the reading list because that is what the students are expecting from us, also in light of our Athena Swan application. It was clear she was informally speaking for the Deaprtmental leadership by saying "we are asking you to...". She wouldn't specify what the consequences would be if we didn't do it. But ultimately it's clear that if you want a promotion or anything else ever again, you better follow this guidance. On another occasion, I was told that I shouldn't send too many students to the Director of Teaching for behavioural issues because it would reflect poorly on me as an instructor and I surely didn't want to risk a conflict with the university leadership or even getting fired for angering our customers. On yet another occasion, I was asked by the Departmental leadership to include trigger warnings when I had asked the students to read an evolutionary psychology paper from a reputable journal because of its unethical, harmful contents, and ideally I would take it off the reading list. In all of these cases, the typical strategy is to talk in person and never leave any paper trail, build up plausible threats but never be very specific as to what the punishment will be exactly, and if need be, ask non-leadership colleagues to spread the word in order to maintain plausible deniability by the leadership. No regulator will ever be able to do anything against this as long as there is no proper self-governance by academics. I am thinking about emigrating to a country where that is still happening.

I don't think that the 'office for students' has much credibility in academic circles anyway, so fatuous remarks from Williamson just confirm that it has no real use and is of no help to institutions... and doesn't even serve students well. Thinking that any form of diversifying the curriculum will diminish its rigor is a negative approach, look at it as enrichment and introducing everyone to new stuff, developing students who have a truly global appreciation of whatever it is that they are studying rather than thinking that it's somehow fixing something that is deemed to be flawed. Expansion is never a bad thing, provided that the new material you include is subject to academic rigor and not merely put there because of the ethnicity of its author not because of its contribution to what you are teaching.