Kathleen Stock: free speech bill could have saved my Sussex career

You have this very small group of radical individuals who think it is legally and ethically defensible to intimidate, harass, threaten violence, and generally make the life of one female academic's life a living hell such that she needs to resign for her own sanity and safety. The fact that the university hasn't enacted disciplinary action against these people if they are staff or students of the university nor the police launched an investigate on a potential threat to the safety and well being of Prof Stock (or ANY true victim) is shocking. The lack of effective action by the university, the police and the University's UCU, in effect, creates a permissive condonement of this type of thuggish behaviours from this small group of people. University of Sussex UCU - shame on you for not even defending the very people your union was made to defend! These small number of people behaving like thugs for being *offended* by speech and opinions they do not like nor want to hear nor be heard. Society should grow a pair and start showing integrity and courage against this type of bullying.

I see that Stock is continuing to parade herself as some noble martyr to the anti woke cause, but that is not the whole story. She chose to attack transgender people. She chose to write a book denigrating transgender people. She had plenty of opportunities to present and defend her stance from an academic over the years, but chose not to do so, perhaps because such hatred cannot be defended. There is scientific evidence from neuroimaging scans that transgender people's brains are different from typical brains, proving that there is a biological source of the characteristic. I will leave it to the readers to decide whether she is truly the martyred Saint she tries to portray herself as, or through her refusal to defend her position academically before leaving to join an unaccredited University founded by and for deeply prejudiced people shows her true nature.

The behaviour of some students and some staff (who are members of UCU) at the University of Sussex has been shameful. Professor Stock is correct about the need for legislation. The University of Sussex senior management should have had the courage to deal with the bullying students through the disciplinary procedure and address the poor behaviour if staff who clearly do not understand the importance of Freedom of Speech to scholarship. I have read no coherent academic statement from students about the rationale for their behaviour or from UCU staff who enacted the harassing behaviour. The founders of the University of Sussex would not have sanctioned these bullying behaviours.

“Universities have been told they have to go beyond the law and actively embody EDI which creates an intensely moralising atmosphere,” said Professor Stock, who said this agenda’s inclusion into promotion structures “incentivises people to become very moralised”. What on earth does this mean ? Universities have enough policies which are violated in practice. Shouldn't we celebrate if one is actually acted upon? Stock seems to have support from government and right wing think tanks, but what she identifies here as threats to academic freedom are all Conservative government policies: student as consumer; inclusive pedagogy and REF impact. I thought civil servants and ministers weren't supposed to affirm critics of government policy?