BY LORI ALLEN
When the topic of “academic freedom” appears in the UK media, it is often buried in the education section or overlooked until left-leaning publications like the Guardian pick it up. There may be a public perception that academic freedom is a matter primarily for elites, a concern of professors and pontificators worried about guarding their patches of public airtime. But as my new Academe article, “Academic Freedom in the United Kingdom,” shows, academic freedom should be of concern to everyone because it is a barometer not only of democratic principles but also of other rights that concern non-academics just as much. Academic freedom—like freedom of expression, freedom of movement, and the freedom of workers to strike—is at risk, because the enactment of these freedoms generates critical thought, imagination, informed debate, and possibilities for a more egalitarian society. When one freedom is constrained, the others soon follow.
Academic freedom and freedom of expression intersect with a range of forms of political repression. The government’s Prevent duty guidance to universities is a prime example. The Prevent duty is part of the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act of 2019, which criminalizes the expression of “an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organization.” It requires institutions of higher education and other public institutions “to have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism.” The law and the guidance and training that have come with it are dangerously vague, have a chilling effect on free speech and debate, and have led to censorship of faculty and students. There is a strong perception among critics of the law that it disproportionately targets Muslims, other minority communities, and leftist students and professors.
Prevent’s reach extends beyond the university campus, however. All employees of public institutions, including NHS doctors and schoolteachers, are legally required to implement it. As UK human rights organization Liberty recently discovered, the government has been keeping a database of all Prevent referrals. Although the vast majority of referrals have resulted in no action, people who are referred will remain in this database without their knowledge. Anyone perceived by a public employee to be an “extremist,” someone “seeking to radicalise” others, or to be “at risk of extremist influences” is at risk themselves. It is hard not to recall the mayhem caused by the Stasi’s regime of surveillance in the German Democratic Republic.
As my article details, Prevent is just one of many policies that is putting the squeeze on academic freedom. We should all be worried.
Guest blogger Lori Allen is reader in the department of anthropology and sociology at SOAS University of London.
Articles from the current and past issues of Academe are available online. AAUP members receive a subscription to the magazine, available both by mail and as a downloadable PDF, as a benefit of membership.
I am surprised by these UK policies and exceptions to Free Speech rights. In the U.S., the exceptions are few: libel, slander, yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater (when there is no fire), and incitement to riot.
The latter category seems closest to the UK ban, but in the U.S. that “incitement” must be imminent: whipping up a crowd with violent rhetoric, for instance. Internet appeals for jihad would presumably not be illegal in the U.S. In the U.S., there is also no such legal entity as “hate speech.” Our Supreme Court has ruled on this issue at least three times, but many universities in our “Politically Correct” times still treat it as an exception to Academic Freedom and Freedom of Speech.