Soup of the Day – Free Speech and Academic Freedom, with contributions from Gerald Lang and Robert Simpson
Samuel Rowan | 29 November 2023 | The Pea Soup
The aim of this series is to host philosophical discussions of current events. For each instalment, we will invite two philosophers to offer different perspectives on a topic that has been in the news.
We are starting the series with a discussion on free speech and academic freedom, which focuses particularly on the appointment of Arif Ahmed as UK government’s point-person for regulating free speech at universities. This thread features a piece by Gerald Lang (Leeds), and a reply from Robert Simpson (UCL).
Selective Pressures: No-Platforming and Academic Freedom
GERALD LANG
Earlier this year, the UK government passed the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, and appointed Cambridge University’s Arif Ahmed as the new Director overseeing free speech at the Office for Students. (He’ll be known, more informally, as the new ‘free speech tsar’.) The fundamental purpose of the Higher Education Act is to permit academic staff ‘to question and test received wisdom’, and ‘to put forward new ideas and controversial and unpopular opinions’, without risk of professional reprisal. The cases landing on Ahmed’s desk will presumably be ones in which these protections are alleged to have been compromised….