A new 'free speech champion' may end up doing the opposite | Alison-Scott Baumann

Ratcheting up a moral panic about universities will hinder, not help, efforts to manage difficult discussions on campus There is a popular narrative that free speech is under threat in universities – 52% of British adults think so, according to a 2019 YouGov poll. The UK government thinks so too, and over the last few years has made some unprecedented interventions into higher education to sort it out – including empowering the Office for Students (OfS), the university regulator, to sanction universities deemed to be failing to uphold free speech. Now Gavin Williamson, the secretary of state for education, wants to go further, installing a “free speech and academic champion” on the OfS board to investigate alleged incidents of censorship. He will also make universities’ registration with the OfS conditional on how well they are upholding free speech, and extend the current legal requirement on universities to uphold free speech to cover students’ unions as well.At first sight this may seem a good set of ideas. First, however, there’s the question of whether they conflict with, or even replicate existing legal requirements on universities – an issue raised by the ombudsman of the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education. Continue reading... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/17/free-speech-champion-universities-campus #universities #freedom_of_speech #higher_education #uk_news #education #world_news #gavin_williamson