Sussex VC to contest £585,000 freedom of speech penalty

The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sussex, Professor Sasha Roseneil, has pledged to strongly contest the decision of the United Kingdom’s higher education regulator, the Office for Students (OfS), to fine the university £585,000 (US$757,000) for failing to uphold freedom of speech.

The OfS’s decision followed a three-and-a-half-year investigation into the controversy surrounding the resignation of Professor Kathleen Stock, who had teaching and research interests relating to sex, gender and the rights of individuals in connection to these and was the target of pro-trans rights protests.

Roseneil, in a statement posted on the university’s website on 28 March, described the investigation as “flawed and politically motivated”. She said the implications for higher education could be dire.

“Sussex is far from the only university to face challenges navigating contested issues, but has been the sole focus of attention from the higher education regulator and is explicitly and deliberately being made an example to other universities.”

She said the fine, £585,000, is “15 times larger than any other sanction it has imposed” and accused the OfS of “levying a wholly disproportionate fine after a flawed, politically motivated, and wasteful investigation”.

According to The Guardian, the university intends to challenge the size of the fine through a tribunal and seek a judicial review of the whole judgement.

Freedom of speech ‘breaches’

The OfS investigation opened in October 2021, around the time of Stock’s resignation from the university in response to protests against her work on gender critical theory.

The investigation concluded that the university breached two OfS conditions of registration. It found that the university’s governing documents failed to uphold freedom of speech and academic freedom, as well as failings in the university’s management and governance processes.

The OfS also noted that it had seen no evidence to suggest that Professor Stock’s speech during her employment at the university was unlawful.

It also concluded that the University of Sussex’s Trans and Non-Binary Equality Policy Statement failed to uphold the freedom of speech and academic freedom public interest governance principles set out in the OfS’s regulatory framework.

Arif Ahmed, director for freedom of speech and academic freedom at the OfS, said: “‘Free speech is a fundamentally important aspect of our successful and vibrant higher education sector. All universities and colleges have a duty to protect academic freedom and to take steps to secure freedom of speech within the law.”

He said the investigation found that the University of Sussex’s Trans and Non-Binary Equality Policy Statement meant that students or staff wishing to express or discuss lawful views, including gender critical views, could have been concerned about breaching that policy and facing potential disciplinary action.

“We know that Professor Stock changed the way she taught her course as a result. And we are concerned that a chilling effect may have caused many more students and academics at the university to self-censor their expression or discussion of lawful views.”

The investigation also found that decisions about important free speech and equality matters had been taken by people without the authority to do so.

“These are significant and serious breaches of the OfS’s requirements. Substantial monetary penalties are appropriate for the scale of wrongdoing we have found.”

In contrast to Roseneil’s assertion that the university had been made an example of, Arif said the monetary penalties had been “significantly discounted” compared to the original calculation “to reflect that this is the first case of its type we have dealt with”.

Sussex ‘defended’ Stock’s freedoms

However, Roseneil said the university had “never wavered from its position that [Stock’s] beliefs are lawful and that her academic freedom and freedom of speech should be protected. We have consistently and publicly defended her right to pursue her academic work and express her lawful beliefs and deeply regretted her decision to leave.”

She said the investigation should have been short, focused and straightforward. But for those at Sussex who spent thousands of hours responding to the many OfS requests for information, the experience had instead been “Kafka-esque”.

She said the OfS had not investigated the circumstances that led to Professor Stock’s resignation, which it does not have the power to do, and “insists it was ‘impartial and view-point-neutral’,” but had not talked to anyone apart from Professor Stock.

The investigation was otherwise entirely desk-based and the OfS “repeatedly refused to hold any substantive meeting with the university”, she said. “We repeatedly asked for feedback to ensure compliance, without response.”

She complained that the regulator had warned the university not to speak publicly during the investigation, adding that the suspicion must be that this was a partisan scapegoating.

As a result, the regulator had failed to win the sector’s trust or free itself of the culture wars agenda of the previous government.

She said the University of Sussex will not be the last to face the challenge of a debate on gender, sex and identity that has become toxic.

“Universities across England are grappling with claims and counterclaims about academic freedom and freedom of speech regarding issues of equality, identity and inclusion. As the protests against the war in Gaza have shown, universities will continue to be a frontline for society’s most contentious issues.”

Stock backs findings

For her part, Stock, writing in UnHerd, for which she is a contributing editor, said: “As far as I am concerned, the findings are very welcome; I hope the sector finally pays proper attention.”

She recounted her own experiences of Kafka-esque investigations at the University of Sussex, where she said she came under prolonged scrutiny for what she felt were “fairly innocuous” statements, while also facing campus protests and harassment, including banners saying “Get angry” and “Fire Stock”, before she resigned.

She said university policy referred to what bathrooms and changing facilities trans-identifying people could use, and what words could be used to describe trans-identifying people in classrooms.

But the “most egregious” aspect was a clause which required that “any materials within relevant courses and modules will positively represent trans people and trans lives”.

Stock said this clause made it practically impossible to discuss with students what she saw as the severe detriments of defining “woman” in terms of inner feelings of gender identity, not biological sex.

While noting that the university had changed its policy to “something more sensible” since she left, she said other universities still have similar clauses in their policies and university managers need to “stop defining concepts such as ‘abuse’, ‘harassment’ or indeed ‘harmful propaganda’ absurdly loosely, in order to pander to rapidly expanding notions of student victimhood”.