The woke brigade has been dealt a blow as Professor Kathleen Stock’s former university has been slapped with a hefty £585,000 fine for failing to uphold freedom of speech and academic freedom. The Office for Students (OfS) ruled that the University of Sussex’s transgender policy had a “chilling effect” on staff and students, leaving them feeling “self-censored” and unable to express “lawful views.” The university faced a three-and-a-half-year investigation after Stock was effectively hounded out of her job in 2021 for her gender-critical beliefs…
Sussex University labelled the investigation as “political scapegoating” resulting in “egregious and concocted” findings, saying they would legally challenge the OfS’s decision. Toby Young of the Free Speech Union on the other hand hailed the ruling, telling Guido:
“This is fantastic news. It shows that Arif Ahmed, the Director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom at the Office for Students, is willing to give universities more than a wrist slap if they fail to uphold free speech on campus. I imagine that many universities will be reviewing their equity, diversity and inclusion policies this morning to make sure they don’t run afoul of their free speech obligations.”
The OfS was allowed to issue fines back in January after Bridget Phillipson was forced to u-turn on scrapping the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act. Worth remembering that initially Labour referred to it as an “antisemite’s charter”. Go woke, go broke…
Read the OfS’s full damning report below:
Speaking on Times Radio, former Home Secretary David Blunkett spoke about overdiagnosis of mental problems:
“Let’s distinguish those who are really severely mentally ill, diagnosed with things that require prolonged medical and diagnostic treatment. My wife and I talk about this a lot, because she’s a retired GP, about the fact that you can be sad without being ill. You can be momentarily depressed because your boyfriend or girlfriend’s just thrown you and you’re not mentally ill. You can even have mild issues, which can be dealt with with the right kind of support, but it doesn’t make you mentally ill. So we’ve got a real task, I think, to get the psychology, if you like, of this over. But there are things where you definitely need medical intervention, and there are other things where you need good friends, you need good connectivity, and you need a job.”