When staff and students at Sussex University forced Kathleen Stock to resign in 2021 over her gender-critical views, it rightfully became a national news story. But this was far from an isolated incident within Britain’s higher-education system. In a government-commissioned report published this week, Alice Sullivan, a professor at University College London, has revealed the extent of the bullying, harassment and censorship imposed on gender-critical academics in recent years. spiked caught with her to discuss her research and the problems still facing dissenting academics today.
spiked: What prompted you to start researching sex and gender?
Alice Sullivan: I’m a quantitative social scientist, and I have a long standing interest in this area – from both a data point of view and an academic freedom point of view.
I first got involved in this area of research when I became aware of the Office for National Statistics’ plans for the 2021 census. Essentially, it wanted to redefine sex by providing guidance that directed people to answer the ‘sex’ question in a way that was not necessarily in line with their biological sex. Around the same time, I became aware that there were academics like Kathleen Stock being bullied for saying what I would consider to be some quite uncontentious things, such as the fact that sex is an important biological category and we need to have that vocabulary in order to talk about it.
spiked: How serious are the problems facing gender-critical academics?
Sullivan: The intimidation is sometimes incredibly extreme. We’re all familiar with cases such as Stock’s, where there’s photographic evidence of some of the horrible things that she went through. We saw student mobs showing up to the university in balaclavas, letting off flares, demanding that she be sacked.
Jo Phoenix is another terrifying case. She was dismissed from her post at the Open University. More than 300 academics signed a letter demanding her removal. An employment tribunal eventually ruled that she had indeed been unlawfully harassed, discriminated against and constructively dismissed. But of course, for every case like that – which is very much in the public domain – there are many, many more people who have experienced a similar kind of abuse, who we don’t hear about. This review allowed me to take evidence both from people whose stories are well known, as well as from people who have never been able to tell their stories before. Many of the reports in the document are anonymous.
We’ve had ethics committees advising people that they can’t collect data on sex, or that they can’t use sex-based language. Academics have even been told that they can’t do research on issues such as youth gender transition. The barriers to academic freedom are totally baked in. Unfortunately, activists are experts at using these barriers to prevent people’s research from going ahead, or making it much more difficult – at the very least, they are delaying people’s work significantly.
spiked: What do you say to critics who argue that gender-critical views can themselves cause harm or create a hostile environment for students or staff?
Sullivan: It’s not uncommon now to hear people talking about ‘harm’ or even ‘violence’, when what they actually mean is, ‘you said something I don’t like’. Well, that’s not harm, and it’s certainly not violence. Referring to incontrovertible facts – like the fact that humans are mammals, and like all the other mammals, we have two sexes – is not a harmful or violent thing to do. It’s not fascism, it’s not genocide.
It’s quite troubling where we’ve got some members of staff in universities who are actively encouraging young people, some of whom are quite vulnerable, to see disagreement in those terms. It’s deeply damaging, not only for the wellbeing of those young people, but also because you can’t engage with education if you’ve got that mindset. You have to be open to disagreement. What we should be doing is trying to help those young people understand that disagreement is not harmful. Disagreement is an opportunity for personal and intellectual growth.
spiked: Do you see a path forward where robust disagreement about sex and gender can be had without it turning toxic?
Sullivan: I am cautiously optimistic. For example, the guidance published by the Office for Students recently, regarding freedom of speech in higher education, was extremely helpful. Universities have been struggling with this, and I believe that the guidance will help them to understand how some of the things that they’ve been doing unwittingly have actually been quite damaging, as well as going some way to repairing it. I do hope also that we will get the free-speech complaints scheme commenced by parliament, and that it will be done in a timely way. This really has been going on for a long time. As far back as 10 years ago, people were already raising the alarm. We cannot leave academics for too much longer without the ability to gain redress.
Alice Sullivan was talking to Georgina Mumford. This conversation was edited for length and clarity.
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