A Nothing Burger With Teeth: On the DfE Higher Education Report

By Jake Steiner

Two weeks ago, the Department for Education released a report, titled “Higher Education: free speech and academic freedom.” As the PPRG’s resident ‘Murican, the very title of this report resembled a similar fuss made by conservatives back home.

Across the pond, American conservatives have taken to whining ad nauseum about conservative views being “censored” on college campuses, and portraying universities as liberal indoctrination-centers. It has become a favored topic of Fox News opinion (ex.: Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Tucker Carlson, among others), Newsmax, One America News, and Sinclair Broadcasting. These complaints range from lamenting the disinvitation of conservative speakers, insults directed en masse to the “libtard snowflakes”, to the occasional conservative student appearing on national television to discuss how they have been silenced, blissfully unaware of the irony. This has also become a common grievance of conservative youth groups like Turning Point USA, which has compiled a “Watchlist” of professors who “discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” Other TPUSA content warns right-leaning individuals to “think long and hard” about “attending a four-year, overpriced indoctrination camp.”

Ultimately, these complaints amount to simple grievance politics, as demonstrated by the ad-hominem (en masse) attacks made in this short clip by conservative commentator Mark Hyman. The aim of this strategy is to engage conservative voters by victimizing themselves and fostering resentment against the snowflake “other”.  

In the United States, the grievance politics of conservative censorship has not amounted to much actual policy. Writing for Vox, Zack Beauchamp argues that this grievance is “profound bad faith” on the part of American conservatives. While Beauchamp concedes that there are some “legitimate problems with open expression on campus,” the absolute number of total speaker disinvitations is extremely low for a country with “over 3000 four-year colleges and universities in the United States,” with a mean between ten and twenty instances in a given year. Beauchamp concludes that the grievance is more about “pushing an ideological line” as opposed to actually defending free speech.

The only differences between Fox News and this report is that the grievance—the aforementioned moaning—is communicated in a semi-reasonable, mostly-intelligent way. And the government intends to add teeth to this grievance.

The government cites little when justifying the moral crisis of free speech which it hopes to remedy. One of the few studies is conducted by ADF international, which self-identifies as a “faith-based advocacy group,” aimed at protecting “religious freedom, the sanctity of life, and marriage and family around the world,” common causes for the political right and social conservatism. Other studies focus not on quantifying instances of censorship, but rather on the perception of discrimination and of self-censorship. The government fails, however, to point to specific instances of intimidation, no-platforming, instead referring merely to “reports in the media” more generally. While, as in the United States, this issue is important, it cannot rise to the level of moral crisis which would warrant additional regulation.  

In all, I would have assessed this report as a “nothing burger”—a way for the government to chunter on about how they’re being “censored,” or how awful “snowflakes” are, without addressing the root problem that their ideas simply are not as popular among younger generations—if they had not given their grievances teeth. The “teeth” provisions ultimately amount to 1: you can sue your university, which is only really applicable if you have daddy’s (or mommy’s) MasterCard, and 2: a grievance process for the “censored” which can impose fines. Depending on the potential amount of the fines to be levied, it can range from a slap-on-the-wrist to the outright absurd, the report did not specify.

The ultimate danger is that this effort amounts to the same efforts to push an ideological line as in the United States. There are serious questions about the so-called “Free Speech and Academic Freedom Champion” position which the government proposes. How much discretion does the Champion have in selecting the cases to investigate and pursue? How will the government ensure that the Champion will exercise their powers fairly, and not biased towards one side of the ideological spectrum?  

Finally, the liberty of free speech is not absolute. It is our right to express viewpoints and ideas, but it is not our right to cause harm to others by virtue of what we say, send, or write. This is the root, for example, of libel and slander lawsuits on both sides of the pond—if defamatory (knowingly false) speech can be proven to cause financial harm, one can bring forth a civil action for those damages, as Dominion Voting systems has done by filing suit against Rudolph Giuliani, former Trump attorney Sidney Powell, and others to the tune of US$1.3 billion each.  

In an era of greater prominence, understanding, and normalization of mental health issues, the question is to what extent certain speech causes harm to others. Insults and offensive statements may have negative effects on the hearer, which in some instances can amount to trauma.