Dr Roger Watson
Professor Roger Watson is Professor of Nursing at Saint Francis University, Hong Kong. He has a PhD in biochemistry. He writes in a personal capacity.
Overlooked by the honours system, never a sniff of a peerage and not having been invited in my whole career to give the opening keynote at the Royal College of Nursing Annual Research Conference – which all my peers have given – I was beginning to think that any kind of recognition would never come my way. But no longer.
At the Spiked Summit recently in London, I encountered Academics for Academic Freedom (AFAF) and got into conversation with AFAF Director Dennis Hayes. We exchanged some views on academic freedom, or the lack thereof, in UK universities. I told him about my experiences at the University of Hull and, overhearing the conversation, another AFAF team member said that I should be on the Banned List.
Honoured at Last
I declared my ignorance of the list and it was explained to me that it was a list of people – mainly academics – who had encountered problems with academic freedom and freedom of speech at universities in the UK and Ireland. My only question was: ‘How do I get on it?’ and, having sent Dennis a summary of my woes at Hull, he duly included me. My entry, of which I am inordinately proud, reads:
Roger Watson. November 2022. Professor Watson co-authored an article in the Daily Sceptic giving evidence-based critiques of Covid policies and practices. Because of one complaint, the Nursing & Midwifery Council investigated the distinguished academic on the basis that he had been: “using [his] status as a registered nurse to promote incorrect information about Covid-19 and the nursing profession in general”. After interventions by the FSU, and others, he was exonerated in August 2023. Watson believes that the vilification he received cost him an emeritus professorship.
To see what kind of company I was keeping, I worked my way through the ‘Banned List’, a 45-page (when copied and pasted into a Word document) catalogue compiled by AFAF. It documents several hundred attempts to silence speakers, discipline academics, remove titles, cancel meetings or otherwise punish people for expressing unpopular views in universities across Britain and Ireland. Whether one agrees with every case is beside the point. What emerges is a remarkable picture of higher education that has become increasingly intolerant of disagreement.
The Roll Call of the Cancelled
The webpage records roughly 280 separate incidents involving around 230 individuals or organisations over the past few years. Some names recur repeatedly because they have become serial offenders against contemporary orthodoxy. Kathleen Stock appears repeatedly. So do Helen Joyce, Jo Phoenix, Alice Sullivan, Michael Foran, Nathan Cofnas, Connie Shaw and Stuart Waiton. Apparently, once you have committed one thought crime, you are assumed likely to commit another.
If you believed newspaper headlines over the past few years, you might imagine universities had been consumed by bitter arguments over Covid. There certainly were fierce disputes. Academics questioned lockdowns, mask mandates and vaccine policies. Some paid professional prices for doing so. But Covid barely features. I counted only around five cases where criticism of Covid policy or vaccines appears to have been the principal reason for attempted cancellation.
One of those concerns Professor Norman Fenton, whose invitation to speak at a health analytics conference was withdrawn after organisers were alerted to his scepticism regarding Covid vaccines. Another handful involve academics whose public comments on pandemic policy appear to have made them professionally radioactive. But that is about it.
Few entries concern disputes over scientific methodology, statistical errors or demonstrably poor scholarship. Instead, most concern opinions, beliefs or questions that challenge prevailing orthodoxies. What increasingly attracts institutional attention is not whether an argument is true but whether it is considered acceptable.
The New Orthodoxy
The dominant issue is sex and gender. Nearly a hundred of the cases revolve around transgender ideology, gender-critical beliefs or the proposition – now considered controversial – that biological sex exists. It is almost impossible to avoid the conclusion that if you publicly maintain that women are adult human females, or question whether males should compete in women’s sport, there is a reasonable chance someone somewhere will try to prevent you speaking.
The campaigns frequently involve petitions, open letters, social media pile-ons or demands that invitations be withdrawn because speakers make particular groups ‘feel unsafe’. That curious phrase appears regularly. Universities have clearly abandoned the idea that feeling intellectually uncomfortable was the whole point of attending one.
The second largest category concerns race, Critical Race Theory, DEI and EDI. Again, there are scores of cases involving academics criticised for questioning diversity policies, challenging racial orthodoxies or expressing scepticism about concepts such as white privilege or systemic racism. Whether those criticisms are right or wrong should be determined through debate, not by an investigation.
The third great obsession of recent years has, unsurprisingly, been Israel and Palestine. After October 2023 the number of incidents rises dramatically. Jewish speakers, Israeli academics, Palestinian academics, pro-Israel campaigners and pro-Palestinian campaigners all appear. Almost everyone seems to have wanted somebody else banned.
This is perhaps the most depressing feature of the entire document. Cancel culture has become bipartisan. People who loudly denounce censorship when it affects them sometimes prove remarkably enthusiastic about silencing those with whom they disagree.
Very few of those included had committed anything approaching professional misconduct. They had not falsified research. They had not stolen grant money. They had not harassed students or assaulted colleagues. Their principal offence was expressing opinions.
Modern Methods of Censorship
One mechanism deserves particular attention because it represents perhaps the most sophisticated form of modern censorship. Rarely do universities now simply announce that a speaker is forbidden. Instead, they express deep commitment to freedom of speech before explaining that security costs have suddenly become prohibitive, or suitable rooms cannot be found, or health and safety considerations require postponement or additional risk assessments are necessary. The effect is the same.
Then there is what has become known as the ‘heckler’s veto’. Rather than persuading audiences not to attend, activists increasingly attempt to ensure events cannot proceed at all. Speakers are shouted down. Entrances blocked. Fire alarms allegedly triggered. Protesters physically prevent audiences entering buildings. The intention is not debate but disruption. Universities appear remarkably tolerant of those who prevent other people exercising their freedom of speech.
Undoubtedly, the universities appearing repeatedly on the list have some of the strongest official commitments to inclusion, diversity and belonging. But diversity patently does not include diversity of opinion.
The very existence of the Banned List should concern anyone who values academic freedom. When a document can assemble nearly 300 examples of attempted cancellation over a relatively short period, we are no longer looking at isolated incidents. We are observing a culture.
For centuries universities advanced knowledge precisely because ideas could collide. Bad arguments were exposed by better ones. Scientific revolutions occurred because people were permitted to say things once regarded as absurd.
Education has always involved encountering ideas one dislikes, arguments one rejects and people whose opinions one finds deeply irritating. That is not a flaw in higher education: it is its defining characteristic. But Britain’s universities – and some in Ireland – increasingly resemble institutions that celebrate freedom of speech, provided everyone says the right thing.
This article was originally published by the Daily Sceptic.
