In recent years the UK has been fond of importing US culture war debates into British discourse. One example of this is the controversies over free speech on university campuses. Selective examples have typically been chosen by the right to suggest that free speech is in crisis, despite the fact studies relied on in support of this view suggest that present day students overwhelmingly value free speech and don’t perceive it to be at particular risk.
The Government’s proposed solution to this apparent crisis has been the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill. Its stated aim is ‘strengthening existing legislation on freedom of speech and academic freedom in higher education’. Far from strengthening legislation on academic freedom the Bill appears to confuse the issue further by conflating academic freedom and freedom of speech in the Bill’s definition and by ignoring reforms that the sector says could address the biggest threats to academic freedom which are primarily the sheer number of staff on casualised contracts and insecure research funding streams.
So what is freedom of speech, what is academic freedom and how does the Bill complicate these concepts? Freedom of speech is the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, by any means. It protects the expression of ideas even if they offend, shock or disturb. Academic speech by contrast is subject to higher standards of rigour because ‘speech is subject to scrutiny and approval by other academics‘.
Academic freedom is commonly understood as having two elements. The freedom to teach and the freedom to research. Freedom to teach includes designing the curricula and selecting pedagogy, entry standards, assessment methods and grades. The freedom to research includes what shall be researched, the research method selected, the purpose of the research, whether it is published and how findings are disseminated.
There are two key ways that these principles are typically given effect to. These are participation in university governance—including by having a say in the running of the university and university decision-making—and tenure of academic posts. Tenure is the idea that academics have the freedom to teach and research with the security that they will only be sacked for good cause, a threshold essentially requiring gross misconduct. Post Margaret Thatcher’s 1988 education reforms, academics in the UK do not have protections equivalent to tenure, they can also be made redundant by their employers. Although for permanent academics there is some security as the university’s governing body must decide to make redundancies.
The UK famously already has some of the worst protections for academic freedom in Europe. Karran states:
Furthermore, the [Higher Education and Research] Act [2017], which ostensibly offers legal protection to UK academics, is less detailed than that in other EU nations, does not appear to include teaching, and indicates that the academic freedom of individual academics is derived from institutional autonomy, and hence limited to the context of individual academics’ relationships with their employing institutions. Given that UK academics have no job security, it is difficult to see what freedoms, if any, this deficient legal framework offers them in practice.
This comparative position has only worsened via increasing precarity in academia. According to the UCU, more than two thirds of researchers and almost half of teaching-only staff in the university sector are on fixed term contracts. Recent research from LSE’s union has illustrated that many universities have been moving further towards casualisation in recent times. 66% of Oxford staff, 59% of LSE staff, 57% of KCL staff, 50% of Edinburgh and 40% of Cambridge staff are on fixed term contracts. Precarity is of great threat to academic freedom because those on fixed term contracts can easily have their contracts not renewed if they research or teach in ways that are deemed controversial or unappealing.
Lopes and Dewan conducted a study of the precarity experienced by university employees. Their interviewees felt that precarity affected their quality of teaching and research. The ‘hire and fire’ culture meant interviewees felt they could not speak up at the university. They would not ‘put their heads up above the parapet as they knew they were replaceable’. Furthermore Lopes and Dewan point out that those on casualised contracts are disproportionately women and people of colour, meaning those groups are particularly chilled from the freedom to speak, teach and research in the university. This has flow on effects, for example women and people of colour are often best placed to diversify and decolonise curricula and yet they will feel less able to do so without repercussion if they are on insecure contracts.
The UNESCO and ILO joint report on the state of higher education highlighted the great threat that academic casualisation poses to academic freedom. It noted ‘the Joint Committee has on several occasions expressed its concern over the international trend in the proliferation of part-time and temporary contracts that undermine tenure’ and said that these changes in employment relations ‘weaken, the full exercise of academic freedom and therefore one of the fundamental pillars of excellence in teaching and research’.
The Bill does nothing to address this problem and in fact ignores fundamental aspects of academic freedom. The Bill defines freedom of speech as: the ‘freedom to express ideas, beliefs and views without suffering adverse consequences’. The definition of academic freedom under the Bill is:
‘freedom within the law—(a) to question and test received wisdom, and (b) to put forward new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions, without placing themselves at risk of being adversely affected in [by]…(a) loss of their jobs or privileges at the provider; [or] (b) the likelihood of their securing promotion or different jobs at the provider being reduced’.
However this definition adds little, it reinforces an academic’s existing free expression rights but does not affirm their freedom to teach and research without interference. As Murray states:
it is not a satisfactory definition ….the Bill’s definition focuses much more on expression than crucial elements intrinsic to the rights to teach and research, such as determining the curriculum and how it is taught or the focus, purpose or collaborations of research.
The UK’s statutory framework was already worse than comparative nations in Europe in terms of its much narrower protection of academic freedom. This Bill only further compounds that problem by defining academic freedom as primarily about speech rights and ignoring the other important elements of teaching and research. It also does nothing to address the crisis of precarity in academia which UNESCO and ILO say is one of the greatest threats to academic freedom. The Bill appears to be a solution in search of a problem in terms of a crisis of speech on academic campuses. If the government was truly worried about academic freedom they might put some effort into solving the problem of precarity in academia. In stead this Bill takes the easier path of doubling down on the culture war rhetoric.
Erwin Chemerinsky and Howard Gillman, Free Speech on Campus (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017)
Terrence Karran and others ‘Academic freedom in contemporary Britain: A cause for Concern?’ (2021) Higher Education Quarterly
Ana Lopes and Indra Dewan ‘Precarious Pedagogies? The Impact of Casual and Zero-Hour Contracts in Higher Education Feminist perspective’ (2015) 7(7) Journal of Feminist Scholarship
G Lukianoff and JHaidt, 2015 The Coddling of the American Mind. The Atlantic. September 2015 issue. Available online at https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/
James Murray, ‘The Thinkery and the Academy: Examining the Legal Parameters and Interactions of Academic Freedom and Freedom of Expression Under English Law’ (2023) Current Legal Problems
UNESCO and ILO Final Report Fourteenth Session Joint ILO–UNESCO Committee of Experts on the Application of the Recommendations concerning Teaching Personnel 1 (Geneva, 4–8 October 2021) < https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—ed_dialogue/—sector/documents/meetingdocument/wcms_839719.pdf>
University and College Union ‘Briefing on the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill
House of Lords Second Reading’ (Tuesday 28 June) < https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/12919/UCU-briefing-on-the-Higher-Education-Freedom-of-Speech-Bill-Jun-22/pdf/UCU_Lords_briefing_on_the_HE_FoS_Bill__Jun_22.pdf>
Contemporary Issues in Teaching and Learning 
Interesting post @sinclaalex that highlights the invidious link between casualised contracts and academic freedom, and the percentages you’ve cited reveal the scale of the issue. While there is undeniably a political element to the bill, the threat on university campuses seems to be structural (precarious contracts, poor governance) and institutional (managerialism, risk aversion). What are your thoughts?
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Great piece Alex! The link between precarity and academic freedom is very compelling, and tells us a lot about the current predicament of UK higher education. There are many similar discussions on the distinction between academic freedom and freedom of expression elsewhere (like my home country, the Netherlands). The culture war rhetoric likewise features strongly in, and frames, the continental debates (one example, in Dutch: https://www.groene.nl/artikel/een-spook-zonder-vaste-vorm). But the link with precarity is much less obvious on the continent, precisely because of the relatively decent job security still embedded in these systems. All of this would make for a fascinating comparative law-take on academic freedom and precarity! (A good place to start: Vatansever and Kölemen, 2022)
I am wondering, however, whether the argument can be extended a bit further, and in this way brought back to your starting point: the culture wars. Academic freedom is, in my view, best seen in conjunction with the academic commitment to rigour, to review, to falsifiability, and to the pursuit of backed-up knowledge. It is, in this sense, less extensive than freedom of expression; it is not the freedom to say whatever you want. But here’s the crux: these outer limits to academic freedom are best guarded by the academic process itself: peer review, discussion, evidence-finding, etc. This too requires academics who have a secure footing: a permanent, protected position. In other words, the link between precarity and academic freedom cuts another way. Precarity does not just undermine academic freedom properly exercised (which should especially in the social sciences indeed allow for a wide range of theoretical, political, and ideological orientations), it also stops academics from academically ‘speaking up’ to each other, within the academic debate. And so both sides of the coin—academic freedom and its limitation by the standards of academic due diligence—are undermined by precarity. Maybe this is why the much more blunt tool of cancelling is on the rise, even in the university.
Kölemen AV Aysuda (ed), Academic Freedom and Precarity in the Global North: Free as a Bird (Routledge 2022)
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Thank you for this comment @dalodell! I absolutely agree. I was trying to think through what the implications were for academic freedom as a whole and the fact that those most able to diversify the curriculum will be disincentivised to, is a really great one!
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Thank you for this rather informative blogpost, I hadn’t realised how little I knew by way of definitions and legal frameworks in this area. It makes me wonder whether other academics and PhD students are as in the dark as I am, outside of programs such as Law. The connection between academic freedom and precarity is quite compelling and troubling – especially for someone studying an unconventional topic that challenges the status quo.
Your piece made me reflect on movements to diversify and decolonise academic curriculum. There appears some pushback to these efforts by some academics who say it threatens their academic freedom to choose reading lists, curriculum, and content (e.g., Turner & Somerville, 2021). I imagine it is this sort of rhetoric that influenced the Higher Education Bill to begin with. Yet I think a much more insidious threat to academic freedom, as you point out, is the precarity of fixed term or limited contracts that would limit one’s ability to engage in decolonising and diversifying efforts to begin with. While it is unlikely that a university would overtly place such limits on an academic’s freedom, these initiatives require teachers to challenge hegemonic views and principles of a discipline, which is likely to cause some stir or controversy. As you point out, casualised contracts are disproportionately taken up by women and people of colour (Lopes & Dewan, 2014) – the same groups who have traditionally been shut out of the academic cannon, and therefore have a vested interest in expanding curriculum to be more inclusive and progressive. However, teachers in positions of precarity may not feel secure enough to take the initiative, for fear of explicit repercussions or even just the implicit disapproval by others in their field that could inhibit their career. This results in a sort of catch-22, whereby those who might value decolonising and diversifying curriculum the most may have the least agency or freedom to do so.
Lopes, A., & Dewan, I. A. (2015). Precarious pedagogies? The impact of casual and zero-hour contracts in higher education. Journal of Feminist Scholarship, 7(7), 28-42.
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