UKLFI Charitable Trust has challenged proposed guidance on freedom of speech at universities in its response to a consultation by the Office for Students (OfS).

The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 (the Act) is aimed at strengthening the protection for freedom of speech in higher education in England and Wales. It requires universities and student unions to ensure freedom of speech within the law. This includes freedom for antisemitic speech, since antisemitic speech is not, in itself, unlawful.

The Government has put the OfS in charge of ensuring compliance with the legislation and Professor Arif Ahmed has been appointed as the first Director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom at the OfS.

The main provisions of the Act are due to come into force on 1 August 2024.  The OfS prepared draft guidance on how the Act should be implemented and put it out for consultation.

UKLFI Charitable Trust has responded in detail to the consultation. Points addressed in its response include the following:

• The proposed guidance rigorously insists on freedom for “lawful speech that may be offensive or hurtful to some”, while saying very little about real impediments at universities to freedom speech and academic freedom that in practice suppress speech and academic work sympathetic to or supportive of Israel.
• The draft guidance even appears to prohibit the IHRA definition of antisemitism being incorporated into University codes of conduct, on the basis that this could penalise lawful antisemitic speech.
• On the other hand, the guidance fails to insist that universities take effective measures to penalise and deter disruption of meetings, which in turn results in the need for security measures that deter attendance.
• The guidance also encourages universities to require organisers of meetings to pay security costs above a fixed level, even though this can have a disproportionate impact on meetings with speakers supportive of Israel, due to the scale and viciousness of hostility to Israel, resulting in the need for more extensive security.
• In addition, the guidance ignores the problem of students being marked down for expressing views supportive of or sympathetic to Israel in exams, coursework, dissertations and theses.

Jonathan Turner, executive director of UKLFI Charitable Trust commented: “We are concerned that this guidance as it stands will have the effect of facilitating hostility towards Jewish students.  It will also contribute to the further suppression of accurate and fair scholarship regarding Israel and the Jewish people, thereby further restricting academic freedom and freedom of speech on an important and sensitive subject.”