Mick Hartley

Over to Gonville and Caius College Cambridge, where an upcoming talk by Helen Joyce – author of the acclaimed Trans – is the subject of some concern. In particular the Master and the Senior Tutor, writing as "Pippa and Andrew", have issued a statement:

[Click to embiggen.]

Ewan Somerville at the Telegraph reports:

A Cambridge college master is engulfed in a transgender row with professors after boycotting a “hateful” gender-critical speaker.

Gonville and Caius College, the university’s fourth oldest, is hosting a talk on Tuesday by Helen Joyce, an author and former journalist at The Economist, about cancel culture.

Ms Joyce has been vocal about her view that men and women are being “redefined” by trans activists, with laws and policies “reshaped to privilege self-identified gender identity over biological sex”.

Students have launched protests, with the college’s LGBT reps demanding the forum be axed because they are “unanimously disgusted by the platforming of such views”.

Tutors are even opening a “safe space” welfare tearoom for students during the talk, blaming “understandable hurt and anger for many students, staff and fellows at Caius” caused by the invitation.

This is a talk by a woman who thinks biological sex is real, and that trans ideology is a potential threat to women's safety. For this the smelling salts need to be on hand for the poor dears who can't handle a bracing dose of reality. And the powers that be at Caius – "Pippa and Andrew" – are feeding the hysteria.

Now, in an unprecedented intervention, the college’s master Prof Pippa Rogerson – the most senior position – has emailed all students rebuking her own staff for hosting it.

Prof Rogerson, writing alongside Dr Andrew Spencer, the college’s senior tutor, said that while freedom of speech is “a fundamental principle… on some issues which affect our community we cannot stay neutral”….

It has sparked outcry from academics and allegations of “intellectual cowardice”.

Ms Joyce was invited by Prof Arif Ahmed, a philosophy lecturer and fellow of the college, to be interviewed by Sir Partha Dasgupta, an economist, in a talk titled “criticising gender-identity ideology: what happens when speech is silenced” on October 25.

Amid an escalating war of words inside the 674-year-old college, Prof Ahmed told The Telegraph: “The point of this event is not to endorse Helen Joyce’s views but to debate them.

“Half the allocated time is set aside for objections and comments from the floor. Her ideas about sex and gender are important and deserve free and open discussion.”

Prof Ahmed stressed that “Cambridge isn't a primary school”, adding: “Free speech is not negotiable. The event will go ahead. Anyone who finds this uncomfortable is welcome not to attend.”

Ms Joyce, the author of best-seller Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, added: “When I was a student at Cambridge I would have been disgusted and embarrassed to receive a communication like that; Pippa and Andrew sound like CBeebies presenters.

“Why are they staying away? If they think I’m that much of a bigot they should turn up, hear what I have to say and tell me I’m wrong. A pair of intellectual cowards who do not deserve to be in two of the best jobs in all the world’s universities.”

Update: Helen Joyce sends an open letter to Pippa and Andrew. It's very good.

I’m writing to respond to your ignorant and insulting characterisation of me to Caius students and academics, which you must have known would be shared more widely and then become public. [The text of that email is appended to this post.]

I am of course sadly used to people who should know better—people with high-profile posts in great academic institutions—making a show of defending free speech, open debate and academic standards out of one side of their mouths, even as they say “however” out of the other. I am also sadly used to being casually defamed: such is the fate of everyone who, like me, refuses to be frightened off talking about the baleful impacts of gender-identity ideology on vulnerable groups, including women, children and same-sex attracted people.

The reason ordinary people like me have had to stick their necks out and force proper consideration of changes to laws and rules that impact on all of us, in the face of campaigners whose slogan is “no debate”, is because of the utter failure of people like you. It’s because the very people who should be brave—the people whose job is to hold space for free speech, and to ensure that the students in their charge are inculcated in the culture of academic freedom—have turned out to be cowards….