Mick Hartley

Yet another gender-critical academic falling foul of the authorities. From the Telegraph – Law lecturer sacked after complaining of gender identity ‘indoctrination’:

A law lecturer has claimed she was sacked by the Open University after questioning requirements to “indoctrinate students in gender identity theory”.

Dr Almut Gadow, 43, has alleged that in 2021-22, the university’s equality, diversity and inclusion department announced plans to “incorporate its political ideologies” across the curriculum.

She claimed that she raised concerns about requirements, including introducing diverse gender identities into the curriculum and teaching students to use offenders’ preferred pronouns.

She said she argued that a criminal lawyer’s role “is to present facts” and that “sex is a relevant fact for offences involving perpetrators’ and/or victims’ bodies”.

Dr Gadow also argued that “no offender should be allowed to dictate the language of his case in a way which masks relevant facts”.

She also told colleagues that not holding a gender identity belief was a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010.

That is, holding a gender critical belief is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act.

Dr Gadow has drawn comparisons between her sacking and the experience of Hartmut Gadow, her grandfather, in Nazi Germany. He was an undergraduate who studied at an illicit underground institution when the Nazis cleansed academia of “wrong thinkers”.

He was repeatedly tried for speech crimes and sentenced to death by hanging, but managed to escape.

Dr Gadow said: “Generally, this academia being taken over by a political movement, is not a question of Left or Right. It is a question of totalitarianism.

“We have seen it under both regimes. I didn’t think it would happen like that in England, to be quite honest.”

In her legal claim, she hopes to set a precedent that establishes academic freedom as a protected belief.

Dr Kathleen Stock, the academic who was hounded out of Sussex University over her gender-critical views, said: “This is a very important case, with potentially far-reaching repercussions for the university sector.

“It demonstrates the link between highly ideological, terminologically vague equality, diversity and inclusion policies – which are rife across the sector – and acts of discrimination against university members for their lawful beliefs.

“It also shows how university pedagogy is being unreasonably constrained by a narrow set of shallow ideas, high on emotion and low on evidence, at the behest of activist groups.”

“Establishing this in law could protect many other academics whose careers are threatened by the rising tide of intolerance on UK campuses,” she said.

Gadow is taking the case to an employment tribunal, and has launched a crowdfunder appeal. 

In 2021/22 the Open University’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion department announced plans to incorporate its political ideologies into ‘all current curriculum’.  The law degree on which I taught was redesigned around a ‘core theme’ of ‘liberating the curriculum’, reflecting these ideologies.  

Criminal law tutors were told that, to ‘liberate the curriculum’, our classes now had to introduce diverse gender identities and teach students to use offenders’ preferred pronouns. I questioned if incorporating gender identity theory might be an unnecessary distraction or even unwise. I described gender theory as hotly contested, and as recently developed in wealthy Western countries. I pointed out that (not) believing in gender identity is a protected religious or philosophical belief under the Equality Act 2010, and said law tutorials are no place to promote one's beliefs.

I also highlighted some of the implications of describing offenders according to self-identified gender in our work. I said a criminal lawyer’s role is to present facts, that sex is a relevant fact for offences involving perpetrators’ and/or victims’ bodies, and that no offender should be allowed to dictate the language of his case in a way which masks relevant facts.   I said an assailant’s language about himself and his offence should not automatically be adopted over his victim’s, and that lawyers and courts sometimes need to describe offenders in terms with which the latter might not agree – calling the innocent-identifying perpetrator ‘guilty’, or the trans-identifying male ‘he’.

When I raised these questions, in an online forum for law tutors to discuss what they teach, management had no answers.  Months later, they were cited as reasons for my dismissal. Managers spuriously alleged that my ‘unreasonable questions’ had created an environment which ‘isn’t inclusive, trans-friendly or respectful’, thus violating the transgender staff policy and codes of conduct. In fact, I had broken no lawful rule by probing the academic soundness of what I was expected to teach. 

I further incurred the wrath of the curriculum liberators when I asked them to define their key concepts such as ‘LGBTQ+’. It had become apparent to me that some treated ‘minor attraction’ (i.e. paedophilia) as part of the ‘diverse sexualities and gender identities’ Open University law teaching now seeks to ‘centre’.  The criminal law module culminated in an assignment in which students had to discuss a relationship between an adult and a minor. Students would gain marks by describing child and adult as each other’s ‘boyfriends’, but lose marks if they considered whether the adult was grooming the child or committing a sexual offence.

My request for clarification was spuriously described as further misconduct. Curriculum liberators complained that it had made them feel undermined, harassed, bullied and reputationally damaged. In fact, asking colleagues to explain core concepts of their output is just part of everyday academic work, but curriculum liberators were unable to do so here.