Mick Hartley

FSU member and University College London academic Michelle Shipworth has been BANNED from teaching her own course, after a Chinese student complained that discussing modern slavery in China was too "provocative". We've now taken this up directly with UCL.https://t.co/B6cL3Ah4mU

— The Free Speech Union (@SpeechUnion) March 9, 2024

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From the Telegraph:

A leading UK university has banned an academic from teaching a “provocative” course involving China to protect its commercial interests, The Telegraph can disclose.

Michelle Shipworth, an associate professor at University College London (UCL), told The Telegraph she had “no choice” but to blow the whistle in order to “expose” how British universities were “conceding to the censorship demands of some Chinese students”.

Ms Shipworth, 58, was also accused of being anti-Chinese after she caught out two students from China who were cheating and they were subsequently expelled. One had used a body double in an attempt to hoodwink her during a supervision.

Her head of department at UCL told her he was taking action because “in order to be commercially viable”, the university’s courses “need to retain a good reputation amongst future Chinese applicants”.

UCL has the highest number of Chinese students in the UK, making up almost a quarter of its total student population. More than 10,000 Chinese students are at the university, typically paying two to three times the fees of home-grown students – up to £40,000 a year.

Ms Shipworth, who teaches at UCL’s Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources, found herself under investigation after a seminar last October examining data from the Global Slavery Index 2014. The data claimed China had the second-highest prevalence of modern slavery in the world….

She recalled that, at the end of the seminar, one of the Chinese students “stood up and said in a fairly cross tone – I wouldn’t even describe it as angry – something along the lines of: ‘Why are you using such a horrible provocation?’”

Prof Neil Strachan, Ms Shipworth’s boss, was alerted, culminating in her being told that another academic had been asked to “take over” the research module she had taught for the past 10 years.