Mick Hartley

From the Telegraph – King’s College London bars staff from promotion unless they support pro-trans diversity policy:

A major London university may have broken equality law by barring staff from promotion unless they support its pro-trans diversity policy.

A barrister has found that King’s College is potentially discriminatory against those who believe there are only two sexes and that trans people are not the gender they identify as.

It could also fall foul of new rules to come into force in August to protect free speech in universities.

King’s College told staff they cannot be promoted unless they sign up to the whole of the university’s “equality, diversity and inclusion ambitions”.

The policy states that staff members should provide evidence of what they have done to promote inclusion, such as taking part in activity run by Stonewall, the charity that has recently come under fire for its support of puberty blockers.

Dr John Armstrong, a reader in financial mathematics at the college, approached the gender-critical group Sex Matters to ask whether the rule was lawful. It asked a barrister to look at the case, and she found it was potentially in breach of the Equality Act and the Employment Act.

The legal opinion, by Akua Reindorf, found that King’s College’s “various policies, training materials and guidance relating to the protected characteristics of sex and gender reassignment are incorrect, as a matter of law, in several substantial respects”.

It found that the college’s policies were very similar to those of Stonewall, which “promote the gender identity belief”.

“I think it is strongly arguable that KCL’s approach to EDI in respect of sex and gender conflicts with and/or actively contradicts the law in certain key respects, and that it is partisan and ideological in nature,” the barrister said….

Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at Sex Matters, said: “The damning conclusions of this legal opinion mean that King’s College London must urgently review its promotion and hiring policies.

“A university that forces staff and applicants to support positions shaped by lobby groups that misrepresent laws relating to discrimination will be vulnerable to legal challenge in the employment tribunal.

“Several high-profile recent cases, like the successful case taken by criminologist Jo Phoenix against the Open University, show that this can be a very expensive mistake.

“Any university that imposes policies that run counter to academic freedom is failing in its core mission, and likely to be penalised by the Office for Students under new laws coming into force in August.”

She added: “Ideological capture by trans lobby groups has no place in higher education."

Unfortunately it clearly still does. It'll take years to flush all this nonsense out of the system.