Mick Hartley

 On that Sussex University fine, from the Telegraph:

Helen Joyce, the director of advocacy at human rights charity Sex Matters, told The Telegraph: “This decision will send shock waves through university senior leadership teams across the UK.

“For too long, many vice-chancellors have calculated that it is safer and easier to permit trans activists to dictate policies and hound their opponents, rather than standing up for evidence-based research and academic freedom. Their cowardice has exposed academics who reject the fringe belief that gender identity overrides sex to bullying and unlawful discrimination by ideological, intolerant colleagues.

“It is gratifying to see Professor Kathleen Stock vindicated after sustained bullying and harassment drove her out of her job at Sussex University.”

Nigel Jones at the Spectator:

Could this mark a turning point in the culture wars surrounding the corruption of our institutions of higher learning, pressured by trans activists to put their emotions and feelings above biological truth?…

However, the message that the times have changed does not yet seem to have got through to the University of Sussex. Vice-chancellor Professor Sasha Roseneil said the university would appeal against the fine. She accused the OfS of pursuing a ‘vindictive and unreasonable’ campaign against it and holding to an ‘absolutist definition’ of free speech. The university said that if the ruling was upheld in spite of its appeal, it would leave them ‘powerless to prevent bullying and harassment’.

It doesn’t seem to have occurred to the Sussex authorities that it was precisely their inability to prevent the bullying and harassment of Stock that brought the fine down on them.

Not so much their inability as their unwillingness. They could have acted against the protestors, but they didn't. 

Stock was forced out of her position at Sussex – well known even in academia for its leftist sympathies – by naked and hate-filled intimidation. Her crime? Writing a book in which she questioned whether fashionable social attitudes to trans and non-binary issues outweighed the biological reality of male and female sex. Sussex students put posters up around the university campus calling for her to be sacked for her views. Stock even considered employing private security guards to ensure her personal safety while she was on the university premises.

Disgracefully, the university did little, or nothing, to protect or defend their own staff member from the abuse. Eventually, the threats forced Stock to resign.

Encouragingly, the Education Secretary has voiced her support for the OfS’s decision. Bridget Phillipson said that academic freedom and free speech were ‘non negotiable’, that the government had taken powers to enforce such principles, and that ‘robust action’ would be taken against all those who did not uphold these standards. It’s about time.