The University of Bristol has been accused of failing to protect one of its professors who was falsely accused of Islamophobia.
Free speech and academic groups have asked the Office for Students (OfS) to examine alleged government and management failings that were said to have put Professor Steven Greer at risk.
The groups pointed out parallels between the Bristol case and Sussex University, which was fined £585,000 by the OfS for failing to uphold freedom of speech in relation to Kathleen Stock and her views on sex and gender issues.
Greer had been at the University of Bristol for 36 years when he was wrongly accused in 2021 of insulting Islam and the Quran during one of his courses. He was subjected to an aggressive social media campaign, received hostile emails and temporarily left his home because of fears for his safety.
And did the university support him? Of course they didn't.
He believes that the university put his life in danger to avoid being seen as anti-Muslim.
The issue arose during a discussion with students taking a human rights module when Greer raised the Islamist attacks in Paris in 2015, in which journalists and cartoonists at the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine were murdered. The module had been praised by external examiners for its “rigorous and critical” examination of contemporary human rights issues.
Six months later a student, who had not attended the course, made a complaint of Islamophobia. The university acted upon it even though it was after the three-month deadline to lodge such complaints.
The university’s Islamic Society then released details of the complaint on social media, where Greer was falsely accused of mocking Islam and the Quran.
He was subjected to a five-month inquiry, after which he was wholly exonerated. However, the university said that it “recognised” the concerns of students and scrapped the module, titled “Islam, China and the Far East”. Greer resigned.
Greer said: “Not only did they fail to protect me, and failed to deal with the complaint appropriately, they then compounded the risk by equivocating about my innocence.
“By saying they recognised concerns, and taking off the module because of student sensitivities, it looks like a whitewash, like they still had lingering suspicions about me.”
He was stitched up, and the university went along with it. Sheer cowardice.
Twelve groups, including the Free Speech Union, Academics for Academic Freedom, Alumni for Free Speech and Christian Concern, have written to the regulator asking it to investigate Bristol.
They pointed out that the university had a legal duty to take reasonably practicable steps to ensure freedom of speech within the law for its students and staff, but took no visible steps to do so in Greer’s case. They allege that Bristol’s failures resulted in the censorship of lawful expression and that, as in the Stock case, there was a failure to take reasonable steps to protect academics from physical harm.
Key failures, according to the groups, include allowing the complaint despite numerous procedural flaws, failing to take action on the aggressive social media campaign by disciplining any students who were involved, and cancelling Greer’s module even though he had been exonerated.
Given the scandal, the complaint notes, it would be a “brave scholar” who would make legitimate observations about Islam in a similar context.
Well quite. Discussion of Islam, let alone criticism of Islam, is becoming increasingly discouraged. As if, perhaps, it might be blasphemous.
Mick Hartley 
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