Mick Hartley

At CAF, the  Committee for Academic Freedom – a new report highlights threats to academic freedom in the study of sex and gender:

A recent report commissioned by the UK’s department for Science, Innovation and Technology shines a spotlight on the suppression of academic freedom in fields of sex and gender research. According to the report, it is not a matter of both sides engaging in a toxic debate, but rather a one-sided attack on gender critical academics.

The second part of the project Review of data, statistics and research on sex and gender, the report is principally authored by UCL professor Alice Sullivan and officially entitled “Report 2: Barriers to research on sex and gender”.   

Questions surrounding sex, gender, and single-sex spaces have evolved into one of the most fraught public debates in the country, inspiring countless opinion pieces, protests and online cancellations. Regular readers will be all to aware that this debate has also conquered academia and created what many describe as a “chilling effect” among students as well as academics.    

However, the findings of this review indicate that the suppression of academic freedom on this topic only runs in one direction. According to the report, researchers who express the “gender critical” belief that “biological sex is real, important, immutable and not to be conflated with gender identity” face harassment, discrimination, and potential careers setbacks. The same cannot be said for the proponents of what the report terms “gender-identity theory”.

This does not come as a huge shock. "No debate" has always been the mantra of the genderists. Contrary views are met not with arguments but with abuse and threats.

Drawing from both news reports and the testimonies of respondents, the report details a staggering number of examples of gender critical researchers being subjected to campaigns of cancellation, public denouncements, open letters calling for disciplinary actions or outright dismissal, and bullying and harassment by colleagues. In contrast, the report also notes that “We are not aware of any equivalent cases of sustained harassment of academics who oppose gender-critical views.”

Might this be because gender ideology in fact bears no relation to science or rationality, but is rather a cult that demands obedience? – a cult that has, extraordinarily, come to dominate our elite institutions of higher learning.