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In Bad Education, Matt Goodwin argues that diversity of opinion is under threat in universities which “are no longer protecting and promoting things like free speech”. Sadly there is clear evidence to support his case — from attempts to monitor “microaggressions” to shocking attempts to suppress the views of gender critical academics such as Kathleen Stock and Jo Phoenix.
Goodwin is angry about hostility he himself has encountered because of his support for the populist right and has made a journey from university academic (until last year he was professor of politics at the University of Kent) to political activist. But his anger gets in the way of analysing the convergence on the university system of a range of very different forces.
First is the intellectual climate, itself shaped by universities. They are where critical theory began and flourished. It is a theory which appeals to academics because it says that words matter: language is a tool of oppression. So our language and the curriculum have to be decolonised in order truly to deliver diversity, equity and inclusion. It is an agenda far removed from classic concerns of the left such as what people earn and what access they have to public services. And there is another crucial difference. There were always left-wing academics — as well as some of a more conservative disposition. But the university as an institution was not engaged in their arguments and did not take a view. Now there are universities, especially but not only in America, where advocates of critical theory have recruited university administrators who use university-wide EDI programmes to advance their agenda and try to require academics to comply.
Secondly there is the intense transgender debate, exacerbated in the UK by misinterpretation of the Equality Act. Too many universities, perhaps influenced by the LGBTQ+ rights charity Stonewall, interpreted the Act to mean any form of self-identified gender is a protected characteristic. The Reindorf review of problems at the University of Essex is a clear and authoritative account of serious mistreatment of academics as a result. Since it was published in 2021 no British university should repeat such behaviour.
The third trend is how students are changing. The psychologists Jean Twenge and Jonathan Haidt have persuasively argued that the rise in access to social media is leading to mental health issues for young people. This can lead to the introduction of trigger warnings and a belief that freedom of speech is less important than protecting people’s feelings. However, higher education appears to provide some resilience to these pressures, lowering the risk of young people withdrawing from work because of mental illness.
There is a class divide too. Young white working-class men are even less likely to go to university than many ethnic minority groups. We should encourage more to go. The real luxury belief is advantaged graduates saying there is no point going to university when for many young people from disadvantaged backgrounds it is the most powerful tool of social mobility we’ve got. For those who were previously on free school meals, average graduate earnings growth in their first decade is 75 per cent, while for non-graduates it is 26 per cent. But instead of promoting the value of higher education, social mobility advocates have put more weight, probably excessive, on the early years.
There has also been the shift in attitudes away from globalisation, represented by Trump and Brexit. David Goodhart, cited by Goodwin, makes universities the arch-culprits in his moral divide between citizens of Somewhere or Nowhere. This is particularly hard on universities as most of them have places in their names. They are definitely somewhere and a good thing too. They are very likely to stay rooted in their place even if the big employers move out or the local paper closes down. Towns and cities in the UK such as Chester, Coventry, Worcester or Bournemouth have been revitalised by the emergence of a strong local university. The government may be underestimating the shockwaves if a university closes.
Add to this mix empowering the student as consumer. The student is not just a consumer, though the university fee is a contract to deliver a service and that strengthens the student voice. Most local student unions don’t want Marxist revolution but to get their academic work back promptly and seminars that are less crowded. But student satisfaction rankings have been given exaggerated weight and empowered students to threaten academics on very different issues.
There are university leaders who see that all these forces mean they have heavy new responsibilities which they cannot avoid. Universities should be the place where diverse young people learn how to disagree. The 2015 Chicago Statement of the principles of free speech in university is important and Goodwin wants “to force universities, through government action, to sign up” and then to practise what they preach.
His many anecdotes move between UK and US as if our two university systems are interchangeable. But there are important differences such as greater labour market protections in the UK (and even more in Europe). Protection from unfair dismissal matters if an academic is caught in a social media frenzy. This might explain the paradox that American and to some extent British universities have been far more susceptible to some of these forces than Continental Europe despite their intellectual origins in Continental postmodernist philosophy.
Goodwin wants to use “the powers of the state to restore justice and balance”. The loss of confidence in the ability of universities to protect freedom of speech justified the 2023 freedom of speech legislation with new powers for the university regulator, which I support. But this is tricky territory.
The problems began on the morning the previous Conservative government launched the initiative. On the Today programme the minister responsible was asked if this meant Holocaust denial would be protected, and she said yes. Holocaust denial is not itself a legal offence in the UK so her statement made sense for a proper free speech absolutist. Within hours, however, No 10 corrected her: it was not protected under the new legislation. We have never known what this free speech code is that does not permit some legal free speech. We do need stronger protections, but Goodwin doesn’t really engage with the issue of whether there are to be any constraints at all.
There is a great American tradition of academics worrying that the modern university is rejecting the culture which nurtured it — William Buckley’s God and Man at Yale, Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, and now Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s The Coddling of the American Mind. In Britain we have tended to express our anxieties instead through the campus novel, a genre of which we are masters. Malcolm Bradbury’s The History Man skewers a certain sort of progressive academic with more skill and subtlety than Goodwin manages. Goodwin has some genuine grievances but he mashes different problems up together and then calls it all a row between right and left — if only it were so simple.
Bad Education: Why Our Universities Are Broken and How We Can Fix Them by Matt Goodwin Bantam £20, 256 pages
David Willetts is a former Conservative Minister for Universities and Science and is author of ‘A University Education’ (OUP)
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