According to a report, UK universities are unable to protect gender-critical academics against bullying and career restrictions on their research.
The report, by Prof. Alice Sullivan from University College London, recommends that students and employees “participate in the recovery of intimidation of freedom must be confronted with the consequences that are proportional to the seriousness of the violation”.
Sullivan said that her report “raises grim care about barriers for academic freedom in British universities. Researchers who investigate vital issues are subject to persistent campaigns of intimidation, simply to recognize the biological and social importance of sex.”
The report said the updated Higher Education (freedom of expression)That comes into effect in August, will maintain the rights of researchers in England and calls for similar mechanisms in other parts of the UK. The evidence of the report dates from before the pronunciation of the UK Supreme Court on biological sex.
A government spokesperson said: “We take strong action to protect academic freedom and freedom of expression, which are fundamental to our leading universities.
“This includes introducing new tasks at universities to ensure that they are robust in promoting and protecting freedom of expression on campus. It is also in addition to the steps that the office is already taking, through fines and new guidance, to ensure that universities remain beacons of academic freedom.”
The other work of Sullivan includes an evaluation commissioned by the previous conservative government and published in March 2025 of obstacles to sex and gender research. The call from the latest report to receive evidence received 140 answers, the majority of people who agree with gender-critical views defined as a belief that biological sex is unchangeable and should not be merged with gender.
Sullivan blamed increasing management layers and an uncertain career structure for reducing academic autonomy, making researchers more vulnerable to internal and external pressure.
“Excessive and cumbersome bureaucratic processes have exacerbated the problem by offering levers to activists to exert influence. Academic institutions must carefully investigate their policy and processes to avoid these unintended results,” she said.
“If fundamental issues cannot be openly investigated or debated, this undermines our academic institutions, it hurts individuals and it endangers the integrity of research. The suppression of research often damages the groups that claim activists to support.”
The report said: “The deterioration of democratic academic government means that in most universities most of the academics who are involved in teaching and researching do little say or have a voice about how their universities are run.”
It orders that universities help students to “see robust disagreement as an opportunity for intellectual growth instead of a threat”. They must also “avoid staff or students to lead to support for mental health care in response to the presence of views with which they do not agree”.
Many of the entries have detailed detailed how research with regard to sex and gender was opposed or reduced by other employees or managers. It also included examples where Sullivan was the target, including a planned reading that led to a one -day conference being canceled in 2020.
Kathleen Stock, the professor in philosophy who resigned from the University of Sussex after protests and hostility of other academics, submitted detailed evidence about the three -year opposition campaign she experienced for her gender -critical views.
Stock revealed a catalog of abuse on campus and social media that go back to 2018, escalating to protests in the autumn 2021 that she described as “a persistent campaign of intimidation” that led to her resignation.
A spokesperson for Universities UK, who represents Vice Chancellors, said: “In practice, universities of the Act are bound by law to protect the freedom of expression of people who have very different views on controversial subjects. They are required, both to allow and facilitate protest, and to prevent the campus to create an intimidating or having to have a hiding environment and of the campus on campus and of the campus and of the campus of the campus and of the campus of the campus and of the campus of the campus and of the campus on the campus and of the campus and the campus of the campus and the campus of the campus and the campus of the campus and the campus of the campus and the campusing the campus and has a good thing on the campus and the campus on the campus and the campus and the campus and has a good thing on campus en miviously follow studies.
“We will carefully regard this report as part of our work in supporting universities while they navigate through these difficult issues.”
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