An event in October in Edinburgh to discuss conflict on campus
In 1937 Left Review published a pamphlet “Artists Take Sides on the Spanish War – Are you for, or against, Franco and Fascism?”
Note the framing. For, or against? The idea of taking sides was positioned as an argument, a question, a debate.
The challenge was the idea of the poet, journalist, and activist Nancy Cunard who wrote to the most important writers of the time. Among those who responded were W. H. Auden, Samuel Beckett, Cyril Connolly, C. Day Lewis, Ford Madox Ford, Victor Gollancz, Aldous Huxley, Sylvia Pankhurst, Herbert Read, Stephen Spender, Leonard Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Vera Brittain, H. G. Wells, Vita Sackville-West and Evelyn Waugh.
Cunard had set up a symbol that allowed her correspondents to continue their own debates. To read the pamphlet is to see over 100 writers pondering their place in the world.
Taking sides in today’s political discourse has become a rather different beast. You’re not required to debate or inquire, but rather to reach a single conclusion and then put those who disagree with you on the wrong side of right. Consequently, the Left always thinks it’s right and the Right never thinks it’s wrong.
Activists and columnists have pompously declared themselves and their viewpoint acolytes to be “on the right side of history”. Which always puts me in mind of that oft quoted moment in the early 1970’s when Henry Kissinger asked Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai for his thoughts on the impact of the French Revolution. To which Zhou replied that it was “too early to say“.
Universities have found this particularly destructive in the last decade. In the literature on academic freedom and free speech in universities the modern benchmark was authoritatively set by the work in Chicago in the late 1960s as President Johnson escalated US involvement in Vietnam and student protest rose to unprecedented heights. The broad principles that emerged from that and subsequent argument are that universities should only involve themselves politically in those matters that would prevent them from prosecuting their core purpose of research and teaching, that dissent, debate and evidence-based academic disagreement is crucial to the discovery of knowledge, that lawful protest should be defended and that there is a crucial difference between protest and disruption. The latter characterised nicely by the former Dean of Stamford Law when she drew the distinction between using a bullhorn in a field – protest – and in a seminar room – disruption.
What has changed relatively recently is that there has emerged, not just in universities, but in the political sphere more widely, a strain of argument that censorship is progressive. That there are certain views – not actions, but just words – the mere expression of which damages the rights of others. There is an idea that freedom of speech comes with consequences. Which to anyone with a passing engagement with twentieth century history will recognise as only being the case in authoritarian regimes and those with a brief knowledge of the history of religion will recognise as the definition of heresy.
The irony is that this way of thinking has come from a good place. In an effort to safeguard minorities from discrimination and individuals from that which would disadvantage them based on prejudice, universities started to think about ways of countering this unfairness. This good impulse however has over time transformed from the removal of blocks to talent into a set of prohibitions. Worse still, prohibitions based not on any objective analysis of harm but too often on a subjective perception of hurt. Offense is confused with harassment, disagreement with hostility and difference of view with a lack of virtue.
Currently I am facilitating sessions in universities in England on free speech. This is catalysed by the introduction of the Office for Students complaints scheme which came into effect in September and carries with it the potential for hefty fines in the event of breaches of the free speech of staff or visitors.
What has emerged from these sessions is that, for quite a lot of the participants, there appeared to be a clash between the powerful sense that they want their university to be ‘welcoming’ and ‘warm’ and (the word often used) ‘inclusive’ but not wanting to extend that to views or people with whom they profoundly disagree.
Surrounded as we are by increasing polarisation, it appears increasingly commonplace for some to think that an opposite view is not just a different perspective but morally wrong or lacking in virtue, and so they find it difficult to give meaningful acknowledgement or even tolerance to those conflicting views. This can sometimes even transfer beyond views to the person themselves and thus, as some have commented, affect possibilities of working and collaborating with people with whom they have differences.
This leads to pressure on universities to take sides. Not as a way of pursuing their core purpose or their position in society but as a way of signalling their ‘values’. However, this is to confuse having “values” with activism for a cause. Taking sides in that way is not an expression of values in any universal meaning of that word, it is not morality, it is opinion. And by definition on these kinds of issues, divisive.
Michael Spence, the Provost of University College London, in a recent Select Committee, asked “are universities actors in debates or are we the forum for debates?” Taking my lead from that, I pose to university staff who have been participating in my sessions whether impartiality is more inclusive and more effective a pursuit of the core objectives of a university than taking a position? What is a university for? Reaching a conclusion or examining the hypothesis?
The Kalven Committee in 1967 emphasised the “discovery, improvement, and dissemination of knowledge”. The Higher Education Governance (Scotland) Act 2016 puts into legislation the idea that fundamental to the pursuit of knowledge is “freedom within the law to hold and express opinions, question and test established ideas or received wisdom, develop and advance new ideas or innovative proposals, and present controversial or unpopular points of view”. The Office for Students, the English regulator, frames the core mission of universities and colleges as “the pursuit of knowledge. Free speech and academic freedom are fundamental to this purpose. Without free speech there are no new ideas. There is no productive debate. There is no social progress. There is no challenge to conventional wisdom. Even where conventional wisdom reflects truth, it must be open to criticism and discussion”.
There is a vibrant and vital discussion to be had about the role of universities and freedom of speech within them. However, it is apparent that Scottish universities (along with their UK counterparts) are encountering significant difficulties on campus when trying to deal with different perspectives on wider societal conflicts – both in teaching, learning and research and on protest and disruption.
This is now becoming a pressing issue for universities. How do they balance freedom of speech and the right to protest with claims of offence and harm? How do they distinguish between academic freedom in research and teaching, and protests and disruption outside the academic context of the lecture theatre or the lab? Indeed, what is the relationship between academic freedom and freedom of speech in universities, and does that relationship vary between the sciences, social sciences, and humanities? Do concerns framed as ‘dignity & respect’ help to defend staff and students’ ability to express different views, or do they restrict viewpoint diversity by portraying some views as being disrespectful and therefore unacceptable to other views? How much do demands that a university takes a side in a controversial issue, say in relation to investment, counter the purpose of the institution which many argue is at its core built on viewpoint diversity?
There are deep divisions (e.g. around Israel and Palestine; sex and gender; race) which ought to be discussed openly, but around which sensitivities are such that discussion is often closed down.
To discuss this a group of us connected to Edinburgh University have organised an event called ‘Conflict on Campus’. We have deliberately curated the widest range of views.
There will be panels on: The purpose of the university. Division on campus – what has happened? How have universities responded? And in the last plenaries participants will be asked to look at the principles and any limits on academic freedom and protest and disruption
The event is not about the rights and wrongs on different sides of particular debates; it is about how to handle those conflicts of view well to further the purpose of Scottish universities.
Simon Fanshawe OBE is an author, diversity consultant and the current Rector of Edinburgh University. He was previously chairman of Sussex University. He is the author of The Power of Difference and the co-founder of the ground-breaking consultancy Diversity by Design.
CONFLICT ON CAMPUS – a one-day event for the leaders of Scotland’s Universities and those who care about higher education in Scotland – exploring the underlying principles that shape institutional responses to contested and divisive issues.
Venue Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh
Date October 21st, 2026, 09.30 – 17.00
All are welcome and you can register here.