Committee for Academic Freedom

🚨 EXCLUSIVE: In 2023, David Harris, Professor Emeritus at Plymouth Marjon University, became one of the first academics to raise serious questions about the scholarly standards of Professor Jason Arday’s published work, shortly after Arday had been appointed Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of Cambridge.

Since Arday’s death, Harris’s role in scrutinising his work and highlighting possible evidence of plagiarism has made him the target of online abuse and personal smears, including potentially defamatory public allegations that he was motivated by racism. In this interview with the Committee for Academic Freedom (CAF), he gives his own account of what happened, explains how he came to investigate Arday’s work, and reveals previously unreported details about his attempts to raise his concerns privately with senior figures at Cambridge.

Among them was Professor Hilary Cremin, Head of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education, whom Harris approached with detailed concerns about Arday’s scholarship. He recounts Cremin’s response, including her apology for the tone and manner of emails in which Arday threatened to report him to the police for harassment, and her invitation to Harris to visit Cambridge “for tea” to discuss their differences.

But Cremin was not the only senior figure at Cambridge whom Harris approached. He reveals that he separately took his concerns to the University’s Head of Policy, Governance and Integrity, only to be told that the issues he had identified pre-dated Arday’s arrival at Cambridge and were therefore not the University’s responsibility.

The interview also sheds new light on suggestions that scrutiny of Arday’s work formed part of a wider campaign against him — a “vicious campaign”, as Diane Abbott has described it. Harris is categorical that he had no contact whatsoever with Dr Nathan Cofnas, and says that his own investigation was conducted independently, privately and through conventional academic channels.

His account raises important institutional questions about academic scrutiny, research integrity — and what Cambridge knew about concerns surrounding Arday’s work years before they became a matter of public controversy.

Concerning to see masked pro-Palestinian activists at City St George’s University of London, using loudspeakers to chant for the sacking of Professor Michael Ben-Gad, apparently because he — an Israeli citizen — served in the IDF in the early 1980s.

The demonstration took place in a main circulation area of the University Building at Northampton Square, through which anyone entering or leaving would have to pass.

Other allegedly pro-Israeli academics have recently been singled out in an Instagram campaign, with their names and photographs circulated alongside accusations of racism and Islamophobia that implicitly question why the university continues to employ them.

Under the newly strengthened Higher Education and Research Act 2017, English universities have a statutory duty to take reasonably practicable steps to secure the freedom of speech of their staff and students — a duty that also protects students’ rights to protest against academics, criticise their views and call for their dismissal.

But what students are legally entitled to say is not quite the same as what universities, as centres of scholarship and intellectual provocation, should expect from members of their community.

Central to the Humboldtian ideal of the university is the notion that even the sharpest political disagreements, and the personal enmities they engender, should be handled with civility, rather than allowed to descend into crude public denunciations and demands for someone’s sacking.

Sadly, this tendency is by no means confined to one side of the Israel–Palestine debate.

The Committee for Academic Freedom (CAF) knows of a recent case at King’s College London where a pro-Palestinian academic faced a hostile campaign following a student complaint about a seminar on the history of Palestine and Israel. Although the university closed two investigations without taking action, posters appeared on campus accusing the academic of supporting terrorism and demanding their sacking. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the academic subsequently described how persistent harassment undermined their professional confidence and made them think twice about what they could safely say in their teaching.

The political positions of Ben-Gad and the KCL academic may differ, but the underlying dynamic of cancellation is all too similar. And beyond the direct impact on each, hundreds — perhaps thousands — of their colleagues take note and silently resolve to keep quiet rather than risk becoming the next target.

Statutory protections may be necessary to secure academic freedom at an institutional level. But they are not sufficient to sustain it in practice. For that, universities depend on something no legislation can manufacture: a culture of intellectual tolerance and a willingness to engage with people whose views we profoundly reject.

A rare Equality Act 2010 challenge to a referral under Prevent, the UK’s counter-terrorism programme for identifying and responding to suspected signs of radicalisation, has ended with a County Court finding that a school unlawfully discriminated against a 13-year-old Muslim pupil.

Although a first-instance decision, the ruling has important implications for universities.

As well as foregrounding a risk inherent in Prevent’s precautionary referral process, that the lawful expression of staff and students may be recast as evidence of radicalisation through a linguistic gloss unsupported by the underlying facts, it points to a potentially underused route to legal redress where such reinterpretations result in discriminatory treatment because of a protected philosophical belief.

CAF Research Manager Freddie Attenborough writes for Verfassungsblog, the leading European platform for constitutional law and public law commentary:

verfassungsblog.de/counter-terror…

CAF is deeply concerned by the Home Office’s decision to cancel Andreas Malm’s Electronic Travel Authorisation, preventing the climate academic and associate professor of human ecology at Lund University in Sweden from travelling to Britain for a series of speaking engagements this week.

In a liberal democracy, the state should be exceptionally reluctant to substitute executive exclusion for argument and debate in settings whose purpose is to explore controversial claims.

Read more and sign the petition calling on the Home Secretary to reconsider the decision here:

afcomm.org.uk/2026/11/02/caf…

🚨 BREAKING: The Committee for Academic Freedom (CAF) has written to Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) on behalf of two senior academics who are refusing to complete mandatory training requiring assent to contested theoretical propositions about “unconscious bias”, potentially jeopardising their career progression and professional opportunities.

The dispute concerns an assessment within What is Unconscious Bias? — part of QMUL’s Introducing Inclusion course, which is “mandatory for all staff”.

The assessment requires participants to affirm that “unconscious biases help us to react quickly but can cloud our judgement”, and to identify accepting that “we have unconscious biases” as helpful. The accompanying feedback declares that such acceptance is “the first step to combating their negative effects”.

Informed by their scholarly research, the academics we’re supporting dispute these propositions and have refused to complete the assessment rather than give answers contrary to their convictions.

Under the assessment’s all-or-nothing marking system, refusing to affirm both propositions caps a participant’s score at 60%, below the 80% pass mark. Yet passing is a condition of eligibility for promotion, professorial review, including decisions on remuneration, and participation in recruitment and promotion panels.

Although influential in social-justice-oriented scholarship, the concept of unconscious bias is contested within psychology, with researchers disagreeing about what it means, whether the processes in question are necessarily unconscious, and whether they exert a causal influence on judgement. Peer-reviewed research also questions whether acknowledging such biases improves behaviour.

QMUL is of course entitled to provide training on its preferred theory of bias. But it remains just that: a theory. When such training is mandatory, requires staff to pass an assessment, and is tied to professional opportunities, there is a clear risk of compelling academics to affirm propositions they simply don’t believe.

That’s why we’ve proposed a simple solution: amend the assessment so that academics who don’t all think alike can demonstrate understanding without having to endorse its underlying assumptions.

Should QMUL decline to address these concerns, CAF is prepared to fund legal counsel to assist the academics, should they wish, in pursuing an internal grievance and subsequent complaint to the OfS.

We believe there are strong grounds for such a complaint, given that such training may breach QMUL’s statutory duties to secure freedom of speech and academic freedom. Consistent with Article 10 protections against compelled expression, the Office for Students has also warned that universities “should not require training or induction that imposes a requirement on the person completing the training actively to endorse any viewpoint or value-judgement”.

Sadly, this isn’t an isolated case. As CAF knows from its casework, universities often impose mandatory training in which the distinction between “understanding” and “endorsing” contested ideas becomes blurred.

That’s why we hope this intervention marks the beginning of a wider pushback against compelled intellectual conformity on campus.

If you’re an academic with similar concerns about mandatory training at your institution, get in touch. CAF can assess your case and, where appropriate, secure specialist legal advice and raise the matter with your university on your behalf.

Contact us at manager@afcomm.org.uk

Full story via The Telegraph:

telegraph.co.uk/gift/1060b2600…