How can universities protect academic freedom and freedom of speech on matters of fierce disagreement? The Office for Students will tomorrow (Wednesday, 26 March) give its answer: fining the University of Sussex for two historic breaches of ‘conditions of registration’.
Sussex is far from the only university to face challenges navigating contested issues, but has been the sole focus of attention from the higher education regulator and is explicitly and deliberately being made an example to other universities. The fine, £585,000, is 15 times larger than any other sanction it has imposed.
The OfS opened an investigation on 22 October 2021, around the time of Professor Kathleen Stock’s resignation from the University in response to protests against her work on gender critical theory. The University has never wavered from its position that her beliefs are lawful and that her academic freedom and freedom of speech should be protected. We have consistently and publicly defended her right to pursue her academic work and express her lawful beliefs and deeply regretted her decision to leave.
The OfS investigation should have been short, focused and straightforward. But for those at Sussex who spent thousands of hours responding to the many OfS requests for information, the experience has instead been Kafka-esque.
On 21 March 2024, after two and a half years, the OfS made a wide range of provisional findings against Sussex. In the final decision, the OfS abandoned, without any explanation, most of its provisional findings, reduced its original penalty by nearly half, and dropped additional regulatory requirements on the University.
The OfS has not investigated the circumstances that led to Professor Stock’s resignation; it does not have the powers to do this. It insists it was ‘impartial and view-point-neutral', but it has not talked to anyone apart from Professor Stock. The investigation was otherwise entirely desk-based — trawling hundreds of university documents and webpages, reviewing policies, statements, guidance, and minutes to find potential breaches of the conditions of registration to which higher education providers must adhere.
The OfS repeatedly refused to hold any substantive meeting with the University. The only such meeting ever scheduled was unilaterally cancelled by the OfS. We repeatedly asked for feedback to ensure compliance without response.
Eventually, the OfS has found two historic breaches. One relates to a two-page statement intended to protect the welfare of transgender staff and students, and the second to the University’s way of approving a small number of documents.
We will strongly contest these findings and have grave concerns about the implications of its decisions for students and staff, especially those from minoritised groups.
More immediately, we must speak out about the OfS’s conduct. The regulator warned the University not to speak publicly during the investigation, meaning I was unable to testify to the Lords’ Industry and Regulators Committee Inquiry into the OfS.
Now I am free to say I recognise its findings that this regulator has failed to win the sector’s trust or free itself of the culture wars agenda of the previous government.
Our experience reflects closely the committee’s observations that it “gives the impression that it is seeking to punish rather than support providers towards compliance, while taking little note of their views.” The OfS has indeed shown itself to be “arbitrary, overly controlling and unnecessarily combative”, to be failing to deliver value for money and is not focusing on the urgent problem of the financial sustainability of the sector.
The suspicion must be that this was a partisan scapegoating. The sadness is that this might have had a very different conclusion. Sussex will not be the last to face the challenge of a debate on gender, sex and identity that has become toxic. Universities across England are grappling with claims and counterclaims about academic freedom and freedom of speech regarding issues of equality, identity and inclusion. As the protests against the war in Gaza have shown, universities will continue to be a frontline for society’s most contentious issues.
A supportive and thoughtful regulator might collaborate to identify and understand shared challenges and develop good practice on academic freedom, freedom of speech and institutional culture in relation to equalities issues. Sussex stands ready to help deliver that support, drawing on our experience over recent years.
Levying a wholly disproportionate fine after a flawed, politically motivated, and wasteful investigation — when the higher education sector is in financial crisis — serves no one.
This article was first published by Politics Home on Wednesday 26 March 2025
