Communications on the Office for Students’ (OfS) investigation into freedom of speech

These are the statements the University has made to the media on this issue. This page will be reviewed and updated.

A message from the Vice-Chancellor following the Office for Students’ report

Our Vice-Chancellor Professor Sasha Roseneil shares a short video message following the Office for Students’ report.

Politics Home opinion piece

The following opinion piece was published by Vice-Chancellor Professor Sasha Roseneil on the Politics Home website on 26 March 2025.

The Kafkaesque investigation into our university looks like political scapegoating

The Office for Students' so-called investigation into the University I represent was flawed and politically motivated. The implications for the higher education sector could be dire.

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.

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University of Sussex official press statement

On 26 March 2025, the University of Sussex issued the following press statement, in response to the Office for Students’ own press release publishing the findings of its investigation.

“Student regulator’s findings will make universities ungovernable”, says Sussex Vice-Chancellor.

The University of Sussex has condemned the findings of an investigation into freedom of speech by the higher education regulator the Office for Students (OfS) that leave universities unable to have policies to prevent abusive, bullying and harassing speech and that will perpetuate the culture wars.

Following a three-and-a-half-year investigation, in which the OfS refused to meet or speak with anyone from the University, and with only one person interviewed, the regulator has handed down a record fine of £585,000, over 15 times larger than any other sanction it has previously imposed, for two historic breaches of its ‘conditions of registration’.

The implications of the OfS’ findings are that universities could be powerless to remove offensive propaganda or to discipline those who engage in abuse, harassment or bullying, unless the propaganda or speech is unlawful. Universities may be unable to set expectations of behaviour or issue guidelines to protect staff and students from abusive, bullying and harassing speech which is not unlawful. Commenting, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sussex, Professor Sasha Roseneil, confirmed that the University would legally challenge the OfS’s findings and warned of the implications for the wider sector.

Professor Roseneil said:

“The OfS’s findings mean that it is now virtually impossible for universities to prevent abuse, harassment, or bullying on our campuses. It means universities cannot protect groups subject to harmful propaganda or determine that stereotyped assumptions should not be relied upon in the university curriculum.

“Universities must be able to have policies and expectations of behaviour that support respectful communication and enable us to manage cultural tensions on campus. It cannot be that we are only able to expect people to obey the law and that poor behaviour can only be challenged in the courts.

“Under this ruling, we believe that universities would not be permitted to expect their staff and students to treat each other with civility and respect. The OfS is effectively decreeing libertarian free speech absolutism as the fundamental principle for UK universities. In our view, the OfS is perpetuating the culture wars.”

Professor Roseneil also criticised the manner in which the OfS conducted its investigation. She said:

“The way the OfS has conducted this investigation has been completely unacceptable, its findings are egregious and concocted, and the fine that is being imposed on Sussex is wholly disproportionate. After three and a half years of trawling thousands of pages of paperwork, whilst never interviewing anyone employed by the University, the behaviour of the OfS sets a dangerous precedent and constitutes serious regulatory overreach in service of a politically motivated inquiry.”

This treatment reflected the findings of the House of Lords’ Industry and Regulators Committee Inquiry into the OfS in 2023. The Committee’s report said that:

“It is clear that the poor relationship between the OfS and providers has been in part because the OfS approach has been overly distant and combative. It gives the impression that it is seeking to punish rather than support providers towards compliance, while taking little note of their views”.

The report added: “The OfS has now become involved in the micro-management of issues such as freedom of speech and sexual harassment. While undoubtedly important, these matters would be better dealt with by effective review of provider governance and disseminating best practice rather than through prescriptive regulatory requirements and time-consuming processes.”

The Government’s review of the Office for Students in July 2024 called out the regulator’s perceived lack of independence and made it clear that the OfS must reset its relations with the higher education sector, from being ‘adversarial and overly legalistic’ to build relations based on ‘respect, confidence and trust’.

“How the OfS has behaved throughout this investigation demonstrates that it has not changed the way it operates and it is not acting in the interests of students, taxpayers, or the sector,” added Professor Roseneil. “It has pursued this flawed investigation to make an example of a university without any regard for the impact of its investigation on students and staff and the wider sector. The OfS is simply not fit for purpose.”

The Government’s review led by Sir David Behan, now interim Chair of the OfS, recommended it refocused its attention on the financial sustainability of higher education providers. The scale of the fine levied on Sussex demonstrates a fundamental disregard for this when so many providers in the sector, including Sussex, are facing significant financial pressures.

The OfS launched its investigation on 22 October 2021 in response to protests that led to Professor Kathleen Stock’s resignation from the University.

Addressing Professor Kathleen Stock’s resignation from the University of Sussex, Professor Sasha Roseneil said:

“The circumstances around Professor Stock’s departure from the University of Sussex are deeply regrettable. Sussex has consistently and publicly defended her right to pursue her academic work and to express her gender critical beliefs. Academic freedom and freedom of speech are the foundational elements of a university, and the University is committed to ensuring that diversity in all its forms, particularly diversity of thought and identity are able to flourish at Sussex.”

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Academic freedom and freedom of speech at Sussex

Read more about the University of Sussex’s commitment to academic freedom and freedom of speech.