Prevent strategy greatest threat to university free speech

The Prevent strategy in the UK is the biggest threat to free speech at universities, says Liberty, who dismiss the media caricatures of ‘snowflake’ students as the driving force.

Corey Stoughton, director of advocacy at the human rights organisation, said that the Prevent guidelines, which require administrators to identify and limit speakers with extremist views, were themselves the biggest hurdle to the operation of free speech within university communities. She labelled the tactics of the strategy for monitoring campus activism as having a ‘chilling effect’ on black and Muslim students, provoking self censorship for fear of being labelled extremist.

Nearly 60,000 events and speakers at higher education institutions were considered under the Prevent duty last year, according to figures from the Office for Students, with more than 2,100 approved with conditions attached.

Stoughton said: “There is a substantial irony in the government spuriously accusing today’s students of threatening free speech when, in fact, the true threat to free speech on campus is the government’s own policies. Indeed, it is an almost Trumpian manoeuvre to distract from a series of government policies that deliberately set out to stifle debate and disempower the voices of people on campuses who may challenge government orthodoxy.

“Through the Prevent strategy the government imposes obligations on universities and members of university communities that either directly interfere with speech or have the foreseeable and actual effect of chilling the exercise of free expression.

“There is every reason to believe that black and minority ethnic students and academics, as well as those of Muslim faith, will be caught up in the Prevent programme, and even more reason to know that their exercise of the right to freedom of speech, conscience and association has been compromised.”