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Wonkhe SUs · The 2026 webinar box set

Freedom of speech

SUs, students, confidence and the culture wars – the law, the evidence and the panic.

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We separate decades of recycled moral panic from what the evidence actually shows, and get to grips with the law as it now stands – the 1986 and 1994 duties, HERA's academic freedom principles, and the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act with its main duties and complaints scheme. We work through the cases shaping the landscape – Sussex, Derby, St Andrews and Higgs – and what the new regime means in practice for SUs on affiliation, security costs, training and democracy.

What we cover

  • The long history of panic – from Eysenck at LSE in 1973 to no-platforming, recycled by every generation.
  • Or is it a panic? – what students say they self-censor versus what they actually hide, and why the headlines mislead.
  • What students actually say – most think speech is well protected, but few know their rights or are ever told them.
  • The legal web – the 1986 and 1994 duties, the Human Rights Act, Equality Act, charity law, Prevent and the public sector equality duty.
  • HERA 2017 and the Freedom of Speech Act – academic freedom, the duty to secure and promote, security costs and the surprise NDA ban.
  • The complaints scheme – students to the OIA, and staff, visiting speakers and the public to the new OfS free speech scheme opening this year.
  • The Free Speech Director – Arif Ahmed's remit, and his stated stance on defending all lawful views.
  • The cases – Sussex and the quashed fine, Derby, the St Andrews Rector, and Higgs v Farmor's School.
  • The see-saw – how one incident can trip both the free speech duty and the harassment and equality duties at once.
  • What it means for SUs – affiliation decided on legal not political grounds, security costs, training that can't require a belief, the end of universities buck-passing to the SU, and the unresolved democracy gap.

Things to read

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