Kathleen Stock, a British former Sussex University professor who resigned from her position four years ago after facing death threats for her ‘gender-critical’ views, has offered fresh commentary in an article on UnHerd after the Office for Students recently completed their investigations into the university’s free speech violations. This investigation culminated with hitting the institution at which Stock was employed for nearly two decades with a record penalty of £585,000.
The university’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Sasha Roseneil, is not happy about the outcome. She has criticised the method adopted by the Office for Students, questioned its impartiality, and stated that she has “grave concerns about the implications of its decisions for students and staff, especially those from minoritised groups.”
In Professor Roseneil’s response, I was especially struck by the following sentences:
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.
It is perfectly understandable and predictable that universities will contend with challenging questions about the nature and extent of academic freedom and freedom of speech. But why should they contend with questions of such freedom specifically in relation to “equality, identity and inclusion”—in other words, DEI? Fortunately, Professor Roseneil answers my question in the next sentence: because, in her view, universities should “be a frontline for society’s most contentious issues.”
What Roseneil is advancing here is a very specific conception of what a university is, one on which many an academic would disagree. But she is far from alone. Universities are, in the minds probably of most of those who now run these chaotic institutions, arenas in which people become activists. It is quite clear—and Stock’s flight from Sussex is a cautionary tale in this regard—that by this account of what universities are, it is not being claimed that universities are institutions in which different views can be openly discussed. No, no. There is a ‘right side of history,’ and the job of academics is to make sure that their students and their colleagues are on that side, or otherwise expelled into the outer darkness.
Universities are not, then, places where competing claims can be freely subjected to criticism without concern for the emotional fragility of others beyond what’s required by manners in the ordinary course of life. For if such a conception—of a free and intellectually open institution—were being defended, we’d have no problem. And indeed, were that a description of the University of Sussex, there never would have been any investigation. Nor, in turn, would Professor Roseneil feel pressed to advance a very specific—and highly contentious, I might add—conception of the university at all.
There is, however, another idea of the university. It is a much older and much more robust conception of that ancient institution, namely that the university is a treasury of the accumulated wisdom which belongs to our civilisation, and the remarkable engagement of our civilisation with other civilisations. A university is a place where one encounters “the best that has been thought and known,” as Matthew Arnold put it.
According to this idea, the university is where people (especially those entering adulthood) might join the great conversation of our civilisation—enjoyed across centuries—by being inducted and initiated into that civilisation through a demanding discipline. And by such initiation, acquiring the intellectual habits needed to engage successfully with that discipline and others related to it.
Rather than fomenting among those still largely in a condition of ignorance and chaotic emotion an activistic mindset, academics are, according to the classical conception of the university, commissioned with instilling among their students the confidence that comes with knowledge and self-control. But with the activistic conception of the university comes an extreme intolerance towards anyone who is not on the ‘right side of history,’ that is, who is undermining the very notion of the university, according to its comparatively recent redefinition.
The Newspeak of equality, identity, inclusion, and being on the frontline consequently becomes necessary because craven university leaders need to present aggressive censorship within their universities as somehow heroic. Otherwise, people will criticise such censorship as cowardly and contrary to the spirit of research and scholarship of which the university is meant to be the home. And it seems especially necessary to deploy such Newspeak over the issue of so-called transgenderism because it is so obvious to the ordinary person that the oft-unexamined claims underpinning this movement are incredible, in the true sense of the word.
After all, I still do not understand why I can make some claims about my interior ‘selfhood’ and how my visible embodiment must reflect that selfhood—how I ‘present,’ to use the popular phraseology—but other claims are forbidden. Presumably if only I can know the veracity of those claims, I cannot be wrong, and I shouldn’t be prevented from vocalising such claims and ‘presenting’ accordingly. (At least, I shouldn’t be prevented from doing so if we’re going to take equality, identity, and inclusion seriously in the Roseneilian sense of those terms.)
For example, a man is permitted to say that he is a woman trapped inside a man, or inside a man’s body (assuming an anthropological dualism of which my Aristotelian training hinders me from making much sense). And the claim that one is partially or fully a ‘self’ belonging to another species is fast mainstreaming, with the minority communities of ‘otherkin’ and ‘therians’—who ‘present’ as the animals to which they claim their inner ‘selves’ belong—rapidly gaining institutional recognition across the West. (Incidentally, perhaps Thomas Nagel’s 1974 essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” should be necessary reading for all undergrads.)
Celebrating the examples above of what we used to call ‘body dysmorphia’ is perfectly acceptable in polite society, apparently. I absolutely must not, however, claim to have a ‘self’ belonging to another racial identity. If I were to claim that my true self is a woman who is just trapped in a man’s body, that’s fine. If I claim that my true self is that of a pigeon which is trapped in a man’s body, that too is fine. (Incidentally, even on strictly dualistic, Cartesian grounds, it’s highly debatable whether a pigeon can be said to enjoy anything even close to what we denote with the term ‘selfhood,’ but let’s not allow that to trouble us.) Were I to claim, however, that I had a ‘black self,’ and were I to try to ‘present’ accordingly, I would be in deep trouble. Trust me, others have tried it.
Obviously, that some claims about the ‘hidden self’ are acceptable and others are not makes little sense beyond entrenched prejudices that favour certain ‘selves’ and seek to oppress other ‘selves,’ the perpetuation of which seems contrary to being on the ‘right side of history.’ So, if all that doesn’t seem to make much sense to you, I have good news: none of it does make any sense. And more good news: you’re not bound to accept the notion of ‘hidden selves’ at all.
In fact, the entire metaphysics and anthropology of the ‘hidden self’ is highly dubious. As a trained philosopher, I object to being required, on the Roseneilian and sadly dominant view of what a university is, to affirm—tacitly or otherwise—either the Manichean dualism of the ‘secret, cloistered self’ or a materialist reductionism that locates the ‘self’ in neurochemicals and prefrontal nerve patterns. For in case you haven’t noticed, transgender claims require one or the other anthropological model for the ‘self.’
But, as it happens, I’m convinced that I am neither a ghost imprisoned in a meat suit nor brain juice. Though I think none are needed, I have strong philosophical reasons for thinking otherwise. Consequently, I also have strong reasons for thinking that the whole transgender movement is foolish and unhinged at best, and extremely dangerous at worst. That a prerequisite for employment at a university appears to be that an applicant has signed up to one or the other of these highly dubious, if not downright superstitious, anthropological models is very alarming.
As the recent investigation into the treatment of Stock indicates, however, things might be changing. The Overton Window on this topic appears indeed to be shifting, and the managerial West may soon catch up. Hitherto, many views that might have been expressed by decent, hardworking people in your local pub could not be uttered in most respectable institutions, not just universities. But such censorship may be diminishing. Surely now that there’s a considerable part of the population who have paid to have their penises chopped off, everything should be up for grabs.
Between a University and a Madhouse
Photo: WOKANDAPIX from Pixabay
Kathleen Stock, a British former Sussex University professor who resigned from her position four years ago after facing death threats for her ‘gender-critical’ views, has offered fresh commentary in an article on UnHerd after the Office for Students recently completed their investigations into the university’s free speech violations. This investigation culminated with hitting the institution at which Stock was employed for nearly two decades with a record penalty of £585,000.
The university’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Sasha Roseneil, is not happy about the outcome. She has criticised the method adopted by the Office for Students, questioned its impartiality, and stated that she has “grave concerns about the implications of its decisions for students and staff, especially those from minoritised groups.”
In Professor Roseneil’s response, I was especially struck by the following sentences:
It is perfectly understandable and predictable that universities will contend with challenging questions about the nature and extent of academic freedom and freedom of speech. But why should they contend with questions of such freedom specifically in relation to “equality, identity and inclusion”—in other words, DEI? Fortunately, Professor Roseneil answers my question in the next sentence: because, in her view, universities should “be a frontline for society’s most contentious issues.”
What Roseneil is advancing here is a very specific conception of what a university is, one on which many an academic would disagree. But she is far from alone. Universities are, in the minds probably of most of those who now run these chaotic institutions, arenas in which people become activists. It is quite clear—and Stock’s flight from Sussex is a cautionary tale in this regard—that by this account of what universities are, it is not being claimed that universities are institutions in which different views can be openly discussed. No, no. There is a ‘right side of history,’ and the job of academics is to make sure that their students and their colleagues are on that side, or otherwise expelled into the outer darkness.
Universities are not, then, places where competing claims can be freely subjected to criticism without concern for the emotional fragility of others beyond what’s required by manners in the ordinary course of life. For if such a conception—of a free and intellectually open institution—were being defended, we’d have no problem. And indeed, were that a description of the University of Sussex, there never would have been any investigation. Nor, in turn, would Professor Roseneil feel pressed to advance a very specific—and highly contentious, I might add—conception of the university at all.
There is, however, another idea of the university. It is a much older and much more robust conception of that ancient institution, namely that the university is a treasury of the accumulated wisdom which belongs to our civilisation, and the remarkable engagement of our civilisation with other civilisations. A university is a place where one encounters “the best that has been thought and known,” as Matthew Arnold put it.
According to this idea, the university is where people (especially those entering adulthood) might join the great conversation of our civilisation—enjoyed across centuries—by being inducted and initiated into that civilisation through a demanding discipline. And by such initiation, acquiring the intellectual habits needed to engage successfully with that discipline and others related to it.
Rather than fomenting among those still largely in a condition of ignorance and chaotic emotion an activistic mindset, academics are, according to the classical conception of the university, commissioned with instilling among their students the confidence that comes with knowledge and self-control. But with the activistic conception of the university comes an extreme intolerance towards anyone who is not on the ‘right side of history,’ that is, who is undermining the very notion of the university, according to its comparatively recent redefinition.
The Newspeak of equality, identity, inclusion, and being on the frontline consequently becomes necessary because craven university leaders need to present aggressive censorship within their universities as somehow heroic. Otherwise, people will criticise such censorship as cowardly and contrary to the spirit of research and scholarship of which the university is meant to be the home. And it seems especially necessary to deploy such Newspeak over the issue of so-called transgenderism because it is so obvious to the ordinary person that the oft-unexamined claims underpinning this movement are incredible, in the true sense of the word.
After all, I still do not understand why I can make some claims about my interior ‘selfhood’ and how my visible embodiment must reflect that selfhood—how I ‘present,’ to use the popular phraseology—but other claims are forbidden. Presumably if only I can know the veracity of those claims, I cannot be wrong, and I shouldn’t be prevented from vocalising such claims and ‘presenting’ accordingly. (At least, I shouldn’t be prevented from doing so if we’re going to take equality, identity, and inclusion seriously in the Roseneilian sense of those terms.)
For example, a man is permitted to say that he is a woman trapped inside a man, or inside a man’s body (assuming an anthropological dualism of which my Aristotelian training hinders me from making much sense). And the claim that one is partially or fully a ‘self’ belonging to another species is fast mainstreaming, with the minority communities of ‘otherkin’ and ‘therians’—who ‘present’ as the animals to which they claim their inner ‘selves’ belong—rapidly gaining institutional recognition across the West. (Incidentally, perhaps Thomas Nagel’s 1974 essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” should be necessary reading for all undergrads.)
Celebrating the examples above of what we used to call ‘body dysmorphia’ is perfectly acceptable in polite society, apparently. I absolutely must not, however, claim to have a ‘self’ belonging to another racial identity. If I were to claim that my true self is a woman who is just trapped in a man’s body, that’s fine. If I claim that my true self is that of a pigeon which is trapped in a man’s body, that too is fine. (Incidentally, even on strictly dualistic, Cartesian grounds, it’s highly debatable whether a pigeon can be said to enjoy anything even close to what we denote with the term ‘selfhood,’ but let’s not allow that to trouble us.) Were I to claim, however, that I had a ‘black self,’ and were I to try to ‘present’ accordingly, I would be in deep trouble. Trust me, others have tried it.
Obviously, that some claims about the ‘hidden self’ are acceptable and others are not makes little sense beyond entrenched prejudices that favour certain ‘selves’ and seek to oppress other ‘selves,’ the perpetuation of which seems contrary to being on the ‘right side of history.’ So, if all that doesn’t seem to make much sense to you, I have good news: none of it does make any sense. And more good news: you’re not bound to accept the notion of ‘hidden selves’ at all.
In fact, the entire metaphysics and anthropology of the ‘hidden self’ is highly dubious. As a trained philosopher, I object to being required, on the Roseneilian and sadly dominant view of what a university is, to affirm—tacitly or otherwise—either the Manichean dualism of the ‘secret, cloistered self’ or a materialist reductionism that locates the ‘self’ in neurochemicals and prefrontal nerve patterns. For in case you haven’t noticed, transgender claims require one or the other anthropological model for the ‘self.’
But, as it happens, I’m convinced that I am neither a ghost imprisoned in a meat suit nor brain juice. Though I think none are needed, I have strong philosophical reasons for thinking otherwise. Consequently, I also have strong reasons for thinking that the whole transgender movement is foolish and unhinged at best, and extremely dangerous at worst. That a prerequisite for employment at a university appears to be that an applicant has signed up to one or the other of these highly dubious, if not downright superstitious, anthropological models is very alarming.
As the recent investigation into the treatment of Stock indicates, however, things might be changing. The Overton Window on this topic appears indeed to be shifting, and the managerial West may soon catch up. Hitherto, many views that might have been expressed by decent, hardworking people in your local pub could not be uttered in most respectable institutions, not just universities. But such censorship may be diminishing. Surely now that there’s a considerable part of the population who have paid to have their penises chopped off, everything should be up for grabs.
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