Universities must be ready to impose “very severe sanctions” on international students caught reporting classroom conversations to authorities in their homeland, England’s campus free speech tsar has warned.
Speaking to?51吃瓜, the Office for Students’ (OfS) director for free speech and academic freedom Arif Ahmed said he was increasingly concerned by the “coercion or harassment” of foreign students over opinions voiced in seminars which have been passed on by classmates to government officials.
It follows reports that the families of Chinese students at UK universities have been contacted by authorities over critical comments?secretly recorded by other students. A study??by the UK-China Transparency thinktank in August also stated that UK academics had been warned by Chinese government officials not to discuss certain subjects in their class – a claim denied by the UK’s Chinese embassy.
While declining to name any of the countries involved, Ahmed said “we have seen reports of exactly that kind of behaviour”.
He added that the OfS was “deeply concerned” by these accounts given the chilling effect that such reporting would have on free speech within the classroom.
“We would expect universities to take very strong steps to address this,” explained Ahmed, who urged institutions to “take proactive steps to find out if it’s happening if they suspect that it may be, and then address it promptly and decisively if they do find it”.
“That would mean, for instance, very severe sanctions on students who are found doing such things,” he continued.
Scholarship agreements?that require students to??could also breach new OfS legislation which came into force in August, said Ahmed, who was a University of Cambridge philosophy professor prior to?joining the OfS in June 2023.
“If you’ve got a scholarship agreement which essentially says ‘scholars from Country X have to sign an agreement saying they’ll do this’ then they will follow the advice. They will report back to the embassy, and report on other students,” said Ahmed, adding: “Those scholarship agreements need to be stopped.”
Foreign students asked to do this might, however, be considered “victims” as well as perpetrators, he continued.
“They’re the victims just as much as the ones who are themselves being coerced, spied upon, harassed – this is something we would expect all universities to monitor,” he said.
Despite what he called the “deep financial entanglement” that UK universities have with certain countries, Ahmed said “universities absolutely must address threats from states trying to interfere with freedom of speech and academic freedom, whether that’s in the form of coercion or harassment of academics…or students”.
In some cases, visiting researchers and lecturers might need to “pass an ideological test to get here in the first place”, he explained.
“In this case you’ve already got the breach of academic freedom before they even get here.”
His comments followed a keynote speech at the?’s inaugural annual conference, held in London on 15 October, in which Ahmed urged academics to speak out about academic freedom and report suspected breaches of the new free speech law.
“Now is the time to make your voices heard clearly,” he said, stating university leaders are more likely to push for greater free speech if “academic freedom is the path of least resistance”.
Asked by?THE?how younger academics in more precarious roles might challenge their institutions, Ahmed acknowledged this duty “may fall more heavily on academics who are established and who have secure positions, and who are able to speak out”.
“Through a position of more knowledge and more experience, knowing who to speak to and knowing what to speak about, they’re able to [speak out] – they have the security which gives them the confidence to do it,” he said, adding it is “important also that the many internal defenders of academic freedom are vocal about it within institutions”.
“Ultimately it is also in a university’s own interests to encourage an environment where people feel free to question. That’s how they’ll attract the best academics, how they’ll generate the best research and teaching by creating an atmosphere where people feel free to question all kinds of things,” Ahmed continued.
“Having this research and teaching also makes students stronger – more intelligent, more resilient – so there’s plenty of internal incentives for universities to pursue academic freedom.”
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