This summer’s protests have pushed university free speech policies to their breaking point. Scenes of police being deployed at scale on college campuses across the US have sparked fears of overreach. At the same time, universities need to balance students’ fundamental right to protest with their ability to fulfil their function as centres for learning and research. However, Oxford’s new Code of Practice on Freedom of Speech, which supersedes the Code of Practice on Meetings and Events, indicates a concerning willingness to curtail protest rights. The changes lengthen the notice period required for events from seven to 20 days and adds that events may be denied permission if speakers express ‘highly controversial’ views, language not featured in the previous code. Whilst the University has said that the change in language is only for clarification and that policies ‘remain unchanged and will be enforced’, freedom of speech protects the right to offend except in cases of genuine harm, and it is not clear that the new changes recognise this. Oxford Action for Palestine (OA4P) has criticised the University, arguing that it imperils the right to protest. Violent protest is unacceptable, but there’s a lot of room between dangerous protests and restrictions on speech, let alone gatherings. Protests simply are ‘highly controversial’; that is in many ways their raison d’etre.
In May, the University Council suggested amendments to Statue XI, which governs University disciplinary procedures, including the banning of a student from any property of the University for ‘up to twenty-one days’ on ‘reasonable grounds’ the person is ‘likely’ to ‘cause damage to property, or inconvenience or harm to other users’. Other vaguely-worded amendments increased the scope for restrictions and penalising measures. The University executive attempted to package the amendments together with necessary reforms on sexual misconduct, a dishonest step which was rejected by the wider congregation. After dissent, it withdrew the proposal.
The new rules, although better than the previous suggestions, demonstrate that, far from retreating, the University executive is set on clamping down. Beyond the content of the changes, what is frustrating is the lack of clear communication and transparency. By firstly trying to ram through changes by linking them to sexual misconduct policy and now taking an executive decision which circumvents the congregation, the Council is evading democratic assessment of the policies, which are profoundly important for all students. Open discussion and consultation may reveal the need for policy changes, but backdoor alterations to vitally important rules are unacceptable.
