Protecting free speech and academic freedom in universities

This article interrogates restrictions on speaking events in universities created both by recent student-led efforts at ‘no-platforming’ and by Part 5 of the Counter-terrorism and Security Act 2015 which placed aspects of the government’s existing Prevent strategy on a statutory basis for the first time. The statutory Prevent duty as it applies in universities includes, under the accompanying Guidance, curbing or monitoring such events on the basis that they could have an impact in drawing persons into terrorism. This article will place the combined impact of Part 5 and student-led curbs on campus speech in context by juxtaposing a range of pre-existing restrictions with the various free speech duties of universities. Focusing on speaking events, it sets out to evaluate the results of this chequered situation in terms of the current state of free speech and academic freedom in universities. It finds potential violations of established free speech norms due to the impact of pre-emptive strikes against some campus-linked speech articulating non-mainstream viewpoints. But it also argues that not all such speech has a strong foundation within such norms.