Gavin Williamson in the Telegraph today suggests that the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill will outlaw anonymous harassment reporting, will remove security from controversial events, and abolish codes of conduct because they contain "threats" of punishment. 
Anyway write about some of this back in Feb wonkhe.com/blogs/the-sect…
Today on the site I'm looking at how the whole panic is constricted through dodgy surveys wonkhe.com/blogs/the-chil…
You can find all our coverage here wonkhe.com/tag/higher-edu…
Labour going in hard on the idea the bill is giving cover to antisemites etc. We looked at the government's attempt to have its cake and eat it on extremists here. wonkhe.com/blogs/its-1986…
Today on @HEPI_news @deanjmachin looks at academic freedom and argues that there must be "no academic freedom defence for a physicist’s musings on race relations or a logician’s on Brexit."
We're again in straw man territory here. Dean argues "One reason Michael Gove’s comment that the country has had ‘enough of experts‘ resonated is that some academics have not taken sufficient care to ensure their publicly-articulated views remain within their field of expertise."
When a geographer or a physicist or an epidemiologist says that aspects of their field have been rooted in or reproduce or exacerbate racism, others are keen that they "stay in their lane" and "stick to their field, not politics"
That's why the idea of a strict discipline based defence for academic freedom is the opposite of academic freedom and would have a major chilling effect on freedom of speech.
In other words, the reason that Gove said that the country has had ‘enough of experts‘ wasn't that academics had not taken sufficient care to ensure their public views remained within their field of expertise. It was because they were pointing out uncomfortable truths.
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