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1 Oct, 4 tweets, 1 min read
A charity which publicly named the Batley Grammar School teacher - putting him at serious risk - has been formally rebuked by the Charity Commission for “inflaming tensions” and endangering his safety, in response to our complaint to the Commission. google.co.uk/amp/s/www.tele…
The Purpose of Life charity named the teacher in an open letter calling for him to be “permanently removed” after he included a cartoon of Mohammed in an RE class. The teacher and his family were forced into hiding, and still haven’t returned.
In response to our complaint the Commission has found that the charity committed a breach of trust, misconduct and/or mismanagement. The charity has also been warned for partisan political activity and told it may face further action.
What happened in Batley is an extraordinary indictment of the state of free speech in Britain. It is especially shocking that a registered charity should have abused its position to put the life of a teacher in serious danger. We welcome this action by the Charity Commission.

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More from @SpeechUnion

The Free Speech Union Profile picture
14 Dec 20
The Free Speech Union is disappointed to learn that Eton’s governing body has decided to uphold the decision to sack our member Will Knowland. No teacher should lose his or her job for challenging ideological orthodoxy, least of all a teacher at Eton. 1/11
This is a betrayal of the school’s 580-year history of encouraging its pupils to think critically and independently about difficult questions. 2/11
We will be referring Eton’s trustees to the Charity Commission and the Attorney General for failing to discharge their duty to protect Eton’s reputation and to ensure it is pursuing its charitable object, which is to advance education for the benefit of its students. 3/11
Read 11 tweets
The Free Speech Union Profile picture
13 Oct 20
1/10 Toby Young, the General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, has made the following statement about the police's investigation of Dr David Starkey. The FSU is supporting Dr Starkey, who is a member, and has found him a criminal solicitor.
2/10 "The suggestion that Dr David Starkey may be guilty of stirring up racial hatred is absurd. The only person he stirred up hatred against is himself and he has paid a heavy price. He has also unreservedly apologised for his remarks.
3/10 As Lord Justice Sedley said when upholding the right of free speech in Redmond-Bate v Director of Public Prosecutions (1999): 'Free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the...
Read 10 tweets
The Free Speech Union Profile picture
22 Jun 20
1/ Four authors have resigned from JK Rowling's literary agency, saying, “Freedom of speech can only be upheld if the structural inequalities that hinder equal opportunities for underrepresented groups are challenged and changed.” Two problems with this principle. First, it's a
2/ rationale for trying to silence those who don't share your political ideology. Second, upholding free speech is a necessary condition for increasing opportunities for underrepresented groups. Without the protection of the First Amendment, the leaders of the American civil
3/ rights movement would not have been able to organise, march and protest. Trans activists, like all those fighting for the rights of underrepresented groups, should embrace free speech, not attack it.
Read 4 tweets
The Free Speech Union Profile picture
6 Jun 20
1/ An alarming number of people are losing their jobs at the moment – or being suspended from them, pending investigations – because they've criticised some aspect of the Black Lives Matter movement.
2/ Grant Napear was fired by his radio station and resigned as the Sacramento Kings TV play-by-play announcer last week after he was mobbed for tweeting "All Lives Matter" nypost.com/2020/06/02/nba…
3/ Gordon Klein, a professor at UCLA, has been placed on leave after he refused to cancel a final exam following George Floyd's death washingtonexaminer.com/news/ucla-stud…
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The Free Speech Union Profile picture
6 Mar 20
Last month, @GavinWilliamson gave UK universities a "final warning" – if they didn't take action to uphold free speech the govt would.

Tonight, Amber Rudd's invitation to speak at the UNWomen's Oxford Society was withdrawn at the behest of student activists – a clear breach of
@UniofOxford's own policy on free speech, as drafted by Timothy Garton Ash and Ken Macdonald, as well as the @EHRC's guidance on free speech at universities published last year, and could be a breach of Oxford's legal duty to uphold free speech under s43 of the Education (No 2)
Act 1986.

What's the point of putting these policies in place if universities aren't going to observe them?

This is the second major 'no-platforming' incident at Oxford in five days. The Free Speech Union lodged a formal complaint with the relevant authorities about the first
Read 4 tweets
The Free Speech Union Profile picture
23 Dec 19
Professor Lee Jussim (@PsychRabble), who has agreed to be on the Advisory Council of the Free Speech Union, has written a Medium post drawing attention to an ongoing academic mobbing:

medium.com/@leej12255/hel…
In this case, a group of academics who subscribe to trans orthodoxy have started a petition calling for the retraction of a peer-reviewed paper from an academic journal because it challenges that orthodoxy. The petition already has almost 1,000 signatures.

Please read Lee's
post and, if possible, write to the editors of the journal in question expressing your support for their decision to publish the paper – and your horror at the possibility it might be retracted for ideological reasons.

Once the FSU is up and running in the New Year we'll be
Read 4 tweets

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