The chancellor of the University of Oxford is a stately but largely ceremonial figurehead. In the past 90 years, only four men have occupied the role: Lord Halifax, Harold Macmillan, Roy Jenkins and Chris Patten. Lord Patten of Barnes is about to retire after 21 years, and the election of a successor later this month has attracted the media spotlight, not least on the contentious issue of free speech in universities.

The chancellor of Oxford lacks executive power but is an important representative of our oldest and most famous university. As wise — or, at least, hopefully wise — counsel to the vice-chancellor, and visitor of five colleges, he or she can set a tone within the city of dreaming spires, so it is right that the candidates should be scrutinised keenly. One of them, Baroness Royall of Blaisdon, a cabinet minister under Gordon Brown and now principal of Somerville College, has been criticised because of her attempt in 2021 to make all her students take unconscious bias training and achieve 100 per cent. She eventually backed down from requiring it but still believes strongly in its benefits.

Certainly, unconscious bias exists and can affect our behaviour. This is no great revelation: the Royal Society defined unconscious bias as “when we make judgments or decisions on the basis of our prior experience, our own personal deep-seated thought patterns, assumptions or interpretations, and we are not aware that we are doing it”. It is obvious and straightforward that this is true.

Unconscious bias training is a different matter. It rests on two assumptions, neither of which I think is reasonable or sustainable. The first is that this bias not only exists but is overwhelming and malign. Our nature, our instinct, is a beast lurking within us and will overpower any kind of critical thought when making decisions, especially those which involve the hallowed subjects of identity and difference.

The second assumption is contradictory: this bias is supremely powerful, but it is also open to remedy, and surprisingly easy remedy at that. When the Free Speech Union protested at Royall’s initial plans in 2021, one Somerville undergraduate, Alexander Brindle, dismissed the challenge.

The theory of unconscious bias training is in fact strongly contested

“While [Free Speech Union founder] Toby Young might struggle to complete a repeatable, five-question multiple-choice quiz, it’s not the sort of thing that would trouble a Somerville student,” Brindle said. (He is now a British Army officer.)

Here is something else which ought not to trouble a Somerville student, Lieutenant Brindle: if unconscious bias is so pervasive and corrosive, is it likely to be overcome in a “repeatable, five-question multiple-choice quiz”?

The theory of unconscious bias training is in fact strongly contested. In 2018, the Equality and Human Rights Commission published an assessment of its effectiveness which expressed extreme scepticism. It judged that such training was “unlikely to eliminate” unconscious bias, and that evidence of its ability to change behaviour was “limited”. More recently, Dr Halima Begum, then chief executive of the Runnymede Trust, said that “techniques like unconscious bias training … do nothing to make the workplace fundamentally fairer”.

Yet there is something more fundamental at work. One conclusion of the EHRC’s research was extremely troubling: “there is potential for back-firing effects when UBT participants are exposed to information that suggests stereotypes and biases are unchangeable”.

In other words, there is no room to question these stereotypes or to argue against their pervasive power. Free speech cannot be exercised to suggest that a decision might be free of taint — that a woman, a gay person or someone from an ethnic minority might not have been subject to sexism, homophobia or racism in any given situation. The bias is inevitable and relentless.

This goes to the heart of the implicit potency of “unconscious bias”. Progressive theology regards it, in effect, as our original sin. We are born with bias, we continue to accrete bias, and every one of us inevitably acts under the malign influence of this bias (without, of course, knowing it — because it is unconscious). The only path to salvation is through submitting to training — a kind of combination of confession and absolution in one easy, multiple-choice test, which is administered by the priesthood of progressivism, practitioners of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI).

 

It is a depressing view of human nature, and an empty mechanism of redemption

I started life as an historian of early modern religion. This Weltanschauung reeks powerfully of the worst of the mediaeval Catholicism that drove Martin Luther to his final breach. Your nature is corrupt, it teaches, and it has always been so. But the progressive priesthood can rescue you: undergo this process, make this obeisance, and through it alone you will be saved.

It is a depressing view of human nature, and an empty mechanism of redemption which first of all demands full and humble acknowledgement of the sin. If Baroness Royall really believes that this kind of training “is consistent with a commitment to free speech and it also helps to develop a free, plural, tolerant society”, then Congregation, which comprises the electors of the University of Oxford, should think very carefully about her candidacy. She is preaching a grim and overbearing doctrine which is not “consistent with free speech”, but speaks the language of St Paul: “not he that commendeth himself is approved, but whom the Lord commendeth”. In this case, for “Lord”, read “Baroness”.