The screaming spires

Oxford University is facing serious questions over its handling of repeated disruption of public talks by Dr Michael Foran, an associate professor of law and tutorial fellow at Keble College, after trans activists interrupted two events linked to his recent work on sex, gender identity and the legal tensions that have emerged between them. 

Foran, an expert in equality law whose scholarship was cited in the Supreme Court’s landmark judgment in For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers, had been due to deliver four lectures on themes from his recently published book, Sex, Gender Identity and the Law.

Footage circulating online shows Foran being interrupted at two separate events

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The lectures took place in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling that, for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010, the terms “woman” and “sex” refer to biological sex, with significant implications for the operation of single-sex spaces, services and sporting categories. That ruling, by the highest court in the land, has enraged trans activists, with some campaigners claiming it amounts to the wholesale exclusion of trans people from public life, and one Scottish Green MSP denouncing it as rooted in “bigotry, prejudice and hatred”.

Footage circulating online shows Foran being interrupted at two separate events. At the first, activists stood in front of his lectern and portentously informed the audience that he was a “bigot” who “masks his transphobia behind a thin veneer of academia”. 

One of the protesters then declared: “If you are here in a critical capacity to challenge his ideas … that is not the same as refusing to platform him. He will not be convinced by your arguments. Please join me in walking out and refusing to platform this bigot.”

At the next lecture, the same two protesters once again interrupted proceedings to address the audience. Judging from the footage, their intervention might most politely be described as having received a “mixed” reception. After they eventually left and attendees settled back for the lecture they had actually come to hear, two further protesters continued the disruption from inside the lecture theatre.

Foran had already warned the Proctors — senior University officers responsible for upholding the University’s statutes and regulations, and enforcing its rules on freedom of speech and protest — that he would not continue the series if disruption recurred. Despite reportedly being informed that no further protest would be permitted, shortly before the second lecture he was told that a larger on-site protest was expected and that organisers would be prepared to allow a planned “die-in” — a potentially disruptive protest tactic involving participants occupying a space while lying on the ground.

That second event proved to be the last. Not unreasonably, Foran decided to cancel the remaining talks, saying the “escalating disruptive protests” had “undermined the academic nature of this series”. He later added: “In attempting to shame students into de-platforming these lecturers, they  manifest the antithesis of what a university stands for.” 

It is tempting to docket this as a story of student misconduct: the usual suspects, with all the usual ill-informed grievances, displaying an infantile impulse to silence those with whom they disagree. But then, protesters plainly have certain lawful rights to object to Foran’s views, even if we might look askance at the pooterish way they exercise them.

The subtler, and ultimately more serious, locus of concern is whether Oxford, as an institution, took adequate steps to distinguish between protected protest, which may require facilitation, and conduct foreseeably likely to interfere with the talks themselves, which does not.

Under the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 (HEFSA), universities are required not only to take reasonably practicable steps to secure lawful speech and academic freedom, but also to maintain a code of practice governing matters relating to freedom of speech. Among other things, that code must set out procedures governing events, meetings and other activities.

One curiosity of Oxford’s code, however, is the degree of discretion it appears to place in the hands of the Proctors. Despite stating that no member of the University may “disrupt or obstruct any of the teaching or study or research… of its members, or its officers, employees and agents, including by obstructing the lawful exercise of freedom of speech by any of those persons”, it then adds that it “shall not be a disciplinary breach to engage in protests permitted by the Proctors”.

Given the remarkably limited guidance accompanying this exception, a great deal appears to turn on the judgment of the Proctors themselves.

What, then, did Oxford’s Proctors allow — and perhaps more pertinently, what should they have allowed?

Fortunately, the Office for Students already provides a framework for answering that latter question. In Regulatory Advice 24 (RA24), the regulator sets out how universities should comply with their free speech duties under HEFSA. While recognising that peaceful protest is itself a legitimate exercise of freedom of speech, the guidance also makes clear that “protest must not shut down debate”, and that it is unlikely to be reasonably practicable for a university to permit, without restriction, protest that disrupts speaker events through the “heckler’s veto”.

The fact that during the first lecture Foran was called a “bigot” and a “transphobe” may well constitute lawful, albeit unpleasant speech. But the protester’s subsequent request for audience members to join him in walking out, delivered from the front of the lecture hall, was not so much a criticism of Foran’s ideas as an attempt to persuade attendees to withdraw their participation from the event itself.

Foran’s subsequent warning to the Proctors that he would not continue the series if the same thing happened again should at least have alerted them to the possibility that future protests might not be confined to the expression of disagreement, but could seek to interfere with the talks themselves.

In such circumstances, RA24 expects universities to have processes for the timely assessment of risks to controversial events, with the purpose of putting in place steps that allow those events to go ahead, securing not just the right to protest, but the rights of students and others to hear an academic speak.

So were protests up to and including a “die-in” authorised by the Proctors, and if so on what terms? If they authorised protest outside the venue, subject to conditions preventing obstruction or interruption, Oxford surely needs to explain what steps it took to ensure those conditions were respected, given that disruption nevertheless occurred. But if they took — or were contemplating taking — the unusual decision to authorise protest inside the venue during the lecture, including a proposed “die-in”, by activists who had already urged attendees not to platform the speaker, that would be much harder to justify, since the risk of obstruction, intimidation of attendees, delay and interference with the audience’s ability to hear the speaker was clear and foreseeable.

RA24 anticipates precisely these sorts of risks through a series of illustrative examples of the situations universities may encounter. Example 12 expressly states that a requirement that protesters should not be permitted to intrude into classrooms or attempt to shut down debate is “viewpoint-neutral” — in other words, a restriction on disruptive conduct rather than on the views being expressed. Example 16, meanwhile, envisages protest being permitted “within a specified zone away from the entrance, but still within hearing distance of the lecture hall”, while security is provided and attendees are warned that attempts to disrupt the event may lead to investigation under the university’s code of conduct.

Although the Proctors exercise their own independent responsibilities under Oxford’s rules, questions about how those powers are exercised are ultimately matters that ought also to concern the institution’s senior leadership. 

Lord Hague, in particular, was elected Chancellor of Oxford in November 2024 on a platform that included a commitment to free speech and academic freedom. Last year, he warned prospective students that they should expect to be confronted by uncomfortable ideas and that “they will hear things that will upset them, that will offend them”, declaring that there would be “no safe spaces” during his tenure.

At the Committee for Academic Freedom, we hope he will use his influence to bring clarity to what occurred in this case and to ensure that those responsible for implementing Oxford’s freedom of speech duties understand both what HEFSA requires and what it does not.

Protecting lawful protest is indeed part of what it means to sustain a culture of free inquiry, but so too is ensuring that protest does not become a soft mechanism for preventing academic events from taking place.