New Director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom could bode well
Your web editor writes:
The government has appointed Arif Ahmed, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, as the Office for Students’ first Director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom.
Prof Ahmed, who has been Professor of Philosophy since 2022 and a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College since 2015, will take up his role later in the summer.
He comes to the job amid fulsome praise.
Dr Anthony Freeling, Acting Vice-Chancellor, University of Cambridge, said: “I congratulate Professor Ahmed on his appointment. Free speech, and fostering an environment of debate and discussion, are central to the role of all universities. We look forward to working with him.”
Susan Lapworth, chief executive of the OfS, said: “Freedom of speech and academic freedom are essential underpinning principles of higher education in England. Arif’s appointment will ensure they continue to be robustly defended across the sector. Arif will bring an important academic perspective to the OfS’s work in this area and I am looking forward to working with him as we implement the new legislation.”
How come everyone isn’t happy?
To understand that you have to turn to Lee Harpin writing in Jewish News. Ahmed, it appears had previously been an outspoken critic of the IHRA definition, writing in February 2021, that it “obstructs perfectly legitimate defence of Palestinian rights.”
John Mann, the government’s antisemitism “Tsar” is reportedly hopping mad and is “demanding” a meeting with Prof Ahmed “to access whether he is a risk to IHRA”! He told Jewish News that Ahmed’s “previous idea that IHRA restricts free speech was ill informed and reached without any empirical research nor any talking to Jewish students.”
“In particular he has no answer to the intimidation of silence, where students choose not to say what they think because of the hostility that will occur.”
Funny that. The intimidation of silence is what Palestinian voices suffer, with the IHRA definition used to deny them their own language to describe the Nakba – the catastrophe – inflicted on them in 1948 and still ongoing, and their right to name the racist discrimination they suffer. I can’t recall Tsar Mann being outspoken about that…
Ahmed is cited as condemning former education secretary Gavin Williamson’s attempts to make all universities sign up to the definition, saying that it “chills free speech on a matter of the first importance,” and adding: “I hope the Secretary of State reconsiders the need for it; but these new free speech duties ought to rule it out in any case.”
He is on record as a fierce defender of free speech, The Times reporting that “He believes that nothing matters more than academic freedom. At the end of 2020 Ahmed led a rebellion against Stephen Toope, then the Cambridge vice-chancellor, who had introduced a free speech policy that required staff and students to treat others and their views with respect. Ahmed drafted an amendment requiring students and staff to tolerate, rather than respect, opposing views. It was passed with a majority of more than 75 per cent.”
After his appointment Ahmed tried to acknowledge the importance of the IHRA definition, claiming it “is an important tool for understanding how antisemitism manifests itself in the 21st century” but was equally adamant that it “must not restrict legitimate political speech and protest”.
What I’d give to be a fly on the wall when Tsar Mann meets Arif Ahmed! I suspect Mann’s bullying bluster will not get him very far on this occasion.
“Communal figures” – unnamed and unlocated – apparently told Harpin were “shocked and surprised”. Now there’s a surprise!
Let’s hope the Zionist lobby is on his radar….top of the league table for closing down debate…..
‘After his appointment Ahmed tried to acknowledge the importance of the IHRA definition…….’ May I ask why? The only reason for its existence was to prevent criticism of Israel and provide MSM with ‘a big stick’ with which to attack Jeremy Corbyn. In what way does it expand an understanding of how anti-Semitism manifests itself in the C21, just by making criticism of Israel a classic example, along with numerous other cliches now referred to as tropes or protected characteristics. The IHRA definition only muddied the water with the one simple definition being ignored?
Doubtless Prof Ahmed’s social media history is currently being trawled though for anything that can be twisted to accuse him of antisemitism. Perhaps he ‘liked’ a ken Loach film, or has attended a Roger Waters concert?
In so far as I can determine, it was John Mann who concocted and initiated the falsehood that Ken Livingstone said that Hitler was a Zionist. What is absolutely certain is that Mann was the first person to claim and accuse Ken publicly of having said it, and did so on the Daily Politics programme, which both Ken and he appeared on shortly after he verbally attacked Ken as he arrived at the studios.
I have no doubt whatsoever that John Mann (and other saboteurs) listened to Ken’s interview on the Vanessa Feltz programme that morning so as to then plan how he would verbally attack Ken (in front of TV news camera crews) when he arrived at the studios that lunchtime to appear on the Daily Politics. And of course, as we soon learnt, Mann and his fellow conspirators completely twisted Ken’s alluding to The Haavara Agreement into something toxic and antisemitic.
And my point is this, that it’s quite likely that John Mann was one of a tiny number of people in the UK who were familiar with the agreement (prior to that day), but if he WASN’T, a quick search on the internet for “hitler supported zionism” would have brought up results for that (it took me two minutes to do a search and and read the first couple of paragraphs of the wikipedia entry that came up at the top of the list of results).
Thank you JVL for this latest news. Hopefully it marks the beginning of a more transparent intellectual appraisal of the implications of the IHRA definition; and a more united front by academics willing to resist its imposition by unscrupulous self serving financially motivated VCs.
There is one element people tend to forget here. Previously HE was NOT run on a market model. There was tacit and campaign assumption that Universities belonged to their students and workers. Therefore it was up to them who they invited as guest speakers.
Older readers will recal the Oxford Union inviting Malcolm X over for debate.
These days, universities are managerialist fiefdoms, so there is less of an organic relationship between the student/workers bodies and who gets invited to appear.
No matter how committed to freedom of speech, I reckon Ahmed is going to come up against unparalleled pressures from the IHRA-support-mob. Maybe JVL – or the JVL education leads – should also ask for a meeting with him, just to say thank you for his past freedom of speech commitment. And also to make sure he is fully au fait with the Jerusalem Declaration.
Thankfully we may see serious, unfettered debates on Zionism, it’s causes and effects which can only be good in a establishment that furthers education. Nothing like good, healthy debate to educate our young people who are able to make up their own minds the rights and wrongs, which is what academia is about after all.
There appears to be much wishful thinking in some of the above. Ahmed has not given any indication that he is a consistent Millsian free speech advocate, with all its intellectual difficulties, and in the interviews I have seen he appears to play to the gallery of his mainly socially conservative supporters. Recently he wrote in The Times:
“The public sector equality duty means institutions must “have due regard” to the need to achieve certain equality aims. They must recognise the desirability of achieving equality aims, but in the context of the importance of free speech and academic freedom. Similarly, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition is an important tool for understanding how anti-Semitism manifests itself in the 21st century. Adopting it sends a strong signal to students and staff facing anti-Semitism. But it must not restrict legitimate speech and protest. I will act impartially.”
As Mike MacNair points out in a carefully analysed argument, this is not the language of a philosopher, rather
“…it is the language of a legally-advised manager who sees in everything a balancing exercise. It expresses the views of a government whose legislation has left intact section 26 of the Equality Act 2010 – the usual legal basis of ‘cancel culture’. ”
Indeed Ahmed the philosopher must know perfectly well that the IHRA definition is a piece of intellectual gobbledegook which, in former appeal court judge Stephen Sedley’s scathing indictment does not satisfy the first criterion of being a definition. But Ahmed the political ‘tsar’ at the service of the government’s agenda, but who bizarrely claims to be ‘impartial’, has different criteria. Will he defend the freedom of speech e.g. of those who contend that political Zionism has always been a settler colonialist creed of which apartheid Israel is the logical outcome? If he does he won’t last long in his new post.
MacNair’s article can be found at
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1446/knavery-and-folly/
[Revelation: I am not and have never been a member of the CPGB]