UKC

An interesting documentary by Trevor Phillips last night on channel 4, viewable here :
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/has-political-correctness-gone-mad/on-de...

His basic question was whether the rise of "political correctness" has stimulated the rise of the right.

A couple of fairly chilling moments that struck me. At about 16.40 a guy who had done time for threatening rape etc on twitter (to the Florence Nightingale pound note woman I think) defending himself on the grounds of free speech, that saying "anything" is OK. And around 31 minutes a group of students deciding that sombreros and pocohontas outfits are offensive and should therefore be banned from campus. Oh, and another student defending the no platforming of Germaine Greer on the basis of her being a bigot (Trevor Phillips almost fell off his chair at that one).

It's very easy to dismiss the latter types as childish students but Phillips takes them much more seriously, and I agree with him. It's very easy to see that when idiot type A meets idiot type B we get a cultural stand off of the type that has emerged in the US.

Worth a watch.

In reply to Postmanpat:

This was an interesting take on it

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/30/political-correctness-how-t...

It's available as a podcast

In reply to Postmanpat:

To me it always looks like a massively overblown bogeyman that's used by people who want to say racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic stuff and be applauded for taking a stand against political correctness. I mean, we're talking about students protesting outside each others' debates, not armed police waiting to swoop if you call someone a "big girl's blouse".

In reply to Postmanpat:

And regarding Germaine Greer - you can discuss where to draw the line with no-platforming (or, to put it another way, with "asking an organization in no uncertain terms whether they really want to associate themselves with a given individual"), but it doesn't seem beyond the realms of sanity to consider someone bigoted if they say things like “Just because you lop off your dick and then wear a dress doesn't make you a ******* woman. I’ve asked my doctor to give me long ears and liver spots and I’m going to wear a brown coat but that won’t turn me into a ******* cocker spaniel."

In reply to Postmanpat:

No platforming is a political stance that if you believe in free speech you have to accept. It's a tiny minority view in most cases blown out of proportion by the right for political gain as Chris' link indicates. The Germaine Greer situation was an unusal case but she seemed to me to be deliberately provocative, as her views countered much medical and scientific evidence on transsexuals not just PC attitudes in this area. I'm falling off my chair that a man like Trever Philips can't recognise this is a rather bigoted attitude, irrespective of Germaine's history of fighting bigotry.

In reply to Offwidth:


Sorry... what?

In reply to Offwidth:
Greer's opinion is strong and provocative but not bigoted.

Bigot "a prejudiced or closed-minded person, especially one who is intolerant or hostile towards different social groups (e.g. racial or religious groups), and especially one whose own beliefs are perceived as unreasonable or excessively narrow-minded"

How does her view fulfill any of those criteria?

In reply to Chris the Tall:

Did you watch Trevor's show?

In reply to Ramblin dave:

Did you watch Trevor's show?

In reply to Dave Garnett:
Part of your free speech is to deny a platform.

You are free to can express an opinion by declining to invite David Irving to speak in your living room.

You're not saying he can't speak at all, just not in your living room (if you wish).

In reply to Postmanpat:

She is intolerant (and possibly hostile to, given the phrasing she used) towards transsexuals. Is your argument that transsexuals aren't a social group?

If not, how can you argue that statement isn't (of itself) bigoted?

In reply to elsewhere:

So if, as a committee member of a university debating society, you express an opinion that Germaine Greer should be prevented from speaking at one of your debates, you are supporting free speech?

In reply to andyfallsoff:


She isn't "intolerant" of them. She just doesn't think they are women. I have no doubt she would be happy to let them speak at her university to present their view.

In reply to andyfallsoff:


Obviously, if she is no-platformed, you can't argue anything.

In reply to Postmanpat:

No, and not going to get chance for a few weeks, so probably won't get round to it.
I expect the podcast/article takes a differant angle, but nonetheless you might find it interesting
Plus it's much easier to listen to podcasts when doing other things - in my case cycling

The free speech issue is an interesting one - very often those who are claiming it are actually quite keen to silence others, often through intimidation, either direct or provoked

In reply to Dave Garnett:


It's essentially irrelevant to free speech. No-one's stopping her from publishing her opinions on the internet, printing them up in a pamphlet and handing them out in the street or standing on a soapbox and shouting them to anyone who'll listen.

A student debate is a privileged platform. Inviting someone to speak at a student debate is conferring a privilege on them. Deciding not to invite them, for whatever reason, isn't infringing any of their rights - the right to free speech doesn't include the right to be invited to speak everywhere you want to.

You could argue that it's diminishing their effectiveness as a forum for open debate, but that's a far less fundamental thing, and also less clear cut - arguably if you keep inviting speakers who are (seen as being) aggressively transphobic then you're going to end up putting off trans people from turning up and speaking, which also diminishes your effectiveness as a forum for open debate.

In reply to Postmanpat:

I think the gradual erosion of traditional positions of privilege has sparked an inevitable reaction from some of those who would have benefited most if things had stayed the same. I think language is a measurable place to choose to fight that battle.

Neither 'side' is particularly covering itself in glory currently, with those who are making proactively finding offence wherever possible at one end, with those who, if they're honest, are just upset they can't call someone a "wog" any more at the other. Having the debate politicised in terms of left and right (or liberal and conservative in the US) certainly doesn't help, just as it doesn't help the climate change debate.

In reply to Chris the Tall:
>

I don't suppose it will change anybody's mind. But Phillips is of course an arch liberal who has adjusted his views and he interviews not just the obvious suspects -old white men etc- but people form a wide variety of backgrounds. So it is far from "the usual suspects" who are objecting to perceived political correctness.

In reply to Postmanpat:

... and thereby being intolerant of the whole point of being transsexual, that such a person may feel they are not of the gender you were born. I understood her views meant denying e.g. use of women's only facilities to M-F transsexuals as well, although I may have just inferred that. I would have thought that is intolerant of the aim of living life as the opposite sex, no?

In reply to andyfallsoff:

She's not intolerant of their situation or in denial of their situation . She just doesn't think that this makes them women. No doubt many millions of people, however sympathetic they may feel to people in this situation, would agree with her view. It's a perfectly rational view. It's not a black and white issue and she, presumably because she feels so strongly about the rights of women, happens to hold her view especially strongly.

In reply to Ramblin dave:


Yes, and if you keep failing to invite (or disinviting) well-known, interesting and well-informed speakers because you disagree with them you are not only devaluing your forum but giving the impression you would be unable to put up another speaker capable of mustering a convincing opposing view.

I agree that being invited to speak at the Oxford Union isn't a fundamental human right, but failing to invite an individual because you already have more speakers than you need is very different from having a policy of boycotting a particular individual because you are afraid of what they might say.

In reply to Postmanpat:

Slightly less inflammotory in her language than Greer, but just as fervent and divisive, is Julie Bindel.
She has asserted that it would be inappropriate to employ a Trans-female as a rape counsellor. Now I would say there is certainly a debate to be had there, it's far from clear cut, but nonetheless the debate has been shut down by those who argue that to even raise that issue amounts to hate speech.

In reply to Dave Garnett:

>
It goes further than this. If the Oxford Union doesn't want to invite certain speakers then that is their prerogative. It is not the prerogative of a third party eg.the students union to tell them who they can and cannot invite. That is clearly an attack on the rights of freedom of speech by a third party, and this is what the Cardiff students union attempted to do to the university.

In reply to Dave Garnett:


I agree, but as I said there's a balance to be struck between encouraging open debate by not restricting your choice speakers and encouraging open debate by not inviting speakers who will make your forum unwelcoming to people from specific groups. I don't think that everyone is getting that balance right, but I do think that it's their prerogative to try to work out where it lies. I also think that even if they're going too far sometimes then that's still a bloody long way from the "tyranny of political correctness" that some people seem to be obsessed with where we're all terrified that we might get hauled off to the salt mines for accidentally saying "coloured people" rather than "people of colour".

In reply to Postmanpat:


Yes. I remember being at the Bristol Students' Union in 1986 when Enoch Powell was invited to speak. There was, of course, a noisy demo which succeeded in making that impossible and he left without taking part. I regret to this day that I didn't hear what he had to say, not because I would necessarily have agreed with any of it, but because he was a brilliant speaker and a huge intellect. I would have had the opportunity to hear what he actually said, in full, and it would have forced me to really think about my opinions and perhaps understand better why he held the views he did.

In reply to Postmanpat:


What authority did they use to tell the university who they could and could not invite?

In reply to Ramblin dave:


A rather feeble petition. But what is happening nowadays is institutions running scared of intimidation and giving in.

In reply to Ramblin dave:


This is the bit that bothers me. Do you mean people who might disagree with you?

It depends on the forum obviously. If you are running a little informal consciousness-raising feminist/ environmental group it would probably not be a good idea to invite Milo Yancopoulis or Peter Hitchens in for a bit of light banter but if you are a grown-up university political debating society then you should certainly not be afraid of taking them on. Of course, it does mean you might actually need to do some homework first, rather than relying on pub level prejudices.

In reply to Postmanpat:


It seems free speech is not a matter of British universities any more
http://www.spiked-online.com/free-speech-university-rankings/results#.WLBLi...

In reply to Postmanpat:

That's the thing, I've come across feminists who don't think male to female trans people should be able to go to women only feminist meets. because of their experiences of living with male privilege, and because there have been one or two well known male to female trans people who were violent against their female partners before they transitioned. To me, this seems unfair in a couple of ways, being that domestic abuse in lesbian relationships happens (lesbians rightly wouldn't be being excluded, because that would be homophobic) and it seems plausible that if anybody needs support of other women to get to grips with living in an unequal society, it could be male to female trans women who've arguably not had their lifetimes to develop coping strategies and the emotional strengths required. Even if one doesn't agree they are women as such, to the outside world they will be, and will have to face whatever inequalities and annoyances which can come with that.

With transitioning from one gender to the other being the hard path that it is (from what I gather), and how we are born not being down to choice, it just seems rather unfair to me.

In reply to Ramblin dave:

It is true that the fight against political correctness is often fought by the right who want to voice their racist, sexist etc. sentiments without being shunned for it.

However, there is truth to the title of the thread. US university campuses are a prime example for this, where strongly leftist student groups aggressively try to censor discordant opinions, trying to declare the entire campus safe spaces (which somehow suggests that the rest of the country isn't safe enough?), invent terms like 'micro-aggression' to censor anything they dislike, demand 'trigger warnings' on classical literature (including Ovid's Metarmorphoses) and shout down any opposition.

E.g. the case at Yale University in 2015 where the Intercultural Affairs Committee sent around an eMail telling students not to wear any “culturally unaware and insensitive” costumes for Halloween, a professor countered this in an eMail and stated students should wear whatever the hell they want, and in return the professor and her husband were bullied into resigning.

Or the case were an Iranian human rights activist was forced to interrupt her speech at Goldsmiths in London because muslim students felt offended by it.

It is a particularly frightening phenomenon considering universities are supposed to be places of free speech where all sorts of ideas should be expressed without censorship, even radical or unpopular ones (short of outright racism and hatred, of course). Students who feel emotional distress when reading a work of classical literature or can't stand differing opinions are probably just not suited for academic study.

In reply to Ramblin dave:

>Inviting someone to speak at a student debate is conferring a privilege on them. Deciding not to invite them, for whatever reason, isn't infringing any of their rights

Might it be more telling if you invited them - - - and no-one turned up?

In reply to pavelk:


Hmmm. I'm not sure that having a few basic rules about behaviour and language or having mandatory training on consent really amounts to political censorship.

In reply to Dave Garnett:

There's a strong argument that a debating society should host controversial or even contemptible people but they're free to express disapproval of somebody by declining to host them. That's their free speech.

In reply to elsewhere:


No. Of course that's their right and it implies a particular point of view, but it doesn't have much to do with free speech. I do get that if it's someone spectacularly loathsome and you are pretty certain what they are going to say because that's what they always say then you could just not have them because they are not only wrong but boring.

In reply to Dave Garnett:

No platform is a valid political view. I don't agree with it but I'd support that freedom to protest as a genuine freedom of speech within the law, ironic sounding though that is. Where the no platform campaigns succeeded it was nearly always down to gutless University management, normally excusing their decision with overegged health and safety excuses. Some elements within the no platform are nasty types with undemocratic tendancies but the likes of the SWP are still legitimate political parties in the UK.

In reply to Postmanpat:
She thinks that transexuals who identify as women are plain wrong in their views. There were many ways of discussing such complex issues than her blunt dick chopping terminology. This displayed clear intolerance to a different social group and as I said flies in the face of current medical and scientific opinion.

The modern world is full of bigots and this would in my view include some of those attacking her in excessive ways as her bigotry clearly infuriated them so much that they also lost their sense of fair argument.

In reply to Offwidth:
>
Greer has always expressed her views trenchantly. It doesn't express intolerance of a different social group. It reflects that she holds strong and provocative views (and expresses them like the foul mouthed aussie that she is) . On the contrary, she also said "I do understand that some people are born intersex and they deserve support in coming to terms with their gender but it’s not the same thing". Expressing views trenchantly is not a satisfactory excuse for suppressing the expression of those views.

If the medical and scientific view is different then why can't the no platformers use the strength of these arguments to confront her?

Incidentally, what is the medical argument for this?

In reply to elsewhere:


Eh?

Now I have come across instances where religious groups have "no platformed" atheist speakers on the grounds that they are biased against religion. It would be interesting if atheist groups did the same. Then no one could discuss religion or atheism.
I do not believe in "no platforming" (ie in the usual case that someone is invited to speak at a university by one group but stymied by another rival group)
Part of free speech is to raise debate not stifle it.
I can understand that some views held by people may be offensive but unless it is incitement to riot or murder etc. then is it far better to debate such views in a public forum where they can be challenged rather than pretend that they don't exist

In reply to elsewhere:


Correct. I wouldn't have a BNP spokesperson to speak at my home. What I am on about is one group denying another group the right to have someone speak. So if someone wanted the BNP to speak at my local village hall and went to the trouble of arranging it. I would not seek to ban it but I would ensure that I invited as many anti-BNP people along as I could. I would protest my disapproval.

In reply to Postmanpat:

We will have to agree to disagree again. In rudely denying gender identity in the face of the science, she sounds to me to be saying l am not transphobic but...

The No Platform folk could face her in debate but thats not how they think. You can't have your freedom of speech cake to defend Germaine and eat it by blocking No Platform views. All bigots and those threatening freedoms get their freedom of speech providing its lawful, not just Germaine.

As for the research, get off your lazy butt and do your own searching.

In reply to pavelk:

Pavel, you might not know this but Spiked Online is spin off project of a group of very odd characters who used to make up The Revolutionary Communist Party (UK). Before Spiked they had a magazine called Living Marxism, which was the main pro-Milosovic voice in the UK on the basis that he was Europe's last true communist being crushed by the Western Imperialist powers. They lost a libel case after saying a number of UK journalists had fabricated the reports of the Serb concentration camps for Bosnians.

Spiked has an amusingly contrarian line at times, to the point of silliness, but I find it very hard to ever get past it's founders' support for the genocidal Serbian nationalist project for such seemingly ridiculous reasons. I wouldn't trust them any further than I could throw 'em.

In reply to Removed UserFuchs:


That was a bunch of "Hizbis" or whatever, who pinched the language of safe spaces and all that, in order to shout down someone they clearly saw as an apostate. If I remember right the only "political correctness gone mad" there was the uni LGBTQ society siding with the Muslim union, rather than with the 'ex-Muslim', but that just seemed like a bad case of not understanding what your 'ally' stands for.

In reply to TobyA:
Freedom of speech and academic freedom is mainly threatened by the neo-liberal tendancies of modern UK University management. They are being run as competing corporations with little tolerance for collaborative efforts and a hatred of academic dissent (despite clear statements in their statutes to the contrary). Most post '92 institutions don't even have a right for elected academic staff representatives on their governing body (except Scotland where law has changed recently that will force this). Performance management is rampant despite all the evidence that such processes are flawed. The REF process that measures research success and provides future funding would have blocked many major past successes of UK research and encourages publishing for the sake of it and works against innovation. TEF the new teaching methodology where funding will follow results looks even less evidenced based and will likely further entrench conservative management approaches, funded by fee increases from students in debt. Academic staff have moved from developing the forefronts of knowledge to become disposable employees. We have hundreds of thousands of classes annually in the sector run by casual staff on zero hour contracts, who don't in theory have to turn up for their session but are alledged to love the flexibility of their work (said to be gladly sacrificing job security and rights like sick pay and annual leave they would have on a standard part time teaching contract). So in summary, the few far left rabble rousers of No Platform have almost no influence in comparison.

In reply to TobyA:

Thank you for information, I didnt know it. Though I have no sympathy for Milosevic and anyone defending him I have no symphaty for any kind of censorship whether state run or forced by a group of loudmouths.
BTW Slobodan - the Milosevic first name means freedom.... what the irony

In reply to pavelk:


Spiked is quite a broad church now, Frank Furedi a well respected social scientist, Mick Hume a very good journalist, Brendan O'Neill a bit random, I wouldn't right them off because of Living Marxism (at the time one of the best leftist mags going) or even due to the RCP. Many off our most respected left wing politicians have done an apprenticeship on the ideological left, including about half of Tony Blair's cabinet who ran the country for over a decade.

In reply to Postmanpat:

I'm puzzled as to how science disproves Greer's view, because if I understand her correctly, she's saying that someone born and brought up male who transitions to become female isn't a woman in the sense that she hasn't had the life experiences and exposure to society as a woman, that a woman born as a woman has had at the same age. One can agree or disagree with her, but it seems to be a valid opinion to hold. I think a lot of that debate was generated by Caitlin Jenner being awarded Woman of the Year.

In reply to Yanis Nayu:
I guess her saying that, brings up the questions of what it means to be a woman (or a man), is it the mental psychological identity, the life experiences, or the biological bits and pieces - does the last one mean that some women who aren't women internally (to do with not having the reproductive organs like some can be) aren't women?

There's possibly a few ways a woman or man might be defined?

Edit: Does what Greer said mean that a woman who transitions to being a man still counts as a woman, due to their life experiences as a woman?

My female fan of Greer's books who is in her 50s (?) doesn't like her point of view on MtF trans people for what its worth...

In reply to Postmanpat:

Mrs Num Num is definitely a bloke

In reply to Postmanpat:

I personally think the term 'Political Correctness Gone Mad' should be banned as it trivialises mental illness.

In reply to winhill:

They may well be respected in your view but they are well off target on their University league tables. They look even worse than the mangled combination of disimilar statistics that form media rankings of Uniiversity quality. The areas they raise are a problem but simply nothing like the main concerns. Academic freedom in the sense of freedom to work hard unhindered without publication on long term projects or allowing difficult ideas to be raised or (especially) open critique of university management in public are all but dead in some universities that are not even red rated. Go and ask academic staff in most universities what happens if try to do these things. It is beyond ironic that such institutions were set up as beacons of truth and yet in some they have become almost the opposite.

The fact that some SUs won't allow vile but legal political parties like the BNP to talk in their buildings is seriously trivial in comparison and in any case usually keeps the local dodgy university management happy as well. The mad people we see ranting on video clips are the left fringe of this slightly repressive NUS idea. In this fringe the extremist left, like the SWP with their revolutionary dogma and political support for terrorist groups, seem to be OK in this strange new world of who is allowed. Maybe it doesn't matter so much now as a good number of the old SWP members I knew have now left and joined labour.

Freedom of speech sadly isn't enshrined in any UK constitution, we have European law on top of UK law. This all has its lists of exceptions most people seem unaware of and these differ slightly from most of our EU partners:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country

In reply to winhill:


Furedi, and his wife if I remember correctly, where both at the very core of the RCP and their views have changed but not become any less extreme in some cases. I remember interviewing one of their set, an academic at Kings back in the early 2000s, who seemed to worship Furedi so I read some of his work. It had a whiff of Nietzsche at best, Fascism at worst to it.

It's funny I haven't really thought about that lot for years, but it is a fascinating little footnote to British intellectual history.

In reply to Offwidth:

>
Well, I've had a quick look and cannot find the medical case against Greer's view. However, I m not clear why you think that science should be the final arbiter of this. Science can describe the physiological characteristics of men and women. In the case of "intersex" (is that an acceptable term?) people it is surely a partly subjective judgement which of these physical characteristics divide one sex from the other, are the "tipping point".

Furthermore, Greer's whole argument is that purely physical characteristics are not the sole arbiter of gender. Pyschological and cultural factors and life experience are also part of the definition.

Scientists are experts in the science but Greer is a world expert in the concept of the feminine. It seems to me her views are worth hearing.

In reply to Offwidth:


Totally with you on this, Steve. I've been a bit puzzled by some of what you've been saying but I see what's behind it now. I would distinguish between the academic freedom that you are (rightly) so passionate about and the whole freeze peach thing but I see why you make the connection.

In reply to Postmanpat:
Someone clearly needs to show you how to use a search engine. To help you along on the layman's approach: start with searching for transgender in this amazing website called wikipedia and work out from its references to the Psychiatry of the subject and other scientific studies (mainly the biological studies but linked in more detail through the 'causes'.)

Greer is an expert on feminism (mainly of a specific type... there are many different viewpoints in academic feminism) and is as much a media personailty these days. To my knowledge she has no expertise on transgender issues.

I'd add that Intersex is where some aspect of gender characteristics are genetically, or hormonally or gonadally (a word?) undefined. This is completely different to a transsexual where transgender person does not identify with their physically assigned gender and wishes to change it. Transexuals are a subset of the trangender Most transexuals/transgender are not intersex and most intersex are not transexual/transgender.

In reply to elsewhere:


Entirely true. But the issue is that usually one group of students wants to invite and hear a speaker, and another group of students doesn't want that speaker to speak on campus. A "no platform" policy is usually not just "we don't want to invite you", but also "... and we don't want anyone else to be able to invite you either".

It seems to me contrary to free speech for a majority of students to be able to impose their speech restrictions on a minority. Just as, in society, various groups can express political views, so on a university campus minority groupings of students should also be able to speak and listen freely.

In reply to Dave Garnett:

My passion is very much an exception, most cogs in the modern university machine know their place or we wouldn't have got to where we have. Prospective students interested in ideas rather than vocation should think on that when they consider taking on the huge debt for studying in the UK... cheaper and better to go to Europe where most courses are available somewhere in english (even some places in France do this now).

In reply to Coel Hellier:

This only happened because democratic decisions were taken in NUS and various student unions. Given the internet it's hardly a major hinderance for those who want to listen to terrorist sympathisers (except the SWP who get a free pass), barely disguised racists and proto fascists. When the big news stories happened it seemed rather manufactured. Having seen the likes of the cambridge union up close I'm not convinced they are free speech crusaders and heros of genuine informed debate, they seemed to me to be more interested in creating controversy and playing rhetorical games as a stepping stone in their political careers.

In reply to Offwidth:


But democracy is not the only issue, given the inbuilt problem of "tyranny of the majority" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority ).

I don't think that a majority of students** should be able to vote to "no platform" speakers that some of the students want to hear. That's as wrong in principle as, say, a majority in Parliament voting that anti-government voices should not be allowed on TV news programs.

[**In practice, of course, it's only a majority of the relatively small number of students who are politically active in their student unions.]

In reply to Coel Hellier:
Yes I'd agree but that's the system we have and it doesn't matter very much. The no platformed organisations also don't have any MPs, their ability to communicate in the press is often limited by rule and where not is also heavily curtailed in practice.

What about the much more important tyranny in our academic working lives that is fast eroding really important academic freedoms: REF, TEF, NSS, inappropriate use of KPIs in performance management, precarious post doc contracts, the army of ZHCs delivering scheduled university teaching sessions, the huge number of non-UK academics (28% now) feeling precarious in their status. Or the wider marketisation of HE without proper regulation and the easy ride this gives to private HE (often already linked with scandals in the US and yet with lighter regulation than the very best UK universities.)

In reply to Offwidth:

Greer is an expert on feminism (mainly of a specific type... there are many different viewpoints in academic feminism) and is as much a media personality these days. To my knowledge she has no expertise on transgender issues.

So, Greer having spent the past fifty years studying, defining, writing about and debating what it is to be a woman you don't think this might be relevant to a debate on what it is to be a woman?

You haven't addressed the question of whether physiology should be the only factor in defining gender.

In reply to Coel Hellier:


Mind you, many students' unions active members a very small minority of the institution's students...

In reply to Coel Hellier:


You mean like with Brexit Coel?

In reply to Postmanpat:

On the research we are back to where we started. I said do your own, you said you couldnt find anything, I pointed out how foolish that was.

The evidence on Greer looks unfortunate not just from the science but given the views from other very experienced feminists who did look carefully into gender identity issues in the transgendered. Its amazing really that someone with 50 years experience could seem to be so sloppy on this subject.

In reply to Offwidth:

>
No , where we are is that you made assertion and refuse to substantiate it.
So, in absence if evidence i can only assume that you can't.

I dont doubt that other feminists dusagree. That doesnt make her view unworthy of listening to. It just means they dusagree.

In reply to Postmanpat:
Come off it. The wikipedia page is full of research links suitable for the dumb acting layman showing the history of psychiatric classifications and later biological evidence of differences.

The feminist arguments on this are pretty serious stuff with a lot of bad behaviour...

Eg

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/04/woman-2

At least the feminists critiquing transexual female identity in that article seemed consistent, detailed and better informed, Greer if you follow her comments after the controversy, seemed initially simplistic and then rather all over the place.

In reply to Duncan Bourne:


Presumably you would confine your protest to peaceful means and in no way condone anyone who would actually seek to physically or by intimidation prevent them from speaking? Or you would in a calm and reasoned fashion dispute their views that you find objectionable?

It is curious that those who advocate restrictions on freedom of speech or censorship of the press, or "no platforming" (and that is what these displays of intolerance and authoriitarianism, weasel-worded aplogias notwithstanding, are about within the limits of the powers of these authoritarians) always imagine that THEY or people like them or of similar views to them will always be the censors and the moral and language/thought police. It never seems to occur to them that those that live by the sword, die by the sword and that their own power to repress or censor is normally quite feeble. It is far more likely that their opponents will be in controp of the instruments of oppression that they themselves have made, they will have fashioned weapons for their enemies to use against them, with equal and opposite ruthlessness. Quite apart from moral and libertarian grounds, simple pragmatism should show that it is a foolish approach :


More: Why, what has he done?
Margaret More: He's bad!
More: There is no law against that.
Will Roper: There is! God's law!
More: Then God can arrest him.
Alice: While you talk, he's gone!
More: And go he should, if he was the Devil himself, until he broke the law!
Roper: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast– man's laws, not God's– and if you cut them down—and you're just the man to do it—do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety's sake.

In reply to Simon4:


It's even more curious that they still think that, even after the example of their worst nightmare, Donald Trump, suddenly having a huge amount of power to get all authoritarian.

In reply to Offwidth:

>
Yup, to be precise 158 of them. I mean, interested though I am, that's a lot of references to go through in the vague hope of finding something relevant. Any clues?

In reply to Postmanpat:

>Bigot "a prejudiced or closed-minded person, especially one who is intolerant or hostile towards different social groups (e.g. racial or religious groups), and especially one whose own beliefs are perceived as unreasonable or excessively narrow-minded"

How does her view fulfill any of those criteria?
>
I see that according some dignity to the existence of transgender people has also been a challenge for you in the past . Many of your posts on a previous thread seem to fulfill the criteria you set out above:

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?t=534499&v=1#x7174264

In reply to Caird:


Haha, good memory, but still mistaken. I'm trying to remember what I was so angry about but I know it wasn't transgenders, or anything on UKC.

In reply to Offwidth:

Hi Offwidth.
The role of academics has certainly changed over the past few decades. Wrt REF, I led and submitted an institutional return for the last one. Looking across the 120 odd institutions afterwards, pretty well the same results drop out by just analysing open source citations and impact factors. Obviously more difficult for practice based disciplines, but you get my drift.
The bun fight has already started to get academics with outputs and grants recruited before the Stern Report 'transfer window' closes forever. Without the facility to buy in research for REF, I think that'll be the end of QR funding for the bulk of post-92s, esp with the REF-TEF tie in. Where will we be then?
I think, looking at RCUK funding etc, 50 research active and informed Universities, and 70 teaching/vocational institutions. Remind you of anything?
If I was cynical I might think that this has been carefully managed. I don't know what you think, but the grief I've seen some academics experience in the last exercise, maybe it won't be a bad thing?

In reply to Postmanpat:

Political correctness gone mad*
HSE gone mad*
Human rights gone mad*

Whilst you can always find some examples of some things "gone mad" (often highly exacegerated or urban myth type story) I don't think we should be winding the clock back to the 18 century.

"Gone mad" seems to flag slack journalism were urban myths are repeated or stories taken out of context.

In reply to paul_in_cumbria:

My place is optimistic about REF (naive maybe) and positively over the moon about TEF as we have good KPI data (never mind its damaging bullshit for the sector as a whole.. as per the RSS response on the subject). What we have lost is an open collegiate approach with time to do good work and replaced it with direct competition and endless, stressful and time consuming 'weighing of pigs in an attempt to make them fatter'. Those who don't meet the criteria (what do you mean you cant eat and grow when we weigh you?) are going and this will be a lot of staff with valuable skills who will be hard to replace in a tightening immigration situation. The levels of casualisation, and in that, especially mass use of ZHC for delivering classes are just disgusting and I don't get why the students are not putting posters up about that instead of the likes of Germaine. Most academics are way too silent as well.

In reply to Simon4:


Calm and reasonable every time (though I might shout a bit. Only language they understand etc. etc.)

It raises an interesting point though. Is peaceful protest always preferable (in effecting change, rather than for society)? Is there ever a case for non-violent protest? Does terrorism work? I am in general an advocate of peaceful protest. But I wonder if I would ever take up arms to fight a cause? I am thinking here of instances where one is fighting against an agressor out to do harm. Say against ISIS, the French and Jewish resistance in WW2, the International brigades in the Spanish civil war. But then should I include ISIS itself, the IRA, ETA? should I include hunt saboteurs?
Given the great amount of suffering and disruption of armed conflict peaceful protest, and open discussion of differences of opinion, has to be the preferable option. This breaks down once sides stop listening to each other.

Great post by the way.

In reply to Offwidth:

I suspect that the ordinary person in the street who doesn't create complicated "intellectual" frameworks for their views might be much more accepting of transgenders and less unpleasant than the activist types in the article.

Any chance of a relevant link on the science stuff?

In reply to jethro kiernan:

Gone mad" seems to flag slack journalism were urban myths are repeated or stories taken out of context.
>
That's obviously what the documentary title was referencing.

In reply to Postmanpat:
What is the motive behind taking apart the human rights act, workers protection and introducing division and exclusion of minority groups who is benifiting?
The "gone mad" thing is quite corrosive and may well break some fundamental underpinnings of what makes our society

In reply to wintertree:


Paul Calf - "F**king students!"

In reply to Postmanpat:


Frankly you don't need to have a complicated "intellectual framework" to understand that gender and biological sex are two different things.

In reply to RomTheBear:


Exactly, which is why I don't understand why Offwidth thinks that scientists defining "sex" (not that he will show us how they define it ) should override Greer's, or anyone elses' views on gender.

In reply to jethro kiernan:


Where was the bit that Trevor Phillips recommended this? Did I miss it?

In reply to Postmanpat:

It does invalidate her view as absurd. If gender is a social construct that depends on someone's view, then it cannot be defined as being the same as biological sex.

In reply to RomTheBear:
>
Good, we all agree then. Happy days!
Or do have some evidence that when Greer refers to gender that she actually means biological sexual identity?

In reply to Postmanpat:
I saw in News Scientist that people who identify as transgender (it didn't say if they're pre-op, but it seems logical that they might be) don't get the same pleasure response going on in their brains in response to human touch, that other people do.

In reply to Postmanpat:

So you do agree that her view is inherently absurd ?

In reply to Postmanpat:


"Biological sexual identity " wtf is that ?

In reply to RomTheBear:

Its the same as "biological sex".
So do u have the evidence?

In reply to Postmanpat:

Would that be in the mind you're talking about, re biological sexual identity?

In reply to Timmd:

Im waiting for offwidth to clarify what defines that

In reply to Postmanpat:


"I agree that when I first was thinking about what is a woman I fell for the usual view that women were people with two Xs and men were people with an X and a Y, which made life nice and easy for me. "

In reply to RomTheBear:

And......?

In reply to Postmanpat:

Just read:
"I fell for the usual view that women were people with two Xs and men were people with an X and a Y, which made life nice and easy for me. "

If that's not defining gender as biological sex I don't know what is.

In reply to RomTheBear:


Lol, almost as good as the quote you deleted!!

"Fell" is what we call a "past tense" thus implying that she no longer believes that.
Indeed that is her point.
Anyway, my hair needs a wash..

In reply to RomTheBear:


I think that's defining sex as biological sex.

"The word gender has been used since the 14th century primarily as a grammatical term, referring to the classes of noun in Latin, Greek, German and other languages designated as masculine, feminine or neuter. It has also been used since the 14th century in the sense 'the state of being male or female' but this did not become a common standard use until the mid 20th century. Although the words gender and sex both have the sense 'the state of being male or female' they are typically used in slightly different ways: sex tends to refer to biological differences, while gender tends to refer to cultural or social ones." New Oxford Dictionary of English.

In reply to Dave Garnett:


"The word gender has been used since the 14th century primarily as a grammatical term, referring to the classes of noun in Latin, Greek, German and other languages designated as masculine, feminine or neuter. It has also been used since the 14th century in the sense 'the state of being male or female' but this did not become a common standard use until the mid 20th century. Although the words gender and sex both have the sense 'the state of being male or female' they are typically used in slightly different ways: sex tends to refer to biological differences, while gender tends to refer to cultural or social ones." New Oxford Dictionary of English.

Odd that you're quoting something that directly contradicts your own statement.

In reply to Postmanpat:

She admitting HERSELF that she thought biological sex was the same as gender when she made those comments. I'm not sure what else do you need here. At this point it's not dishonesty is sheer absurdity.

I can see how you can relate to this woman, she does seem to insist with her bigotry even after admitting that she was totally wrong.


If only you had hair...

In reply to Postmanpat:
I didn't say that it was anything to do with Trevor Phillips, my comment was more general observation on a drip drip "gone mad" commentary that comes from certain parts of the media using tactics that could be classed as smear tactics rather than a reasonable discussion on how things could be improved.

In reply to Postmanpat:

I guess if you want to 'win', you can not look into finding out for yourself, but you want to learn something new, you could have a look at some of his links every so often until you find out?

In reply to Timmd:


158 links? Id rather draw

In reply to Postmanpat:
Fair enough, that wasn't a dig by the way, the winky was because that can seem to be how UKC is at times.

In reply to RomTheBear:


I'm saying that Greer's reliance on the genetic definition means that, in modern usage, she's actually referring to sex not gender but it's understandable because the terms are used somewhat arbitrarily. Anyway, even if she's going by cytogenetics she's already ignoring intersex aneuploidies.

But then you knew that, obviously.

In reply to Dave Garnett:


I think it's a bit stronger than that, she's saying that sex = gender. A transwoman has not gone through puberty, has not had periods, has not had the experience of growing/not growing breasts and dealing with the reaction that the changes to their body has in others. Because of that lack of experience, which cannot be gained by anyone not born a woman, they're not a woman. She's saying that being a woman is linked to physical sex in such a way that "feeling" you're a woman can't make you one. IIRC she says that intersex are neither man nor woman (and that there's nothing wrong with that).

In reply to Dave Garnett:

Is there much point analysing what she thought, when this whole episode looks so confused with apparent contradictions and mind changes. It's plain weird she could be muddling gender and sex (so I don't believe it's that simple). Much of this came from press releases and TV interviews, hardly the best way to promulgate ideas. If it wasnt her I'd say it was likely a constructed controversy. Cambridge union claimed high ideals yet more often than not organised mud wrestling to hone the next generation of politicians.

In the end there is a body of science and medical practice, that most modern feminist theorists try to include and others still reject but with well reasoned arguments, unlike Germaine: maybe she will publish a long article (I cant find anything from her in this format) or even another book one day and clarify everything. In the meantime she comes over as intellectually sloppy commentator with bigotted soundbites.

In reply to Offwidth:


Not that weird, unless you are pretty well immersed in (fairly recent) gender politics or sociology the terms are pretty much interchangeable. But you're right, second guessing what Germaine Greer might or might not have meant is pointless.

In reply to Offwidth:


That she is touted by some as an expert on feminism may be something to do with such soundbites. The challenge is then to reconcile the 'lopping off your d1ck' soundbite with her assertion that female genital mutilation is akin to getting a tattoo.

I think the theory of us negotiating the world as cognitive misers, expending the minimum mental effort to achieve a coherent view, is helpful in explaining how transgender issues have been responded to by some in this, and previous posts on UKC.
On the subject, there have been posters who have given clear explanations of relatively simple concepts like cis- and trans- , only to have a 'nah, mate, you've lost me there' type of response. Or, on the subject of references and links to pertinent information and research, we get the ' that's too much/it's too academic'.. Well, ultimately, I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you. So, some cling to the soundbite, and externalise their problem as undue complexity of the subject.
Ping/pong, ping/pong, all those posts , and at the end of it all, little the wiser. Whilst UKC forum contributors seem largely accepting of transgender individuals and accord them some dignity, there are others whose input reminds me of the treatment which was dished out to the character on the TV series from about 10 years ago, 'Little Britain'. 'Meera'- an Indian woman who sports traditionally Indian clothes and speaks with a strong, yet understandable Indian accent.

Meera is always victim to Marjorie's racist attitude as most sketches will feature Meera making a suggestion with Marjorie pretending to misunderstand her answer and forcing her to continuously repeat it while Marjorie continues to nag her to say it again.

In reply to Dave Garnett:

I think the lack of response to her quite clear argument, and the quick resort to no platforming is quite telling. Common PC tactics, no arguments because they might expose the inadequacy of the claim, just assert that X is true and attack as -phobic whoever disagrees.

In reply to thomasadixon:


If we are to say that the developmental changes and accompanying experiences confer womanhood, then taking hormones can offer something similar- breasts develop, the way of thinking alters, and ( rather like puberty) the resultant changes create an uncertainty in the way the developments are integrated into who you are.
Going further, presumably, a womb transplant could soon be feasible, and with an appropriate regime of hormones you could also have periods which would give something akin to a 'fuller' experience.
Are we then to infer that joining the 'women' category requires that you have to experience the full set of changes ? If so, where does that leave cis- females whose hormonal functioning has arrested, or FGM on pre pubescent girls, or children raised in repressive conditions? Does this sort of thinking add force to the notion that the more male to female gender reassignment surgery you have, the more womanly you'll become? Sure, in chasing extensive surgery, you may be able to 'pass' more easily, yet there are transgender individuals who would say 'I was born in the wrong body' who don't have access to surgery- or perhaps don't even want it.

There are individuals who have had full gender reassignment surgery who view those transgender individuals who have not as second class. But then again, there are cis-females who consider all trans- females as not proper women. But the trans- female might outwardly look more 'womanly' than the cis-female. That trans female might have have only experienced a female puberty as a result of early use of hormone blockers, and been home schooled to shield her from taints of male privilege. The cis-female might have had a very repressed childhood, such that her feelings about puberty were secondary to survival. Which, then is female?
Man is a concept, as is woman, disquieting as that is. Intersex ? "and there's nothing wrong with that"- well, if you were the intersex individual, the chances are that, society as it is, you'd want to identify as male or female, rather than live as an isolated misfit. Intersex may be relevant when it comes to obtaining medical treatment, but outside of that sphere, in an era of supposed equality, perhaps we'd be better just letting them express who they think they are.
I don't think you can tie up all the lose ends in this. A big hairy guy who cross dresses at weekends is probably unlikely to be someone who has a strong and persistent desire to identify as a member of the opposite sex. But for those individuals who do have that overriding sense they were not born in a body appropriate to their feeling of gender, should we say 'no you're not a woman, you're a mentally disturbed man, and the fact that you may have lost your wife, family, house and job is because of your preoccupation with this delusion. It's your responsibility if you suffer harassment and attack, or kill yourself'.
It's as if some sections of society are saying 'We have to put a label on you to make more salient your anomalous existence (but we don't yet have the means to integrate the person with that label into society).'
Until that day, why not just live and let live, eh?

In reply to Caird:


It's the lot, and hormones do not replicate puberty at all. There's a *lack* of choice experienced by women and not by those who want to become women. You're waiting to see if you get breasts and periods, you're comparing with others and it's all happening to you and out of your control. Similar but perhaps less dramatic changes happen with men, and again it's out of your control. It's something that happens to you.


I think we're to note that no matter the physical changes you make you can't join the women category, you either are one or you're not.


It does the opposite, it says that you can't become "more womanly" you either are or you are not. If you're flat chested you're still a woman, if you get into fights instead of wearing dresses you're still a woman. If you're genetically male then you're not a woman, no matter what surgery you have or how "girly" you choose to act (exactly what GG said, without the crass language).


I think this is what it boils down to. Why do you think that others should follow your definition, rather than thinking that man and woman are sexes? Man is the male of the species, just like a bull or a stag is the male of the species.


Perhaps we should be aiming to accept them as what they are, rather than continuing the situation where they are forced to identify as X or Y?

In reply to Caird:
>

Exactly.

A number of points:

1) The discussion was not about whether Greer was "right" or "wrong". It was whether she had the right to be heard on the subject or whether she her views are "bigoted". They certainly seem to be representative of a number of high profile radical feminists and , according to people on here, very much discarded by recent thinkers on the subject and therefore should be easily refuted. Both of which are amongst the many reasons she should have the right be heard.

2) Given that, as you say, "we cannot tie up all the loose end" there is plenty of reason for room for debate on the subject. The no platforming policy implies that there is a "correct" answer to the question of what constitutes a "man" or a "woman". Nobody on here has yet come up with a biological definition of sex (is there one?) and certainly not of "gender". The truth is that it is always going to be a matter of opinion, and as yet there is no overwhelming consensus to make one opinion the de facto standard. Hence Greer's argument that she has a right to have her opinion heard.

The only de facto standard is the legal definition which, as I understand it, enables a post op transgender to declare their new sexual identity and this to be recognised in law. Works for me but clearly hasn't settled the broader debate.

4) I think the reason Greer is regarded as an expert on feminism is that she wrote on of the
most influential books ever written on the subject, not that she swears a lot.

5) You are making the mistake of thinking that everyone is (or should be) as interested in the subject as you. It's obviously bloody ridiculous to expect anyone to comb through 158 internet links to find something that is supposedly clear (the biological definition of sex) and could thus be easily summarised unless they are planning to write a thesis on the topic.

For most people the subject of transgender people is a subject of no or only passing interest. It simply isn't something that touches their lives. It's pretty odd therefore, that those who more interested, instead of trying to engage them by summarising the issues, simply scorn the rest for not reading volumes of research.





3)

In reply to Postmanpat:

1) My discussion on Germaine was always about Germaine in particular being right or wrong (clearly the latter, despite some of what she was probably trying to say having intellectual merit... ie much better written and consistent 2nd wave stuff).

2 &4) She is an intelligent role model with a clear position available 'off the shelf': she should have done a much better job. She should also have written something to clear up the mess.

5) I love the fact you are still saying so much on the subject despite being dis-inclined to do your own research. Intellectual curiosity, to me, makes someone much more worthwhile talking to. I've spent enough time in my life trying to inform intelligent people with a particular ignorance in a subject area (and with oddly fixed views despite this ignorance) that there are other sides to an argument. Enough to clearly realise it usually isn't beneficial educationally (such views are hard to budge even with facts and logic) and it usually just wastes my time. Donald is the perfect proof of this pudding... the clear majority of white college educated americans voted for him: for most people, even the well educated, emotion 'trumps' facts and logic.

In reply to Offwidth:


They didn't according to this

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/whit...

"Among college-educated whites, 45% voted for Clinton – 39% of men and 51% of women (the only white demographic represented in the poll where the former secretary of state came out on top). "

In reply to Offwidth:
.5) I love the fact you are still saying so much on the subject despite being dis-inclined to do your own research. Intellectual curiosity, to me, makes someone much more worthwhile talking to.

You made an assertion. I looked in the obvious places to see what you meant and found no evidence to support your assertion. Indeed, I found comments like this:

"Since “biological sex” is actually a social construct, those who say that it is not often have to argue about what it entails. Some say it’s based on chromosomes (of which there are many non-XX/XY combinations, as well as diversity among people with XY chromosomes), others say it’s genitals or gonads (either at birth or at the moment you’re talking about), others say it’s hormone levels (which vary widely and can be manipulated), still others say it’s secondary sex characteristics like the appearance of breasts, body hair and muscle mass (which vary even more). Some say that it’s a combination of all of them. Now, this creates a huge problem, as sex organs, secondary sex characteristics and hormone levels aren’t anywhere close to being universal to all men or women, males or females."

But being a humble chap and acknowledging my limited knowledge on the subject, I wasn't going to challenge you on the basis of a few comments on the internet.

You have basically then said "Well, there's a library, it'll be in there somewhere". All the stuff I have read suggests that your assertion is simply not true ie. there is not an The laziness, is on your part, not mine.

I don't know why you think I have a fixed view. I barely even have a view (except that no platforming is generally a bad idea.)

In reply to Postmanpat:

The borders of biological sex being blurred doesn't change the fact that most operations involve those with a very clear biological sex chosing to have a transformative physical change with support from the medical establishment, based on their perceived internal, gender. The intersex cases are simply irrelevant to Germaine's dick chopping assertion.

In reply to MG:
The numbers claimed seem to vary but its at least around half (college graduates on that guardian link). Another link here:

https://newrepublic.com/article/138754/blame-trumps-victory-college-educate...

The point remains a lot of clever people voted for Trump in the face of all his post truth views.

In reply to thomasadixon:

>

Talk with an endocrinologist and you'll find that hormones initiate and develop puberty.
as for your adding the matter of choice to your criteria, I'm not entirely sure where this comes in- are you saying that having no choice defines a woman? Anti- abortionists seem to think there shouldn't be a choice too.

>I think we're to note that no matter the physical changes you make you can't join the women category, you either are one or you're not.
>

If you say so...

>

Wouldn't it be comforting for you if it all boiled down to accepting the genes you were born with ? Only it isn't that simple and replicable. The expression of those genes you are born with is determined by the proteins that surround them, and they can vary...ah the murky world of nature-nurture...
Imagine having gene therapy discontinued because in your world, choice is not an option because you are genetically what you are.. Isn't that nice?
and as for your trivialising the 'crass language' delivery of GG, it might be useful to think on the repercussions of giving her airtime. I personally think the debate is well overdue. But GG's phrasing is designed for effect. We see how segments of the media operate. The Daily Mail would likely go into overdrive reporting on the deluded, sick creatures of her scorn. People's lives would be at risk as a result of the biased reporting - I could of course be wrong, but when has sensationalising and rabble rousing ever lost out to reason?
The number of calls to transgender support lines has increased massively since Trump was elected. OK, GG hasn't been elected, but her media presence mean she enters the public's consciousness undiluted.

>I think this is what it boils down to. Why do you think that others should follow your definition, rather than thinking that man and woman are sexes?
>

I didn't give a definition, I said that 'man' and'woman' are concepts ( or do I mean constructs?). How sharply delineated those concepts are is another matter. You prefer a strict binary by the sound of things

>Perhaps we should be aiming to accept them as what they are, rather than continuing the situation where they are forced to identify as X or Y?
>

I gave my thoughts on this in my previous reply to your post. When you say ' accepting them for what they are' , given that by your definition male/female, man/woman is the way it works, what exactly is 'what they are'?
It would be great if we had less transphobia as a result of this, and 'they' would be able to live happy lives as a result.

In reply to Offwidth:

>
I agree.

In reply to Postmanpat:

Latest..

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/27/universities-free-speech-row-...

In reply to Offwidth:


Academic Freedom usually refers to content not conditions though. If you check who the backers are for FSUR you find Dennis Hayes, Professor of education at the University of Derby and who co-founded Academics for Academic Freedom in 2006, so they hardly look out of the loop. But AAF is looking mostly at content.

By a remarkable serendipity Frank's latest book just happens to deal with this very issue, What's Happened To The University?

I wouldn't advocate splashing the cash on it but again it seems to focus on content, perhaps there's a bit about conditions but it isn't the main focus.

A couple of high profile cases of people forced out would be Tim Hunt the women in the lab guy from 2015 and remember James Watson the dna helix man sacked (and supposedly forced to sell his Nobel) over inconvenient if not untruthful statements.

But perhaps we don't hear about people forced out for complaining about their employement conditions.

In reply to Postmanpat:

Has it gone mad? I don't know.

Has it got more stringent? definitely.

The other day I was re-watching The League of Gentleman (released in the late 1990s) and thought that some of the lines would not pass the PC filter these days.

In reply to Caird:


Well put.

In reply to winhill:

You don't hear much as a good number just retire (before they had planned) and most of the controversial departures have gagging clauses. From the cases I know across a few institutions I suspect a good bit more than a person a day on average leaves a UK University due to issues that almost certainly have academic freedom implications. In this I mean permanent academic staff who are broadly OK as an academic but not meeting REF KPI's or teaching based KPIs or needlessly caught up in a restructure; these factors occurring as the institutions are desperate to replace what they see as under-performing staff (or even some academic areas) with shiny new and often cheaper and more compliant 'birds in the bush'. Casualised staff are treated worse still than permanent staff. This is all going on with hardly any major public signs of concern. To fill gaps, huge numbers of scheduled classes are being delivered by people who's (zero-hour) contract says they don't have to turn up. Hence, I'm convinced conditions and mismanaged/inappropriate KPI's are doing most of the damage to academic freedom.

I've pretty sure I met Dennis at a Stern event, and am aware of his book (not read it yet).

In reply to Caird:
I'm thinking given the amount of time (and thought) it takes to keep posting on a thread like this, one could look up a likely looking half a dozen links on a wiki page instead and learn something new. It comes down to where attention is directed in the end, imho.

In reply to Timmd:

Here's a link about transphobia where you don't even have to read- or even have heard of Germaine Greer.
To make it less scary for some UKCers, about 30 secs in, there's a face with a beard doing the commentating.

It does have some swear words in

youtube.com/watch?v=WCDq7LIR2LQ&

In reply to Caird:

Pogonophobe.

In reply to Offwidth:


Just to be clear, the book I mentioned is Frank Furedi's, the ASAF have published a book in September last year with a chapter from Dennis Hayes.

You can buy it on Amazon but it is also available as free download:

http://www.civitas.org.uk/content/files/Why-Academic-Freedom-Matters.pdf

Good to see they mention Tim Hunt in the intro!

But again it looks to be focused much more on content than conditions, although iy covers both.

In reply to winhill:
Sad to see Joanna Williams perpetuating the same myth in the first, chapter. I've seen no evidence Germaine has been investigating gender indentity in transexuals in any significant measure, let alone her whole life.

Also too much focus on things like Prevent (a stupid policy but not especially serious yet in its impact on academic freedom) and student censoriousness (ditto) and way too little on active university mangement handling of dissent to flawed goverment assessments like REF and TEF and NSS, or worse still the response to staff who make fair external public criticism (where suspensions and inclusions in reorganisations are not uncommon). Staff may dislike but dont often fear Prevent and No Platform, they do often fear consequencies of non compliance to policy and especially those likely following whistle-blowing.

It was him I met, the book I was thinking of was his forthcoming publication Beyond McDonaldisation.

http://www.derby.ac.uk/staff/dennis-hayes/

In reply to Postmanpat:

Not in Britain, but this is one of the cases I think
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39125187

In reply to pavelk:
The stated position on 'boys have penises and girls have vulvas' is a highly damaging simplification based on lies. Maybe the church is sulking because it can't control what constitutes truth, often with barbarism, like it did for centuries, so now is resorting to alternative facts. Academic Freedom and the Catholic church are hardly comfortable bedfellows.

In reply to Offwidth:

The thread title is "Has political correctness gone mad?" This was just an example - in my opinion. If the inscription on the bus is truth or not, let everyone assess alone

In reply to pavelk:
I think its one of the most excusable cases I've seen. You can't make your mind up about lies, they are just that, despite what some of the religious would like to foist on us (from daft denial of Dawinism back to earth centric solar systems).

Back to my point about real threats to academic freedom, this blog post has just been published in THE.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/why-audit-culture-made-me-qui...

In reply to Offwidth:

I grew up in the country with state run censorship and they used the same argument like you to justify it (and they used - besides - similar ways how to punish inconvenient people when they decided not to imprison them as Liz Morrish describes). I am afraid once you excuse censorship (and ban of the bus is censorship) we take the direction from democracy to authoritarian society ant it´ s very difficult to reverse it as history of my coutry (and many others) shows.

BTW the sentence on the bus you call lie, seems to be usually truth and it has something to do with XY sex-determination system.

In reply to Postmanpat:

And so it goes on.....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2017/03/02/university-bans-phrases-rig...

In reply to pavelk:
Sure you have a point in principle but all societies have a limit in practice on what can be said and laws to back this up. The discrimination laws in the UK would be stretched by that bus if it came here. So it's a terrible example. The church isn't interested in what it regards as normal men and women in producing that moral threat: it aims its disgust at the transgendered and intersexed, using lies, as the theology and sermons are clearly not working.

In reply to Postmanpat:

More stupid decisions that have no real effect on academic freedom and the news suiting the Telegraph agenda. When someone gets disciplined for saying something on that list I will start to pay attention. In the meantime the University system is hemoraging freedoms and staff under the audit cuture.

In reply to Offwidth:

So it's OK as long as it's just a scare tactic?

In reply to Offwidth:


Specificially, which law would that bus violate?

In reply to Offwidth:

Do I understand you well that its more important for you who declares the statement than whats the content of the statement? That was another favored way to silence uncomfortable facts in communist countries..

In reply to Postmanpat:

If you cannot find things to be offended at, why not make them up instead?

http://www.rebelcircus.com/blog/racist-phrases-2/

In reply to Coel Hellier:

I said it was stretching law (which is bigger than criminal law) not violating specific criminal laws but just for you look up Harry Hammond who was prosecuted for carrying this sign round Bournemouth.

"Jesus Gives Peace, Jesus is Alive, Stop Immorality, Stop Homosexuality, Stop Lesbianism, Jesus is Lord".

In reply to Postmanpat:

No its not OK but in true pp fashion you are are falling into the trap of arguing right wing intellectual nicieties about the sprinkles on the academic freedon cake when the cake is going mouldy (due to application of right wing market ideologies). You cant have degree and research factories with staff with such freedoms.

In reply to pavelk:

No. The person is irrelevant. To me freedom of speech is very important and should be prioritised unless the crimnal law or by-laws or democratic decisions are breached. I'd say the balance is going too far in banning some types of speech, especially on campus. I can point out No Platform type things are often wrong but irrelevant compared to the real and very serious damage being done to free speech in Universities by REF, TEF, NSS, and other audit culture processes that way too few seem concerned about. Stuff like Prevent is more serious than No Platform but not as problematic as the audit culture. I can also point out the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church given it's record on freedom of speech although the current Pope gives me optimism about change.

In reply to Offwidth:

And you are making the simple mistakes of thinking that the two things are mutually exclusive and of promoting your own interests above those of others. Not very egalitarian

In reply to Postmanpat:
So you would regard fiixing a scratch on your car and a wheel that is coming off on a 50 50 egalitarian basis?

My personal situation is not relevant, I'm probably too well supported to risk attacking and I can retire soon anyway if I wish. On the left right thing I'm pretty central and the true thinkers on both sides seem to see the same threats as I do. I talk on the subject because I care about the treatment of colleagues in less secure positions and for the future of UK academia.

In reply to Postmanpat:

I rather think political madness has become 'correct'

In reply to Offwidth:

When I say "your interests" I don't necessarily mean your personal self interest.

I don't accept that universities trying to impose language rules or firing staff following specious calls of political incorrectness is "a scratch".

You're going to have to explain your case better because there is a risk of sounding like you simply resent the idea that academics should be managed in order to ensure teaching and research standards are high. As the father of two daughters recently out of university who experienced failures of course design, teaching and feedback and had little recourse, and knowing a university administrator who regaled me with numerous anecdotes of disorganised academics failing to engage with the system, failing to teach their courses and consistently blaming everyone but themselves, It would be interesting to hear the other side.

It may, of course, be that the structures put in place to protects standards are inapropriate (NSS certainly sounds mad) but your reference to neoliberalism suggests that you are odds with the whole idea and that much of your objection is a politicised objection to budget controls and management of resources..

In reply to Postmanpat:
I'm saying you can't have your cake and eat it. If you want academic freedom in your University, thats good, but its bit more expensive and disruptive (in a good way) and incompatible with a University being run solely as a business (something I regard as oxymoronic).

The threats as I've seen being intimately involved in UK academic politics for decades are largely miniscule on the No Platform side and very real, serious and large scale on the audit culture side and I not joking about numbers of good permanent staff, currently being forced out of the sector annually, certainly being well into the 3 figure range and possibly being in the 4 figure range. It's not new either but it is accelerating. A few cases over the years did make headlines, like Chemistry closing at Exeter (as fought by a nobel prize winner) but most goes under the radar. As a politically moderate engineer in a top end post '92 I've lost many more good colleagues to forced early retirement and redundancy than natural retirement at the end of career. Other good colleagues have left as they felt the writing was on the wall, more than those just getting a better offer. The treatment of casualised staff has never been worse (with a few honourable exceptions where everyone on contract renewal has been made permanent). ZHC use for scheduled class delivery (which should be incompatible with a University) has never been higher. Governance (outside Scotland) has never been worse.

Every major problematic issue in teaching I've seen was obvious to me before the complaints (knowing the people and the situation) and could have been easily fixed in advance by our management but in practice were usually caused by them (square pegs in round holes). Problems with staff and course design do exist but overall satisfaction levels have from evidence never been higher, nor compensation for problems easier to obtain. The fact that academia is still working so well is largely because most academics still believe in what they do despite the system. As I see it audit culture makes things worse as it wastes huge amounts of time on pointless activities, it can delay solving things until the problem has become dreadul, it really annoys the best academics I know, good mangement never needed these horrible frameworks to tackle the badly behaved, the frameworks have been shown by research to be faulty and sometime counterproductive and the frightened compliant academics focus on their KPIs and lose track of what they are supposed to be there for (so as an example some researchers won't support students as well as they should).

From your customer perspective the worst records of HE delivery in the western world are in the US private model who love this 'Mcdonaldisation' crap. The very same institutions now being given an easy ride in the UK compared to proper Universities (a group where I'd include the likes of Buckingham and some other new players who do look serious).

In reply to Postmanpat:
I forgot to deal with finance.

First the departmental level. Sometimes reorganisations are required but I've never been involved in or aware of an example yet where the numbers provided in the management case were correct or honest. Those fighting for Exeter Chemstry made this point well for their campaign. The top slice on home students income moving from departments to the University increases gradually year by year.

At institutional level we are competing as our primary function instead of a mixture of planning, competing and collaborating. As a country HE is largely state funded and competion at all costs is leading to massive unwanted distortions. This includes serious skills gaps in many area of key national importance (..as the STE bit of STEM departments reorganised and closed, industrial demand for their graduates were usually increasing) but surpluses of unwanted graduates in others . When I started off in a Polytechnic things worked for UK needs a lot better, although to be fair our productivity as a post '92 (graduates per unit cost) has more than doubled since then.

At a macroeconomic level now. First and foremost brexit is coming. 28% of our staff might be under threat for their immigration status and attracting new overseas staff will become more difficult (we cant rely on home grown as needs massivley outstrip qualified numbers... I'm guessing about 50% of recent academic appointment are to non UK citizens). We urgently need replacement for EU research funds (probably this will happen but its slower than we need as already collaborations are being affected). The £3billion export market that is overseas students is being hit hard; the part of this where Universities make a profit fllls the gap in underfunding of home student education and the fact no research grants are properly fully costed. Academics speaking freely would say this is madness (not brexit, but the apparent lack of action to deal with these specific threats). Austerity is nearly worldwide but top overseas Universities are shoring up finance protections including academic freedom.
Finally fees... I geuinely believe the UK fee game will end in tears partly as the US system we seem to be moving towards is now widely being seen as unsustainable but also because we are less honest than the proper Universities in the US.. what we do for the disadvantaged is less good and how we retain the academic freedom that makes our product worth buying is more under threat. The biggest investment change with the new fee income in UK is lots of new buildings and increased central administration. The burden on many of our students is almost certainly not worth it but a lot of that will likely transfer to the taxpayer as they fail to earn. Where it does turn out to be a good investement its still a big extra debt where I think the state should have helped more and the Universities should have spent more on the front line staff and facilities to maximise that benefit.

In reply to Postmanpat:


And on and on....
Of 115 UK universities surveyed, 63.5% were found to "actively censor speech" and 30.5% were found to "stifle speech through excessive regulation".

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-39153731

In reply to Big Ger:

It doesn't go on thats the same spiked survey data again and the same news on cardiff met.

In reply to Offwidth:


I think you've misread that, she says Greer has spent her life studying Women and Power, not transgenderism, the remarks on which it notes were years old.

But here even if you re-read you're being far too harsh on Greer, she wasn't, at that time looking at transgenderism, she was looking for some sort of Essence du Femme that would define what a woman was. The pointlessness or not of that particular endeavour has little to do with trans which is just a side show.

The science here is nowhere near as strong as you'd like, it weather vanes constantly and there is a mismatch between women who want male and female brains to be functionally indistinguishable and people who want to use the wrong brain/wrong body analogy as a form of science.

There's no scientific reason to no platform Greer.

In reply to winhill:
Joanna does imply she was an expert, odd for someone for whom words are so important. On both the science (where the biology is way less important than the medical evidence) and the transexual issues, Germaine was all over the place on those TV interviews.. I've said they are not fair places to judge but why hasn't she written anything to clarify the issues. I accept the validity of the coherent line on this made by others (even though I'd believe the expert psychiatrists working in the area more).. It all smelt of posing on both sides with the relevance to academic fredom being more like arguing about angels on pin heads. In the meantime another few good staff left universities as they didn't meet a pretty arbritrary performance measure or a dishonest reorganisation or failed contract renewal, all that flew in the face of genuine academic freedom and did real damage to real people and thousands of teaching sessions were delived in HE by staff on ZHCs with hundreds of notetakers on ZHCs helping students with access issues that are a shame to our sector. I could scream with frustration that people don't get this stark comparison and are still moaning in mass about words.

In reply to Offwidth:
Thanks for the extended reply. Sorry I didn't respond but I am travelling. I hear what you say but my immediate reaction is to think that if sector expands at the rate HE has in recent decades it is bound to undergo huge systemic change and will require tight budgetary control, and what you are describing is largely a result of that and poor management rather than "neoliberalism".

PS. I see that old bigot Jenni Murray is on form

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/jenni-murray-transgender-rea...

In reply to Offwidth:

Student Union suppresses the speech of one of its societies ... because they highlighted the lack of free speech ...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2017/03/07/student-union-bans-conserva...

In reply to Postmanpat:
I might have given that argument the benefit of the doubt a few years back. REF NSS and TEF and what has happened to individuals (like Liz... an old union political adversary of mine and someone I respect) and the removal of shame in evidence for reorganisations (like none at all in the last two I saw), in areas I know well or where pragmatic moderate colleagues (I fully trust not to be playing political games) know well, have removed any doubt from my mind. We have such a large influx of overseas staff that we know what things are like in comparison elsewhere. We have simply moved in many British Universities from bastions of free speech to no better in some cases than the so called Universities under effective dictatorships, across the middle east and say Russia or China. Degrees will be taught, free speech ideas exist behind closed doors but we are fast losing any concept of what a University should be. The free speech breeches by students really are trivial in comparison. Its hillarious people are worried about students causing such problems when too many academics have been silenced on external critical dissent ages ago. What would you prefer to know as a priority: the course your relative has selected is secretly earmarked for closure and the academics can't talk for fear of dismissal or that they face pointless rules on non PC langauge.

My younger self would be amazed of my use of words like neo-liberalism being linked to University mangement but to paraphrase when it looks like that and quacks like that, its likely that.

In reply to Postmanpat:
This is an extract from the US statement on the issue. Many UK institutions are sadly miles from this now and as well as the uniform loss of Tenure in the UK some UK universities are experimenting with ideas like limited time spans for promotion from a lowest grade Prof, where if promotion is unmet will lead to demotion: the most ridiculous thing I know of on a Prof grade in the western world.

https://www.aaup.org/report/1940-statement-principles-academic-freedom-and-...

Academic Freedom

1) Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results, subject to the adequate performance of their other academic duties; but research for pecuniary return should be based upon an understanding with the authorities of the institution.

2) Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject. Limitations of academic freedom because of religious or other aims of the institution should be clearly stated in writing at the time of the appointment.

3) College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and officers of an educational institution. When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.

The sad UK reality in some institutions:

1) In some institutions Research most meet REF averages or you may be demoted or even asked to leave. Some places actively block conference publications as being expensive and low rated.

2) Teaching can be highly prescribed; subject to (untrained and inexpert ) management inspection of 'quality' and where student assesment KPI's are poor staff can be subject to performamce management even in the case of no concrete evidence of problems... a thorny issue for those who teach the most difficult subjects on courses as pointed out by the RSS in their submission to TEF

www.rss.org.uk/Images/PDF/influencing-change/2016/RSS-response-to-BIS-Technical-Consultation-on-Teaching-Excellence-Framework-year-2.pdf

3) open critics of some UK institutions have been suspended, disciplined and managed out of the institution on compromise agreements with gagging clauses.

We urgently need a similar charter to the US version in the UK.

In reply to Offwidth:


Sounds to me as though there is some sense in that. OK, I'll feeling argumentative, so here goes:

I can think of lots of professors who might have been performing at a high research level when they were promoted, but certainly are not now. I can also think of plenty of academics whose research is only of mediocre quality and not -- if we were honest -- actually worth doing.

Who pays for it? Well, the answer is that increasingly students are paying for it, through student fees (where else does the money come from?). Now personally I don't object to *tuition* fees (under the current quasi-graduate-tax system), but I don't see why students should also subsidize the research being done at their university.

Effectively they are paying a lot to be taught by people who also do research. To some extent they benefit from being taught by people who also do research, but I still think it's somewhat unfair to make them pay for that academic time spent on doing research, especially when a lot of it is mediocre.

University management is far from perfect, but they are faced with a pretty hard job, namely what to do with all the academics (half of them?) whose research is not worth doing. Now, many of them will be very good teachers, and putting them into teaching-only roles (whether contractual or de facto) is a good solution.

But there are still many who dabble at mediocre research, and everyone pretends that this is a good thing. The students who pay for it get the cachet of a degree from a "research university" -- note that university rankings largely follow the quality of research, not the quality of teaching, even though the research is not that relevant to the student experience.

So, things like TEF, REF, "restructuring", etc, are far from perfect, but they are there for a reason. The management is trying to do their best, however ineptly. Of course the Union would assert a God-given right for every academic to have plenty of time for research and scholarship and no-one is even allowed to ask whether they are actually any good at it or whether the stuff they do is worthwhile.

In reply to Coel Hellier:

Next time we meet, ask I'll explain exactly the sort of case I mean: too risky for a public forum. This isn't underperforming in a normal sense it's underperforming on any one of the following: REF average income or REF average papers quality or several other KPIs. I know of retrospective applications of rules and complete falure to allow for serious mitigation.The reality of the worse cases in the worst institutions beggars belief. The union are sadly culpable in this as they are so busy they have not been paying attention and often see all performance management of profs as unfortunate but normal.

Irrespective, even if things hadn't got so bad if you beleive in academic freedom we need a system like the US one to protect the academic freedoms of what reasonable academics would regard as good enough academics if we wish to retain a world class system.

In reply to Coel Hellier:
Sleep has reminded me of a few other things I needed to pick up in your argument.

In nearly all post '92 Universities Profs are performance managed so those sleeping on past laurals are rare (and again the fault of management in your business based view) . Below Prof either you have research income to fund you time or you have 200 hours across the year competing with things liked forced HEA applications and the pretty busy general day job.

Things seem more relaxed in the pre '92s I know but I still don't recongnise your picture. Maybe those you know are unrepresentative or maybe its me. I've worked with enough Physicists (your area) to say its last thing I'd say about that subject area. If you are saying the below par research you have seen ranks well in REF but is no good in your opinion you are being pretty rude to the researchers concerned and dishonest in your business based arguments here.

Who pays? Its the state responsibility to ensure funding for Universities in the western world and academic freedom is supposedly enshrined in that function. The UK government chose a fee model to fund students despite explicit warnings on possible consequencies on academic freedom by commercial imperatives. Yes the UK is also dishonest about the fact almost no research is full costed so sure some cross subsidy from teaching occurs in some institutions but most research subsidy comes from 3rd stream income which averages, from memory, over a third of total income these days on UK University balance sheets. My argument is, if academic freedom is lost the product purchased by students is functional in some ways but counterfeit.

A bit more on the money. Over 50% of teaching income is top sliced from departments to pay for central costs. These are real and important in many cases... buildings, fuel, 3rd stream support functions but increasingly are also building administrative empires that do not support front line staff or generate income. There are then top slices within the department. What the student sees is barely 40%. Oddly when you get the 'golden egg' of a full costed research grant the actual money becomes rather opaque in this top slice sense. If we treated it the same as teaching, a 100k grant pays for 40k of staff time and equipment!? REF fills some of that gap but not at the true levels needed for maintaing world class facaility. Cross subsidy is inevitable and most Universities do an amazing job in keeping up under such pressure.

Your view on students getting nothing from research is reductive and cynical in the extreme. Its really sad to hear a UK prof who thinks in that way. I chose my University to interact with the best minds and achieved that to a very significant extent. Things have changed since my youth but that is again mainly managerialism driven. Universities could ensure better contact in small but effective doses but that's not part of any funding methodology. Good Heads try and do this irrespective. Few universities ignore it completely: pretty much everywhere has numerous weekly free open research events students can attend and be inspired by.

The Union asserted a right for academics to have reasonable time for independant research and/or scholarship. In my contract it's 200 hours a year for my personnal staff development (that gets stolen in some institutions for things like HEA apllications and other compulsory training) I would argue that is probably too short from your business perspective to keep staff properly up to date in their subject, so it's far from restrictive practice based lounging on research deck chairs. Again sad caricature, for all their faults the Unions are one of very few fronts still left fighting for academic freedom.

In reply to Offwidth:
REF TEF and 'restructures' etc are far from perfect (no shit) but they are there for a reason (yes top down state -imposed managerialism). The management is trying to do their best, (local mangement yes.. senior mangement no as they should oppose it but it comes with real power to control the rabble and fighting it is dangerous... or at a sadder human level real cash to control; to build things like unrequired shiny new buildings they can regard as their legacy). I know a lot of mid level academic managers (34 years and high level work builds a lot of contacts) and most would dearly love to see the back of it. It eats their time and the time of their staff. Even some of the less craven VCs know this. Most important of all we don't live in a bubble. Other western contries survive without this nonsense and none of them have the real performance threats I'm seeing with high flying staff or the level of gagging of valid public complaint.

I have said above, I have no objection for what any fair minded independent 3rd party would regard as an honest fully fact based restructure but I've never seen or know of one (and I've seen and know of a lot)

In reply to Offwidth:


There is a heck of a lot wrong with the REF as a way of assessing individual academics. For one thing, the REF assesses the *paper*, not the person's contribution to the paper, and it only assess up to 4 papers. So someone mediocre need only contribute in a minor way and be a co-author on 4 papers over a 7-yr period and still be ranked pretty well by the REF. In areas where most papers are by multi-author teams, this is not hard to do.


I did say that students benefit from being taught by people who also do research. But that's very different from them subsidising that research. Thus, if someone spends half their time on research and half on teaching, should student tuition fees pay for half of that person's time or for more than half?

That is not an issue for the good researchers, who will be getting research grants and REF income to cover that research time, but there are a lot of people in UK universities who do not bring in sufficient money to cover the time they spend on research.

It is likely that there are fewer such people in post-92s, which wouldn't be surprising, but I do think there are significant numbers is pre-92s.


But does the state have a responsibility to fund 30 universities, or a responsibility to fund 150 universities?

In reply to Coel Hellier:

Subject dependent. Law and you just need someone standing at the front of a (packed) room and access to online resources; medicine and you need that plus labs, microscopes and kit, dead bodies, staff to carry these around, etc etc. Physics I imagine the same, possibly minus the dead bodies. So the pressure on institutions tend to be more law less science.

In reply to Coel Hellier:
Well done for ignoring the vast majority of my counters to your views.

On these new points:

REF is an imposed government process where UCU and other critics said what you said but senior management across the sector complied anyway.

You seemingly admit you were are wrong on post '92s but for the bottom end pre-'92s are you really sure that 3rd stream isn't funding much of this? My impression is these institutions are doing well... the average 3rd stream income across all 164 HE providers is is approaching 20% and the bottom half are well below this level. Again if you think student funding isn't enough or targetted badly to meet UK needs why are you not saying so?

http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/facts-and-stats/Pages/higher-education-data...

https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/02-03-2017/income-and-expenditure

The state allowed 164 HE providers, to get where we are; the vast majority of HE graduates end up in graduate level employment. So which ones do you want to close and where will you get the extra graduates industry needs? At 30 might that mean your institution closing? There is current demand for more institutions according to the government trying to improve competition by giving new private providers a place at the table (or significant growth) with a much easier quality assurance ride than the existing Universities.

In reply to Offwidth:

For research intensive universities, I think the way the money works is that teaching home students roughly covers its costs, doing research loses money, and the margin is made teaching overseas students. To be neoliberal about it, the business model is that the universities do research to raise their profile, especially through league table position, which attracts more international students, which generates a surplus, some of which is ploughed back into shinier buildings and facilities.

I think the REF actually has been an overall positive feature of the UK system, which has raised the standards of research. The downsides of REF - and I certainly accept there have been some of these - have come from inappropriate use of it by university managements. Its purpose is not to judge individual researchers, it is so HEFCE has a basis to allocate the QR money (i.e. the block grant for research not tied to specific projects) more or less fairly (or at least more fairly than just propagating however much university x got last time, which is how things used to work). But I accept, it's difficult to separate it from a wider "audit culture" which places much too much value on arbitrary metrics (and I'd count league table positions in this category).

In reply to Richard J:

I think it has improved medium quality in volume and reduced really high quality. Many genuine research stars have said their research would be impossible under REF or severely curtailed. This has all come at very significant expense (they quote the excercise cost but never include the internal planning, practicing and auditing) and much research time wasted, often based on unsustainably excessive working hours and soul destroying for those who fail to make the cut (all too often unfairly as the gaming was pretty blatant). The new Stern REF suggestions have some real improvements but are still hugely burdensome and needs modification in some areas (for instance to fairly assess cross-disciplinary work and small centres of genuine excellence in big below par teams). I don't believe it is beyond the wit of so many big brains to generate something fair, much simpler and a lot cheaper.

You are right though that its the way REF has influenced internal institutional managerial KPI-based performance management practice that is the big hit on academic freedom. I would say some of the worst offenders in the VC ranks seem like good buddies of the current HE minister.

In reply to Coel Hellier:


That's because the one thing the REF is *not* designed to do is to assess individual academics. It's meant to assess the research performance of departments (or UoAs, to be picky), to inform a funding allocation, and it does that by judging outputs (i.e. individual research papers). It's incoherent and stupid for management to use REF processes to assess individual research performance.

>I did say that students benefit from being taught by people who also do research. But that's very different from them subsidising that research. Thus, if someone spends half their time on research and half on teaching, should student tuition fees pay for half of that person's time or for more than half?

As I said above, I don't think in the actually existing finances of UK research intensive universities, home student fees do subsidise research to any significant extent (the situation with overseas students is very different). But even if they did, you could make an argument anyway that they should. The value of a degree has at least two quite different elements. Firstly, there's what the student actually learns, which the quality of the teaching has some influence on, and which may or may not be influenced by how good they are at research. But then, there's the prestige value of the degree as a positional good - a degree from Cambridge or MIT gets some intrinsic value from the prestige of the institution, quite independently of whether its owner actually knows anything, and that prestige does arise from research.

In reply to Offwidth:


Really? Beyond Harry Kroto and Peter Higgs? On this I do agree with Coel, that 4 good publications over 6 years is a low bar for a research star (in STEM subjects anyway), who should easily be able to knock those off and then spend the rest of their time on something longer-term, if that's what they want to do .

More seriously, if Peter Higgs was hanging around in your department waiting for his Nobel prize to arrive, would you be really giving him a hard time for not getting enough publications out (assuming of course he was doing his share of the teaching)? It isn't the government that tells university management that they should translate broad, institution and department level REF outcomes into the way they deal with individual staff.

>You are right though that its the way REF has influenced internal institutional managerial KPI-based performance management practice that is the big hit on academic freedom. I would say some of the worst offenders in the VC ranks seem like good buddies of the current HE minister.

Well, VCs are a strange breed, and it's probably in the job description to ingratiate themselves with whatever HE minister is in power. I'm not sure that any of them actually think the TEF (as the current minister's hobby-horse) makes any real sense, though.

In reply to Richard J:

Yes really

https://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Impact%20press%20com... and this is just Science REF covers all areas and outside Science levels of criticism is even higher.

Most of the best researchers I know also resent it. Higg's view needs answering, not just written off as an outlier:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-boson-academic-...

The cost is huge and where QAA inspection costs previously spiralled out of control reducing the budget forced them to look for a pretty much as fair but much less onerous system. Why cant we just cut the REF costs and let them think of what they can do as fair as possible within the new cost base.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/academic-estimates-real-cost-of-r...

The gaming is rampant (and won't change in a new game)

http://cdbu.org.uk/ref-stats-revisited/

The top journals are alleged to be distorting quality

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/09/nobel-winner-boycott-scienc...

Dennis Leeches case illustrates the issues for cross disciplinary work

https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2013/nov/21/inter...

As for departures: I've seen mini Higgs examples forced to leave in KPI obsessed departments.

My VC loves TEF (and we are really good at it, despite being pretty upper middling in my view in our teaching quality). Coventry is probably the best example... really astonishing results from TEF modelling given what I know of the place from good friends. De Montfort is also a major surprise (I work in a post '92 so don't have a Russell Group chip on my shoulder).

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/mock-teaching-excellence-fram...

In reply to Offwidth:

>My VC loves TEF (and we are really good at it, despite being pretty upper middling in my view in our teaching quality). Coventry is probably the best example... really astonishing results from TEF modelling given what I know of the place from good friends. De Montfort is also a major surprise (I work in a post '92 so don't have a Russell Group chip on my shoulder).

VCs may be pleased that their uni is likely to do well in TEF, but that's different from them thinking it's a great thing. I don't know who your VC is, so maybe s/he does think TEF is indeed a methodological triumph. I know the VC of DMU pretty well (he was my colleague in his previous job) and while he's ruthlessly focused on promoting DMU I'd be surprised if his enthusiasm for TEF was more than opportunistic. The chair of the TEF panel is the VC of SHU; talking to him about it, he was ruefully relating how that role had just led to his daughter continually berating him about TEF's evils (she was a SU sab officer in another university). I think the consensus is that, it's the personal enthusiasm of the HE Minister, and while he's in post it's not going to go away.

My own VC has made his own low opinion of the TEF pretty clear in public (e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/science/political-science/2016/feb/23/why-the-t... but that doesn't mean the Uni isn't going to do all it can to do well in it.

In reply to Offwidth:


It seems to me that all your examples aren't actually complaints about the REF itself, (apart from the impact issue perhaps), they're complaints about how the REF is dealt with in individual universities. As I said before, I agree with you about the prevalence of poor management excessively driven by metrics and KPIs, but I don't think this can be laid entirely at the door of the REF.

On the interdisciplinary question, the complaints you cite are of people whose work wasn't submitted to the REF by the University, not complaints that the work wasn't fairly treated in the REF itself. Likewise, people have a perception that they have to publish in the glamour journals, but this is explicitly not encouraged by the REF rules.

The problem is that people in universities didn't believe that the REF panels would actually obey the instructions they were given, which were pretty clear about how to handle interdisciplinary work in a way that wouldn't disadvantage it. And the instructions were completely explicit that the work was to be judged on its own merits, not by what journal it was published in. My belief, from talking to lots of panel members and chairs, and the HEFCE officials, is that the panels did follow these instructions pretty well (with perhaps one or two lamentable exceptions).

In reply to Offwidth:


The problem you have, is what is the alternative? Governments have been keen for while on doing the whole thing on the basis of citation metrics, and Elsevier is forever having meetings with the minister offering to do the whole thing themselves for a modest fee. I think there's plenty of evidence that metrics would not be robust, and would make all the gaming and distortion issues even worse. Some of the big research universities (UCL especially) take the view you should just do it on the basis of how much research income Universities have won - I think this is a multiply bad idea, for reasons I'm sure you would share.

So you end up with large scale peer review as the worst option, apart from all the others.

In reply to Richard J:

Oh those pesky unintended consequencies.

The critics deal with much wider issues than internal mismangement of the process. They claim the process is a flawed process and an expensive waste. Of course most REF panels did their very best, but so what? When estimates of the process cost are as much as a billion to distribute about the same amount every year the auditing process and its unintended consequences are clearly out of control.

There is a small irony in my links: I actually think impact assessment based funding is a good idea as long as its fraction isnt too big. Such assessments occur intrnally anyway so putting cases together shouldn't be too much extra work. As a much cheaper alternative to REF we could use a weighted citations index, grant capture index and a small addition of impact at University level modelled in a function roughly on current levels and remove the whole mess at a fraction of the cost and spend that billion on productive work and maybe a bit on development for the lower end institutions (like the old CNAA did for the Polys)

In reply to Offwidth:

I think the high estimates of the process costs are rubbish. And I say that having had personal responsibility for the whole thing in a large research intensive university.

On metrics, did you read "The Metrics Tide"? I think that was a pretty sober evidence based look at the pros and cons of going in that direction, with a lot of input from across the sector.

In reply to Richard J:

On TEF that link doesn't work. I'll swap you one:

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/tef-could-redefine-idea-of-great-...

In reply to Offwidth:

Here's mine again:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/political-science/2016/feb/23/why-the-t...

Sorry to hear about your boss.

In reply to Richard J:

OK on REF cost we agree the quarter billion base cost yes? For the billion level we just need an average of about extra 5 million expenditure on average in individual institutional response over the REF period. Using numbers we can do in our heads and looking just at research staff costs... lets say at costs of about £100 an hour for research intensive academics thats 50,000 hours... sounds a lot until you break that down. Thats 20 departments over 5 years with total research staff time of 500 hours per department a year (about a third of an academic's time).... my department has monthly meetings and numerous other excercises dedicated to REF that in total easily exceeds this number. So do you still seriously think that 1 billion is rubbish?

Yes this is sort of an unintended consequence (I say 'sort of' as some highly educated idiots clearly didn't do some similar thinking).

In reply to Richard J:

Didn't say he was mine

In reply to Offwidth:

I don't see any reason to think that the HEFCE estimate of £246 million hugely understated the total cost, and the report itself gives some reasons to think why it might be an overestimate. That estimate did include the time taken for meetings inside institutions, based on survey data.

Of course one can take the view that just because academics like to have lots of meetings, it doesn't mean they ought to.

To be more serious, this is one of the places where 100% submission should reduce the internal management burden quite a lot.

In reply to Richard J:
You're avoiding my point. 500 hours per potentially active department per year isn't going to be far out and that's about a billion irrespective. If HEFCE are right we are talking something way below 100 hours of academic time per department per year. Try telling your fellow staff that and see how they react. Or shall I call up some of my SU mates and get their very different internal counter view?

It doesn't matter if the meetings and other activities were intended or not. Its what happened. Its real and you refusal to accept this is pretty odd for someone in your position.

I think you are being optimistic about cost reduction across the sector. In the end people will waste REF related time having meetings and pressuring other people and my cynical view is this is on the increase irrespective of the system. Stern will probably result in something fairer but not cheaper.

These economic estimates are important when looking at audit arrangements. When the old QAA departmental reviews ended all that wasted time and money was then put to much better use (especially the previously wasted academic staff time)

In reply to Offwidth:
No, I'm not avoiding your point. You are asking me to believe your entirely anecdotal, back of the envelope calculation in preference to a number that was produced as a result of systematic surveys, which I'm not going to do.

I'm sure you can find some of your mates who'll say I did a crap job in running a process that would deliver the best result for the least cost and grief, as was my aim, but that's academic life, and I'm just glad I don't have to do it again.

The other side of the equation, of course, is to ask how much money is at stake. This is about distributing about a billion a year of public money. How much do you think you should spend to make sure that a billion a year is well spent?

You didn't say whether you'd read the metrics review report, to understand why some of the glib solutions to making the REF process cheaper wouldn't be robust. Interestingly, some of the strongest opposition to metrics actually came from engineers.

In reply to Richard J:
I'm sanguine about an imperfect cheap system replacing an imperfect expensive system given the likely benefits of all that extra time and money. You are being unfair in ignoring the critics of REF and supporting the critics of alternatives. Any system would have to roughly match the current situation for QR funding distribution or it would be a non starter, possibly only with winners (part of the model could be no big decrease with the central cost saving).

About a billion per excercise to distribute one billion a year is just obviously too much. The time spent in departments on REF is way beyond anecdote: find me any departments who met that HEFCE number... as I said well below an average of 100 hours of total staff time on REF in one year in an average department (I tried to underestimate slightly on my numbers on my envelope).

I'm not trying to get at you. I know people in your position worked very hard for public good as did all the departmental leads and the REF assessors. Its the expense of the system and its consequencies for performance management in some institutions I have a problem with.

In reply to Offwidth:

As one data point, I led and wrote the REF submission last time for our UoA. and I'd guess that submission added up to about ten days work total, which once every seven years is not that bad (admittedly our unit is a relatively small one, at about 11 FTEs).

On metrics, personally I do think that they would be good enough, so long as they are done sensibly and adjusted and normalised to each UoA (I don't think one can use them *between* UoAs, but can use them *within* UoAs).

There may be areas where they won't work well, but subjects should have the option of going to metrics on a subject-by-subject basis (rather than the current doctrine of one methodology applying across the whole REF).

[And no, I wouldn't put Elsevier in charge, you'd need academics in each area to decide the appropriate metrics.]

Of course they'd be far from perfect, but likely no worse than the current supposed peer-review system, and certainly cheaper.

One big benefit of metrics is that by avoiding the requirement for panels to read all of the papers, we could ditch the artificial restriction to only four papers (only two under Stern!), which is just ludicrous for many fields.

[How can one justify a system of assessing only a small fraction of a research group's outputs, and then going on the opinion of only one or two people who have spent twenty minutes reading it and are not experts in the field of that paper?]

In reply to Offwidth:


Sounds like a rubbish approach in a department. I estimate less than 10hrs a year of my time (typical academic) on ReF in most years (depositing papers, writing 100words etc). A little more near submission time . Those who write the submission will take more time, of , course. Based on experience in three Russell Group institutions

In reply to Coel Hellier:

You must realise how lucky staff are in your team with that and you must be impressively efficient to do everything for everyone in 80 hours. Its the best I've ever heard of, in terms of not wasting too much departmental time on REF. Almost miraculous!

In reply to MG:

We can do the sums your way as well. If double the numbers of the ~50,000 FTE's actually submitted for REF spent an average of 10 hours extra a year because of REF thats half a billion in cost.

~50,000 x 2x 10 x 5 x £100

Its easier in the Russell group... much less performance mangement time associated with it on average.

In reply to Offwidth:

Why double? There is some IT database stuff I suppose too but not double.

In reply to Offwidth:


Echoing Richard J's condolences if he is, we cross paths occasionally
I've been responsible for the REF at a previous post-92 institution where we used it as part of a change strategy to galvanise a huge rise up the rankings. The institutional costs are generally over estimated
Paul

In reply to MG:

Because many people didn't make it and many who did were fractions (but still had to get to know what was going on and do their stuff).

In reply to Offwidth:
I think you are extrapolating from an outlying experience. My main criticism is the focus and emphasis REF puts on research over teaching. TEF is meant to change this but a) won't and b) will encourage crap, commodity teaching, which is dispiriting.

In reply to MG:

I used your numbers how is that extrapolating from an outlier?

In reply to Offwidth:


I honestly don't see the problem, in a fairly straightforward and cohesive unit submitting to one UoA. The strict page limits mean that there's not that much to do, honestly! If I were asked to produce a REF submission for my unit *now* then I could do it by this time next week.

Of course universities *can* greatly expand the job by holding endless discussions and meetings that just re-iterate the same points again and again -- and to be fair, my university sounds as though it might be heading down that route for next time! -- but if you add up what a university actually *needs* to do for the REF it isn't that much.

As has been suggested, some universities may be using the REF as a cover for tasks that they'd have to do anyhow, such as dealing with "problem" people.