The University of Sussex has learned nothing from the Kathleen Stock debacle

The University of Sussex, one of the leading temples of progressivism in academia, has been fined £585,000 for failing to safeguard free speech following the Kathleen Stock affair. Stock, a philosophy professor, was hounded out of Sussex in 2021 over her belief in biological sex. The Office for Students (OfS)’s investigation into the fallout from that debacle is damning: it criticised the university’s policy statement on trans and non-binary equality, saying its requirement to ‘positively represent trans people’ and an assertion that ‘transphobic propaganda [would] not be tolerated’ could lead staff and students to ‘self-censor’.

The message that the times have changed does not seem to have got through to the University of Sussex itself

Could this mark a turning point in the culture wars surrounding the corruption of our institutions of higher learning, pressured by trans activists to put their emotions and feelings above biological truth? On the face of it, it certainly looks as though the chilly winds of reality blowing across the Atlantic from Donald Trump’s America has penetrated at least one quango, the OfS.