A recent report published by Alumni for Free Speech may well be the most significant report published to date about free speech, recent legislation requiring universities to promote it, and the impact that doing so might have on our higher education institutions.
Its significance, of course, isn’t to be found in its spurious claims about how universities’ EDI spending undermines free speech, but rather in its bare-faced promotion of obvious falsehoods that advance a right-wing agenda – and a post-truth disregard for facts in favour of creating talking points with no grounding in reality.
This debate isn’t abstract or merely rhetorical – it arrives at a moment of real vulnerability and uncertainty for UK universities, shaped by recent free speech legislation, intensified regulatory scrutiny, and heightened political anxiety across the sector.
The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act has changed the risk environment in which universities operate, introducing new statutory duties, potential financial penalties, and personal liability for institutional leaders. In that climate, reports like the AFFS’s gain outsized traction – not because of their evidential rigour, but because they offer simple explanations and scapegoats when institutions are running scared.
Universities are also contending with declining resources, the culture-war politicisation of higher education, and growing hostility towards equity-oriented work – framed as ideological excess rather than the legal, pedagogical, and ethical necessity it actually is. The current moment demands clarity rather than caution, and engaging with this debate isn’t about defending EDI as a programme – it’s about defending the university as a space for pluralism, knowledge production, and social responsibility.
Upon reading the AFFS report, any academic worth their salt will immediately spot the methodological and conceptual flaws, the careless – perhaps even deliberate – overestimation of the credence of its data sets, and the ideologically informed, dubious assumptions it relies upon throughout. It’s barely worth patronising readers with a critique of these things.
But the very existence of the report, and the fact that it’s now widely circulated, warrants a response from those of us who work to promote equity in higher education and face sustained efforts to undermine what we do.
Credibility tests
Despite the report’s scholastic shortcomings, what the AFFS has to say brings into sharper focus a dilemma EDI professionals and critical scholars have faced for decades – do we risk countering anti-EDI claims like those in the AFFS report, even though this might confer on it a credibility it doesn’t deserve? And do we inadvertently end up defending EDI initiatives that we know can sometimes reinforce, rather than challenge, the very inequalities they aim to address?
We only need to look at recent writings by scholars and activists genuinely committed to social justice to understand the legitimate concerns they raise – that EDI initiatives can operate as largely ineffective equity window-dressing, used to maintain an inequitable status quo while giving the impression of doing the opposite.
Does engaging with this report, in one way or another, play into its authors’ hands – either by providing them with undeserved scholarly credibility, or by promoting the very EDI initiatives that might be undercutting our own social justice agenda?
Perhaps the least desirable option is to ignore the AFFS report entirely – we might avoid elevating it to the status of a credible research piece and prevent the spread of its conclusions, but this leaves it free to circulate unchallenged, which will itself be considered a victory of sorts for its authors. Just another piece of landfill, pseudo-academic “research”, drifting around the internet as a populist counterbalance to genuine efforts to make lives better for some of the most marginalised in society.
So, here we find ourselves again, having to defend the work that we do, despite being our own worst critics and wishing this was work that didn’t need doing.
More positively, it would be remiss of us as scholars with specific responsibility for EDI initiatives within our own university not to welcome scrutiny, alternative perspectives, and the opportunity for debate. Despite our obvious misgivings about what the AFFS has produced, it’s worth responding – not just to justify the EDI work we do, but to expose the broader political and ideological agenda of these self-styled defenders of free speech.
With that in mind, and at the risk of patronising our readers, here are some thoughts about why we shouldn’t take the AFFS report seriously – and why we should be sceptical of arguments that position a commitment to freedom of speech and to equity, diversity, and inclusion as somehow incompatible.
Where it falls apart
The report presents a table comparing university EDI expenditure with free-speech compliance ratings and asserts a statistically significant relationship. But correlation alone doesn’t demonstrate causation – institutions with higher EDI investment are overwhelmingly large, research-intensive universities with more complex staffing structures and regulatory exposure. Without controlling for size, student demographics, international recruitment, award-bearing research portfolios, or existing infrastructure, it’s analytically unsound to suggest that EDI spend drives non-compliance.
At best, the data demonstrates juxtaposition, not causality – and before sector policy responds to such findings, deeper inquiry and a transparent methodology are essential.
The report also recommends that higher EDI spend should be matched with parallel investment in free-speech protections, including dedicated free-speech officers and institutional neutrality. This framing subtly positions EDI work as a partisan agenda that needs balancing, rather than a statutory duty and moral commitment to fairness – implying that equity threatens academic freedom rather than enables it.
Here we see the AFFS report’s internal logic and ideological assumptions promoting a fundamental misunderstanding of what EDI work is for. To set the record straight – EDI work doesn’t exist to police ideas. Its purpose is to eliminate barriers to participation, address awarding and progression inequalities, prevent discrimination and harassment, and improve students’ sense of belonging within the university.
It’s also about improving retention and student success, and diversifying leadership and knowledge production to create a more effective institution that’s representative of all the demographics contributing to its operation. EDI expands the pool of voices that get to participate in free speech, who gets to benefit from a university education, and who ultimately goes on to thrive in our society. Freedom of speech has little substance or value if it’s limited to relatively privileged groups who already feel at home within university cultures.
Equity isn’t censorship
Reflecting on our decades of experience in higher education, it’s important to state clearly that a commitment to promoting equity is not a form of censorship. Decolonising the curriculum doesn’t silence academic debate, and promoting belonging for all students – including those from under-represented groups – doesn’t reduce intellectual rigour. The opposite is true. When marginalised staff and students are empowered, universities gain new knowledge, new debate, and expanded intellectual horizons.
If a commitment to freedom of speech means that already powerful voices speak without challenge while marginalised communities must debate their humanity or endure hostilities unprotected, then what’s being defended isn’t freedom – it’s dominance. A healthy academic environment is one where contentious ideas can be debated within a culture of respect, criticality, and safety – not one where harm is tolerated in the name of neutrality.
We must resist misleading narratives that present EDI work as overreach or ideological imposition. Universities invest in EDI because it’s a legal responsibility under the Equality Act, because it improves student achievement and wellbeing, because it’s central to global competitiveness and institutional reputation, because it strengthens research cultures, and because it helps build a university culture where everyone feels they belong.
We don’t pursue equity work as an optional programme – we do it because excellence without inclusion is exclusionary, and because a modern university can’t thrive while inequity persists. An equitable, inclusive university isn’t a constrained intellectual space. It’s a more expansive one.
Over to the sector
The AFFS report is representative of a broader public conversation about the role and legitimacy of EDI strategies in UK higher education – one shaped less by evidence than by political anxiety, culture-war framing, and regulatory fear. Rather than retreating into defensive postures, universities committed to equity and fairness need a proactive and principled response built on clarity, confidence, and institutional courage.
The first priority is communication – institutions must move beyond vague or managerial language and articulate, in plain and accessible terms, what EDI actually does, why it exists, and how it’s evaluated, transparently linking it to legal obligations, student outcomes, staff wellbeing, retention, and academic excellence. Clear narrative coherence is essential to counter caricatures that frame EDI as ideological overreach rather than core institutional infrastructure.
Universities should also explicitly reject the framing that positions free speech and equity as opposing forces, and instead assert that equity is the condition that makes meaningful free speech possible – by expanding who can safely speak, participate, and be heard. At a time when equity initiatives are increasingly politicised, institutional hesitation risks legitimising bad-faith critique, and universities should continue to invest openly and unapologetically in strategies that build belonging, address structural racism, and challenge epistemic exclusion – while remaining critically reflexive about effectiveness and impact.
The sector urgently needs high-quality, methodologically sound research examining not only incidents of speech regulation but the political, legal, and ideological drivers behind the current resurgence of “free speech” discourse – including who defines speech harms, whose speech is protected, and how power operates within debates framed as neutral or universal.
Universities must also ensure that those most affected by speech regulation, harassment, and exclusion are meaningfully involved in shaping institutional responses – moving beyond consultation towards shared governance models that recognise lived experience as a form of expertise, particularly in relation to race, disability, migration status, gender, and faith.
The question facing the sector isn’t whether universities spend too much on EDI, but whether they’re yet investing sufficiently – politically, intellectually, and materially – to transform the structures that continue to reproduce inequality. Retreat, silence, or strategic ambiguity won’t protect universities from attack.
Standing firm
Freedom of speech and EDI are not opposing forces. When done with integrity, accountability, and courage, EDI is the very mechanism that enables free speech – by extending voice, participation, and dignity to those historically excluded from it. Yet this work is already deeply complex and emotionally demanding in a sector where structural inequalities persist, resources are finite, and progress requires sustained cultural change rather than performative gestures or reactionary policy cycles.
Reports like the AFFS’s don’t simply misrepresent the purpose of EDI – they actively undermine it, generating distraction, confusion, and manufactured controversy that forces practitioners to waste time rebutting poorly evidenced claims rather than progressing tangible work that improves the experiences of students and staff.
EDI professionals already face uphill battles – institutional resistance, inconsistent leadership commitment, racism fatigue, emotional labour, and the expectation to deliver transformation without redistribution of power or resource. The last thing the sector needs is yet another bad-faith intervention masquerading as concern for free speech while in practice bolstering those who want to dilute or roll back equity work entirely.
Challenging such narratives isn’t optional – it’s a necessary act of protection, not only of EDI programmes, but of the very principle of a university as a place where knowledge, justice, and pluralism matter.
Our task now is to respond with clarity and resolve. We refuse the false binary that pits equity against free speech and instead reaffirm that equity is the condition that makes free speech meaningful – not a threat to it. We’ll continue building a university where inclusion isn’t seen as a concession but as foundational to academic freedom, knowledge production, and social purpose.
Our commitment remains unwavering – to build an institution that is anti-racist, decolonial, inclusive, and intellectually ambitious for everyone, and to do so despite those who seek to derail or discredit this work.