Leeds University has suspended a lecturer, Frank Ellis, for voicing his opinion that black people are, on average, less intelligent than white people. There has been much debate about the propriety of the University's action, both for and against it. Myself, I find Ellis's views repellent but, broadly for the reasons given here, I don't think he should be suspended. Freedom of speech is too important, and too fragile, a right to be abandoned for anything less than direct threat to others. Of course, I also think (well, it's the same thought, really) that the rest of us have a right to criticize his views, and his voicing of them, as trenchantly as we please, again within the same constraint of no direct threat to others. That's what I think, although I can see how others might think differently – these racial generalizations come to us enveloped in the shadows of past horrors committed in their name, and we may be tempted to think that those horrors justify us in forbidding anyone to voice them. But as I've suggested, there are important reasons to resist that thought.
However, what really puzzles me about this case is the reason that the University seems to think it has for silencing Ellis. Apparently Ellis is being accused of violating the 2002 Race Relations (Amendment) Act, according to which public bodies, including universities, are obliged to promote equality of opportunity and good relations among people of different races. But if the universities are really bound in this way by the Act, why haven't we heard about it before now? Why, for example, haven't universities taken action against those academics who have called in the past, and probably will call again in the future, for a boycott of Israeli academics? There can be no doubt that such demands, even if they aren't successful, do not promote good relations among people of different races (assuming, as the Act itself does, that there are in fact races, even if they're only social constructs). I myself don't want to see those pro-boycott academics suspended from their jobs, repellent though I often find their views. Freedom of speech really matters, even when the speech in question is obnoxious. But it looks as if Leeds University ought to want to suspend them, and so should other UK universities, if they have these duties under the Race Relations Act. Why has nothing been done about this? Pshhh. I think we should be told. (Eve Garrard)
Updated at 2.35 PM: See now the exchange about this posted here.