ABSTRACT
Universities in the United Kingdom face a long-standing crisis of public confidence. They are the subject of moral panic, accused either of unfairly restricting freedom of speech, or of giving too much freedom to Islamist extremists. In recent years they have also seen unprecedented levels of government attempts to regulate their freedom of speech in a top-down way. This chapter introduces these issues and the key themes of the book. While much of the media interest in campus freedom of speech issues focuses on student activism, this book focuses on the impact of key regulatory structures: first the counter-terrorism measure the Prevent Duty, and second, charity law as it applies to students’ unions, and their regulation in most cases by the Charity Commission for England and Wales. These structures have a particularly significant impact on Muslim students and staff. The chapter also examines two common trends in discussions about freedom of speech: seeing it solely as a matter of rights, where one’s right to exercise it is absolute; or seeing it as a risk to be managed, leading to risk aversion. The chapter suggests that a third approach is the only way forward: freedom of speech as requiring reciprocity, via deliberative democracy.
