Liam Kennedy: Real danger that freedom of thought in the wider society is put at risk

The ugly mantra was left hanging in the air. Two of the three women subsequently resigned, one reluctantly so.

Claudine Gay, president of Harvard University, held out for several weeks. It did not help that attention began to focus on her wafer-thin academic publications. Worse still, allegations of plagiarism, of a kind for which students would be heavily penalised, began to emerge.

Some donors expressed their disgust that anti-semitic utterances had not been disavowed promptly by the Harvard authorities. Six months into her post, Harvard’s first black president resigned.

Some more attractive mantras have crossed the Atlantic. No, I’m not thinking of ‘Make America Great Again’, translated by the satirical magazine Private Eye as ‘Make America Grope Again’. I am thinking of ‘Equality, Diversity, Inclusion’ (EDI). Who could possibly not delight in such virtuous sentiments?

Indeed, my university, Queen’s University Belfast, has foregrounded EDI in its new policies on making campus life welcoming to all, and to minorities in particular. QUB may be late in tuning in to the latest orthodoxies but it is playing catch-up with gusto. There is now mandatory attendance at EDI-type courses for all members of staff.

There must be some staff whose consciousness on these matters needs to be re-engineered. Trust is in short supply. But might there not be tensions between these three ostensibly laudable objectives?

Commenting on the US scandal, The Economist warned of the dangers of appointing candidates for positions on the basis of gender, race or other protected characteristics that do not necessarily correlate with ability. So equality of opportunity may be sacrificed on the two side-altars of inclusion and diversity.

There is recognition in the Queen’s policies of the minority status and the difficulties facing transgender people. This is as it should be. This tiny fraction of the population, less than one per cent (some say 0.1%), deserves support and protection in the light of deep historical prejudice.

I was surprised, however, to see no mention of disadvantage affecting perhaps 30 to 40% of our students, that of social class.

I have known personally only two colleagues who have transitioned. One is a brilliant economist and historian who transitioned from male to female, underwent surgeries, and is both happy and creative in her skin.

The other is less happy. He transitioned from female to male, experienced several botched operations in London, and lives a life of pain. It may be just a little coy for Queen’s to refer to the ‘challenges’ of transitioning. It can be much more serious than that. In any case, trans colleagues need our empathy and our solidarity, though providing a link to the increasingly discredited Stonewall organisation hardly inspires confidence.

There is a related issue here. It is entirely desirable that trans people and their allies (which should be all of us) campaign for change that serves to include them in the wider community and safeguard them from discrimination. But this should not oblige non-trans people to subscribe to claims with which they see little basis other than assertion.

For instance, I see no reason to jettison the understanding that biological sex is fundamental, though I’m happy to engage in conversations that might persuade me otherwise. I can accept that gender is a set of performative acts and so is in part a social construct but sex manifests itself in so many ways, from hormones and physiology to the ability to conceive and deliver a child. What is surely unacceptable is to see the minority of trans extremists, who may or may not be trans persons themselves, intimidating those with gender critical views and hounding them out of their livelihoods.

A cause celebre is that of Professor Kathleen Stock, a lesbian feminist, who was driven from her post at the University of Sussex and shamefully abandoned by her colleagues because she questioned some of the new dogma surrounding gender issues.

Others have suffered intimidation and death threats. Moreover, it is hard to see how waves of hysterical reaction on social media do any good for the cause of trans people. One might well argue that showing solidarity with trans people means opposing such pile-ons. Prejudice can flow in more than one direction. Yelling ‘transphobe’ at those who hold other views on sex and gender is a regression to the world of playground bullying. I might add, most at risk of ‘progressive’ gender theories are children, particularly autistic children, but that is a whole other story.

Some might or might not be comfortable with a self-declaration of gender identity as sufficient evidence of transitioning from a sexual identity assigned at birth. While the case of the double rapist in Scotland who presented as a woman, and was directed to a female prison, is at the extreme end of the dilemma, many women quite understandably fear the invasion of hitherto female spaces by persons with male bodies. Predatory men haven’t gone away, you know.

Finally, there is a real danger in accepting some currently faddish, almost theological, constructions of gender and gender difference – embedded in a discourse of intolerance – that free inquiry within the universities and freedom of thought in the wider society is at risk.

I cherish the day when my university appoints a president on the basis of the brilliance of their academic achievement - one who just happens to be of working-class origin, old, female, black, Gaelic speaking, and of course transgendered.

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Liam Kennedy is emeritus professor of history QUB and author of Who Was Responsible for the Troubles? The Northern Ireland Conflict.