Academic who said she was ‘personally victimised’ by trans flags accuses university of ‘no-platforming’ her
University of Sussex professor Dr Kathleen Stock.
A “gender-critical” academic who said she was personally victimised by trans flags put up to protest Donald Trump has now claimed she’s been “no-platformed”, after a university postponed her seminar citing safety concerns.
Dr Kathleen Stock, a philosophy professor at Sussex University, claimed to Times Higher Education on January 7 that she faces a “hostile environment” in the workplace because of “very targeted behaviour” against her.
The “targeted behaviour” was pink, white and blue trans flags, put up by faculty staff to show solidarity with trans students at Sussex University after global events impacting the trans community, including Donald Trump’s administration reportedly pushing a policy to legally erase transgender people.
Stock, who denies that her “gender-critical” views on trans rights are transphobic, was due to give a seminar on diversity and inclusion at the University of East Anglia next week.
UEA postponed her talk, citing “security and health and safety issues”, and said it will be held once a bigger venue with additional security has been found.
Stock, who has previously said “trans women are still males with male genitalia”, has accused UEA of “no-platforming” her, telling The Telegraph: “I think this is part of a wider pattern where an invitation to speak is given in the normal way, and then senior management panic in response apparently to some kind of protest.
“They know that can’t say they are cancelling the talk, so they say we are ‘postponing’ it in the interests of something nebulous like health and safety.”
UAE said that, as well as a bigger venue and additional security, they would find a trans speaker to give a talk in the week following Stock’s seminar.
The university said that “the views of members of the transgender community” had to be respected and that Stock’s talk “raised issues of academic freedom”.
Stock previously penned a letter calling for universities to “sever their links” with Stonewall, one of the UK’s most respected LGBT+ charities.
The letter claimed that Stonewall’s work is “in tension with academic freedom” because the charity calls for a trans-inclusive stance in education and opposes “transphobic” teaching and research material.
Stock has previously denied opposing trans rights, saying: “I emphatically deny that I am transphobic. I vocally uphold the rights of trans women to be free of violence and discrimination, but I question whether the only way to protect trans women from violence is to allow trans women into female communal spaces.”
