Edinburgh University’s new rector must save it from gender ideology

Simon Fanshawe has been installed as the rector of Edinburgh University. The arrival of the comedian and Stonewall dissident to the post will hopefully bring to an end a dismal episode in the life of one of Britain’s greatest academic institutions. But don’t bank on it. The campaign by transgender activists and others to uninstall Mr Fanshawe is already underway – and they know what they are doing. 

For the past decade a collection of campus zealots has been allowed to run rampant in this supposed seat of higher learning. They have threatened the health and livelihoods of lecturers and banned freedom of speech – often with the tacit acquiescence of the university authorities. 

One of Mr Fanshawe’s predecessors as rector, the Labour Party activist and feminist Ann Henderson, became afraid to appear on campus following her intimidation by trans activists, annoyed that she wouldn’t utter the dogma that ‘transwomen are women’. With the  endorsement of the University and College Union (UCU) these activists have been allowed to prevent the showing of films like ‘Adult Human Female’, which was regarded as transphobic because it questions gender ideology. James Kirkup shed light on this in The Spectator as the editor of Edinburgh’s student newspaper wrote about why she stood by her decision not to cover the film’s screening. 

Liberal minded academics like the social scientist Dr Neil Thin have faced attempts to hound them out of their jobs. In Thin’s case, it was for simply making wry observations about student groups claiming to be anti-racist yet holding events that excluded white people. Dr Thin also criticised the lamentable decision by the University Court to cancel the Enlightenment philosopher David Hume on the basis of an allegedly racist footnote to an 18^th-century essay.  

At the height of the recent campus culture war, university authorities shamefully agreed to rename the Hume Tower after they received a petition from students claiming that it offended the international student body. They couldn’t bear the pain of attending lectures in a building dedicated to such a racist, even though Hume was a lifelong opponent of racism. They were reportedly going to rename it the Julius Nyerere tower, until someone pointed out that the Tanzanian dictator and Edinburgh alumnus was a rampant homophobe. It is now called after its address, 40 George Square – which was built in 1766 and bears the name of the monarch, George III, who vastly extended the British Empire. It would take a stone not to laugh.

Mr Fanshawe will find no shortage of comic material in Edinburgh University campus but the campaign against him is no joke. The black-balling bigots are well versed in the arts of covert intimidation and until now have gone largely unchallenged by a supine university administration that seems incapable of defending its own staff let alone freedom of speech.

So who are these people? Edinburgh University Labour Students have leapt to condemn Fanshawe’s election because of his alleged views on transgenderism. An open letter has been set up by an anonymous user on Organise.com that accuses the new rector of being a transphobe and a bigot. 

Fanshawe is neither. Nor has he threatened ‘the legitimacy of trans people’ as has been alleged by Jonathan MacBride of the University’s staff pride network. Fanshawe was one of the founders of the LGBT campaign group Stonewall and has been a lifelong campaigner for the rights of sexual minorities. His crime however has been to be openly critical of Stonewall’s insistence on promoting the idea that ‘transwomen are women’ and demonising anyone who disagrees. He has also spoken in favour of ‘women’s sex-based rights and protections’, rather in the manner of the author JK Rowling who has been one of the biggest donors to the University in the past. Certainly, the group Edinburgh Academics for Academic Freedom can hardly believe what has happened: ‘We’re over the moon’

The fact that the lecturers’ trade union, the UCU, has supported the curbs on free speech and thought in Edinburgh University, for example with the Adult Human Female showing, tells you all you need to know. This academic institution has been invaded by the curious quasi-religious belief that people can change sex by an act of the imagination.

I am myself a former elected rector of Edinburgh University and I have been bewildered and appalled at what has happened to this institution since I stood down in 2012. I could never have imagined that this flight into obscurantism could have happened here of all places. But as Sir Tom Devine, emeritus professor of history at Edinburgh, said: ‘A sinister culture had been allowed to develop in Scotland’s greatest university.’ Hopefully Fanshawe, an open-minded rector and chair of the university court, will be able to guide this addled institution back to something resembling sanity.