Free speech essential to university life, Cambridge chancellor candidate says
Universities must stay committed to free speech, a leading contender for the chancellorship of Cambridge University has said.
In comments likely to be seen as Lord Browne setting out his stall for leadership of one of Britain's leading universities, the former head of BP described freedom of speech as the single value which must 'not change' in higher education institutions.
The 77-year-old made the comments as the race to replace Lord Sainsbury as the next ceremonial head of Cambridge University gains momentum ahead of the election in July.
The official list of candidates is yet to be released but potential contenders include Mohamed El-Erian, the economist, Gina Miller, the anti-Brexit campaigner, and Michael Portillo, the former Conservative minister.
Alumni and senior members of the university and its colleges are eligible to vote in the election.
Lord Browne, who led BP between 1995 and 2007 before founding an environmentalist investment group, made the comments in an interview at Hay literary festival in Powys, south Wales.
Asked how universities should respond to threats to free speech, such as the pressure exerted on American institutions by Donald Trump 's administration, Lord Browne said: 'There's been a lot of change in universities. But the values must not change.
'Universities embody this great thing that says: I may disagree with your view, but I will fight to make sure you can say it.
'People need to be able to say what they think, so long as they do it in the spirit of debate and they [do so] in a way which recognises they may disagree with each other but they can have that debate.'
Universities, he added, 'are not there to form government policy and not there to have walls, that's the role of nation states, but they are there to really engage with the future.'
The US administration has withheld $4 billion (£2.95 billion) funding for Harvard in a move intended to punish the country's wealthiest university for refusing to comply with demands to clamp down on its diversity initiatives.
The cut to funding will hamper critical research into infectious diseases at the university, Harvard's president warned last month.
Addressing the situation in the US, Lord Browne said: 'Some things have now been forbidden, or chilled down to zero, in the US. 'Research on climate, for instance, these things have been, dare I say banned, since Trump.'
Cambridge University was at the centre of a free speech row in 2020 when academics roundly rejected a policy which asked that scholars be 'respectful' of differing views.
A new policy which emphasised 'tolerance' was passed in its place.
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