Provost's update: How do we manage disagreement and diverse views in our community?

Dear colleagues,

Thanks to everyone who got in touch with their views, ideas and offers of support after my last email, especially the person who pointed out that I had asked for feedback but not given an email to send it to. All comments are gratefully received at president.provost@ucl.ac.uk.

In this month’s message, I want to think about, and get your views on, a subject about which I get a lot of emails in one form or another: how do we collectively approach the fact that being a diverse community means being a place where a wide diversity of conflicting opinions and ideas exist and are expressed?

A regular feature of my inbox is people troubled or angry about a particular event or speaker representing views that the writer believes to be contrary to UCL values, and sometimes deeply personally distressing, while at the other end of the spectrum are people concerned that others in our community appear to be attempting to silence or ‘deplatform’ them because they disagree with what they are saying. (In highlighting this, by the way, I do not intend to discourage people from contacting me; in the vast majority of cases, those who do so are raising issues about which it is useful and important for me to hear and with which I want to engage.)

With almost every issue, my response comes back to freedom of speech as both a core value for UCL and a legal duty.

Under the current legislative framework, we have duties not merely to uphold freedom of speech, but actively to take steps to promote it. These duties extend beyond such conceptions of academic freedom as protect a narrower class of speech than that protected by general free speech principles. Moreover, while we have duties under the equalities legislation, those duties as they apply to universities are shaped by a presumption that communities of our kind are ones in which people should expect to be confronted with ideas and expression which they find confronting, offensive, uncomfortable, and even impact on their core sense of self, as well as ideas and expression with which they agree.

But beyond a glib affirmation of the principles of free speech sits the more knotty and complex questions of how we live together as a community in which there are many sharp differences of opinion, often deeply held and personally felt. It is easy to uphold freedom of speech as a principle; it is not always easy to live with it in practice, especially for those who feel that they are on the sharp end of it. Disagreement is the inevitable product of diversity, and we must learn to navigate it successfully.

Perhaps part of the problem, and part of the solution, lies in the nature of our dialogue, and in the fact that in the majority of cases we are not actually having a dialogue, but rather a monologue. Freedom of speech is sacrosanct in the academic life because we recognise that it is through rigorous and objective exchange, analysis and challenge that knowledge is expanded. But let us be honest: this does not characterise a lot of the debates that are happening within our community. In reality, more often than not, our events are made up of speakers and audiences of people who are in agreement and reflect each other’s pre-existing opinions and assumptions back at them. Where differing opinions are put on the same platform, it is usually regarded as a gladiatorial combat in which each person is waiting for their turn to explain why their opponent is wrong, rather than listening with an open mind and a willingness to genuinely consider alternative viewpoints.

I would love us to be having better debates and disagreements, in which the objective is not to ‘win’ but to extend mutual understanding, in which we learn the art of being okay with difference, of strongly disagreeing but still attempting to understand where an opposing view is coming from, of disliking an opinion or idea but not the person holding it. I would love us to celebrate epistemic humility as a virtue, and to practice finding language commensurate with the goal of increasing understanding. We must never tolerate personal attacks, bullying or harassment based on a person’s identity or their views, which is never acceptable and against which we must always act strongly. But the uncomfortable sensation that an issue about which you have felt absolutely certain might not be so clear-cut as you thought, that you might even be wrong, is something we should all feel from time to time if we are not being shallow in our intellectual endeavours. We certainly owe it to our students to teach them the core life skill of being able to navigate a world in which not everyone thinks in the same way as them.

(I should say, incidentally, that in promoting this kind of debate, I am not assuming that we will, on many crucial issues, achieve any kind of consensus, or even the discourse ideals of deliberative democracy. But even Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic pluralism in which “the “other” is no longer seen as an enemy to be destroyed, but as an “adversary” i.e., somebody with whose ideas we are going to struggle but whose right to defend them we will not put into question”, seems better than some of the ways that we approach differing opinions now.)

Of course, in order to achieve that kind of debate, it is also crucial that amongst our academic staff and students there is genuine diversity; this means diversity in all aspects from gender, sex, sexual orientation, disability, race, religion or belief. It is easy for a department to hire to a cookie-cutter pattern and so to engage in a process of self-reproduction in which genuine disagreement is impossible because of the predominance of a certain kind of group-think. Fortunately, I have not seen that phenomenon at UCL, and long may that continue to be the case.

The need to change our culture of disagreement and debate is easy to diagnose but, of course, harder to achieve. We will be making the first steps later this spring with the start of a ‘disagreeing well’ initiative, which will include a number of projects and activities based on the understanding that there will always be strong differences of opinion at UCL and that positive engagement with alternative views is a vital academic and life skill. I hope as many people as possible will engage with this work. Please register your interest here to be one of the first to find out more about the initial event and get involved.

These are not easy issues. Many will say that there are clear lines past which we must not disagree well but condemn; and there will be strong disagreement about what and where those lines are. I really would value hearing all ideas and opinions.

Your responses

I really appreciate all of the engaged and interesting responses to my last email, including feedback on how UCL might support academics to develop policy contacts and share their expertise better with policymakers and some creative ideas of how we might engage better with politicians and improve public understanding of universities. Ideas for future topics for discussion have ranged from how we might utilise the force of our huge alumni community better to the development and management of our estate, including how we think about sustainability. Please keep telling me what you think and what you want to talk about.

University Management Committee discussions

UMC, the university’s senior management team, meets weekly to focus on key decisions, planning and issues and I will share the top decisions and discussions coming out of those meetings in my emails to you. Recent meetings have covered:

• UMC reviewed current trends in student recruitment. There was then a preliminary discussion about how we might evolve the principles underpinning our admissions system. A detailed discussion paper will return for initial discussion at UMC in April and will be shared with Academic Leadership Group thereafter.
• The committee also reviewed the KPIs that will be used to track progress against the strategic plan, and the indicators that will be reviewed monthly by UMC on issues key to the running of the university. The budget forecast was also discussed.
• UMC reviewed progress against key EDI benchmarks in preparation for reporting to Council. There was also discussion of a proposal to establish a Task and Finish Group on religion and belief. This will take representations from across the university to understand the practical steps that might be taken to better support staff and students with their faith commitments or in ensuring they feel able to express their beliefs. The EDI team will work on the terms of reference and membership for that group with the aim of it beginning consultation during this academic year.
• UMC also reviewed and approved a proposal to accelerate the payment of a 5% uplift on the London allowance with the first tranche of the pay award, rather than splitting this into two increases with the pay award (the second in August this year). The London allowance is the element of the pay settlement that is determined locally, outside of nationally-agreed awards and pay scales.

Thanks again and I look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes,
Michael

Dr Michael Spence
UCL President & Provost