Why Scottish universities are failing staff and students — and how to fix them

I RECENTLY STUDIED  at a Scottish university and was shocked at what I discovered.

I earn my crust as a technical writer in software. Several years ago I began to write commercial fiction as a hobby — nothing highbrow, mainly romantic suspense and crime thrillers. I soon realised that writing novels is much harder than writing technical manuals, so I enrolled in a part-time master’s in creative writing at a Scottish university.

The course was useful and I learned a lot, but I was surprised at some of the things we were being taught. For example, during a class on publishing, the tutor asked us to read Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed — an educational theory that advocates empowering marginalized individuals to challenge their oppression. Not much use to authors wanting to learn about book marketing. The same tutor also used another lecture to rip into JK Rowling for being “a massive TERF.”

Regardless, I decided to continue my studies and applied to do a part-time, self-funded PhD. My project involved writing a novel and a thesis that would examine the history of sex education in Scottish schools.

The university liked my proposal and invited me to an interview where I met the supervisory team. During this and in the subsequent follow-up emails, I was told I would have to consider “a range of gender presentations”, and my supervisors would take an “inclusive, trans-positive approach” — in other words, I was being told what to think and what to write.

Inclusion means excluding the views of anyone who questions or challenges it

So, I withdrew my application and began to dig …

Initially, my focus was on transgender ideology since it was my refusal to believe humans can change sex that was the obstacle to my PhD. I quickly realised trans ideology is only one head of the hydra. And the hydra’s name is Critical Theory. Some call it “woke”, or “radical progressivism”, or “cultural Marxism” but it’s all the same thing.

It’s a hard-left philosophy that began in the Frankfurt School in the 20th century, which views everything in society through a lens of power and oppression. It regards racial, sexual and gender minorities as sacred, and advocates for the transfer of power and resources from the majority to so-called “disadvantaged” minorities. It has spawned Critical Race Theory, queer theory, postcolonial theory, and intersectionality, to name but a few.

Critical Theory will also sacrifice anything that gets in the way of its “social justice” project, including free speech, academic freedom, and scientific knowledge.

Over the past 20 years, our universities have become captured by this ideology. It hides in plain sight as DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion.

EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion) began as a noble idea with good intentions – the idea that by understanding our differences, we might learn to tolerate and respect one another.

DEI is its evil twin: a “queering” of the idea to birth a new religion that celebrates all forms of diversity except diversity of thought and opinion. Equity means forcing equal outcomes on different groups, which lowers standards. Inclusion means excluding the views of anyone who questions or challenges it. DEI is a deeply divisive creed that does the very opposite of what it purports to do.

DEI has infested our universities, and is slowly destroying everything that higher education is supposed to promote.

Teacher training colleges were amongst the first to fall – what better way for activists to spread their ideology than to unleash it on the young.

In universities, staff and students alike now find themselves amid a stifling groupthink, in which questioning it is verboten.

Academics cannot apply for a job or a research grant without submitting a “diversity statement”, forcing them to swear allegiance to the new orthodoxy. Lecturers are told to “decolonise” their curricula to infuse them with an anti-Western dogma. Staff must undertake “anti-racism” training which calls for discrimination against white people, and display pronouns in their bios to demonstrate fealty to radical gender ideology. Students are compelled to take “diversity tests” which tell them they suffer from “white privilege”.

Heretics are silenced or removed to ensure the dogma’s grip is maintained in what were once politically-neutral institutions. Professors Kathleen Stock and Jo Phoenix were hounded from their jobs because they dared to speak out against the doctrine. The group Academics for Academic Freedom lists nearly 200 academics who have been sacked, harassed, or prevented from giving talks in recent years.

On campuses today, the results are evident: student mobs, speech codes, open letters demanding dissenters be sacked, together with ludicrous protests (Queers for Palestine!).

Attempts by the University of Edinburgh to screen the documentary Adult Human Female (which explores the impact of gender ideology on women’s rights) were cancelled twice after trans rights activists formed blockades and blocked venue entrances.

So, how do we tackle the problem? Well, our American cousins have shown us the way.
Our universities and colleges are heavily reliant on public funding for teaching and research. They receive approximately £2 billion per year from the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), which is financed by the Scottish Government.

This money could be used as a powerful lever to change behaviour, such as insisting that admissions are based on merit, not quotas. Any institution that refuses to remove its DEI policies and practices should be defunded. For example, the US administration demanded that Harvard close its DEI programs, reform its admissions policy, and ban face masks used by pro-Palestinian protesters.

I believe that only Reform UK will return our once world-class universities to their original purpose: to educate rather than indoctrinate, and to pursue truth, evidence and reasoned debate.

And I propose a new ministerial role: the ‘Wokefinder General’.