Academics ‘need clarity’ on navigating disagreements

Disagreements between university staff on academic or political matters are “too often being improperly channelled” into employment and governance processes, according to researchers at The Open University (OU), who have called for a clearer understanding of the boundary between lawful disagreement and unprofessional conduct. 

A paper by OU academics Sara Haslam and Dan Taylor sets out how university staff can better work “with disagreement”. 

The document, which stemmed from a working group set up by the university in the wake of the controversial Jo Phoenix case but does not reflect an institutional position, draws on facilitated discussions with OU academics about disagreement over political and academic matters. 

Despite free speech laws being in place, it identifies “persistent uncertainty about the professional boundaries around academic freedom and disagreement and their intersection with legislation or policy designed to protect individuals”.

Taylor, a senior lecturer in social and political thought, told Times Higher Education that “academic colleagues across the board, not just here but everywhere, are finding it increasingly difficult to work out and navigate what the bounds of disagreement are, particularly when it comes down to issues around politics and values”. 

It follows statements by officials at the Office for Students suggesting that students should expect to be exposed to views they find offensive, and Haslam and Taylor argue in the report the same should apply to higher education staff. 

“Where disagreement about such matters becomes difficult to manage or is side-stepped, the result can be a contraction in the range of viewpoints or research that colleagues feel able to pursue or address, with consequences for academic freedom and the wider culture of scholarly dialogue,” the paper notes.

The paper, “Working with Disagreement at The Open University”, says many colleagues “avoid open discussion” of such difficulties, while “yearning for a clearer statement of their professional rights and responsibilities”.

In conversations, the researchers found some staff were “aghast at attempts by others to twist disagreement on social or political matters into an employment or governance issue”. 

In 2024, an employment tribunal found that gender-critical academic Jo Phoenix had been forced to quit her position at the OU after facing a “hostile environment” from colleagues – something the tribunal said the university had failed to protect her from. 

“Disagreement on academic or political matters is too often being improperly channelled into employment and governance processes, distorting both,” the paper says.

“When academic disputes are escalated through complaints, open letters or institutional pressure rather than resolved through professional discussion, the consequences – as the Prof. Jo Phoenix case demonstrated in recent years – are severe for individuals and for the university.”

Haslam, a professor of 20th-century literature, said they wanted to encourage thinking “about where a disagreement should lie, and whether it stays in the professional or cultural space, or whether it moves into the governance and policy space”. 

The paper says the issues around scholarly disagreement were exacerbated by remote working and an “increasingly polarised political environment”. 

“The result, as described by colleagues, is a working culture that is risk-averse, constrained and increasingly unable to defend the university’s core public mission,” the paper says. “Silence and resentment take the place of working with disagreement.”

It suggests establishing a virtual “Common Room” for staff to “post and discuss various campaigns and open letters, or hold open debates on a given topic”. 

“The aim is not to resolve disputes but to normalise the practice of working through disagreement as part of academic culture, and to provide a space where the ‘grey’ area of thinking…is actively valued,” the report says.  

Haslam and Taylor added that this would also reduce pressure on academics who do not want to be involved with controversial or difficult conversations. 

“Some colleagues actually feel quite stressed by, say, an invitation to sign an open letter,” said Haslam. 

They also recommended continuing the facilitated discussions across the university as an “investment in academic self governance”.

“What we found as we were talking to folk is that there was a thirst for this kind of conversation,” said Haslam. “The fear sort of dissipated as the conversations were happening.”

The paper warns that if academics cannot self-govern when it comes to matters of free speech and disagreement, “we invite chaos and can only expect top-down management incursion or external imposition – and that is worse for everyone”.

“The alternative to colleagues responsibly governing our own professional culture is having it governed for us.”

helen.packer@timeshighereducation.com