Alice Sullivan: Cancellation of gender-critical scholars not over

“I’ve been no platformed several times recently – this isn’t over yet,” says UCL sociologist Alice Sullivan on the continued censorship faced by gender-critical academics.

With her new book Sex, Lies and Statistics enjoying rave reviews, new laws formalising free speech protection on campus and the Labour government apparently heeding her recommendation made in the Sullivan Review to ensure data is collected by default based on respondents’ biological sex, one might assume the “gender wars” that raged at UK universities in recent years are over, along with the noisy demands to stop talks by academics committed to the idea that sex is binary.

But Sullivan said pressure to shun those deemed transphobic remains intense, albeit the demands are less visible. “I will still hear about the venue that’s cancelled me but you don’t hear – for the most part – about the occasions where someone wanted to invite me but chose not to,” she said.

During Sullivan’s talk at the University of Bristol in October 2025, activists scaled the walls to bang on windows as she lectured about how census and crime data had been undermined by encouraging people to categorise themselves based on their preferred gender rather than sex.

At the University of Edinburgh in 2023, protesters physically tried to block women from entering a building hosting a book launch arranged by Sullivan and others.

Not afraid to wade into public controversies – she recently joined the panel of the rival review into Jason Arday’s appointment at the University of Cambridge – and with almost 30,000 followers on X, Sullivan has been accused of manufacturing free speech rows to boost her own profile. If anything, she has under-reported the level of hostility and censorship that she has faced, she insisted.

“People probably think I’m straight on the phone to a journalist whenever anything happens but there are lots of things that aren’t in the public domain,” she said, although her new book itemises some of the letters of denunciation directed against her, including one signed by 480 scholars outraged that she was permitted to speak at an AdvanceHE event in 2022.

Confronted with determined efforts to silence her, working at a university founded on a desire to challenge orthodox thinking and conformism (the “godless institution in Gower Street”, as Matthew Arnold called UCL) has been important, believed Sullivan. “I’ve been relatively fortunate to be at UCL, even though it hasn’t done anything amazing [to protect my academic freedom],” she said.

“But when you look at what happened to Kathleen Stock at Sussex or Jo Phoenix at The Open University, you can see how bad things can get. Many people have told me: ‘I’m not willing to speak out because I know what will happen to me’,” she continued.

Even within her own institution Sullivan continues to face internal criticism despite leading UCL’s Social Research Institute. Last month UCL president Michael Spence told a conference in Edinburgh that he had received a complaint after a lecturer informed a seminar: “It’s just not worth having Alice Sullivan.”

“UCL was founded on the radical notion that you could think very different things and nevertheless live together well in community,” reflected Spence on why UCL’s 10,000-strong body of academics needed outspoken scholars like Sullivan, adding the university’s “founding vision” of pluralistic thought combined with robust and respectful debate was “more important than ever” as it celebrates its 200th anniversary this year.

“I’ve always had a lot of support from my peers in quantitative social sciences,” reflected Sullivan, who was shortlisted for last year’s Maddox Prize, an award to recognise those who “stand up for sound science and evidence in the public interest” in the face of hostility.  “But my views have always been uncontroversial and squarely in the middle of mainstream public opinion. When I became involved in this debate, however, I couldn’t say, in an academic setting, things that almost everyone believed,” reflected Sullivan.

“To say sex is real and binary has long been mainstream but we have shifted a long way from that view [in academia]. Even in some departments in UCL I’m not sure I’d be able to say what I do now as an authoritarian culture has taken hold,” she added.

Too often universities have allowed protesters to score victories by shutting down events or disrupting them to the extent where would-be attendees feel too intimidated to turn up, argued Sullivan. “Institutions have not tried to dampen down that febrile atmosphere that takes hold when the mob targets someone. The opposite is true: if you let people win using aggressive tactics then they’ll keep doing the same thing.”

Praised by several critics as one of the books of 2026, Sex, Lies and Statistics, published on 13 November, is Sullivan’s most comprehensive take on how gender activists have been so successful in capturing public policy and, in doing so, eroding the usefulness of trusted information sources such as medical research journals and the Office for National Statistics.

This issue is one that should concern academics across the political spectrum, the book explains. Stressing that the need for women to be counted properly in the national census was a preoccupation of Emily Wilding Davison and other suffragettes, Sullivan explains her fight for reliable data should not be written off as part of a right-wing culture war, even if it aligns with Donald Trump’s views on this matter. “When people on the left walk away from this debate because they don’t want to be associated with anything Trump, Robert Kennedy or anyone on the right says, that’s very damaging,” she said.

“There is a massive danger that the left just leave this to those with anti-science ideas –  the lunatic right – which makes it much harder to challenge. We need academics who are pro-science, pro-logic and pro-Enlightenment values to be part of this discussion.”

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com