Buckingham University shows how we can fight the culture war

In the age of cancel culture, relying solely on our ancient institutions to uphold liberal ideals is a fool’s game. We must also support and encourage insurgent establishments that truly understand, and take seriously, those sacred freedoms. The University of Buckingham is one such admirable institution.

Earlier this year, the University of Nottingham withdrew its offer of an honorary degree to racism tsar Tony Sewell following pressure from censorious activists after the publication of Sewell’s pioneering report that questioned long-held taboos about racism in Britain.

The report rightly highlighted the importance of delving into the nuances and complexities of racial disparities instead of falling back on generalisations such as “institutional racism”.

This week, however, the University of Buckingham, a private university, has awarded Sewell an honorary degree in recognition of his work in helping disadvantaged children get to university. Buckingham may be less well-known than Nottingham, but its increasingly active support for free speech and academic freedom is earning it a reputation as a pioneer for liberty. 

The vice-chancellor, Prof James Tooley, has called for better protections for academics facing harassment and censure for their research and the university has twice topped university free speech ranking for its positive promotion of open inquiry and rigorous debate. This is what outstanding moral leadership looks like.

When faced with seemingly endless examples of historical erasure and cultural denigration, there is a risk of succumbing to pessimistic fatalism. It is easy to believe, for example, that this new generation is a lost cause, already fully indoctrinated into the cult of identity politics. Or that our institutions are already captured and there is little we can do about it now. Some even argue that we should fight fire with fire and play the censors at their own game. But none of this has to be the case.

The best way to champion liberal ideals is to embody them. That means having these arguments out in the open, defending those with whom we fundamentally disagree, taking a public stand against those who seek to tear us apart, and building new spaces that give life and meaning to these foundational ideas. This is how the culture war is won.

The actions of the University of Nottingham only served to expose its shallowness. Few people are more deserving of an honorary degree than Sewell, a man who has dedicated his life and work to advancing and improving the material lives of some of the most disadvantaged young people in the country – and one who has taken great risks to challenge prevailing narratives with courageous thinking and scholarship. If a university does not champion intellectual bravery then you have to ask whether there is any point in it at all.

In America, the University of Austin in Texas was launched last year with the goal of advocating “unfettered pursuit of truth” and “freedom of inquiry, freedom of conscience, and civil discourse”. It has exciting and ambitious plans to revivify intellectual life.

We in the UK should be watching closely but, thankfully, there are already places such as the University of Buckingham which remind us how higher education institutions can enable liberal democratic societies to thrive.