Cambridge college master emails alumni after donors pull funding over her criticism of gender-critical speaker
Some Cambridge alumni considered the response to be a challenge, and it is understandable that more have since written to complain. Others threaten to withdraw wills or urge their children not to attend university.
William MacKizzi, of Alumni For Free Speech, a new cross-campus network, said: “Her email has gotten away with free speech issues, other than claiming her rights to free speech…They are in a hugely uncomfortable bunker. They should stop drilling”.
Ms Joyce said Professor Rogerson’s response was “unbelievable” because they were “the ones who tried to silence me” and did not mention using the mailing list of all students to “insult her”.
About a hundred protesters, some of them masked, gathered outside the debate last month, chanting “Transgender rights are human rights” and beating drums. Eyewitnesses claimed that the fire door had been hit and that the microphones had to be turned on to full volume because Mrs. Joyce was inaudible.
The Cambridge Sociology faculty also apologized to the students for inviting them to speak.
Professor Arif Ahmed, a colleague of Caius who invited Ms. Joyce, claimed that he had to smuggle some students into the lecture hall because they were “afraid of being ostracized by their fellow students”.
He said the fear of speaking freely was “stalking the halls of academia”, with another row erupting over inviting Professor Kathleen Stock – a philosophy expert who was bullied from the University of Sussex last year – to the Cambridge Union later this month.
