Universities in England should rearrange classrooms and use the Chatham House rule to help students overcome their fears of discussing controversial topics, according to the government’s lead on free speech.
Arif Ahmed, the Office for Students’ director of freedom of speech and academic freedom, said there was a significant danger to academic integrity if speech and expression were restricted on campuses, and he urged universities to take positive steps to tackle student reticence.
“There’s a range of innovative approaches that I think universities should be willing to think about,” Ahmed told the Guardian in his first public interview since the government’s review of freedom of speech legislation last year.
“Let’s think about, for instance, what’s the geography of a classroom? It might be something as simple as that. Or it might be asking people to write essays defending views that they actively dislike or perhaps even detest.
“There are other sorts of psychological techniques, for instance like deep listening, or should we use Chatham House rules [sic] in classroom discussions? Or should we have rules about [restricting] recordings? There’s a whole range of things that we can do practically, and I’m keen for universities to think innovatively about what they can do to get people talking.”
The Chatham House rule – named after a meeting place in London where discussions are held without views being attributed to individuals – “might be a way of encouraging people to raise and discuss controversial matters”, he said.
Ahmed said that in his experience as a teacher, students needed encouraging “not to feel scared to raise subjects or put forward points of view that people might find difficult, offensive, shocking, disturbing.
“When it comes to really important matters, whether it’s life or death matters, abortion, euthanasia, immigration, race, all of these things, it’s really important that people feel feel to discuss them freely, and even if they don’t endorse certain views they should be free to discuss those views. Otherwise we can’t have a proper conversation.”
Deep listening, another technique Ahmed champions, involves a listener making a summary of an opponent’s position and revising it until the opponent agrees it is accurate. Researchers have found success in using the techniques in divided communities such as Cyprus.
Ahmed has been in the role for nearly 18 months but the general election last year and the incoming government’s decision to suspend implementation of the new campus freedom of speech law left him in limbo.
But the government is to issue revised regulations later this year, allowing him to fulfil his role for the first time since his appointment.
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Ahmed said one source of hostility to free speech came from leaders afraid of damaging their university’s corporate image, especially involving lucrative commercial relationships with other countries.
“I’m not going to name any specific country but it’s always going to be important that university leaders think very carefully about the consequences for freedom of speech or academic freedom when they enter into these arrangements,” he said.
“It is really important that we have international ties and that we have international students coming in, they bring so much to this country, of course nobody wants that to stop.
“What is important is that it be managed in a way that is transparent and shows universities have done careful due diligence in relation to human rights and freedom of speech.”
