Statement on the Events at South College, December 3^rd, 2021  

We in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures offer our utmost support to, and pride in, the students of South College, the members of Durham’s LGBTQ+ community, our students and staff of colour, and the president and elected officers of the Durham Students’ Union. The School takes this opportunity to reiterate our unequivocal commitment to the University as a place of inclusion, not discrimination. 

The University’s policy of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion states our conviction that the best outcomes of wellbeing and achievement will be forthcoming when ‘everyone respects and understands the value of different people working together’; when ‘everyone is treated fairly’; and when ‘negative behaviours and attitudes such as prejudice, discrimination and harassment are unacceptable, and people feel supported to challenge these.’ We will not tolerate any bullying, aggression, harassment or abuse, which we take to include micro-aggressions and patterns of unwelcome behaviour such as misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and classism. Far from being ‘against’ free speech, we know just how far our students are willing and able to engage with troubling ideas – in classroom and lecture settings designed to provide context, nuance and the right to reply, without fear of being harassed in their own home, or made subject to ridicule. In standing against prejudice and for the values of the Durham community, they have been scapegoated for defending the very right to freedom of expression they are now lazily claimed to have undermined.  

As educators, we agree that university experience should include exposure to new and potentially unsettling material. But engaging with controversy sensitively, through an examination of evidence and the highest standards of academic research, not invective and opinion, is fundamental for students’ development of the confidence and security in their arguments that they are now displaying so exemplarily. We have, as a School, accordingly been deeply concerned to learn of the events at Durham’s South College on the evening of December 3^rd, 2021, following the invitation to the College’s formal Christmas dinner of a high-profile external speaker whose after-dinner speech went on to cause serious upset to others present. We note that the invited journalist is neither an academic nor an investigative reporter, but a columnist whose positions are not routinely bound by the same approach to rigour, critical scrutiny and the scientific method expected of university-level discussion. 

We hope that current students perturbed by the way the evening played out will not be deterred from making use of the pastoral support for which the Durham collegiate system is rightly famed. Our overriding priority, as ever, is to provide both current and incoming students with the kind of warm and inclusive environments for living and learning that enable all of us to reach our potential. 

We encourage students affected by the incident to seek out the array of EDI support services provided within the University: https://www.durham.ac.uk/about-us/professional-services/equality-diversity-inclusion/ 

Student Support and Wellbeing: https://www.durham.ac.uk/colleges-and-student-experience/student-support-and-wellbeing/

Durham Nightline: https://durhamnightline.com/ 

For those looking beyond the University, help and advice are also available via organisations including Humankind: https://humankindcharity.org.uk/