Pro-Palestine student activists in UK left disappointed by 'mixed bag' free speech guidelines for universities

Student campaigners have been left underwhelmed by last week’s guidance from England’s higher education regulator, intended to bolster freedom of speech on campus.

The Office for Students (OfS) said the regulatory advice should help institutions “navigate” their responsibility to “secure freedom of speech” under the new Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, due to come into effect in August.

The OfS guidance, effective from 1 August 2025, states that the bar for restricting lawful speech is particularly high and universities should take “reasonably practicable steps” to secure lawful speech and protest.

Steps recommended by the OfS to “secure lawful speech” include: “not punishing students or staff for lawful expression of a viewpoint”; “supporting constructive dialogue on contentious subjects”; and “not requiring applicants for academic jobs or promotions to show commitment to a viewpoint.”

But many student activists have confessed their dissatisfaction with the guidance, arguing that it lacks the specificity to practically support their right to protest.

It also seems to be ignored by UK courts. This week, a Cambridge college was granted an interim High Court injunction against pro-Palestine protesters, following similar steps taken by both Trinity College and St John's College, highlighting a growing conflict between regulatory expectations for upholding free speech and judicial decisions prioritizing institutional order and disruption prevention.

Dan, a long-time organiser with the London School of Economics Student Union’s Palestinian Society, said the OfS advice was “disappointing but not surprising.”

“Stopping attempts to enforce blanket bans or injunctions on campus protests is a positive step, but it’s within the context of a broader continuation of state support for universities' increasing repression of student protests.”

Dan was ambivalent as to whether new guidance and legislation would enable campaigners to pressure universities to change their policies.

“It’s hard to tell because the guidance is at best a mixed bag.

“Where universities have tried to blanket ban protest, it could strengthen students' ability to hold their university accountable. Though I don't think the guidance is going to enable much more in terms of protest.”

Addressing the guidance’s potential to support universities’ platforming controversial speakers, he said, “I definitely have concerns about the OfS’s problematic framing of free speech, especially since it ignores the fact that the most pernicious attack on free speech in universities has been their Prevent program.

I'm concerned that this kind of guidance could use free speech to justify repression of students protesting against people who advocate for racist policies.”

Fiona Lali, the campaigns coordinator for the Revolutionary Communist Party – a prominent organising body active across over 50 British universities – similarly felt the guidance to be toothless, saying, “it's simply guidance.”

“Free speech, according to universities, is very arbitrarily used, and they've shown quite clearly where they stand on the question of Palestine, which is why all of these protests have existed in the first place. I don't think this is going to fundamentally change things.”

She added, “What happens in universities isn't isolated from the general culture of political repression that Britain is not even sleepwalking into, but quite consciously creating at the moment. So any guidance like this won’t change the overall climate, which is a very punitive one.”

Fiona placed the blame for the perceived absence of campus free speech not with university or government authorities, but the student body, for not doing enough to uphold it.

“I have no faith or confidence in any government authority or any university management or bureaucracy as any kind of arbiter of free speech.

“I think people who choose to put themselves forward for Student Union Election positions should genuinely represent students' interests and not act as a neutral body between university management and students.

“I think they should be political fighting bodies that put on mass assemblies so that students can decide on what it is they think the Student Union should be acting upon.

Legal experts have also described the guidance in terms of it being not sufficiently effective.

Julian Sladdin, a partner at the law firm Pinsent Masons and specialist in university regulation, said “The difficulty which remains in practical terms is the fact that institutions are still subject to dealing day-to-day with extremely complex and often polarising issues on campus and where the bounds of what may be lawful free speech are constantly being tested.

“These matters do not appear to be sufficiently addressed by the guidance at present.”

Some, however, have welcomed the guidance, including Remi Adekoya, who teaches politics at the University of York, who said: “Any move towards entrenching academic freedom in UK universities is a good thing.”

In his introduction to the guidance, Arif Ahmed, a Cambridge University philosopher and director for freedom of speech at the OfS, said: “It’s important to remember that universities can regulate speech where appropriate.

“No university needs to allow shouting during an exam, or for a maths lecturer to devote their lectures to their own political opinions rather than the subject at hand.”