Cardiff University defended student trans activists who directed threatening and violent messages to academics who criticized a Stonewall scheme as expressions of “free speech,” even after one victim targeted had their car window smashed.
According to a letter written to the Welsh Minister of Education by Toby Young, General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, the University defended student trans activists who staged an ongoing campaign of harassment and intimidation against university staff and openly advocated physical violence against them.
The organized tactics began on June 21, 2021, just days after 15 academics signed an open letter published calling on the university to review its participation in a Stonewall Diversity Champions scheme and expressing concerns that policies advocated by the scheme do not “respect for the rights of all staff and students, including women.”
Activists quickly began to distribute leaflets featuring an image of a woman aiming a gun alongside a list of names and photos of certain academics, with the text “ACT NOW” and “Destroy the TERF menace.”
The document labeled the signatories “transphobic pricks” and warned them of “repercussions,” strongly implying they would be victims of violence if they continued to vocalize criticisms of Stonewall. The leaflet was reported to police by two signatories, one of whom was promptly disinvited from an academic event.
The following day, Cardiff University released a letter of support for the trans activists rather than their staff. The statement asserted that the university’s “commitment” to the students involved in the LGBTQ community was “longstanding and non-negotiable,” and expressed concern that the students who disseminated the threatening leaflets should be made to feel “unsafe.”
On June 24, it was revealed by an anonymous whistleblower that violent rhetoric against the group of academics was posted to the Cardiff University LGBT+ Society’s official Facebook group. One member threatened to “[weaken a signatory’s] knees manually with a 2×4” while another detailed the “urge to throat punch people when they’re being racist / transphobic / homophobic.”
Other aggressive comments included suggesting a “petition to make punching transphobes not only legal but rewarded,” while another student said, “either you’re a transphobic a**hole or you’re not.”
On September 16, the activist group which published the leaflet, ACT Now, published a statement boasting of how they “[provide] a physical reminder” that the academics’ “bigotry would not go unopposed.”
In response, the trans activist organization said it would “[embrace] a diversity of tactics, including doxxing fascists,” and would promote an “offensive” in order “to destroy the TERF menace and secure Queer Liberation.”
Despite anonymous whistleblowers providing the identities of those responsible for the calls to violence – including names and photographs – university administrators refused to take action.
On October 11, one of the signatories found that their car window had been smashed, but the University continued to dismiss the incidents. Two weeks later, Cardiff administrators would state in an email that no investigation would be launched into the incidents, and that it was “satisfied” that it had done enough by simply going to police about the leaflets.
The Vice-Chancellor also sent an email to staff announcing their continued partnership with Stonewall’s Diversity Champions scheme.
Threats against the academics continued throughout November as stickers with imagery similar to that seen in June appeared on campus reading: “Not gay as in happy, but queer as in f*ck you,” with a drawing of a woman holding a gun. The incident was again reported to police, who declined to investigate.
According to the letter detailing these incidents published by the Free Speech Union, those academics singled out for harassment have suffered “acute physical fear, extreme anxiety and illnesses such as depression” as a result or their experiences. Members of the FSU and their colleagues have proposed taking legal action against Cardiff University.
Christian Wilton-King, a former lecturer who lives in Cardiff and knows some of the academics involved, told The Times, “There is an army of people, who may include students, whose actions are intimidating lecturers who question them, and that has serious implications for free speech on campuses across the country.”
Reduxx is a newly-launched, independent source of pro-woman, pro-child safeguarding news and commentary. We’re able to continue our work exposing predators and reporting the truth thanks to the generous support of our readers.
