You can’t talk about that! Well-being and the dangers of self-censorship in universities

In a guest post, social-work professors Jane Fenton and Mark Smith discuss their research on how students and lecturers bite their tongues for fear of causing offence.

As universities increasingly take the view that students are vulnerable to an expanding range psychological or emotional harms, this raises many questions about how this will impact on campus freedoms, in particular free speech. In an excellent contribution to the debate, this question has been considered in a new paper by Jane Fenton and Mark Smith, professors of social work at Dundee University. Today, we’re very pleased to republish their recent article on the Scottish Union for Education (SUE) Substack - a regular and excellent source of news and analysis on developments in the world of education.

Last Thursday, universities around the UK marked University Mental Health Day. This annual day organised by Student Minds and the University Mental Health Advisors Network (UHMAN) aims ‘to get the nation talking about student mental health and working together to make mental health a university-wide priority’.

An initiative directed at ensuring that ‘no student is held back by their mental health’ will seem laudable to many. But is there a downside? After all, student welfare initiatives and counselling support services, directed by copious amounts of guidance on well-being and mental health, have in recent years become central to the organisation of life on campus – with little discernible positive impact on the quality of education.

Indeed, as the Policy Exchange’s Lara Brown argued at a recent salon discussion organised by Living Freedom, there is a danger that the university is becoming less about creating the next generation of knowledgeable, thinking individuals and more about simply ushering students through their study years unscathed pressures that are really fairly normal to the experience of becoming educated. For more on the issue of reclaiming the university from these trends, see Living Freedom’s latest Substack where Sam Rubinstein argues for Making Academia Difficult Again.

Meanwhile at Living Freedom Summer School 2025, organised by Ideas Matter, we will look at how young people can start to respond to recent trends. For example, a useful starting point is the session ‘Reclaiming freedom: escaping the straitjacket of wellbeing and mental health’. This will explore why young people are now regularly assumed to be in need being shielded and protected from ideas or words judged to be harmful or even just discomforting or challenging – and seek to develop answers on the means to assert autonomy. The summer school, which is open to everyone aged 18 to 30, takes place in London on 26 to 28 June. Find out the full details here. Apply now - and I hope to see you there.

Sticks and stones: the idea that words cause harm and the implications of this for higher education

Jane Fenton and Mark Smith

We have just had an article published in the Journal of Further and Higher Education. It is called ‘Sticks and stones: the idea that words cause harm and the implications of this for higher education’. In it, we report on a small study we did with Social work students across Scottish universities. Against a backdrop of concerns around the curtailment of free speech on university campuses, we asked them if there were public issues they found difficult to discuss in class.

Of course, we can be led to believe that there is nothing to be concerned about regarding free speech in universities. An article by Jasmine Zine for Academic Matters in 2018 is typical of an outlook that suggests that concerns about free speech are merely a ruse perpetuated by the so-called alt-right, aimed at ‘weaponizing free speech and using it as a rhetorical prop in campaigns of ideological intimidation’. There is a fine line, we are told, between free speech and hate speech.

To be cast as alt-right, whatever that might mean, is a disconcerting experience for a couple of Social work professors who have always considered themselves to be politically ‘left’ in a traditional sense of acknowledging and seeking to challenge the impact of structural disadvantage on people’s lives. But here we are, consigned to ‘the wrong side of history’.

In some ways, we’re fortunate. We’re both at a stage where we don’t need to worry about controversial views damaging our career prospects. Younger colleagues, however, would need to be pretty brave (or foolish) to say the kind of things we do.

One of the reasons that many academics shy away from such debates is that they are rooted in the particular ideological framework of critical theory. Those not well versed in this can feel ill equipped to understand, and be nervous about challenging, its assumptions or manifestations in the classroom or wider academy. And with good reason. Debate is framed in morally evaluative tones of right and wrong, and politically as a clash between progressive or regressive (or ‘alt-right’) forces. That is one of the problems with critical theory: it is a zero-sum game premised on a belief that everything is based around power struggles among competing social groups, and to demonstrate progressive credentials, you need to take sides.

So, to the research. The study was funded by the American-based Heterodox Academy, a non-profit member organisation of university staff and students, from across the political spectrum, who are committed to viewpoint diversity and open inquiry.

For the study, we used an adapted version of Heterodox Academy’s validated questionnaire to ask Social work students from across Scotland about their comfort (or otherwise) in speaking out about contentious issues. Small adaptations were made and agreed to better fit with Scottish terminology and context. For instance, in the section on what consequences the students thought might result from them speaking out, we inserted: ‘I might cause someone emotional or psychological harm.’ The rationale for these adaptations was the debate at the time around the Scottish Government’s plans to restrict speech in the name of preventing harm.

The questionnaire was disseminated to students across Scottish social work programmes, with varying degrees of response. All eight universities offering social work were represented in the returned sample (n = 102, 5.3%). Of the respondents, 78.4% were female, and 20.6% were male, thus reflecting the gender imbalance in social work more broadly.

The results of the study indicated that 67% of students felt reluctant to talk about at least one controversial issue. Within this group, the biggest fear was that other students would criticise them for their views. However, coming a close second, and applying to over 70% of these students, was that what they might say could cause psychological or emotional harm.

Admittedly, the results are based on a small sample size. They do, however, mirror similar studies undertaken by Heterodox Academy, which might suggest that there is something to be worried about. We pick out two reasons we should be concerned.

The first is that our (and related) findings fundamentally reshape what university education ought to be about. It should be about provoking students to think differently about their worlds, even – and perhaps especially – when this leads to discomfort and uncertainty. Conversely, it should not serve to reinforce questionable ideological stances. This isn’t just our position. It is enshrined in the Higher Education Governance (Scotland) Act 2016 which confers ‘freedom within the law to: hold and express opinions, question and test established ideas or received wisdom, develop and advance new ideas or innovative proposals, and present controversial or unpopular points of view’. Although you wouldn’t always know this…

Our second concern is that seeking to protect students from words and ideas they might not like does not help those it is intended to. A growing body of evidence suggests that the trend for teachers to shield students from content they might find harmful – through the use of trigger warnings, for instance – is likely to be counterproductive, fuelling cognitive distortions and ultimately contributing to the mental-health crisis among young people we are said to be facing.

We conclude the article by suggesting that it is time for universities to reclaim some sense of academic purpose and to instil in students the belief that they have views and ideas to contribute, even if some of these may be held open to question. This may be uncomfortable, but it is not harmful, and done constructively (as we would suggest it generally is) can hone a more balanced understanding of oneself and one’s place in the world alongside others with perhaps different viewpoints. We do students a disservice by encouraging them to think of education as dangerous and harmful.

Jane Fenton and Mark Smith are both professors of social work at Dundee University.

Read on: Beyond the Harm Principle

In this Letter on Liberty, Rob Lyons asks how we might reassess John Stuart Mill’s harm principle in an age where harms abound. How do we live together in a society, when one person’s freedom is another person’s nightmare? If ‘harm’ can mean anything from physical injury to mental distress caused by offending remarks, even words can be restricted because they can cause harm. Mill’s harm principle sounds like a decent basis for defending liberty, he writes, but it is no longer good enough. If we want to enjoy freedom, we need to demand the right to offend the sensibilities of those who want to deny us that freedom.

Read Beyond the Harm Principle here.

The rise and fall of the ‘ivory tower’

Watch the debate from the Battle of Ideas festival 2024, featuring Dr Jennie Bristow, Maeve Halligan, Dr Neil Thin and Austin Williams.