University's £585,000 fine in trans free speech row

A UNIVERSITY has been fined £585,000 for failing to uphold free speech after a professor was branded "transphobic" and hounded by students for her views on gender.

- By Chris Riches

Professor Kathleen Stock, 53, felt "cancelled" and forced to leave the University of Sussex in 2021 after she was targeted on campus for her biological sex stance.

Her statements reportedly included saying that "the claim 'transwomen are women' is fiction, not literally true" and "spaces where women undress and sleep should remain genuinely single-sex in order to protect them".

Challenge

Now regulator the Office for Students has fined the university for failing to uphold freedom of speech.