The Observer view: Michelle Donelan deserves to lose her job

Conservative ministers have in recent years bullied civil servants, been criminally sanctioned for breaking the law and sent restricted material to those unauthorised to receive it. Now there is a new misdemeanour to add to the list: the science and innovation secretary, Michelle Donelan, has had to pay damages and apologise to two academics after they launched legal action, accusing her of libelling them.

Last October, Donelan wrote to UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), a non-departmental umbrella body that oversees seven higher education research councils, Innovate UK and Research England, to complain about two members of the latter’s new equality, diversity and inclusion expert advisory group. She accused the two academics of “sharing extremist views on social media”, expressed her “disgust and outrage” at their appointment, and asked UKRI’s chief executive to disband the working group.

Except that neither academic shared extremist views on social media. One tweeted a Guardian news story with the headline “Suella Braverman urges police to crack down on Hamas support in UK” with the comment “this is disturbing”. It seems Donelan implausibly interpreted this as a comment on the sentiment in the headline not the news story. The other stood accused of “amplifying” a post that condemned violence on both sides but made reference to Israel’s “genocide and apartheid”, a view that may cause offence to some but which is certainly within the bounds of legal speech.

UKRI responded by suspending the two academics and conducting a full investigation. Its report, published last Tuesday, found no evidence that either academic had shared extremist material or supported a proscribed terrorist organisation; no failure on their part to uphold the principles of public life; and no grounds to remove either from the working group. Donelan has publicly apologised; and the government stumped up £15,000 in agreed damages.

Quite apart from the financial cost to the taxpayer, this is a case of a minister unfairly impugning two academics because she disagrees with them. Muddying disagreement with support for extremism has reputational consequences for the people in question, and, more broadly, will have a chilling impact on other academics who hold similar views. It undermines academic freedom in the university sector, and is symptomatic of a government with a low tolerance for free expression and dissent. As we reported last year, there is evidence of 15 government departments monitoring the social media feeds of their potential critics in order to prevent them from speaking at government-funded public events.

Extraordinarily, this is a government that also claims to champion academic freedom. Ministers are right that there are issues in higher education: several academics, for example, have experienced bullying or lost jobs as a result of their mainstream gender-critical view that sex cannot be replaced by self-identified gender.

It remains to be seen whether the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 will have its intended effects; culture change can be difficult to effect through legislation. But ministerial hypocrisy is actively undermining it.

“Free speech for me but not for thee” is the sentiment that characterises much of the debate on free expression. But citizens have a right to expect government ministers to uphold free speech rights for everyone. A science and innovation secretary who uses her position to falsely denounce academics as holding extremist views cannot continue in post; she should resign or be sacked.