UCL bans lecturer from China course to protect its ‘commercial interests’

A leading UK university has banned an academic from teaching a “provocative” course involving China to protect its commercial interests, The Telegraph can disclose.

Michelle Shipworth, an associate professor at University College London (UCL),  told The Telegraph she had “no choice” but to blow the whistle in order to “expose” how British universities were “conceding to the censorship demands of some Chinese students”.

Ms Shipworth, 58, was also accused of being anti-Chinese after she caught out two students from China who were cheating and they were subsequently expelled. One had used a body double in an attempt to hoodwink her during a supervision.

Her head of department at UCL told her he was taking action because “in order to be commercially viable”, the university’s courses “need to retain a good reputation amongst future Chinese applicants”.

UCL has the highest number of Chinese students in the UK, making up almost a quarter of its total student population. More than 10,000 Chinese students are at the university, typically paying two to three times the fees of home-grown students – up to £40,000 a year.

Ms Shipworth, who teaches at UCL’s Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources, found herself under investigation after a seminar last October examining data from the Global Slavery Index 2014. The data claimed China had the second-highest prevalence of modern slavery in the world.

She asked small groups to discuss the question: “Why are there so many slaves in China?” in order to build their data assessment skills, leaving the methodology open to criticism.

Far from being anti-Chinese, Ms Shipworth said her use of the survey was only to highlight problems with it – not least that, because China has the world’s second-largest population, it would inevitably be close to the top of a modern slavery index.

‘Provocative in-class exercise’

She recalled that, at the end of the seminar, one of the Chinese students “stood up and said in a fairly cross tone – I wouldn’t even describe it as angry – something along the lines of: ‘Why are you using such a horrible provocation?’”

Prof Neil Strachan, Ms Shipworth’s boss, was alerted, culminating in her being told that another academic had been asked to “take over” the research module she had taught for the past 10 years.

She was also told to “not use teaching case studies or examples that only focus on one country”, and advised against posting “educational issues about only one country” on social media.

In an email, Prof Strachan also informed Ms Shipworth that she had been accused of “being biased against students from a single country – China”.

He cited as an example of a “specific instance of bias” that, having caught out Chinese students for cheating, she was now “overly suspicious” of students cheating “and these students are all from China”.

Prof Strachan said a further complaint had said that “you used a provocative in-class exercise – investigating data quality but using the subject of slavery – that focused only on China and that made Chinese students feel demeaned”.

He went on to say that “the result of this perceived bias is that Chinese students are not having a good experience at UCL, and that the reputation and future recruitment of our courses is being damaged”.

‘No choice but to make this public’

Ms Shipworth told The Telegraph she “was suicidal” after being subjected to restrictions on her teaching, academic freedom and use of social media on the basis of a class she had taught without any previous known complaint for a decade.

“I feel I have no choice but to make this matter public in order to expose the extent to which UK higher education is conceding to the censorship demands of some Chinese students,” she said.

“In my time at UCL, I have seen and exposed flagrant cheating, including falsified references used in student applications and some Chinese students using paid services to produce assessments for them, which they are then unable to discuss in class.

“Because so many universities are dependent on overseas student funding, university managers often do not want to hear these types of concerns being raised. This threatens to undermine the value of an academic degree.

“I am astonished that asking students a question about China, and my raising of cases of contract cheating, is being used to justify curtailing my academic freedom and freedom of speech.”

Ms Shipworth’s case has been taken up by the Free Speech Union, which has written to UCL’s provost to demand that all restrictions be lifted.

A Free Speech Union spokesman said: “The documents we have seen reveal an undue deference to the sensitivity of some Chinese students that is utterly incompatible with academic freedom.

“Academics and students have every right to discuss and even criticise China, even if it is inconvenient for institutions increasingly in hock to Chinese student fees, and we will defend that right.”

A UCL spokesman said: “We always follow up complaints received through our Report + Support tool. However, it would not be appropriate to discuss individual cases.

“UCL is proud to have a thriving and diverse student community, with the brightest minds from the UK and more than 150 other countries choosing to study and research here.

“We also have a long tradition of safeguarding freedom of speech, and are committed to upholding the rights of our staff and students to facilitate debate and exercise their academic freedom of enquiry.”

‘I didn’t see the point of living ... I hadn’t done anything wrong’

Standing in a classroom in front of 80 students, of whom between 20 and 30 were Chinese, Michelle Shipworth showed them a slide in her Data Detectives course.

It was just after 3pm on Oct 25. Now, more than four months later, she is at the centre of a row over academic freedom.

The slide the associate professor had shown was taken from the Global Slavery Index 2014. She recalled: “I put the slide up and said: ‘Why are there so many slaves in China?’”

It was a question intended as a starting point for students to explore data and how it is used. In fact, she used the survey precisely because “there is a massive problem with it”, not least its ranking of China as the world’s second-worst country for modern slavery.

Further slides in the course describe the survey as “terribly inaccurate” and encourage students to think about how the data was compiled and the comparisons made.

But at the end of the hour-long seminar, one of the Chinese students, a man in his 20s, stood up to lodge a complaint.

“I wouldn’t even describe him as angry,” said Ms Shipworth, “He said something along the lines of: ‘Why are you using such a horrible provocation?’”

Sitting in the kitchen of her north London flat and reflecting on the events, she still appears bamboozled.

“It’s a great question. I was just slightly concerned he was asking it after I had already demonstrated the problem with the dataset. It signalled that he hadn’t been paying attention in class,” she said. “But I didn’t get the sense he had been stressed in any way. I certainly didn’t think anything of it.”

The next day, however, she received an email from a colleague. Another student, who was not Chinese, had flagged that they were upset the Chinese student had been made “cross” in class.

Ms Shipworth, who has been teaching at UCL since 2009, was exasperated. “To be honest, I rolled my eyes at this. Honestly, I don’t know if it’s a generational thing,” she said.

“It was like a child at kindergarten fell over and yelled a little bit and then another child that observed this got upset and then went to the headmistress. And then the headmistress goes to the person in charge of the playground and says: ‘What’s this all about?’ It happens occasionally. So what? I couldn’t take it seriously. I didn’t bother to respond [to the email].”

But on Oct 30 – five days after her seminar – Prof Strachan, Ms Shipworth’s head of department, called her to say that a “bunch of Chinese students are very upset” and asking for an explanation of what had happened.

Ms Shipworth, whose husband is a professor in the same department, gave her version of events. Prof Strachan, she said, suggested she use India as an example too so that her Chinese students would not feel singled out.

She declined to alter a course she had taught for a decade with no previous complaints. “In fact, I have had loads of Chinese students thanking me over the years,” she said.

She has had Chinese research students who have previously assisted her in the same seminar. “I felt then as I still feel now – our obligation is to teach the very best we can,” she said. “It doesn’t mean making them [students] happy every day, but it does mean challenging them.”

Shut out of teaching module

Later that day, Ms Shipworth found herself unable to edit UCL’s internal learning hub, called Moodle, for her next seminar, or to email students their coursework. She had been shut out of her teaching module.

In an email sent by Prof Strachan at 3.29pm on Oct 31, he told Ms Shipworth: “While we respect your academic freedom to teach [and] to promote critical thinking… the teaching teams are really worried about how the students have taken this, and it’s important to respond to their concerns.

“Focusing on just one country and using a topic that is currently geopolitically controversial is a sensitive topic.”

When Ms Shipworth cited John Stuart Mill, the English philosopher, in her drive for academic freedom and her preference not to modify her teaching, Prof Strachan replied at 10.34pm: “I would be pleased to continue this discussion in person to continue this broader conversation – note that I am an economist and modeller and I have no idea who JS Mill is.”

He praised her seminar, saying he was “pleased that a set of your students really benefited from working through a challenging question that has poor data underpinning it”, but again stressed that the question “was phrased to be too controversial and difficult for them to understand”.

Ms Shipworth, an academic energy expert, said that response “p---ed me off massively”.

At that week’s seminar – seven days after the initial controversy – the students dutifully returned. The Chinese student who had complained sat at the front of the class. “He was smiling broadly, like really grinning,” said Ms Shipworth.

“I really genuinely don’t think any of this situation had distressed him or the other students. If they were really distressed by me, they wouldn’t have come to the class.”

‘Absolutely harangued me’

The following week, two colleagues – Ms Shipworth will not reveal their identities – “absolutely harangued me and insisted I completely remove this exercise for subsequent years”.

She admitted caving in to the request. After suffering from mental health issues in the past, she took a nosedive. “I was suicidal. This is one of the problems of somebody who suffers from depression. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I wasn’t making plans [to kill myself] but I was telling my husband I didn’t see the point of living,” she said.

By now, it was mid-November. Ms Shipworth kept on teaching – and given her undertaking not to repeat the China slavery exercise, the problem had seemingly gone away.

In January, she attended a workshop with senior academics, among them Michael Spence, UCL’s provost, a man she describes as “fabulous” and hugely supportive.

She raised her case, and what she saw as the infringement of her academic freedom, at the workshop. “All the senior academics in the room agreed with me,” she said.

Ms Shipworth fired off an email to her departmental colleagues, informing them that senior staff at the workshop believed her academic freedom had been curtailed.

Three days afterwards, on Feb 6, she received an email from Prof Strachan informing her that two related complaints had been made against her under a UCL reporting system.

“The general issue made is that you are perceived as being biased against students from a single country – China. This perception of bias is from Chinese students and by a UCL staff member of Chinese heritage,” he wrote.

‘Getting other people to do all his work’

The professor cited specific instances that included her investigation into so-called contract cheating, where one student gets somebody else to do their work. Twice she had discovered cheating, in 2018 and 2022, and both times Chinese students had been expelled.

She has asked UCL how many students have been kicked out for cheating, and has been given no answer. She suspects she is the only academic who has dared to call out a Chinese student for “contract cheating”.

In one case, a student had used a body double to take part in a Zoom call, and Ms Shipworth had spotted the deceit.

“He was getting other people to do all his work and then using a body double in meetings. It was due to my investigative work that the student was expelled,” she said.

In another instance, she raised suspicions about a student’s poor performance in class and a “mismatch” with far superior submitted essays.

In the email, Prof Strachan again raised the issue of the Data Detective seminar using the slave labour example, and also accused Ms Shipworth of “making a Chinese student embarrassed in class and accusing them of lying when they made an excuse to leave”.

On that occasion, she said, she had asked a Chinese student for a response to a question and he had reached for another student’s laptop in search of the answer.

Finally, she was accused of posts on Twitter relating to academic freedom in China “when no similar posts are made about any other country”. Ms Shipworth said she repeatedly asked for any examples but has not received any from the university.

The result of her “perceived bias”, wrote Prof Strachan was that “Chinese students are not having a good experience at UCL and that the reputation and future recruitment of our courses is being damaged”.

‘Contributing to the perception of bias’

Two days later on Feb 8, Prof Strachan sent a follow-up email in which he expressed concern about Ms Shipworth’s mental health and told her she could “at any time… take sick leave”.

He said he was handling the complaints “informally” and had not concluded either way whether she had breached UCL policies.

But he added: “We have a collective duty to ensure all students have a good educational experience at UCL and, in order to be commercially viable, our MSc courses need to retain a good reputation amongst future Chinese applicants.

“I am therefore concerned that if there is a perception or misperception of bias that this could damage your own reputation as well as that of the course.”

He then listed a series of “requests” that included stopping Ms Shipworth from “teaching case studies or examples that only focus on one country” and to “find different ways” of encouraging Chinese students “perhaps with weaker English language skills… to engage more fully”.

Using China as an example, was, said Prof Strachan, “contributing to the perception of bias”.

He said the department was putting a different academic in charge of the module, effectively preventing Ms Shipworth from teaching a course she created, and also advised her not to post on social media “educational issues about only one country”.

Ms Shipworth was appalled at her treatment, shocked that she could be asked to stop using one country examples in her teaching. “I use examples from the UK all the time; I focus on India. This is just stupid,” she said.

The same went for preventing her from asking specific individuals for responses. “It’s a way for me to pick up on students who are struggling,” she said. “It would detract from their education.”

The furore her class in October has created has left her scarred, and Ms Shipworth is adamant she is not biased against her Chinese students.

“It is crazy. In my experience, Chinese students have been really robust because they are so focused on their studies,” she said. “That is what has startled me so much – this supposed distress when I know they are strong.”