Following the publication of the report, an open letter was sent to the Vice Chancellor by Essex staff and students complaining that the Reindorf report would have a “significant negative impact on student and staff wellbeing”. Minutes from the Senate (the governing academic body) discussing the review were subsequently leaked to the Universities and Colleges Union. Shortly thereafter, widespread complaints and Freedom of Information requests about the report and apology were sent. Within six weeks, the VC apologised to staff and students for releasing the report — before exams and during pride month no less — and for “anyone having been made to feel unsafe as a result of the Review”.

In the latest episode of this shameful debacle, last week the university informed Freedman and Phoenix that it plans to publish their personal data that had previously been redacted. The two academics told me that, according to the university, they made transgender and nonbinary staff and students feel physically unsafe. Why? For simply holding the views that sex is immutable and that spaces like prisons should remain segregated according to biological sex. 

This is part of an ongoing pattern of behaviour from many universities across the UK and elsewhere. Feminist and human rights academic experts are routinely hounded, cancelled and even blacklisted. They deal with calls to have them fired from their jobs and face Kafkaesque trials based on pernicious and spurious complaints to their employers. They are told that they make students and staff terrified as a result of their mere presence on campus. And while the University of Essex appeared to be taking these issues seriously, what has happened to Freedman and Phoenix shows how much power the trans lobby has when it comes to academic institutions. The VC has done a U-turn and appears to have caved to pressure.

Despite the initial apology, the University has done nothing to remedy the appalling treatment of Freedman and Phoenix. Essex told Phoenix that it was ruling out any possibility of investigating the violent, potentially illegal, threats made against her by a student.

The University has power and resources, including access to legal advisers. The professors have no recourse to justice via the Employment Tribunal because they’re not employed by Essex. But if they were, they would have a strong claim based on discrimination grounds.

Yet at the same time, to bring a claim requires them to put their homes on the line. Their reputations were badly damaged by the University’s actions, and for the VC to ‘apologise’ for the Reindorf report and then threaten to release personal data is nothing short of a disgrace.

The University of Essex has been contacted for comment.

---

Julie Bindel is an investigative journalist, author, and feminist campaigner. Her latest book is Feminism for Women: The Real Route to Liberation. She also writes on Substack.

bindelj

---