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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
National
Richard Adams Education editor

US controversy points to tests facing UK universities free speech tsar

Claudine Gay
Harvard’s Claudine Gay testifying before a House committee hearing in Washington last week. Photograph: Ken Cedeno/Reuters

England’s newly appointed university free speech tsar, Arif Ahmed, finds himself in the same position as the leaders of three of the US’s elite universities: having to nurture free speech on campus but struggling to explain those principles in real-life cases.

Last week the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) were at the centre of compelling political theatre as they were grilled by the Republican representative Elise Stefanik on the tension between free speech and antisemitism.

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