A UK university faces the prospect of legal action over claims it failed to protect an academic’s right to freedom of expression who was invited to give a lecture on sex and gender.
Prof Alice Sullivan has written to the University of Bristol and the university regulator the Office for Students (OfS) to complain after her talk was disrupted by protesters. She told the BBC some people who had wanted to attend had stayed away because they felt intimidated and that reasonable steps could have been taken to prevent that.
“Everyone has a right to peaceful protest, but that must never amount to a heckler’s veto, which means shutting down other people’s right to speak,” she told the broadcaster. “This isn’t just about my rights as a visiting speaker, this is about the rights of the university community to hold discussions and to have people come and listen.”
Sullivan has said her talk went ahead in October after a lengthy delay against a backdrop of protesters climbing walls to bang on windows, and who shouted through megaphones and set off fire alarms.
She claimed she was prevented from staying to meet attenders afterwards and later heard some people had felt too intimidated to come. She said the university had had 15 months to plan the event and should have found a venue that would have allowed it to go ahead more safely and with fewer of the restrictions she believes marginalised it.
According to a letter before action sent to the university, these included the alleged prohibition of undergraduate attendance and the decision to hold the event at the institution’s Clifton campus; described as “particularly vulnerable to protester disruption”.
Sullivan said she was “prepared to take legal action”, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme it was important to demonstrate that universities were capable of hosting a wide range of views.
Sullivan, a University College London academic, has previously accused UK universities of failing to protect gender-critical academics from bullying and career-threatening restrictions on their research.
She said the report in which she made the claim raised “stark concerns about barriers to academic freedom in UK universities”, adding: “Researchers investigating vital issues have been subjected to sustained campaigns of intimidation simply for acknowledging the biological and social importance of sex.” Her other work includes a review commissioned by the Conservative government and published in March 2025 of barriers to research on sex and gender in which she recommended that data on biological sex and gender identity should be recorded as distinct categories.
A University of Bristol spokesperson said: “Prof Sullivan’s seminar went ahead safely, in line with our strong commitment to upholding free speech. Although protesters caused unacceptable disruption, appropriate measures were in place to enable the event to continue and to protect the speaker and attendees.
“Prof Sullivan expressed her gratitude to our security team for their support and subsequently met with our vice-chancellor to discuss what happened. We refute claims that we failed to protect her freedom of speech; every action we took was in support of this and the restrictions she outlines were all necessary for public safety.”
The OfS declined to comment.
