Eric Kaufman is right that the government will have a fight on their hands if they are planning to take on the universities on free speech.

Students’ expectation that they are entitled to control their academic environment follows logically from their redefinition, not as students but consumers. If students are not supplicants at the fount of knowledge but paying customers, then naturally the customer is always right. And the customer is entitled to demand a safe, welcoming, home-like environment in which his or her opinions are not unduly challenged.

It will be interesting to see whether Gavin Williamson’s sabre-rattling extends beyond culture war issues such as trans rights or political correctness toward defending free speech in areas sensitive to other groups of paying customers — notably those from autocratic regimes elsewhere in the world. A 2019 Foreign Affairs Committee report on the influence of autocracies in British universities noted in particular that “China’s internationalising trend in higher education has been accompanied by domestic attempts to curb the influence of educational norms and values associated with the West.”