Professor Alice Sullivan, a leading academic, has threatened the University of Bristol with legal action for failing to protect her right to free speech. She has also written to the university’s regulator, the Office for Students (OfS), after a her campus talk was disrupted by trans rights protesters.
Sullivan said: “Everyone has a right to peaceful protest, but that must never amount to a heckler’s veto — that is, shutting down other people’s right to speak.”
The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act (HEFSA), which came into force in August, places universities under a clear statutory duty to uphold freedom of speech and academic freedom on campus. Universities also have a long-standing obligation to protect the rights of staff, students and visiting speakers to express lawful views, even where those views may offend.
In one of her first acts as Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson MP, paused the implementation of HEFSA’s main duties, which had been promised by the previous Conservative government. Following sustained pressure — including the Free Speech Union’s threat to pursue a judicial review — Ms Phillipson later backtracked and partially implemented the legislation.
Professor Sullivan recently led a government-commissioned review, published in March 2025, which recommended that data on biological sex and gender identity should be recorded as distinct categories. The review also found that universities were undermining academic research into puberty blockers and failing to address harassment directed at those holding gender-critical views. As a result, Professor Sullivan has become a target for aggressive trans activist campaigns.
The University of Bristol initially invited Professor Sullivan to deliver a lecture on sex and gender in July 2024, later agreeing that it would take place in the autumn. However, after she accepted the invitation, the university informed her that the event would be “subject to a risk assessment” and could “only proceed as an online internal event”.
Professor Sullivan insisted on delivering the lecture in person, refusing to bow to pressure from student activists seeking to silence her. While the university eventually agreed, it imposed a series of restrictions which she argues breached its legal duty to protect free speech.
The lecture went ahead on 22 October 2025 at the university’s Clifton campus under those restrictions. These allegedly included barring undergraduate attendance without publicising the change, and selecting a venue described as “extremely vulnerable to disruption”, rather than a more secure location routinely used for external speakers. In correspondence from Sullivan’s lawyers, it is noted that the university had 15 months to identify a secure venue but failed to do so.
In her complaint, Professor Sullivan claims the university did not take reasonable steps to prevent protesters from disrupting the event. She described scenes resembling a “zombie apocalypse”, with protesters blocking access to the venue, banging on windows with placards, making abusive gestures, repeatedly triggering the fire alarm, and creating sustained noise intended to derail the lecture. The disruption eventually forced the event to be relocated mid-way through to a more secure location.
Professor Sullivan said: “It is a central function of universities to provide a space where critical analysis, dialogue and the pursuit of knowledge can occur without fear.
“If the School of Policy Studies at the University of Bristol cannot safely host a talk about data, statistics and research on sex and gender, something has gone badly wrong. Both the obstructiveness of university managers in the run-up to the event and the aggression of the protest were shocking.”
As she left the campus, Professor Sullivan was met with chants of “shame on you” from the protesters.
She is neither the first nor likely to be the last academic to face such hostility. Earlier this year, the University of Sussex was fined a record £585,000 by the OfS, which concluded that its transgender and non-binary inclusion policy had a “chilling effect” on free speech. Kathleen Stock left her post as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sussex following a series of protests against her gender-critical views. It is worth remembering that holding gender-critical beliefs is a protected characteristic under equality law.
A spokesperson for the University of Bristol said: “Although protesters caused unacceptable disruption, appropriate measures were in place to enable the event to continue and to protect the speaker and attendees.”
Professor Sullivan disagrees. She said the university “could have apologised, and they could have said we intend to do better in future. That is all I want from them.”
Read more in The Times.