A former Students’ Union Campaigns Officer, Dr Stephen Quilley, has written to fellows of Gonville & Caius College criticising the master and senior tutor’s decision to boycott last month’s Helen Joyce talk.

Joyce is a gender critical feminist who has drawn controversy for her views on trans issues. She was invited to speak at Caius by Arif Ahmed earlier this term, prompting an SU protest.

Quilley, who graduated in 1989, wrote: “the College desperately needs to issue an apology and a retraction” for the decision to condemn Joyce’s views. He told fellows: “If you have tenure, now is the time to make it count.”

Quilley, a Canadian academic writing in a personal capacity, outlined that he’s “not sure if Pippa Rogerson and Andrew Spencer”, respectively master and senior tutor of the College, “can recover” from the email they sent to the student body on 19 October.

In this email, Rogerson and Spencer stated: “We do not condone or endorse views that Helen Joyce has expressed on transgender people, which we consider offensive, insulting and hateful to members of our community who live and work here.”

As a result, Quilley suggested, “Caius has suffered serious reputational damage”, with alumni “withdrawing funding and sponsorship”.

“The College and the University are looking increasingly exposed, and often foolish.”

Quilley argued that the “genius of the Oxbridge college system is that it forces students and faculty to sit next to people from different disciplines, different countries, and holding diverging political opinions, in convivial and informal contexts, forcing potential antagonists to see each other first of all as individuals”.

Quilley wrote that while the Helen Joyce “scandal” seems to be a turning point it is not the first such episode in Cambridge. He noted: “The banning of Jordan Peterson gave an indication of the way things were going.”

Speaking to Varsity, Quilley said: “there is an atmosphere of great fear in all universities” and that those “who disagree with new orthodoxies (often with good reason) are pilloried and sometimes fired”.

Quilley explained that he was not calling for fellows to oust Rogerson and Spencer, speculating that they acted “out of fear” and adding that it is not his “place to say who should run a Cambridge college”.

However, Quilley doubled down on his call for the College “to apologise to Helen Joyce and to retract” the email they sent to students on 19 October and stressed that they ought to “re-affirm an inviolable commitment to the principles of liberal discourse”.

“The College should also make it clear to students that being exposed to difficult and challenging ideas is what makes a Cambridge education so great”, he added.

He suggested that what has happened at Caius is part of a broader process which is “undermining the foundation of civil society and democracy” and said: “It saddens me to see British universities diving into this rabbit hole.”

“Pippa Rogerson’s role should be umpiring and securing a continuing informed dialogue including the widest diversity of opinion,” Quilley added.