Recent reports have suggested Arif Ahmed, a controversial fellow of Gonville & Caius College, is set to land the Higher Education Bill’s new ‘Director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom’ role.

The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill has already passed the House of Commons and House of Lords, and is now in its final stages of the process before receiving Royal Assent. The Bill will change provisions on freedom of speech and academic freedom in higher education.

One of the Bill’s clauses includes the creation of a ‘Director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom’. The role will oversee the performance of the Office for Students, a body which the bill gives extensive responsibilities, including the running of a new complaint scheme where students, current staff, people applying to become staff, or visiting speakers may make complaints against universities or student unions if they believe they are in breach of their new duties of promoting free speech. The Office for Students will also be given the power to monitor overseas funding to higher education providers if it presents a risk to freedom of speech within the law.

While the director is yet to be publicly announced, reports in national newspapers including The Times and The Telegraph have claimed Ahmed is a leading contender for the powerful new role.

If the reports are true, this will mark the second major post Ahmed has landed recently, after having been appointed to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) board by minister for women and equalities Kemi Badenoch, in December.

The academic is no stranger to being in the limelight on campus. His Michaelmas term invitation to Helen Joyce was the latest in a string of controversies over the last few years, including having been named in an investigation by the Byline Times into Republican billionaire Peter Thiel’s links to a group of influential UK academics, renowned for their ‘free speech’ advocacy.

Free speech activist and associate professor of the Philosophy of Religion, Dr James Orr, who has also been involved in past controversies, said: “Egregious assaults on academic freedom are rare in Cambridge and the university’s policy is already robust, so it would be surprising and disappointing if someone were forced to resort to the legislation’s complaint mechanism. I hope that the main effect of the new law will be to encourage universities to prioritise academic freedom as an institutional value over and above concerns that have nothing to do with the aims the tax-paying public expects them to be pursuing”.

Joel Rosen, the President of the Union of Jewish Students, also expressed concerns about the bill last year. In a letter to the secretary of state for education Gillian Keegan, he said that the bill could "foreseeably allow a range of extremists including Holocaust deniers, legal recourse to obtain compensation if they are denied a platform”.

Rosen highlighted how this bill would have a detrimental effect on Jewish students across the country as it could allow “those who espouse antisemitic views to intimidate Jewish students while under the protection of the law”.

UJS urged the government to amend the bill to ensure that “freedom of speech is balanced with a university’s or student union’s duty of care towards all its students.”