Universities who censor reading lists are fictionalising history, says Universities Minister

Michelle Donelan, the Universities Minister, has warned that removing texts from reading lists is “a very dangerous and odd road to go down, and it certainly has no place in our universities”.

The government has warned that censoring reading lists risks fictionalising history akin to the Soviet Union.

Ms Donelan said to the Telegraph on Chopper’s Politics podcast that “the so-called decolonisation of the curriculum is, in effect, censoring history”.

She said: “As a history student myself, I’m a vehement protector and champion of safeguarding our history. It otherwise becomes fiction, if you start editing it, taking bits out that we view as stains.

“A fundamental part of our history is about learning from it, not repeating the mistakes, being able to analyse and challenge why those events happened.

“If we’re going down this road of taking bits out, are we then going to end up putting bits in that we wish had happened?”

Ms Donelan expressed worry about censoring or removing aspects of university curriculums. She said: “It just doesn’t work when governments try to remove elements of history. Look at the Soviet Union, look at China. There are multiple examples where it’s been tried. It doesn’t work.”

She also said that “most of the narrative that is coming out…is about removing elements of history, about whitewashing it and pretending that it never happened, which I just think is naïve and almost irresponsible.

“A lot of the talk of the decolonisation is actually removing those elements, it’s not about packing in extra into history.”

“A fundamental part of our history is about learning from it, not repeating the mistakes, being able to analyse and challenge why those events happened”.

– Universities Minister, Michelle Donelan

This comes as the government have announced a ‘free speech champion’ whose goal they claim is to oversee free speech and academic freedom at British universities.

Policy Exchange, a right-of-centre think tank, published a report last August finding that ‘pro-Brexit’ and ‘right-wing’ academics feel that they are forced to self-censor. The report concluded that universities are increasingly governed by unwritten rules and social norms which force academics to self-censor for fear of negative consequences.

Such claims have formed the basis of professor of politics at Kent University Matthew Goodwin’s and others’ recent campaign for academic freedom at universities. It has alleged harassment, disinvitations, a culture of intimidation, and staff being passed over for promotions.

A YouGov poll of 820 academics found that 32% of respondents who said their political views were “right” or “fairly right” self-censored in teaching and research, compared to 13% of those who said they were centre or left.