Conservative MP, government whip and member of the of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Events, Chris Heaton-Harris is under fire having been accused of compiling a ‘hit list’ of university professors who teach Brexit courses.
Heaton-Harris, the BBC has reported, wrote to universities asking for the names of professors. Lecturers have accused him of conducting a ‘McCarthyite’ witch hunt.
Heaton-Harris insists he believes in an open debate on Brexit and tweeted: “To be absolutely clear, I believe in free speech in our universities and in having an open and vigorous debate on Brexit.”
He is a member of the pro-Brexit European Research Group of Conservative MPs.
Commons leader Andrea Leadsom defended her colleague, insisting Heaton-Harris had not sent a threatening letter to universities.
She told BBC Radio 4‘s The World at One: “It does seem to me to be a bit odd that universities should react in such a negative way to a fairly courteous request.”
However, Sally Hunt, chairwoman of the University and College Union, said: “Our society will suffer if politicians seek to police what universities can and cannot teach. This attempt by Chris Heaton-Harris to compile a hit list of professors has the acrid whiff of McCarthyism about it.”
Pro-EU peer Lord Patten, the chancellor of Oxford University, and former chairman of the BBC Trust, described Heaton-Harris’s letter as an “extraordinary example of outrageous and foolish behaviour”. He said he was sure most vice-chancellors would drop the letter in the wastepaper basket.
