= When Outrage Replaces Inquiry: The Abertay Episode and Scotland’s Fear of Free Thought =
The firestorm begins
Abertay University became the latest battlefield in Scotland’s crisis of critical thought when a criminology class invited a speaker from Justice for Innocent Men Scotland (JIMS) to discuss flaws in the justice system.
The session, intended as an exercise in inquiry, was swiftly re-framed by activists and commentators as an act of heresy. Within hours, online threads filled with denunciations, calls for sackings, and language so inflamed it eclipsed any trace of reason.
The talk’s purpose, to question how fairness and evidence are handled in Scottish courts, was lost in the noise.
What began as an academic discussion was transformed into a public morality play.
♦
The new heresy
Attention soon turned from the topic to the lecturer who had arranged it.
He was not accused of misconduct; he was accused of allowing thought. Yet his name was dragged through the comment sections with a level of venom once reserved for genuine wrongdoing.
People who had never met him demanded his dismissal. Others wrote gleeful posts about complaints they had filed.
The question of whether the class had been balanced, factual, or educational was irrelevant, the mere act of hosting debate was declared intolerable.
Reputation, in this new moral economy, is not destroyed by evidence but by contagion. One post of outrage sparks another until the sheer volume of fury becomes its own proof.
It is the social-media equivalent of a public stoning conducted with keyboards.
♦
The second apology
Later that day, Abertay’s Principal, Professor Liz Bacon, issued a new statement, longer, more polished, and even more defensive.
It opened by disowning JIMS entirely: the group’s “views do not reflect those of Abertay University.”
It then reaffirmed the institution’s alignment with state-approved initiatives such as Equally Safe in Higher Educationand the 16 Days of Action on Gender-Based Violence.
In tone, it resembled a crisis-management briefing more than an academic defence. Every paragraph repeated words like inclusivity, safeguarding, and wellbeing until their meaning blurred into apology.
The Principal spoke of “championing free speech within the law,” yet condemned the JIMS presentation as “not in alignment” with Abertay’s values.
That single line revealed the contradiction at the heart of modern academia: free speech is permitted only when it flatters the institution’s self-image.
♦
When care becomes censorship
Alongside the Principal’s letter came a joint message from senior staff and the Student President, complete with helplines for trauma and crisis services.
By pairing a policy debate with contact numbers for rape-crisis and emergency support, the University quietly recast an academic lecture as a potential act of harm.
The shift in framing was subtle but profound. It replaced intellectual disagreement with emotional injury.
Dissent was now to be managed, not discussed.
♦
The JIMS response
JIMS responded with a measured statement of its own: they condemned the University for forming a judgement without dialogue and reminded readers that many of their members, including directors, are themselves survivors of sexual abuse.
They reiterated what the outrage machine ignored: JIMS does not defend perpetrators; it defends due process.
Its work is grounded in evidence, legal analysis, and first-hand accounts of wrongful conviction.
To conflate that with hostility to victims is to confuse compassion with compliance.
Their statement ended with a plea universities once understood instinctively: “Engage with evidence, not assumptions.”
♦
The mob psychology
The backlash that followed was predictable and chilling.
A few users posted reasoned arguments, but they were drowned beneath waves of insult.
To question the orthodoxy of “believe all” was to risk being branded a misogynist, a denier, or worse.
This is how the moral economy of outrage sustains itself: every dissenting voice is treated as proof that the threat still exists.
Those who demand dialogue are portrayed as dangerous; those who silence them as virtuous.
♦
From outrage to orthodoxy
Universities once trained students to think.
Now, too often, they train them to signal belonging.
Abertay’s handling of this episode shows what happens when fear of reputational damage outweighs devotion to truth.
When senior management apologises before it investigates, when helplines are offered before facts are checked, when the vocabulary of wellbeing replaces that of evidence, the academy ceases to educate and begins to perform.
♦
The larger pattern
This is not an isolated event.
Across Scotland, institutions have absorbed the language of advocacy groups whose funding and influence depend on moral certainty.
Equally Safe has become less a safety framework than a political catechism: its terms dictate who may speak, who must listen, and what cannot be questioned.
What began as compassion has hardened into doctrine.
And doctrine, unlike scholarship, cannot bear scrutiny.
♦
Why this matters
To defend the right to question is not to deny harm; it is to preserve the very conditions that make justice possible.
When outrage replaces inquiry, when public emotion dictates what may be said in classrooms or courtrooms, truth itself becomes unsafe.
Scotland’s legal system already shows the cost of this moral capture: evidence excluded under Sections 274 and 275, cases built on inference and belief, the presumption of innocence eroded by political fashion.
Now the same logic governs the universities that should be challenging it.
♦
The choice before us
The measure of a free society is not how loudly it condemns evil but how carefully it guards fairness.
If Scotland’s institutions cannot protect the right to examine difficult truths, they will soon be unable to recognise them.
The episode at Abertay is more than a campus dispute.
It is a mirror held up to a nation that has begun to fear its own reflection.
♦
by the Accused.Scot Editorial Team