The Open University believes in the right to express academic argument and opinion openly and freely as set out in the Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom. All members of our academic community, both students and staff, have freedom within the law to hold and express opinions, question established ideas, or present controversial points of view.
The OU is also committed to promoting its research output. Research can and does include a range of contentious issues on which individuals may argue a particular view, that others, both inside and outside the university, could disagree with. Any view that an individual takes on a particular issue is not the institutional or corporate view of the university.
Communications follow a standard process to continually highlight research from a wide range of OU academics on many subjects. This includes publishing the authors articles on our own websites and promoting on the core Open University social media accounts. The publication or promotion of academic work of a particular author is done without fear or favour.
All comments on The Open University social media accounts are moderated, in line with our own community guidelines, including evenings and weekends. On rare occasions in moderating, inappropriate comments might be seen by others, but where conversation may be particularly sensitive in nature, moderation capacity is in most cases increased.
