By Seun Kolade
On 31 August 2026, The Spectator published an article by Andrew Gilligan under a title that left no room for uncertainty: “Simon Woolley is not fit to lead a Cambridge college.” It was a verdict. The article opened with the portrayal of a man “ranting” at a rally in Trafalgar Square. Gilligan then asked whether this was “some rabble-rouser from the lower shallows of race activism”, before revealing that the speaker was Lord Simon Woolley, Principal of Homerton College, Cambridge. By the end of the second paragraph, Woolley’s intervention had become evidence that “unsuitable appointments at Cambridge did not begin with Jason Arday”.
The gravity of that accusation deserves attention. Gilligan was not merely saying that Woolley had spoken intemperately or chosen an unfortunate metaphor. He was declaring him institutionally unfit and retrospectively questioning the legitimacy of his appointment.
The article travelled back almost two decades into Woolley’s associations with the activist Lee Jasper and organisations of which Woolley had been a director, while acknowledging that Gilligan had not accused Woolley of personal gain or wrongdoing. It revisited his beginnings as a “street hustler” and ticket tout, described him as having “climbed the activist ladder”, and suggested that Theresa May had been desperately searching for “any black figure” after the Windrush scandal. Five days later, Gilligan returned with another article: “How much longer will Cambridge stand by Simon Woolley?” Disagreement had become a relentless campaign for removal.
These are grave charges. But what, precisely, was Simon Woolley’s offence?
Woolley had spoken at a vigil for his friend Professor Jason Arday, whose death followed weeks of intense press coverage and public scrutiny. He described Arday’s treatment as a “public execution” and a “lynching”. He asked his audience to imagine becoming so consumed by “the business of cruelty” that one could relish hurting another human being for sport with a poison pen. “Jason should still be here today,” he said.
The words did not come out of nowhere. Woolley told the gathering that, only days before his death, Arday had sat at dinner with him, Diane Abbott and Misan Harriman. According to Woolley, Arday held Abbott’s hands and said: “They’re hounding me to death, and I cannot see a way out.” That testimony cannot establish every chain of causation surrounding Arday’s death. It does, however, tell us how Arday himself reportedly experienced what was happening to him.
It is possible to argue that Woolley’s description of Arday as having been "exonerated from plagiarism" could have been more carefully qualified. Earlier allegations had been considered by Liverpool John Moores University and were not upheld, but new information had prompted Cambridge to announce further investigations. Yet an arguable overstatement at a vigil is not evidence of incitement or institutional unfitness. It certainly does not justify placing the speaker’s entire life in the dock.
So let us test the central accusation. Did Woolley advocate violence? No. Did he threaten a journalist or instruct anyone else to do so? No. Did he call for mob justice? No. He raised his voice against what he regarded as cruelty and demanded a reckoning. Others are free to debate his metaphors, but strong speech is not violent speech. Moral outrage is not incitement. A society that can no longer summon moral outrage against cruelty has not become more civilised. It has become anaesthetised.
Nor does Woolley’s wider record resemble that of a reckless demagogue. For three decades, he has worked principally through democratic and institutional channels. He founded Operation Black Vote to increase political participation among communities historically marginalised from British public life. He has campaigned for voter registration, political education and a more representative Parliament. He served on the Equality and Human Rights Commission, chaired the advisory group supporting the Government’s Race Disparity Audit, and now sits in the House of Lords as a crossbencher.
His interventions have addressed the Windrush scandal, discriminatory policing, child poverty, educational exclusion and racial abuse in football. He has spoken for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities and resisted attempts to set disadvantaged white and minority ethnic communities against one another. When discussing stop and search, he affirmed policing by consent.
In an official government speech, he urged campaigners: “Be strong, but be smart. For change to take place we have to take people with us on the journey.” The alleged rabble-rouser has spent much of his adult life peacefully bringing people together, across a whole spectrum of backgrounds, for the greater good.
Why, then, should one speech of moral anger open his entire career to demolition?
This is where the attack upon Woolley reveals something much larger than a dispute between a journalist and a college principal. His real offence was using his voice. He did not remain within the role prepared for the safe Black leader: visible, accomplished, grateful and quiet when the conversation becomes uncomfortable. He used the authority of his office to accuse powerful institutions of cruelty. The response was not simply to challenge his words. It was to ask whether a man who spoke in that manner should ever have possessed such authority.
Modern organisations have increasingly become proficient at representation by arithmetic. They count Black employees, ethnic minority executives, women on boards and people from disadvantaged backgrounds in senior positions. The figures enter annual reports, diversity statements and celebratory social media posts. A photograph becomes proof of inclusion. An appointment becomes evidence of progress.
But numbers do not tell us whether power has changed. They do not tell us whose voice carries weight, who can challenge prevailing assumptions or who is permitted to name injustice without being treated as the problem. Representation that provides visibility but denies voice is merely decorative. Diversity that can be displayed but not heard is not inclusion. It is staging.
This is the new frontier of suppression. The doors are no longer always closed. Sometimes they are opened with ceremony. The excluded person is welcomed inside, given a prestigious chair and invited into the institutional photograph. But the invitation contains an unwritten condition: do not disturb the room. Do not speak too loudly about the arrangements that govern it. Do not use the authority attached to your position against those who believe they granted it to you.
The establishment has learned to count Black faces while discounting Black voices.
This does not mean that every Black leader must hold the same opinions, or that minority leaders should be protected from criticism. Woolley is not infallible because he is Black, and his language does not become correct merely because it was directed against racism. But criticism should engage the substance and proportionality of what he said. It should not convert disagreement into a referendum on whether another Black man’s advancement was an undeserved gift.
The attack on Woolley also performs a disciplinary function. It sends a warning to every person from an underrepresented community who enters a powerful institution: see what happens when representation acquires a voice. Your credentials may be reopened. Your origins may be recited against you. Old associations may be excavated. Honours once presented as recognition may be redescribed as patronage. The chair is offered, but the voice is policed.
There is also a striking inconsistency in a political culture that invokes free speech to defend degrading claims about Black intellectual capacity, yet treats Woolley’s denunciation of racism as evidence that he is unfit for office. Freedom of speech cannot be a one-way gate through which racial provocation passes freely while anti-racist moral protest is stopped and searched.
Homerton College has stated that Woolley was appointed through its established processes and continues to enjoy the confidence of its leadership and Governing Body. That support is important. But the responsibility does not belong to Homerton alone. Society must decide whether forceful opposition to injustice is a qualification for public leadership or grounds for disqualification.
I will also say something to those watching the attack on Simon Woolley from the sidelines: silence does not always mean agreement. People may be cautious or unwilling to enter a bruising public dispute. But when an organised campaign of delegitimation proceeds without resistance, silence permits its assumptions to settle into common sense. Supporting Woolley does not require agreement with every word he spoke. It requires defending the right of a public leader to speak courageously about injustice without having his entire legitimacy placed on trial.
Simon Woolley’s deadly sin was using his voice. He used it to speak for a friend who believed himself hounded, and to confront a culture in which another person’s suffering had become public content. His critics were entitled to answer him, dispute his metaphors and even challenge his claims. But the demand that he be stripped of institutional legitimacy exposes the emptiness of representation that welcomes the face while fearing the voice.
The true test of inclusion is not whether a Black person can enter the room, appear in the photograph or occupy the prestigious chair. It is whether he can speak once inside without having that chair pulled from beneath him.
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Seun Kolade is a Professor of Entrepreneurship and Digital Transformation at Sheffield Business School, Sheffield Hallam University, and a Visiting Professor of Gordon Institute of Business Science, University of Pretoria, South Africa.
