Canadian documentary filmmaker Ric Esther Bienstock was prompted to examine the growing culture wars on university campuses after her daughter questioned whether it was appropriate to wear sandals decorated with a traditional Chinese pattern.
The experience prompted Bienstock to investigate how debates over identity, cultural appropriation and free speech were affecting students and academic life. The result was Speechless, a two-part documentary series exploring campus activism and the changing boundaries of public debate.
The series aired on CBC in Canada and on BBC Storyville in the UK this spring. Its broadcast by two major public broadcasters would have seemed virtually impossible to many observers only a few years earlier, given the prevailing editorial climate surrounding these issues.
The documentary traces a series of high-profile campus free speech disputes over the past decade, beginning with the 2017 dispute involving biology professor Bret Weinstein at Evergreen State College. Weinstein had objected to a proposal that white students and staff voluntarily leave campus for a day as part of the college's annual "Day of Absence" event, a stance that triggered protests and calls for his resignation.
The film also examines the polarized debate over gender identity, including the criticism and protests directed at women who describe themselves as gender-critical, among them author JK Rowling. The series concludes with the wave of pro-Palestinian campus protests and encampments that spread across universities in 2023 and 2024, during which some demonstrators were accused of expressing support for Hamas or using antisemitic rhetoric. Throughout, Bienstock traces the mounting tension between free expression, identity politics and activism on university campuses.
Campuses Worldwide Confront the Same Issues
However, these issues are not confined to the English-speaking world. Germany has seen controversies strikingly similar to those depicted in Speechless, among them the 2022 cancellation of a talk by 36-year-old PhD student and biologist Marie-Luise Vollbrecht. Ironically, her lecture was scheduled to take place during the “Long Night of the Sciences” (“Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften”) at Humboldt University in Berlin.
The talk was titled “What Is Biological Sex, Why Are There Only Two Sexes, and Why Is That Different from Gender?”
According to Vollbrecht, the lecture had been planned for months and only became controversial after she co-authored a guest essay in Die Welt criticizing what she and several other scientists described as a skewed portrayal of sex and gender in programs produced by Germany's public broadcasters.
The authors argued that children’s programming increasingly presented concepts such as pronouns, gender identity and multiple genders in ways they considered ideological rather than scientifically grounded. They also criticized what they described as the inclusion of age-inappropriate sexual themes in some of their content.
Alongside the article, the group published a 50-page dossier calling on Germany’s public broadcasters to return to political neutrality and what they described as a fact-based presentation of biological sex. The publication sparked a backlash from transgender activists and their supporters, who called for Vollbrecht’s lecture to be canceled. Humboldt University subsequently withdrew the talk from the program, citing security concerns following the controversy. A legal battle with the university ensued, which she subsequently won.
Vollbrecht says activists subsequently traced her anonymous X account back to her real identity, forwarding posts from the account to her doctoral supervisor as part of what she describes as a sustained campaign of harassment and defamation.
The ordeal, she says, took a severe toll on her mental health, ultimately leading to a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). She further alleges that former friends and fellow students tried to sell personal information and stories about her to journalists as the controversy unfolded.
Signs the Tide May Be Turning
There are now signs that universities may be responding differently. In 2022, students and transgender activists successfully pressured Humboldt University to cancel one of Marie-Luise Vollbrecht’s planned lectures. Following the cancellation, Vollbrecht successfully challenged the decision in court, with judges ruling that the university had acted unlawfully.
Four years later, when she spoke at Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf, the university rejected calls to cancel the event and publicly defended academic freedom. Whether that reflects a broader shift in attitudes, greater awareness of universities’ legal obligations, or both is difficult to say, but institutions now appear more willing to stand their ground.
Outside the venue, activists staged a protest, holding signs reading “Protect Trans Kids” and using a megaphone to denounce the lecture as “discriminatory and dehumanizing”. Some students went further, calling for Vollbrecht to be dismissed from her position and barred from the university campus.
The university’s student union (AStA) supported the protesters, arguing that Heinrich Heine University could not claim to be a place of diversity and acceptance while at the same time hosting what it described as a “transphobic” lecture. The campus branch of the Christian Democratic Students (RCDS) initially joined calls criticizing the event but later the group said: “The freedom of research and teaching also protects controversial academic positions.”
The reversal also echoes one of the central conclusions of Speechless. As Bienstock wrote after making the documentary: “When a black professor was branded a ‘white supremacist’, I knew our universities had lost the plot.”
Whether universities are truly moving past that period remains an open question. But the response at Heinrich Heine University, together with the BBC’s decision to broadcast Speechless, points to a growing willingness among institutions to defend academic and artistic freedom, even at the cost of controversy.
