Chairman Sir Michael Barber said the Office for Students will force institutions to allow diverse opinions to be heard amid concerns that some views are being shut down

Universities that tolerate curbs on free speech will face intervention, the head of the new student watchdog has warned.

Chairman Sir Michael Barber said the Office for Students (OfS) will force institutions to allow diverse opinions to be heard amid concerns that some views are being shut down.

The regulator was created this year in an effort to ensure universities are providing good value for money for students and the taxpayer.

Sir Michael said universities must allow every point of view to be heard – even if some are considered offensive to students.

‘To avoid discomfort is to retreat from freedom of speech: to run away from the good, the true and the beautiful,’ he wrote in Times Higher Education.

‘Instead, universities must help students develop the resilience and character needed to live with and benefit from being challenged.’

He added that ‘much of the most profound learning requires discomfort’.

Sir Michael’s comments follow a number of incidents in which students have banned speakers from their campuses over their allegedly offensive views.

He said some academics had voiced concerns that the OfS might place restrictions on what they said, but in fact the opposite was true. ‘Ideally, we will never have to intervene,’ he said.

‘But if we do, it will be to widen freedom of speech rather than restrict it.’