I in general agree with
@Luther Blissett, that we should not be seeking to censor academic debate, indeed that is what Creawley and the UK PACE appologists are seeking to do with their harrasment narrative.
I defend Crawley's right as an academic to make fallacious arguments based on bad science, even though it has been used by her and others to justify medical abuse of people with ME including adolescents and young children, however in the University context I do not defend her right to deliberately lie to suppress rational scientific debate. I would not want to ask the University of Bristol to suppress her academic freedom, but I do however want to ask them to prevent her from deliberately using false information to libel, slander and abuse national charities, other academics and whole groups of people in order to suppress rational scientific debate.
Further I feel that the University of Bristol has failed in its moral and potentially legal obligations in relation to the ethical aproval of the SMILE study and in relation ethical aproval of Crawley's studies using GET and CBT. The University needs to be further challenged on this.
in contrast to supporting her academic freedom to get things so drastically wrong, she does not have a clinical freedom to perpetrate what amounts to medical abuse. However challenging her and many others' clinical practice is not the responsibility of her University but is the responsibility of her NHS Trust, her Health Authority, the NHS as a whole, NICE and the BMA.
In summary I feel that is wrong to challenge an individual's academic freedom, but that it would be correct to challenge the Unviersity of Bristol in relation to her false narrative confounding legitimate criticism with harrasment and in relation to their ethical aproval for a number of her studies. So I support a petition or open letter to her University in relation to these issues.
It is right also to challenge her clinical practise, though given that she, although a prominent advocate, is not alone in recommending CBT and GET perhaps any petition or open letter should be more general than just Crawley.
(Added after first posting: sorry it took me quite a while to write this, not a good brain day, so it might be superseded by other comments that appeared whilst I was writing it.)