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Prof Alice Sullivan said the University of Bristol failed to protect her right to freedom of speech at a talk on sex, data and research in October.
The University College London academic, who led a government review earlier this year that demanded public bodies collect data on biological sex as well as gender identity, has also written to the Office for Students (OfS).
Prof Sullivan told The Telegraph that the event at Bristol’s School for Policy Studies on Oct 22 descended into chaos after demonstrators held up placards reading “Trans Lives Matters”, set off multiple fire alarms and shouted “shame on you” at her as she left the event.
Security staff at the university were forced to move the event to a higher floor in the building midway through to limit the disruption, and she was later “whisked into a car to get me off the campus”.
She told The Telegraph: “It was far, far worse than anything I could ever have anticipated. I have never seen anything like it in my life. It really felt like a zombie apocalypse, with these people banging on the windows and howling.
“People set off fire alarms in order to disrupt the talk. They were literally scaling the walls outside so that they could bang on the windows and shout through loudhailers.”
Prof Sullivan claims that the University of Bristol failed to accommodate her talk properly despite an 18-month lead time, during which the institution tried to move the event to take place online.
She told The Telegraph that only 60 ticket places were made available despite a 400-person capacity in the lecture hall where the event took place.
Lawyers for Prof Sullivan have now written to the university warning that she is willing to bring a legal challenge against it for failing to protect her right to academic freedom.
A letter before action claims the University of Bristol failed to properly advertise the event, banned undergraduates from attending and neglected to take reasonable steps to ensure it was not disrupted.
Protesters also impeded the entrance to the venue and intimidated some of the 20 or so attendees that managed to gain access, the 42-page document added.
The University of Sussex was fined a record £585,000 earlier this year after the OfS ruled that it had failed to protect the philosophy lecturer from being hounded out of her job over her gender-critical views.
Source: ‘Trans activists turned my lecture into a zombie apocalypse’