At last an end to student snowflakes stifling free speech as universities clamp down on censorship
THERE was a time when university free-speech debates could be seen as elitist. Hardly touching the lives of most people.
But if that was ever the case it certainly isn’t any longer.
Two years ago a symbolic ambition of Tony Blair’s government was achieved.
In 2019 more than half of young people in the UK went into higher education.
When most young people are going to university, what happens there ends up mattering everywhere.
And what has happened in universities in recent years has been a disgrace.
These institutions were meant to open the minds of the young people who go into them.
But increasingly the opposite has been true.
Universities have long been dominated by the political Left, with the far Left creating most of the weather.
As they have grown, so their influence has grown.
With every year the number of dogmatic, yapping students seems to grow.
People whose minds have been closed — rather than opened — by their university experience.
From the university halls they spill out into the rest of society, telling everyone else what to do, think and say.
These people are the creations of universities. People who think of themselves as “social justice warriors”.
SEMI-EDUCATED MORONS
In fact they are nothing more than bitter, semi-educated morons who constantly demand emotional safety from the “aggression” of anything they disagree with.
These people object to absolutely everything that happened the day before they were born and most of what happened after. But, gosh, do they do what they are told.
They condemn our country's past and everyone within it.
Everyone and everything is racist. These scolds have pushed for buildings such as Liverpool University’s Gladstone Hall to be renamed. Because the 19th Century prime minister’s father benefited from the slave trade.
Just last week, Gladstone Hall was renamed after a communist activist instead. No nasty things could be linked to her, of course.
All this is because of what is taught and encouraged at universities across Britain.
But most striking has been attempts to shut down speakers.
Over recent years there have been large numbers of high-profile academics and others “no-platformed” from universities. A growing list of people have stood accused of holding the “wrong” opinions.
And while pretending that they care about ideas, major universities have shown that all they really care for is giving in to the woke mob.
Activist, feminist and Guardian journalist Julie Bindel was no-platformed by — and I’m not making this up — the University of Manchester Free Speech & Secular Society back in 2015 because she happened to hold views on the transgender community that some students did not like.
Last year former Home Secretary Amber Rudd told how she had an invitation to speak at Oxford University pulled half an hour before she was due to give a talk about encouraging young women to become MPs.
Why? Because when she was a Home Office minister the Windrush scandal happened.
'RADICAL HOT-HOUSES'
What message does that send to prospective female MPs? “Don’t bother.”
But they are not consistent, these radical hot-houses.
So long as you express hatred of Britain and its past you will get on just fine.
A professor like best-selling Canadian author Jordan Peterson, a critic of the Left and Marxism, is no-platformed by Cambridge University after a backlash from students and staff.
Meanwhile left-wing radical academics like Priyamvada Gopal of Churchill College, Cambridge, who delights in telling us how awful people like Churchill are, get given every platform they want.
Many people notice this ugly unfairness. They notice this trend of pandering to radical leftists. And they notice the hatred of anything remotely sensible, let alone conservative, in our universities.
Happily, the Government has noticed too. And so in the Queen’s Speech this week there was an interesting passage.
The Queen announced that the Government plans to legally oblige universities to defend free speech.
New laws will make it easier for academics and others to take action against universities if they are “cancelled”.
It would be a welcome change. More than a decade ago I had a talk cancelled at a London university at short notice.
Then (as now) there was an exchange of hostilities between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. As somebody who is more supportive of Israel than I am of terrorist groups, it was announced that my presence was not wanted.
In fact, a minority of students threatened violence if I even appeared on the campus. And so the university cancelled the event.
VIOLENT RADICAL ACTIVISTS
On the one hand, of course, such things are no great shakes. So what? Who cares whether you get to speak to a group of motley students on a wet weekday afternoon?
On the other hand, it matters a lot.
Because if the violent radical activists continue to get to decide who has a right to speak and who does not, then here is the thing.
People who are subsidised by the taxpayer to go to university will come out having heard only one side of every argument.
Whether it is foreign affairs, trans rights, women’s rights or anything else — they will leave university more badly informed than when they went in.
And more sure that they are right.
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The rot in universities seeps out everywhere. Because the people who leave them stupider than when they went in end up scolding us all.
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That’s why we should cheer this bit of the Queen’s Speech this week.
If it works, the whole country will feel a little bit more free.