If universities censor, they can't complain when the state censors them

I spoke at a Guardian debate on free speech before an audience of students at King’s College London last night. I’ve argued with racists and Putinists in my time and – to put it as mildly as I can – these little bastions of academia were up there with them in their contempt for basic freedoms.

Contempt is perhaps not quite the right word. Most simply did not understand what freedom was, and could not grasp the need for universal human rights. They could not see themselves as others saw them, or understand that by giving up on basic principles, because they are difficult to live with, they had left themselves naked before their enemies.

The students, and the academics on the platform, were outraged by the government’s plans to ban “non-violent” Islamist extremists from speaking on campuses. By non-violent, ministers mean men, who may preach all the reactionary prejudices about women, Jews, homosexuals, and apostates, but stop short of advocating terrorism.

I said they had every right to be angry. The only justification for censoring opinion is when it incites violence. You can use every other weapon a free country gives you to confront speakers you oppose. You can fact check them, mock and undermine them, expose their fallacies and overwhelm their defences. But you cannot ban them. Give up on that principle, and you lay yourself open to every variety of dictator and heresy hunter rigging debates and suppressing contrary opinions.

They seemed to like that. But where, I continued, might the state have got the idea that it was acceptable to ban speakers, who were not advocating violence. The question was so obvious it answered itself. To me, at any rate.

For years the National Union of Students blacklisted feminists because they had once said in frank language that trans-sexual women weren’t real women. In recent months, Oxford University cancelled a debate on abortion because protesters objected to the fact it was being held between two men; officials at London Southbank took down an atheist society’s “flying spaghetti monster” poster because it might cause religious offence; the students union at UCL banned the Nietzsche Club after it put up posters saying “equality is a false God”; and Dundee banned the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. Meanwhile half the campuses in Brtain have banned the Sun. You may be transsexual, God-bothering, pro-abortion, egalitarian, supporter of the Leveson inquiry. But you cannot pretend that any of these individuals, groups or images promoted violence.

Unless universities reformed they would be wide open to attack by the state, I told the audience. How could academics and students even keep a straight face when they told the Home Office it had no right to do what they were already doing?

I think it is fair to say that my speech did not go down well. In fact, the audience came close to revolt. When I said that universities should be physically safe spaces, but the notion that students should be kept safe from ideas or arguments defeated the whole purpose of higher education, one woman suggest I was advocating child abuse. When I said that their hypocrisy would be their downfall, they saw no reason why they should not persist in double standards. They were right and the government was wrong. They could ban, but no one could ban them. That’s all there was to it.

Michael Harris, a colleague on the Guardian, made the brilliant point to me afterwards that tuition fees had made students consumers. They no more felt they had a duty to uphold freedom of speech when they disapproved of a speaker, than shoppers thought they had a duty to visit M&S if they shopped at Waitrose the week before. The customer was king and could do what he damn well wanted. I left thinking how too many left-wing academics were creating the ideal authoritarian types for the corporations, political parties and police forces of tomorrow. The abiding lesson of their supposedly liberal education was that they were entitled to suppress argument.

I wish I had known, but while I was speaking, Queen’s University in Belfast was making my point for me. You can find the full details on the Little Atoms website, which has quickly become essential reading for me. But in short, Queen’s was going to hold a symposium with the mild title of “Understanding Charlie: New perspectives on contemporary citizenship after Charlie Hebdo” Jason Walsh, the Christian Science Monitor, had planned to argue that

Society today is lumbered with increasingly hollowed-out institutions and little commitment to the liberal, dare I say it Enlightenment, values that, despite their limitations, made us what we are, which is, I hope, increasingly tolerant of one another. Newspapers, even satirical ones filled with cartoons you may not like, are part of that.

He couldn’t. The Vice Chancellor at Queen’s – one Paul Johnston – cancelled the discussion yesterday because he was “concerned about the security risk for delegates and about the reputation of the university.”

What to make of his cowardice?

The most obvious point is that senior academics now see suppression of debate as a means of protecting “the reputation of the university”. Freedom of thought and open argument, once the best reasons for having universities, are now threats which must be neutered.

Second, it is now not only difficult or impossible to satirise Islam because of fear of violence, it is becoming difficult or impossible in British universities to discuss the actual violence. Not only can you not show Charlie Hebdo cartoons, you cannot talk about the motives of the men who murdered the cartoonists. Third, although he cannot prove this, Walsh suspects that there was no real security risk, just the possibility that someone’s feelings would be hurt when he and others unequivocally condemned the murderers of cartoonists and Jews. The possibility that someone will or may hear an argument he or she does not like is now enough to justify censorship.

Finally, Queen’s has made the vice-chancellors and academics protesting against the Conservatives’ plans to ban Islamists look like perfect fools and utter hypocrites. If universities censor learned debates on Islamism, how can they possibly deny the state the right to censor Islamists?

I would have used the example of Queen’s and made all these arguments last night. But it would have done no good. Academia is lost in a self-satisfied stupor, and I doubt a single criticism I or anyone else made will wake it. Never has the security establishment been presented with such an easy target.

Show comments

http://zimriel.blogspot.com/ Zimriel

I would take your piece more seriously if it hadn’t used the meaningless term “racist”. It is name-calling, a rhetorical ploy; abuse, not argument.
Pete

It will all be over soon. Hypocrisy cannot last.
tom rose

Whether the article is mostly right or badly flawed, there is no doubt that our rights and freedoms hare under attack, as they have been since 9/11 provided an excuse to enact anti-terrorism legislation that has been widely misused.

I grew up on a country where you could SAY just about anything, so long as you did not commit or incite violence. If someone’s feelings were hurt that was not your problem. That is not to say that the freedom was abused to cause gratuitous offence.

My grandfathers would be ashamed of what Britain has become … both the one I knew that fought in the trenches in WWI and the one I did not who died (along with his eldest son) fighting in WWII. The freedoms and values that they fought for and that so many died for are being given away far too easily.

The state already has far too much power and does not need any more.
Carlos Malleum

I see now that Queens Belfast are going to hold the conference after all, in June. Well done to the University for actually stepping up to its responsibilities as an academic institution. It’s a shame some of the other Universities in the UK don’t have the courage or the perception to see where their culture of groupthink is getting them.
Stormbringer

“The only justification for censoring opinion is when it incites violence.”

If the Universities, Academics and Student Union are to be logically consistent then they would no longer provide any platform from religious representatives whose belief systems and holy books demand from their readers actual violence (not mere incitement) towards others that is often targeted towards specific groups.

When will the universities close down the Nuremberg rallies that are prayer rooms and forbid any students promoting their religion?

It sounds as though that Universities are simply not fit-for-purpose and many of them should be closed down and their so-called “academics” need to be systematically sacked.
carlbennett

Totally agree, with the rider that The Sun has in fact more than once promoted violence, from “Gotcha!” to Katie Hopkins.
global city

the one flaw in the Left’s strategy is assuming that academe really is central to the prospects for our civilisation.
Peter Kolding

I’ve come to the conclusion that what we are seeing in academia and the Left is the reappearance of the pre-scientific, pre-Enlightenment superstitious mind. It struck me recently when reading an article in the Guardian. The columnist objected to Madonna using the Thatcher quotation “If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.” She objected to this not because the actual quotation was offensive, but because it was produced by Thatcher. This is magical, superstitious thinking. It is of a par with not reading On the Origin of the Species, because Darwin was a tool of the devil.

The more I thought about the mental outlook required to come to the conclusions of modern Leftist thought, the clearer I understood the inevitable actions that mentality would demand of its followers.
- Genie Balham
  
  Interesting thought Peter
- Lydia Robinson
  
  Hardly surprising that they find so much common ground with Islamic fundamentalists.
vildechaye

By citing “damage to their reputation” as a reason (probably the only reason, security being a fig-leaf) for cancelling the conference, they are implicitly supporting the CH attacks.
S&A

‘[One] woman suggest I was advocating child abuse’.

So students are ‘children’ now?
cartimandua

Behind the Times paywall is an article which quotes Scotland yard about how IS now recruit by social media.
“Radicalization” now happens via the Internet as well as in person. Young people “get this” but oldies just don’t. So that’s why you cannot platform extremists in order to have an intellectual bit of fun. Their ideas wont be “challenged”. They will be normalized. Extremists of all kinds give people an emotional experience which is addictive.
Yes we may now be raised to be self regarding and sentimental. Spoilt rotten by Dalrymple is an excellent book.
However free speech cannot exist in the modern world where speech is no longer ephemeral and local.
Nkaplan

“Michael Harris, a colleague on the Guardian, made the brilliant point to me afterwards that tuition fees had made students consumers. They no more felt they had a duty to uphold freedom of speech when they disapproved of a speaker, than shoppers thought they had a duty to visit M&S if they shopped at Waitrose the week before. ”

If you think this problem was created by tuition fees or could be ended by abolishing them you have seriously failed to understand how deep this rot goes. These students have no conception of the importance of free speech because they are pampered, sentimental and politically correct morons, incapable of critical thinking and unable to cope with hearing opinions contrary to their own. These problems arise from the leftist obsession with equality, diversity and multiculturalism which infests every institution in this country (even the allegdly Conservative Party – think Anna Soubry for instance), and a failure properly to educate children for well over a generation.
- Lydia Robinson
  
  It’s funny to observe how quickly all pretence of pc breaks down completely when lefties are given free rein to discuss a right wing woman like Sarah Palin or Katie Hopkins – it’s perfectly fine to allude to their private parts and wish death and rape upon them. The Guardian deleted that comment, by the way.
ScaryBiscuits

Cohen is impeccable in his logical defence of free speech. However, he is wrong on one factual point: there is no such thing as a non-violent extremist. Extremism, the insistence that there can be no compromise with others, leads inevitably to violence.
- Peter Kolding
  
  “Extremist” is always a pejorative, and exclusively used to typify one’s opponents. In fact, it could be argued that the use of the word “extremist” in an argument is the definition of an extremist opinion. I might also point out that Pacifism itself has been described as “extremist” in many situations, and one can hardly regard Pacifism as pro-violence.
  - ScaryBiscuits
    
    Many Muslims would disagree with you that ‘extremist is always pejorative’. Baroness Wars is one. The Prime Minister of Turkey is another who finds ‘moderate’ offensive. Therein lies a big part of the culture clash with modern Western and particularly British civilisation built on historical compromises and, exactly as you say, abhors extremism.
Erdogan’s Putty Face

I’m fine with Universities acting in reckless, stupid, arrogant ways. However, they should become companies, funded by their students (all adults remember) and anyone else stupid enough to donate money to them. Not a single penny of taxpayer money should go to them whilst they act in such a censorious, hypocritical way.
freddiethegreat

Academics and Uni professors, rectors etc do tend to be dribbling cowards. In fact, it is almost a requirement for the job. Witness the removal of the statue of the man who created the University of Cape Town and the Rhodes scholarship fund, who promoted black / white understanding and tolerance – because a tiny minority of semi-literate parasites ‘students’ demanded it. Truly, liberals are the first ones to be eaten in the revolution.
GeeBee36_6

A fine article, but (rather like the offerings of Rod Liddle, only in a more measured tone) it leaves one astonished that the writer pretends to be ‘left wing’. Both Rod and Mr Cohen demonstrate, on a weekly basis, that they want nothing to do with the left and all its works. Perhaps they persist in their delusion that they are of the left because of an attachment to the old, rather cuddly, pre-Blair Labour Party, with its radical talk from Foot and Benn in opposition, which inevitably translated into the capitalist, reactionary policy of Wilson and Callaghan when in office.

Now that the Frankfurt School and Gramscian nightmare versions have come out of the closet – the internationalist version of the true left, and no less terrifying than the nationalst versions of Nazism and Fascism – it is largely those deluded, tribal Labour supporters who help keep it close to power, whether they are learned scribes int he Speccie, or the rump of the urban white working class,

Brecht’s quip about governments in democracies ‘dissolving the people and electing another’, whenever they find the existing electorate insufficiently malleable, manifests itself in the mass importation of ready-made victim groups. Once these tame voters are in place, they must never, but of course, be antagonised, lest they should look elsewhere for representation.

As Curtis Yarvin has observed, ‘conservative’ parties meekly follow in the wake of the progressive parties, albeit at the respectable distance of a decade or two. Thus the political zeitgeist shifts inexorably to the left. Cameron, to his credit (when dwelling solely on his prowess as a
professional politician) has recognised this phenomenon, and has decided to short-circuit it, and play the progressive left at their own game, and decided to grab
himself some of this victim group action.

The solution to this spiral into insanity is a radical one, but is not suitable for the children I fear.
Aporia

Great article, though the idea that tuition fees can explain censorship turns the issue on its head. Even if you grant that students have become “consumers,” which I have reservations about, this explanation doesn’t get off the ground until you consider what the consumer wants. If students actually wanted universities where they could discuss ideas openly and vigorously without fear of censure, then their status as consumers would be a good thing for free speech, not a bad thing.

So the problem is much, much deeper than this: it’s a cultural shift, at a grassroots level, away from Enlightenment values. Nick mentions that Queen’s thought it was acceptable to censor in the interests of its “reputation”; but this is not unique to institutions: it’s a value that’s becoming increasingly common at the individual level. Whereas once it was considered morally wrong to censor, the social stigma attached to a rejection of freedom of speech has been lost. It’s become a quirk of the punchy, politically-engaged Libertarian, rather than a binding societal value.

I put this down to the modern scourge of moral relativism and the accompanying non-judgementalism, the unwillingness among the population at large to stand up and say that Kant trumps the Koran. Enlightenment values must be defended more firmly, but as Nick writes here and as I have experienced as a student, doing do is difficult because it has become “too offensive”.
- jim_joystique
  
  I think an obscurantist like Kant would probably have enjoyed the Koran very much.
- chesters
  
  I don’t know much about Kant, but agree about moral and cultural relativism.
  I have just retired from working in a UK University, in social sciences, where the curriculum (which I hasten to say, I had no part in writing) was steeped in this kind of stuff. ‘All values and cultures are equal’ ‘respect for cultural differences’ (no matter how unpleasant some cultural practices might be) and avoid being ‘judgemental’ at all costs – these were the messages infusing the curriculum and assessments. There was much encouragement for students to become ‘critical thinkers’ but they had to toe the party line otherwise risk failure. Nobody saw the contradiction. So you end up with a wishy washy ‘anything goes’ and dumbing down, for fear of ‘offending’ any minority group.
  I agree that Enlightenment values need defending, now more that ever, but it’s an uphill task at Universities.
  ‘The sleep of reason brings forth monsters’ indeed
  - Damaris Tighe
    
    I realised that critical thinking wasn’t the same as ‘Critical Theory’ when I read a prospectus for an MA in Critical Theory – cultural Marxism from start to finish. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I imagine the course’s students’ smug sense of superiority when they graduate as critical theorists.
    - chesters
      
      I know exactly what you mean. Personally, I cry. But these students and their tutors certainly think they have the ‘moral high ground’. Nick Cohen cites Queen’s Belfast – well, it’s a world class university but obviously cowardly when it comes to hosting a forum which might ‘damage its reputation’. I have been an external examiner for courses at Queen’s and other UK universities. The staff commonly name-dropped French post modern philosophers to show how right – on they were. At the time, you had to get Derrida and Foucault into everything, otherwise you just wouldn’t cut the mustard. I’m not sure how well these courses prepared students for living in the real world.
      - Damaris Tighe
        
        And Lacan!
        
        chesters
        
        Ah dear old Jacques! I recall struggling with his work and all those French Po-Mo philosophers and psychoanalysts, to get street cred with my academic colleagues, and impress students. I gave up after a while, especially on reading Sokal and Bricmont (‘intellectual impostures: when the merde hit the fan’)Thank goodness I never attained the status of an intellectual.
  - cartimandua
    
    But you have to defend them with a firm grip on the collar of reason and evidence. In modern times platforming those whose attitudes to for instance women and gays are vile spreads those views. It gives them legitimacy.
    In ye olden days talking cr** didn’t matter. People said it and it was ephemeral. Now it goes viral and is written or pictured in perpetuity. That gives it spurious legitimacy.
    Enlightenment values have to adapt to modern realities.
    - chesters
      
      well I agree: but spreading vile attitudes about women and gays, for example, seems to be OK amongst some (?many) on the Left, and in universities, if the people who are busy spreading those views are thought to be at the top of the hierarchy of ‘oppressed groups’. As others have noted here, the Guardian is a prime example of this.
      And we have been told by many student union people that students have to ‘feel comfortable’ at campus events. So feeling comfortable trumps rational discourse. How should Enlightenment values adapt to modern realities? should we tolerate the (extremely) intolerant, for example?
      - cartimandua
        
        A recent case which had men harrumphing involved a bit of pro life propaganda. The question was a closed question which made a priori assumptions and the “panellists” heavily laden with men who are famous misogynists.
        There are academic and logical requirements of debate which determines whether it is truly about debate or whether it is in fact propaganda.
        “Feeling comfortable” may be because students now understand the effects of the Internet in ways older people do not.
        They know people learn and their emotions are swayed by the Internet. They know people are becoming inured to hardcore po** and sadism of many kinds.
        Older people just don’t get it because they have not used the Internet in the same way. Young people know that for instance happy slapping became endless violent attacks for the benefit of camera, that shared selfies can end up being used to blackmail an ex.
        Its a different world.
cartimandua

Students “get it” more than aging green inkers. People learn. The ubiquity of the Internet and mass media means platforming nuts gives them legitimacy and lots of publicity. Platforming odious people spreads their message for them. Its not hard to choose who to avoid. They are always people who attack people not ideas.
Even non violent Islamists attack women and gays.
Kasperlos

The last three decades have brought into tired institutions phony dogmas pulled out of narcissist backsides of brainwashed generations, and agitated by useless, batty professors of pottiness in a vain exercise to arouse any modicum of human strand in their otherwise empty shell. Rather the issues, subjects and objects of their leftist qualities reflects their own confusion. The Age of Western Reason and Enlightenment is long over. Attempts to find something new – like the fraudulent Hipsters – in the halls of academia is rather something very old: intolerance, boredom, impatience, autocracy, self absorption, and a misplaced sense of self righteousness. These leftist oriented students – living in a box – reflect the vileness of the university acolyte students of Mao’s ’60s Cultural Revolution. However, many of these clones changed stripes under the 1980s Deng Zhao Peng’s ‘It’s Glorious To Be Rich’ movement. Witness the 50 and 60-something ex-communist Chinese ensconced in their luxury digs along the Thames. Astute observers of the condition would recognize that the cynical slogan of ‘first among equals’ describes the mindset of today’s false prophets of academia.
global city

This is because the cultural Left feel that they have won. They know the position…they are now the reactionaries protecting the privileged status of lefty wankery and thuggery.
Kennybhoy

A sinful urge came upon me to respond to Maister C’s article with an “as ye sow, so shall ye reap”. But I have too much time for Maister C …
http://www.ukipforbritain.co.uk/ ukipforbritain

The truth is, Nick, you’ve been talking to young Nazis. Naturally, they support fascisim, violence, the suppression of free speech, equality of the sexes, and seek the destruction of Great Britain – it is their nature.
- cartimandua
  
  You have a problem with equality of the sexes???
  - James
    
    I do. As a male i’d like equal rights in law and medical treatment.
    - cartimandua
      
      And you think you don’t have it. That’s actually a myth that men don’t have equal rights. for instance with health mental health and prostate cancers may be badly cared for but male heart disease is much better diagnosed and treated than heart disease in women. Life expectancy now is virtually the same although it should be shorter for men because male metabolism is higher.
      
      As far as law goes after divorce women take a financial hit they never recover from unless they repartner,
      
      Men actually get richer in marriage and richer after divorce.
      
      http://www.fin24.com/Womens-Wealth/Empowerment/Women-poorer-men-richer-after-divorce-20130729
      
      “That’s what Professor Stephen Jenkins, a director of the Institute for Social and Economic Research and chair of the Council of the International Association for Research on Income and Wealth, found in a British survey a few years back.
      
      The father’s available income rises by about a third, he said, while the mother’s drops by more than a fifth and stays that way for years.
      “
      - James
        
        Nonsense. Divorce laws discriminate against men. Cancer research and drugs have been advanced in breast and cervical cancer. How can mental health diagnoses possibly be different for men and women?
      - Liberanos
        
        That there are still large areas of inequality favouring men is surely unarguable. However, a complicating factor in diagnosing female heart problems is the differential in pain experienced. This often masks symptoms and delays treatment.
  - http://www.ukipforbritain.co.uk/ ukipforbritain
    
    Are you nuts?
Oliver

If you corner these authoritarian lefties they are forced to admit that their approach to censorship is based, -not on a desire for safety- but an unshakable belief that they are on the right side of history so closing down debate is fine.

“we are right, you are wrong” end of conversation.

I urge as many of you as possible to elicit this response from as many authoritarian lefties as you can.

It is incredibly difficult to get people to realise that a bunch of anti war, anti racist, pro equality/diversity activists are actually a dogmatic, authoritarian scourge. Most people just cannot get beyond all of the touchy feely lefty rhetoric about tolerance and diversity.

The only way to get most people to reject these political puritans is by cornering them and getting them to admit that their authoritarian ambitions are based on a pseudo religious moral certainty that they are the way the truth and the light.
UKSteve

Free speech? In a university? When virtually all of them ban UKIP from campuses, especially during elections?

Novel. ironic.
- freddiethegreat
  
  Free speech and freedom of thought is not permitted at universities.
  - UKSteve
    
    I know, that’s why I wrote what I did
Sharon Fruitcake

But we have the interweb where every lefty nutter can rant to his/her heart’s content.
James

Its racist to want to control borders but not racist to discriminate against your own race. Frankly, if I were PM i’d remove their passports send them packing to The Holy Grail of Europe.
DrWatt

Freedom of speech should be absolute – you cannot couple it with get-out clauses and exceptions, no caveats – you cannot place restrictions on freedom of speech and then call it a fundemental right. The trouble is that many university students are so concerned by someone somewhere being offended or damage by freedom of speech that they only see freedom of speech in negative terms – which in reality is all about their distrust of ordinary people – we little people cannot handle freedom of speech in their bigoted minds therefore there must be restictions placed upon what we underlings have to say in case its something they don’t want to hear or might feel offended about. In the past the defenders of free speech had faith in their people – these days we have little wannabe tyrants everywhere policing peoples views and thoughts because they basically have no faith in people and what they might have to say – universities were once the bastions of free thought – now they appear to be in the control of a bunch of spoiled little tinpot dictators who want it all their own way – they deserve to have the tables turned on them.
misomiso

+1
cartimandua

Would it be “free speech” if a speaker wanted to discuss how darkies are of lower IQ?
Islamists treat women, gays, and people of colour very badly. Apparently their holy book says they can.
I always think with Lefties they really don’t mind what people say about women.
Try putting “man” or even” black man” into the description of “less than” and see how that sounds.
- WFC
  
  The answer to your question is “Yes”.
  
  The answer to your comment re lefties is that (with some honourable exceptions) they believe that “free speech” means that people are free to agree with them.
- Rhoda Klapp8
  
  If it were true that darkies had a lower IQ, would it be OK to say so?
Chamber Pot

The irony is spectacular. The idea that the Guardian could host a debate on free speech (which it doesn’t believe in) is at the same time both ludicrous and presumptuous. This Soros backed outfit and rag fails completely to speak truth to power and grovels in front of a motley assembly of Establishment pederasts, fringe lunatics, frothing at the mouth Moslem agitators, and global monopolists. The Guardian sees everyone who fails to share its sick world view as either monsters or sub-human knuckle draggers……and wishes to tortures them with ghastly sermons from the yawnsome and tedious YAB, or worse, from Will Self. The poor victims of this vile abuse will find themselves begging Anjem Chaudary succeed in establishing his Caliphate and shutting these windbags up permanently.
cartimandua

You don’t get it N Cohen, The Internet has changed everything . If you platform BS you give it spread and legitimacy.
So no don’t platform supposedly non violent Islamist speakers. Cynanide is still cyanide even in small doses.
They are still demagogues who give the emotionally vulnerable an experience which leads them into “heavier” opinions. People learn.
- Darren Stephens
  
  The problem with this argument is the age old one.
  
  The effects of cyanide are easily and objectively measurable. Cultural effects are not. Who decides what is “BS” or not? The only way is to let them all speak. And let us make up our own minds.
wudyermucuss

As a far left/anarchist/woteva acquaintance told me recently,”people need educating”.
Such ideas lead to people dying in camps.
**** these smug,hypocritical,overwhelmingly middle class/comfortably off wannabe elitist rulers.
Come the real revolution,I’d have these people tilling the fields.
- freddiethegreat
  
  They might end up being tilled INTO the fields.
  - wudyermucuss
    
    Mao’s happy citizens would occasionally pull a limb from the side of the road to gnaw on and realize it was remains of their child.
- little islander
  
  ‘real revolution, I’d have these people tilling the fields’? More like the red army in the gulags. LOL!
  - Alice
    
    Khmers Rouges!
Violin Sonata.

A guardian debate on free speech- is this a joke ? Its somewhat like King Herod leading a debate on childcare.
- James
  
  They restricted my comments ability for publishing facts against misrepresenting articles.
  - Violin Sonata.
    
    I just responded to you and it apparently needs approving, for some
    odd reason.
    Edit: I mentioned about posts sent to newspapers vanishing and censoring and my post needed ‘ approving ‘?
    - James
      
      Its not just the moderators of the media but your opinions are turned into data for profiling and held at GCHQ. I wish that this was conspiracy but its reality.
  - vieuxceps2
    
    Yes,I too have the award of being banned from the Guardian’s “Comment is Free” columns. Irony of irony?
Jim91

“The only justification for censoring opinion is when it incites violence”

Er… what exactly is it that these “non violent extremist” preachers are suggesting should be done to gays and apostates? I like Nick’s writing, but it seems to me that he’s conflating the combating of real toxic and dangerous Islamic Wahhabi doctrine with childish censorship of run of the mill “controversial” ideas. The government’s ban is just an attempt to halt years of progress at turning some of our universities into defacto Wahhabi indoctrination camps.
- cartimandua
  
  The government probably now understands more than we used to about the drug that is Islamism.
- Feminister
  
  Or to put it another way, he’s conflating the serious danger of proponents of ideas that endanger white men with the less serious danger of proponents of ideas that endanger white women and non-white men and women.
- WFC
  
  The cure for “bad” speech is more speech, not less.
Ivan Ewan

“preach all the reactionary prejudices about women, Jews, homosexuals, and apostates”

Surely, since they’re spouting these prejudices in an attempt to change Britain into a new Islamic society, it’s not “reactionary” but “revolutionary”.

Or are only good people revolutionary and all bad people reactionary, Nick?
http://www.lauramarcus.com Laura Marcus

I am reminded of one of my favourite quotes from The West Wing, penned by Aaron Sorkin. Why has Democrat president Jed Bartlet hired a Republican to work in the White House someone asks. “Because he likes to surround himself with smart people who disagree with him,” replies a staffer.
- UKSteve
  
  And they had to be, with Jed’s Nobel prize for Economics and all!
Dionysus

Puting (pun intended) racists and putinsts into the same category. Brilliant. What’s next? Saying all Russians are homophobic racists and alcoholic pigs? Be my guest, I won’t be surprised. Yes, indeed there are people who, let’s say, go the extra mile in supporting him. However, supporting Putin isn’t fundamentally wrong, unlike being a racist.
Torybushhug

This same intolerance is seen with QT audiences where the vocal left seeks to undermine the right by way of loud hissing and booing of anyone with an opposing view whereas those on the right quietly make their points and don’t tend to cheer their own side as loudly either.
- Verbatim
  
  In Australia, with our sister program Q&A, active sledging occurs and most politicians won’t have a bar of the program.
- Darren Stephens
  
  Really? You must only have one eye open when watching QT. Or maybe a completely different programme. Everyone is a bad as each other.
sfin

In our “all must have prizes” society, it’s what inevitably happens when you send, essentially, thick people to university.
- Mr Grumpy
  
  Yes, but it’s not just the thickos. Free speech is far from secure at Oxbridge.
  - Verbatim
    
    It’s pure group-think. When I was young there was a strong herd mentality which I vigorously opposed. Now I feel sorry for those shallow individuals in the herd who let others do their thinking for them.
    - sfin
      
      Yes, I agree. It all goes hand in hand with the infantilisation of our society (or a plebeian dumbed down society as V.S Naipaul put it).
      
      Our younger generation seem to grow up much later than we did and carry the selfishness, narcissism and group thinking of adolescence further into adulthood.
  - sfin
    
    Have you seen some of today’s politicians who are Oxbridge alumni?
    
    I would suggest that Oxbridge hasn’t been a guarantor of intelligence for decades!
    - UKSteve
      
      As Peter Hitchens pointed out 2 years ago, there are (were) more men who went to Oxford in the Cabinet (27 members) than women, and 22 of the 27 are multi-millionaires.
Mr Grumpy

As ever, Nick is superb until he decides it’s time to burnish his leftist credentials.

The Guardianista’s “brilliant” thesis that the Evil Tories have closed students’ minds by the simple expedient of introducing tuition fees is very easily put to the test. Are Scotland’s universities bastions of robust free speech?
- Richard Ferguson
  
  No.
  - Mr Grumpy
    
    QED.
- Graham Martin-Royle
  
  Labour introduced tuition fees, the coalition increased them.
Kevin T

I agree very much with the basic point you are making but I don’t think the idea that this is down to universities charging fees stands up. The same attitude exists to an even greater degree in the student unions, which are not run on capitalist principles and I doubt the people at the universities making the decisions see themselves as capitalists. This is a left wing movement, specifically the middle class left. The values that are being placed beyond challenge are those of the average Labour member, trade unionist or Guardian reader. The reason they are outraged about Islamist speakers being banned is Muslims are an ethnic minority and Victims and therefore must be deferred to, unlike white males making the same points. Pure left wing Victim politics. The left needs to confront this (as, to be fair, you personally do) and not try and palm it off onto capitalism.
- The Masked Marvel
  
  Indeed. Every student protest turns violent, including the one about tuition fees. So by their logic, complaining about tuition fees should be banned because it clearly incited violence.
  - Genie Balham
    
    Tee hee…. very neat
  - Ivan Ewan
    
    Success! Have a cigar.
    - Guest
      
      ★★★★ I RECEIVED FIRST DRAFT OF $13000!@ak15:
      
      ,,
      
      ➨➨➨➨https://QuicksAdviceClear.com/gets/carriage…
- Pesty
  
  To be fair, I believe the consumer rights argument by way of tuition fees was proposed by Michael Harris at the Guardian and not the author here. Although, I think we can also infer that the author supports that line of reasoning.
  
  I agree with your criticism of the argument, though. I don’t think it’s an accurate representation of the motivations to suppress speech across academia.
- Verbatim
  
  I agree with this entirely. It’s all about the tired old tics of identity politics with a herd mentality. Hopefully these drones will grow up and begin to think for themselves, as opposed to the comfort of group-think.
  - post_x_it
    
    University was supposed to be the place where they grow up and learn to think for themselves.
    - freddiethegreat
      
      Unfortunately, freedom of thought is discouraged by the most vicious sanctions at universities. That’s why they go from drones to clones.
      - Darren Stephens
        
        The damage is done before they actually get here.
- Dr. Heath
  
  I agree. No crime or atrocity or call, say, for the utter and permanent worldwide elimination of democracy that happens in the War of Omnicide [the collective term for the wars conducted by Muslims against Narms, against non-Muslims and against governments that do not piously and properly support the wars against Narms and non-Muslims] will, in the short-term, convince those uni students for whom moral posturing or virtue signalling seem compulsory, that any Muslim group or individual can be other than a victim. One of ‘our’ victims, that is. The colossal death toll amongst, say, the Syrian population barely registers in the minds of people whose knowledge of history and contemporary affairs is largely non-existent, with only a few approved laundered ‘facts’ and opinions getting past the internal censors that control what passes for thinking inside the heads of the sledgers and all the self-righteous fascists masquerading as defenders of their own and their nation’s liberties.
  
  [Narm – Not A Real Muslim. This is a term I’ve found useful ever since a long association with some Pakistani Sufis who, despite their genuine and absolutely pacifism, regarded anyone who did not believe exactly what they believed about Islam to be not a real Muslim.]
- Martin Adamson
  
  Exactly. The “decent tolerant left” which Nick Cohen claims to represent is an organisation with but a single member, now that Norm Geras is dead.
  - Rhoda Klapp8
    
    Another example of Cohen’s confliction. Nothing can be done for him until he faces the reality of the nastiness of many on the left. Collective solutions seem always to involve compulsion of the unwilling and condemnation of the heretical. It would be interesting if Mr. Cohen could show us the way to avoid that problem.
    
    Oh, and universities should be divorced from the State. They should be totally independent of the state apparatus. They don’t need it, they need to find their own place, not forced into an obsolete pattern by the tyranny of state funding.
    - Darren Stephens
      
      What? Place aczdemia purely at the whim of the market? Really?
  - Darren Stephens
    
    Speak for yourself.
    
    I agree entirely with Nick: the limit being placed on the free exchange of ideas within academe is worrying. I may be left-leaning, but it doesn’t mean I want thought from the right banned: quite the contrary. I want to have the argument. We (wider society) have, over the past thirty years or so, encouraged the ghettoisation of arguments via the mechanism of identity politics, the mantra of “check your privilege” and the slinging of the “hypocrite” label. And look where it’s getting us: just a bunch of ways for those (on left AND right) who don’t want to listen to stop any debate before it even happens.
    
    The “incitement” argument or “risk” argument is often rolled out by institutions, especially as universities are increasingly aware of the risk of litigation. So they become more timorous as they have become corporate entities. This loss of collegiality is a big problem. As is the fact that many students have been pushed through an earlier education system that doesn’t encourage thought and discourse. “Be a good little consumer unit”, seems to be the creed, to prepare them for the “jobs market”, where they have just enough to do the jobs needed, but not enough to ask any probing questions about the system they are working within. It’s damaging to all of us.
    
    It’s kind of ironic that Morgan and Gove were trumpeting the promotion of “British” values in schools, right now. Perhaps they’re right. Maybe the “British” values of the original Poll Tax riots, the Peasants’ Revolt, Bannockburn, the Civil War, the Enlightenment, Peterloo, Chartism and Suffragism might be useful to inculcate again. But I’m not sure those were the British values they meant: they’ve been eroded over several decades by governments of all hues.
    
    [disclaimer: I work in an English university]
    - LarryCook
      
      One never learns a damn thing listening only to those with the same opinion. It’s ignorant and arrogant to insist not only that there’s only one side of the coin, but also to insist that nobody turns it over.
    - mrs 1234
      
      How come so many students support ultra-conservative islamists? Are they unaware or simply in denial of how long a member of the LGBT community would last in an Islamic State?
      - Ringstone
        
        Awkward question – you’re banned!
- WFC
  
  Very good point.
  
  Moreover, the same “no platform” tendencies were around when I was at Uni – long before fees were introduced – although I would concede that they weren’t as ridiculous then as they are now.
- ScaryBiscuits
  
  The problem is the quality of students, which is a direct result of the quantity. It has been reasonably well established that about 20% of children are capable of an academic, higher education and that it is generally clear which by the age of 13. Another fact is that approximately 50% of children go to university. It follows that about 60% of students are intellectually incapable of doing the course for which they are enrolled. This is on average across all universities and all courses. Outside the more ‘difficult’ course, that proportion is likely to be 100% in some cases and these people are likely to be disproportionately represented at political events. Cohen is, therefore, wasting his breath speaking to them. In general, they are – quite literally – incapable of understanding the point he is making. The university management also have no interest in helping students understand as their institutions are no longer places of learning but financially motivated, producing degrees in the manner of a sausage factory.
  - Sausage
    
    1. 80:20 ratio. Pulled from nowhere. Smells like the Pareto fallacy.
    2. 50% of school kids go to Uni? Simply bollox. The UK Gov website has higher education participation rate at a shade under 50% for 2011/12 for 17 to 30 year olds (which is a good thing BTFW). Higher education is not limited to University attendance. That 17 to 30 age range is obviously not just school kids. 18 (25.7%) and 19 (11.8%) year olds may account for most but is that really a surprise or a bad thing? And the >6% over 22 going into Higher Ed? Also good.
    3. There is no 3. You started weak and got worse. The most appealing part was “sausage”. I like sausages.
- sebastian2
  
  Surely what we’re suffering is the intolerance and bigotry – even hatreds – of “liberal” tyranny. As such they, as liberals, excel in offending against themselves. Except they are not liberal.
  
  It would be better if we called these hate-mongers by the name that fits best: juvenile fascists.
monty61

Spot on. Add into the mix that you can’t get published in any social science or humanities discipline without fitting into the framework of some bullsh**t theory, and we reach a point that individual, critical thinking in our institutions is a thing of the past. Cowardice, apathy, laziness, playing the game, all win out over honesty and rigour. It’s a travesty of what academia SHOULD be about.
hepworth

“A Guardian debate on free speech”???
Is that supposed to be funny?
thetrashheap

“Michael Harris, a colleague on the Guardian, made the brilliant point to me afterwards that tuition fees had made students consumers. They no more felt they had a duty to uphold freedom of speech when they disapproved of a speaker, than shoppers thought they had a duty to visit M&S if they shopped at Waitrose the week before. The customer was king and could do what he damn well wanted.”

I think the bigger problem is the Universities see themselves as businesses. A Public service can put social conscience above income and reputation much more easily than a business.

We are putting business men in charge of universities, they will be risk averse to risks without a monetary benefit. They aren’t places of learning any more they are service providers.
- http://www.ukipforbritain.co.uk/ ukipforbritain
  
  Yes – and places of indoctrination.
  - UKSteve
    
    http://www.brugesgroup.com/eurorebuttal/propaganda.live?article=172
    
    https://eacea.ec.europa.eu/erasmus-plus/actions/jean-monnet/jean-monnet-centres-excellence_en
- capitilsimrunamok
  
  yes the brand image is so important for a busiversity.