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UK government launches plan to fight ‘unacceptable silencing’
in UK universities
16 Feb, 2021 11:24
© Getty Images / Laurent Hamels
Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has unveiled the UK government’s plan to tackle “unacceptable silencing and censoring” on university campuses after speakers have been no-platformed and censored for views deemed controversial.
The new measures could force universities to accept a free speech condition if they want to receive government funding, require student unions to guarantee that their members and any guest speakers are entitled to lawful free speech, see institutions that fail to protect free speech face fines and allow speakers who are denied a platform or academics who are dismissed to seek compensation in court. “Free speech underpins our democratic society and our universities have a long and proud history of being places where students and academics can express themselves freely,” Williamson declared while announcing the proposals.
I am deeply worried about the chilling effect on campuses
of unacceptable silencing and censoring.
A 2018 report from the UK’s Joint Committee on Human Rights supported Williamson’s concerns, as it found numerous examples of censorship and debates being shut down, raising concerns about restrictions on free speech and the use of “safe space” policies in educational institutions.
Read: the exaggerated overuse of 'safe space' policies...
But, the new measures have received a critical response from some in the education sector, as they see the move as unnecessary, believing that concerns about censorship are overblown and there are bigger issues that need to be addressed, particularly given the challenges facing the industry during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“There is no evidence of a freedom of expression crisis on campus,” the vice president for Higher Education at the National Union of Students, Hillary Gyebi-Ababio, said opposing Williamson’s proposals, claiming institutions are “constantly taking positive steps to help facilitate the thousands of events that take place each year.”
The National Union of Students currently has a no platform policy, which was introduced in 1974, to fight back against fascist and racist organisations, that allows members to vote on barring speakers from campus to “keep students safe” at the organisation’s yearly national conference.
There has been a growing list of academics experts and speakers, from all sides of the political spectrum, who have been banned or no-platformed by UK universities in recent years due to remarks they’ve made which have been seen as controversial or offensive by some students.
Journalist Peter Hitchens had a talk at Portsmouth University indefinitely “postponed” when the Students Union claimed he shouldn’t speak during LGBT+ History Month due to previous views that he’d expressed in his published work.
Labour politician Chris Williamson was denied a platform at the Royal Holloway Debating Society over comments that were deemed offensive and controversial by Jewish students.
Nobel Laureate Professor Michael Levitt was “uninvited” from a joint university bio design conference for his “Covid claims” despite not planning to discuss the pandemic during his appearance.
Author and ethologist Richard Dawkins had a planned talk at Trinity College, Dublin cancelled due to his views on religion, particularly Islam.
Scientist Richard Dawkins ditched: are university students stifling free speech?
Libertarian: UCD graduate Juliette Barnes, a keen debater at the university's Literary and Historical Society.
Photo by Steve Humphreys
John Meagher, The Independent
October 03 2020 02:30 AM
It is one of the oldest university societies in the world. The College Historical Society - popularly known as the Hist - has been a feature of student life at Trinity College Dublin since 1747.
It boasts about 10,000 members and has achieved a mild sort of celebrity outside of Trinity's venerable grounds thanks to the controversial debates it has hosted over the years.
This week it found itself in the glare of public opinion once more when it was revealed that an invitation to the veteran atheist, evolutionary biologist and contrarian Richard Dawkins to speak at the society had been rescinded.
According to the TCD student newspaper, the University Times, the Hist's auditor (chairperson) Bríd O'Donnell said the society would "not be moving ahead with his address as we value our members' comfort above all else".
Professor Richard Dawkins
Announcing the cancellation on her Instagram page, O'Donnell said she had been "unaware of Richard Dawkins' opinions on Islam and sexual assault until this evening.
"I had read his Wikipedia page and researched him briefly," she wrote. "Regretfully, I didn't look further into him before moving forward with the invitation... I want to thank everyone who pointed out this valuable information to me. I truthfully hope we didn't cause too much discomfort and if so, I apologise and will rectify it."
As soon as the University Times tweeted the story, the floodgates opened. The vast majority of those who responded to the post suggested the society had made a mistake in favouring student "comfort" over robust debate and engagement with different ideas.
The Trinity professor Brian Lucey tweeted: "I suspect that almost every headline speaker over decades has had some comments that were regrettable, unfortunate, disreputable or disgusting. That doesn't mean they're not worth debating."
Some suggested it was a form of cancel culture and one that was becoming more prevalent in Irish universities.
TCD economics lecturer Ronan Lyons, a former member of the Hist, was among several academics to argue that the society had acted unwisely. "College life is supposed to be a time where you are out of your comfort zone and where you are challenged to ideas that might be different to your own," he says. "The idea of 'comfort' just doesn't come into it.
"I have no problem if there are established rules. For instance, if it's a case of, 'We welcome debates of all kinds, but the following topics are not up for discussion, such as the Holocaust', that's fine. But the idea of a debating society that would prioritise the comfort of its members sort of misses the point of a debating society.
Think of the Oscar Wilde quote: an idea that is not dangerous
is unworthy of being called an idea at all."
Wilde himself attended a number of Hist debates while an undergraduate at Trinity.
"I'm not telling any society what it can and cannot do, but I'd be worried if it affected the attitude of learning new ideas in education," Lyons adds. "I mean, I'd be worried if my students didn't want to hear new ideas.
"One of the modules I teach is the development of the Irish economy and, in principle, somebody with certain personal, political beliefs, might be uncomfortable with some of the ideas that you come across when you study Irish economic history. Like, 'Was the Famine a genocide?' Almost certainly not by any reasonable definition, but if you're of a certain political persuasion that would be an uncomfortable view.
"Another module, the history of the world economy, also covers some very uncomfortable topics, such as slavery. It's not easy to talk about that, but it is something that has to be taught. You don't go to a gym to be comfortable, you go there to push yourself and I think college is like a mental gym where you're getting yourself out of that comfort zone."
For University College Cork student Bryan O'Shea, the founder of Free Speech Ireland, third-level education is the very life-stage when challenging ideas are confronted. "University should be anything but a safe space," he says. "Debating societies and universities should provide an open forum for discussion and critical thinking. It is the key tenet of a university - to confront students with challenging ideas and dissenting opinions.
Illiberal trend among progressives
"No-platforming a speaker suggests the correct position has been decided in advance. This is unacceptable. Any institution genuinely committed to public debate should push back against the illiberal trend prevailing among left-wing, progressive students.
"We see this manifesting itself elsewhere in society as well. The ostracisation and dogmatic response to anyone who questions the Covid-related restrictions is an example. There is an absolute refusal by a lot of people on the left to engage in a free and open exchange of ideas with those whose opinions they disagree with."
O'Shea believes the no-platforming phenomenon is, chiefly, employed by liberals. "They have totally rejected the idea of free speech and embraced their own b
eliefs that they deem to be the morally correct and unquestionably virtuous ones," he says. "They seek only to enforce their orthodoxy. Progressives have wormed their way to the top of Irish society and have demonstrated their absolute intolerance for dissent."
And not just Irish society, it's all over the western world.
It is a sentiment that is echoed outside of Ireland, particularly among academics such as Jordan Peterson - equally loved and loathed for his 12 Rules for Life bestseller and refusal to recognise words such as 'cis', a comparatively new derivation to describe someone whose gender identity is the same as their sex at birth.
The provocative broadcaster Piers Morgan is set to challenge the no-platforming orthodoxy in his forthcoming book Wake Up: Why the 'Liberal' War on Free Speech is even more Dangerous than Covid-19.
Some are especially concerned by what they see as an erosion of free speech on our university campuses - a trend that is said to have been prevalent in some US universities over the past decade.
In their polemical 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff argue that today's teenagers and early twentysomethings are being disadvantaged as a result of 'safe spaces', 'trigger words' and the banishment of those deemed to cause offence. They argue the phenomenon of 'safetyism', coupled with over-parenting when children are young, has led to the emergence of modern identity politics and hypersensitivity. And to cancel culture and no-platforming.
Labour senator Ivana Bacik, who has long associations with the Hist, believes it is unfair to castigate today's university students as less robust than those in her time at college and argues that modern-day campuses are just as willing to entertain challenging ideas as before.
"No-platforming is not a new phenomenon," she says. "It's been happening for years. In 1988, I was one of a group of students at the Students' Union at Trinity who wanted to no-platform the Holocaust-denier David Irving. At the time, we made a strong argument that he should be prevented from organising on campus; but it wasn't a free-speech issue."
The issue provoked much controversy at the time - and did so again a decade later when students at UCC planned to have Irving address them. For many years Irving, who is now 82, had been a free-speech test case for universities here and in the UK.
"I would never want to de-platform anyone, unless their views have been shown to be completely wrong, as has been the case with Irving," says Bacik. "His assertion that the Holocaust did not happen is outrageous. I think anyone who wilfully distorts history should not be afforded the free speech rights of everyone else."
While such contentious issues would be magnified by social media today, Bacik says the students' union stance on Irving caused considerable publicity at the time. "It wasn't just a college issue," she says, "there were all sorts of letters published in the Irish Independent and the Irish Times - as students, we were strongly criticised for denying him a platform."
Bacik, who has spoken on panels alongside Richard Dawkins, has been on the receiving end of the no-platforming phenomenon. "Some years ago, I was invited to speak at Notre Dame University [the private Catholic research university in Indiana] and the invitation was rescinded by the university organisation over my pro-choice views on abortion."
Where does she stand on no-platforming those who have inflammatory views, but don't distort history or, by any reasonable measure, tell lies? "It's very tricky," she says. "You have to take each speaker in context. Free speech is a hugely important principle in any democracy, absolutely, but it's never been an absolute right. In our constitution, it's subject to restrictions. There are libel laws and incitement to hatred laws in Ireland, too. And one has to bear that in mind.
"When it comes to universities, the whole point of debating societies is for students to hear different sides of a debate. At the same time, there's no right to be invited. It's up to the students on these committees to decide who to invite and who not to and I'm not going to wade into that one."
UCD graduate Juliette Barnes, keen debater at the university's Literary and Historical Society - commonly known as the L&H - believes college can be a key time for being confronted with ideas diametrically opposed to your own. "I always spoke on the freedom of speech side because I'm a big believer in it and a big believer in pushing against cancel culture and no-platforming in general.
Flaw in the debate
"I'm a libertarian, so I'm all about individual people feeling enabled to do what they feel is the right thing to do economically, freedom of speech-wise, socially, whatever. And I think people absolutely should have the right to say what they feel even if it's obviously wrong, or inflammatory, or stupid, or hurtful. But I similarly think the flip side of that is that individual organisations also have the right to choose who they want to give a platform to."
Barnes has been following the Hist/Richard Dawkins story with interest this week. "A flaw in the no-platforming debate is where we can sometimes assume that a platform is a privilege you have when a platform is actually not synonymous with free speech. Free speech is the right you have and the platform to execute that upon is the privilege."
For Barnes, there is a difference between controversial figures being invited to a debate with those of opposing views as distinct from merely getting to address an audience, uncontested.
"A situation where there is a debate and the audience is getting to hear both sides is a reasonable contention," she says. "When I was in college, there was a big furore [at TCD] over the Hist inviting [then Ukip leader] Nigel Farage and people saying that the issue with him being invited was that he was just an individual speaker in an environment that wasn't being moderated by a hardened journalist and that would give him [Farage] an opportunity to say what he wanted and ride roughshod over everything."
Ultimately, the Farage visit went ahead - with the political journalist Pat Leahy chairing the discussion - but not before the Hist decided to revoke the awarding of the gold medal that it presents to many of its guest speakers.
For Bryan O'Shea, it represented much that has gone wrong in college campuses today. "They [the Hist] issued a grovelling apology for the high crime of inviting Nigel Farage. It will be interesting to see who they invite through the rest of the year. Will they all be left-wing? If so, will these speakers make people feel uncomfortable?"
While committee members of the Hist may have been feeling the weight of opinion this week, some have called for tolerance. Tomás Ryan - the TCD neuroscientist who has become a well-known figure thanks to his media engagements during the Covid pandemic - urged those critical of the decision to rescind the Dawkins offer to take a philosophical approach.
"This was a mistake," he tweeted. "But undergraduate students need to be allowed to make mistakes, ideally without intense international social media pressure. This seems like an error of judgment rather than intolerance. TCD encourages respectful debate from diverse perspectives."
