BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, Free Speech at Universities
"‘It can be a nasty business teaching philosophy at a British University. When Professor Kathleen Stark got an OBE last month for services to higher education. 600 fellow philosophers worldwide signed a letter of protest. Invitations to speak at conferences have been withdrawn because other academics have said she makes them feel unsafe, even though she's appearing online on a different day. She compares her treatment to 17th century witch trials. It's strange to work somewhere where people make it quite clear they loathe you, she says. Professor Stark is a prominent target of the so called cancel culture in British universities, because she maintains biological sex is immutable. And although she says she's supportive of trans people, questions whether those she's described as male bodied should be allowed into formerly women only spaces. The government seems now intent on rolling back what it sees that as the shutting down of free speech on campus, introducing new legal measures and appointing a free speech champion, inevitably dubbed a Tsar'...
‘Odd, isn't it, do you think, that two of the four members of this panel, the two who actually work in academia don't think there is any problem at all? How do you explain that?’
‘Well, I mean, it's a bit like living in China, you know, you're not going to criticize the government, you can have a normal, a normal life and not perceive the kind of restrictions that are going on. I think the, the restrictions are felt most keenly by a sort of minority of maybe 3 to 5%, which are conservatives or gender, gender critical feminists working in the social sciences and humanities. Our report very much shows that, it's, if you look at that particular segment of academia, 50% of them report a hostile climate in their departments for their views. You have a 50% share who say they self censor in their teaching, research and academic discussions. And in fact, if we take Brexit supporting academics in the social sciences, fewer than two in 10 say that they would be comfortable sharing their views. So this is quite pervasive affecting 1000s of academics’...
‘Isn't there an irony in the notion that the government is going to appoint someone who is going to police what is and isn't said on university campuses?’
‘Not really, I think we have to think about society as having three layers. That is the government is one layer, the citizens are another, but there's an intermediate layer of institutions, and you can get threats deliberately coming out of that intermediate layer, and the government can actually act to protect the freedom of individuals. So for example, if there is a gang, outside my house, not letting me emerge, I rely on the government to essentially police that gang and to arrest them. And that gives me my freedom. Similarly, if we look at the case of universities in the United States south in 1960, for example, that wanted to restrict the rights of black students, the federal government had to come in to actually ensure those students had the right’...
‘Left and right discriminate at equal rates and academics and non academics do as well. But when you have a very strong pronounced skew, and so there's about a nine-one skew between left and right among social science, humanities academics, that the effect of that is a hot, actually quite a high level of discrimination’...
'Data I have in the US, for example, would suggest one in three conservative academics and graduate students has either been threatened with discipline or disciplined. So that is actually formal processes'...
‘I was no platformed in 2014, when I was invited to Oxford, to do a discussion about abortion. It was a balanced discussion, but it was closed down by the threat of student protests. And what I found really fascinating was that those who didn't want to stay even have this debate on campus, argued that it shouldn't have to happen here. And that students shouldn't have to invite someone into their house, who they don't want to be there, that this is their space. And if they don't want to have that discussion taking place within their space, then they should be able to… say we're not going to have it’...
‘We want to [have] a space where you won't be attacked for it. And I think that's what student unions do, in ensuring that what you are coming to say is actually be like the ability to debate and garner knowledge rather than just comment and incite hatred. And I think those are very different things.’...
‘There's actually a lot of data on this and what we find is that the average student has not changed much. American students are still very supportive of free speech. What has really changed since 2014, or 2015, is the social dynamics. So that the extremes are empowered now to inflict great harm on people who couldn't, who might have said something a couple of years ago as part of a discussion without any bad consequence. The dynamic shifted first on universities and now in the last few years, we've seen the same dynamic in newsrooms, especially those on the left. And we're now also seeing a cancel culture on the right where people, moderate conservatives are afraid to speak because of the wrath they will experience from the small minority empowered by social media on the right’...
‘I don't need to learn more about Holocaust denial or eugenics. They've been pretty well debunked, and I don't want to dignify it with a debate. We want to push things forward into new ideas, new ways of thinking’
‘Well, this is the problem that John Stuart Mill, raised so, so beautifully and insightfully 150 years ago. That one of his first points was things that we think are wrong, sometimes with time, we find, we find that there is some evidence for them. Now with Holocaust denial, that's extremely unlikely. But I'd ask you this. Suppose a scholar found in the old Soviet archives, that there was, you know, there was some evidence, not that the Holocaust didn't happen, obviously, it happened. But if there was some evidence that it wasn't 6 million, it was 4 million. Would, would you allow such a scholar? You know, this is, we're not talking about a crank on, on right wing talk radio, we're talking about a scholar and accredited historian, would you allow that historian to present? And I put it to you that a lot of the cancel culture recently, is that scholars and historians and people such as that, who have a finding, that is, that violates orthodoxy on LGBT or trans issues or race issues or or immigration issues, and such people will be no platformed, they will be shut down.’…
‘I've been an academic for almost 25 years, I've lectured in UK, abroad in the US, in the, in the Middle East without any censorship. And I've spoken about all these issues, whether it's trans rights, or sex and sexuality, and race theory, all the things that we consider culturally sensitive. I have never once been censored, or told that you can't pursue that line of questioning. And I'm just thinking isn't really this a little bit of a myth that we've created around the free speech crisis?’
‘I see your point that for most people, there's been no problem. So it's not as though it's not as though there is a sort of an even or consistent threat detector out there that will, that will destroy anyone who strays over the line. It's pretty random and haphazard. And all it takes is one person to start the start the public condemnation and others will join in. Now, I assume that you are not mostly disagreeing with the progressive position. That's where you get in trouble.’
‘Not at all… I have challenged people on all kinds of things. I've challenged people on penal reform, I've challenged people on concepts and notions around pedophilia'…
‘Aren't we just making too much of the fact that there may be a small group of people who are now finding that their views are no longer fashionable?’
‘If it was just a matter of what's happening to the average, I would agree with you, this could be seen as just cultural evolution. But it's not a shift in the average, it's a shift in the power of the extremes. And we saw this first on campuses around 2014, 2015. But now it's flooded into journalism and our politics. So the Republican party in particular has a terrible problem, that the extremes are now so empowered to destroy the reputation and even now it's gotten to the point where if you were called out on social media, you can expect hostile calls, maybe even death threats to your to your phone, people showing up at your house, intimidating your kids. And so it's it's this shift from making arguments based on words in a limited forum, to the mindset of all out war, fighting evil, and each side fights its own its own evil, the left is focused on fighting fascism and racism in the United States. And the right is focused on fighting the woke left. And so even if it's only a small change in the average, it's a huge change in dynamics brought to us by, by moving on to social media, between 2009 and 2012, and rising political polarization.’"
These are the same people who condemn others for "white fragility". If they're so sensitive, can they really do their jobs as academics?
I thought the Oppression Olympics were bad. The fact that some people are supposedly discriminated against more means that others can be discriminated against less?
This is very interesting - a small minority of students trying to control what happens in "their" "home". Of course students who disagree don't get to have any say over what happens in their home. And this idea that a university is a home and you shouldn't have to do anything you don't like or be challenged at university is antithetical to the idea of learning
Since the left define non-leftist views as inciting hatred, they need never be challenged - except with even more radical lefitst ideas
The woke left doesn't destroy people on penal reform and pedophilia, so
