If universities are breeding the leaders of the future, then we’re facing a horrifying and intellectually impoverished, darkened future. The Enlightenment is over, folks: the Inquisitors have won.
In the 1960s, university students were the spear-carriers of the Free Speech Movement. Today, their children and grandchildren are tearing it all down.
A recent audit of Australia’s universities found that just one supports free speech on campus. The situation in the US is likely far worse: Berkeley, the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement is now the home of rampaging mobs violently suppressing free speech.
Across the Atlantic, the darkness of censorship and blasphemy proscriptions is also fast descending.
The decision some weeks ago by Trinity College Dublin’s Historical Society (the Hist) to “disinvite” prominent scientist Prof Richard Dawkins from a scheduled address sparked considerable controversy across social media and other platforms.
Proving that campuses are indeed hostile to free speech, Trinity’s Provost offers mealy-mouthed excuses for his students’ censorious behaviour.
While its decision did not necessarily reflect the viewpoints of many in the Trinity community, including those of some alumni, Dawkins had not been invited to the Hist for a debate. He was invited to give a speech and take a question-and-answer session afterwards. This is part of the issue and students have every right to say that they don’t want to be forced to listen to what someone has to say on an uncontested platform.
Still, the Dawkins episode provides us with an opportunity to consider in general the issue of “deplatforming”, to borrow that ugly word from the growing lexicon associated with denying free speech.
Would a better model have been to hold a debate in a debating society?
In other words, allow a panel of yelling, crying, screeching student bullies to shout down Dawkins at every turn.
Besides, as the Provost admits, even debate is too “uncomfortable” for the cry-bullies of his college.
Certainly even debates may cause discomfort, albeit a discomfort that may be worth enduring if we learn something. Would the discomfort of this debate be worth it: That this house believes Middle Eastern women need western feminism?
Apparently not as this debate was cancelled, perhaps rightly[…]
I was told this one was too controversial: That this house believes In a 32-county Ireland.
The students of Trinity are not only not interested in hearing ideas that might offend them, they’re implacably opposed to even having to defend their own ideas in open debate. All they apparently want is to hear things they already agree with echoed back at them.
This is not a university education: it’s a circle-jerk.
Faced with violent, intolerant students, academics are scared to stand up for free speech. The BFD. Pic: Steve Parsons.
The cancellation of uncomfortable motions for debate and the deplatforming of controversial speakers are becoming more common occurrences[…]In a university, students are there to learn, and that process involves making mistakes at times. It is not easy for students to run societies in times when any decision can attract a vicious social media response. The students’ deplatforming decisions, whether we agree with them or not, reflect the harsh public environment in which we now live, one that is greatly different from the more tolerant times when people of my generation were students[…]
On the other hand, sometimes it’s impossible to allow planned events to proceed on campus because of the very real danger of violence. Two years ago, Trinity had little option but to cancel a talk by the then Israeli ambassador to Ireland Ze’ev Boker for that very reason. Of course, we uphold the right of students to protest but it was regrettable that he was not allowed to speak.
If the times are more intolerant now, its because a generation has been raised to cry and scream the instant they’re contradicted because gutless academics are too weak to give them the rhetorical clip over the ear they so richly deserve. The violent intolerance of today’s student left will only grow bolder and more censorious the less it is confronted.
Where do you draw the line when confronted with QAnon and other conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers or anti-maskers?
You don’t. You follow J S Mill’s advice:
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
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