Free Speech In Universities?

[mushroom25]

following the resignation of Professor Kathleen Stock, academia has said that universities must exist to uphold academic freedoms, and they should “stop pretending there is no crisis of free speech and start paying attention to the problem and trying to solve it”.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/29/stop-pandering-students-universities-told-trans-row-professor/

should students and academics be free to challenge without fear of cancellation, or worse? or are some views just too toxic to be shared with the young and vulnerable?

[naomi24]

Calling them names doesn't address the issue and neither does dismissing them as attention seekers . What they're doing is working - and that should worry everyone who recognises the value of freedom of speech.

[jourdain2]

It very much worries me, too, naomi. I have a close relative who will no longer speak to me because she cannot accept that I hold different opinions on something and will not be talked out of them. She says it is 'to protect her sanity'. I have mentioned the Voltairian principle, but to no avail. Horribly divisive society, we now have.

[cashier]

Her 'sanity' must be particularly sensitive if she can't interact with a person who has a different opinion to her. I am dreading the anadyne world of the future everybody thinking the same saying the same, acting the same.

[Peter Pedant]

// Must all our views now be approved lest we be "cancelled"? What a load of old pony!//

and um.... its different on AB ?

[Atheist]

Naomi; 13:32. You're not keen on people calling names? What do you make of serial name-callers like those who use terms like Nazis and Fifth-Columnists, and Nasty Lefties etc? I don't think the 'lefties' here use such inflammatory terminology.

[andy-hughes]

Naomi, calling them names does not address the issue, but that's fine, it wasn't meant to.

[naomi24]

Atheist, I think the people you refer to very often don’t understand politics - just as those who call anyone with an education or who are comfortably off ‘toffs’ fail to understand that good breeding doesn’t equate to money and privilege.

[Peter Pedant]

no you two - please dont do 20 entries that dont say anything

the VCs and Ps ( vice chancellors and principals that is!) probably thought that if they shut up and kept quiet the whole thing would go away

if you think about uni-s - - - it usually does.

[Peter Pedant]

am I right in thinking that someone who nightly used to tell me not to quote them.... or to address them - - or refer to them

is now rooting for free speech?

this has to be AB ! - never was there a more striking conversion on the road to Damascus !

[Peter Pedant]

o god llook at this from almost ten years ago

https://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/News/Question1380898.html

[naomi24]

No, PP, you are not right. Your problem is with misquoting.