Today’s students are anything but coddled

The big problem I have with this article is that the author is attempting to re-frame restrictions on freedom of speech as some kind righteous cause that takes power away from professors and other academics and critics. The problem with that is that it can't end there. When professors (not just white men, but anyone) cannot expose students to controversial material for fear that some of their students might take offense, it harms everyone, including those attempting to create a more tolerant society. What exactly is the problem with hearing opinions that are odious? Especially when those opinions are common in the wider political world? An excellent example would be the abortion debate that the author mentioned. It was canceled because certain students were offended by the content that one of the speakers sought to present. What about the students who were offended that their views were marginalized? I'm not arguing for either side of the abortion debate, I'm arguing that both sides hold legitimate positions regardless of what their opponents believe. As such, a university denying the rights of the undecided students to hear two competing arguments on a political issue of the day horrifies me. Are there types of speech that should be restricted for the safety of the student population? Yes. But that is a very limited set of speech, things like calls to violence by white supremacy groups, neo-Nazis, or radical Islamic organizations that promote violence. Anything other than that? Any place where legitimate debate may be had? We as students must be exposed to that, if only so we know what our hated political opponents are saying. One other thing. The author quoted an activist who helped implement the revocation of the abortion debate. She said that "we’re more committed to rooting out pervasive sexism, racism, homophobia and transphobia…for too long, men have spoken over women, trans and non-binary people, just as white people have spoken over people of color. In some cases, they should shut up and listen…this involves rethinking the right to speak at all times, for all people, on any topic." That last segment is incredibly important. I want to really look at this quote, because the author holds it up as a critical piece of evidence in his argument that activists are good people trying to fix society. Look at the actual content though. The activist is arguing for removing values and personal opinions from society, through censorship if necessary, and clearly is arguing that there are certain ideas that must be removed from society for the good of select minorities. I don't deny that many of the ideas the activists are targeting are odious. I don't deny that I personally would love to never encounter someone holding many of those views if I could avoid it. But the fundamental right of individuals to hold opinions counter to those held by a majority of society are sacrosanct. If these activists are permit to silence white men on the topic of race simply because of their gender and race, they are no better than the bigots they seek to replace. By all means, argue with the white men on the topic of race. Disagree, vehemently even. Vote them out of office if need be. But they must be allowed to speak so long as they do not threaten others with violence. Not just for their sake, but ours too. If we as society begin to mandate what types of ideas we allow in our public discourse we have no idea where it could end. Today we shut down a pro-abortion speaker, tomorrow what happens when we shut down a religious leader with thousands of followers? Or a political candidate because we disagree with their politics? Or an academic whose work is controversial? We will only drive those opinions underground, losing both knowledge of our political opponents, and the benefits of a pluralistic open society. This societal pressure will create a group of people who feel oppressed for the views they hold in an intolerant society. That is generally a precursor to violence. We need to maintain a broad definition of freedom of speech, not just for our individual benefit, but so that we as members of society retain the freedom to discuss and criticize ideas in the open, rather than resort to violence to have our ideas heard, whatever those ideas may be.

My apologies, the formatting of my comment was messed up. It was not meant to be a wall of text.

Thank you bbrow008 for your comment. I couldn't agree more.

The Cardiff students attempted to ban Greer for comments she had made previously, and which had nothing to do with her proposed talk. So it was an effort to punish her for having expressed uncomfortable/nonconforming views, rather than an attempt to regulate speech on campus. The problem with your article is that it takes for granted the existence of certain amoral positions which have in themselves very little nuance or subtlety; you are in fact repeating the mistakes of certain intolerant and uncritical students. Greer's view, for example, that men who choose to define themselves as women and undertake certain procedures to make them better resemble women are in fact not women is, on the face of it, perfectly obvious. Gender is a social construct but sex is rather more firmly - physically - established (a man who is born a man will never be able to give birth). I think that is Greer's point. Those who protest about this sort of argument choose to ignore the complexities of the debate for fear of upsetting people - so for example it may be perfectly acceptable for a man to define himself as a woman and it would be rude and aggressive to continue to describe him as a man. However, it would be equally and simultaneously true to say that he is not in fact a woman and was not born a woman. Because the second point risks undermining or contradicting the first, many such students will refuse to hear it aired and will rule it to be misogynist in order to remove any risk of causing offence - so a perfectly obvious and uncontroversial truth becomes silenced in order to protect a political position. It is problematic when truths and rational opinions are undermined in this manner to protect others from offence, because we end up in a sort of insane mental state where we disavow truth for convenience; this sort of doublethink can never be welcome. I would say, however, that we turn this debate into rather a bigger thing that it is. It does not I think undermine all debate on university campuses - it seems in the main to be very intensely focussed upon gender politics, and is peculiar to a certain sort of student. The majority of university discussion and research remains relatively free and open.

Students today are anything but studious--lacking zeal for truth. But that is because they are fed a steady diet of rot gut ideology instead being taught the disciplines to help them to make up their own minds rather than follow the bad palaver offered up by the soft headed media, which seem to be the single most important influence on their teachers and professors, all hard left. They firmly believe they have a right to a kind comfort usually afforded to the imbecilic or old. Unpracticed in language and reason, of which they are surely in modern times the most ignorant in history, they are poor spokesmen for their own, immature views and responses, and vulnerable to the cheap and easy rhetoric of the left that has enslaved and killed so many millions from the Soviets to the Islamo-Fascists today. They are extending their adolescence well into their thirties, and in the meanwhile are so staunchly anti-speech and anti-thought that the Russian Federation could be hiring them to fill its police ranks--if only they studied foreign languages. I don't blame young people, however: they are the very sad product of their lamentably awful schools and universities.

Whether intentionally or not, this article is deeply misleading. Take the claim that 'When an anti-abortion group at Christ Church, Oxford invited two men to debate abortion on campus a year ago, it was the college that cancelled the event after student protests' - this is true as far as it goes, but omits the fact that the college cancelled the event in response to threats by students to disrupt the debate with musical instruments, making it effectively impossible for it to go ahead. The cancellation wasn't, as this statement suggests, a considered reaction on hearing the opinions of the student body. More generally, the portrayal of this issue as students versus reactionary professors neglects to mention that the students in question are a small, unrepresentative bunch of ideologues, whose actions are, in most cases, opposed by the majority of students. As for the claim made by Distraktd_249973 that the abortion debate was opposed because it involved two men - well, this is untrue, and wouldn't amount to much of a defence even if it were. That was one of the students' stated reasons for opposing it, but the fact that a similar debate at Cambridge just beforehand - one that did involve women - was also attacked by the Women's Campaign suggests that they were merely seeking to close down dissenting opinion. Indeed, women are disproportionately the victims of 'no platforming', Germaine Greer being just the most prominent example. The idea that one's race, sex, sexuality etc. ought to be a factor in determining where and how one is allowed to speak is absurd and invidious, but, in any case, reality simply doesn't bear out the idea that these student campaigns are making room for minorities to speak. Their only effect (and, I suspect, their aim) is to enforce ideological conformity.

"Those who approach the world around them with a critical sensitivity, those who are ready to stand up and fight, will be the ones who make a better world for their own and for future generations." That is two groups, not one. There are those who approach the world around them with a critical sensitivity, and then there are those who are ready to stand up and fight. Being ready to stand up and fight requires simplification, a 'for-or-against' or 'friend-or-foe' logic that is prone to compromise critical sensitivity. One reasonable complaint against the activists described here is precisely that their poor past discursive experiences (especially online) have encouraged that kind of 'friend-or-foe' simplification. Instead of asking who is making the best arguments they tend to ask who is an ally, who gets a 'like'. That is a straightforwardly anti-intellectual stance, and one that cannot be accommodated in the classroom. (Well obviously it can be accommodated as a an OBJECT of analysis, just not as a MODE of analysis). An example of the friend-or-foe logic: "[W]e're ... committed to rooting out pervasive sexism, racism, homophobia and transphobia." No tolerance there of the possibility that there may be objections to trans* identity claims that are NOT phobias; no acknowledgement of the potential intellectual tensions between feminism and trans* identity claims; no recognition of the fact that years of patient work establishing that gender (unlike sex) is socially constructed may be at odds with the individualistic gender essentialism relied upon by many trans* activists; no recognition, then, that there may be a legitimate feminist case for refusing to stand shoulder to shoulder with the trans* community; no recognition, indeed, that any idea could matter except "linking together voices that are otherwise marginalised and disconnected". What about some rigorous analytical critique of the supposed links? What about asking which marginalised voices have a good case to make against their marginalisation, and which don't? In short, what about some critical sensitivity?

Saying that trigger warnings are there to stop free speech is like saying that allergy warnings are trying to stop the production of food with allergens in there They aren't, they're just warning people about what their snack contains. Likewise a lecture which deals with - for example - the jim crow laws in America or votes for women should absolutely have the fact they contain racism and violence against women announced. The same way a bag of nuts has 'contains: nuts' on it. I had a presentation on society in the home during the late 19th and early 20th century. Which I forewarned people contained discussion of domestic violence, rape and general violence against women. Because guess what, statistically I was speaking to at least one victim of sexual assault. And while I don't know the statistics for domestic violence off the top of my head, there was a possibility I was also speaking to someone who grew up in a home with domestic violence going on around them. I've had panic attacks before. The last thing I want to do is induce one in another person by accident and if literally all it involved was warning people the same way I might that a floor is slippery or that one toilet is out of toilet paper then so fucking what. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom of criticism from other people or freedom from counter-protest. I

Too many people today are too hyper-sensitive about politically correct language and thought. Forget the band-aids and just get on with life. Can't stand an implicit criticism? Can't tolerate some offense? Well, compare your perspective to a soldier in Afghanistan who just returned from a 10 mile patrol in the hot sun. Wusses have no basis for complaint. No sympathy from many of us if your eggs are too runny or if your coffee is too weak. Or, return to the 18th Century for a day and renew your authentic education about human existence.