Let’s recreate a campus culture that enables vigorous academic debate

Yes indeed - academics must learn not to trespass beyond the professional and scholarly bounds of the privilege of academic freedom by engaging in social media ‘mobbing’ and ‘pile-ons’ that are often mere ill-informed rants and sometimes viciously bullying groupthink.

"Recreate"? from where, what, when? No more empty, a historical slogans, please

"hostile interrogation"? Really? They were asked whether calling for the genocide of Jews contravened their bullying and harassment policies (this happened on US campuses in the wake of October 7th). For context, misgendering someone contravenes their bullying and harassment policies. So, the outcry was around consistency of applying their policies. Misgendering someone? = bad. Calling for the genocide of Jews? = Free speech. If you think that adds up, then you probably need to think a bit harder.

I totally agree with the author of post #3. That really was the lowest point academia has reached in a very long time. While Jewish staff and students continue to be harassed and bullied on UK, and other Western campuses, I am reminded that in May 1933 it was uni students across Germany throwing books onto bonfires. VC's have no done enough to get on top of this grim situation, but then, for many academics sadly, 'misgendering' is indeed the greater harm.