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UK minister to tell universities to stop 'no-platforming' speakers

60 points by vixen99 9y ago

kgraves 9y ago
Good. The purpose of going to university other than getting an eduation is to have your views challenged by people you don't agree with.
- boyce 9y ago
  People have differing objectives when they go to university
  - scotty79 9y ago
    Should anybody beside them care?
    - boyce 9y ago
      Not sure what other members only clubs beside SUs the government thinks it can interfere with the running of
insickness 9y ago
This is probably a step in the right direction since, in my estimation, there is a clear bias against conservative speakers at universities. However, this is still government forcing people to allow certain kinds of speech. That's the other side of the coin of the government disallowing certain kinds of speech. In the UK, people are getting jail time for posting speech deemed offensive on social media. Both involve delineations best left out of the hands of government. I wouldn't want to see the government force free speech or punish offensive speech on privately-owned platforms like Facebook, Twitter or Hacker News. But when it comes to publicly-funded universities there may be no way around this.
- scotty79 9y ago
  > I wouldn't want to see the government force free speech [...] Why? How else can you prevent strongest factions from silencing all minorities? The role of the adult is to keep in check strongest kids so the weaker can play safely.
  - dgudkov 9y ago
    Who defines who is the strongest, who is the weakest?
    - scotty79 9y ago
      Strongest is the one with biggest estimated capacity to do harm to others. Adult does the estimating.
      - dgudkov 9y ago
        That's the definition of dangerous. It's not the same thing.
- DanBC 9y ago
  > In the UK, people are getting jail time for posting speech deemed offensive on social media. Please could you link to some of these cases? Because in almost all of the ones I've seen it's been someone making threats of violence, not just being offensive.
  - dogma1138 9y ago
    The most basic google search would show that’s not the case; rude and racist remarks sure but not actionable threats. Section 127 of the communications act is an abomination.
    - DanBC 9y ago
      Please link to any cases. So far when anyone has linked a case it's turned out (with one exception) to be someone making very many direct, credible, threats of harm, or engaging in a campaign of harassment. But those cases got widespread, mostly american, coverage of the attack on free speech. Those sites are wrong.
StudentStuff 9y ago
I'm not keen on safe spaces, the harsh reality is your going to run into a broad range of people with varying views and a variety of degrees of sanity, better to let them have a shitty little backroom at UW and not give them a good story to take to the media that an insane mofo got banned from a college for spreading hate down there. Throwing media attention at those who seek to push us gays back into the closet is counterproductive, akin to fanning a flame. Milo and his ilk love to be no platformed, as it makes for great PR when they can say "Blah college banned us, how dare they!". Suppression of ideas doesn't work, let them die in the brutal, harsh light of public discussion and debate. With free media attention and a stunted discussion, this will only continue to snowball. Building walls never works, unless you prop them up!
- anon1385 9y ago
  >Throwing media attention at those who seek to push us gays back into the closet is counterproductive, akin to fanning a flame. Milo and his ilk love to be no platformed, as it makes for great PR when they can say "Blah college banned us, how dare they!". Quite a few of the people involved already have a 'platform' writing for major national or international publications[1], or regularly featuring on TV. So yes it does give them something else to moan about in their regular newspaper column, but I'm not sure it makes all that much difference to how much attention they get. The media is already pretty much saturated with people like Germain Greer, and they are all very adept at generating controversy to promote themselves without outside help - that's how they got where they are today. That's the irony of this really - it's a bunch of people with the biggest megaphone imaginable complaining that they have been silenced because people didn't want to come to/host their utterly insignificant student debate. The fact that such an insignificant thing has become a major story is evidence of just how loud their voices are, sadly. [1] there are other people being 'no platformed' as well, but I'm not sure the government/Daily Mail is really suggesting they want to force universities to host Abu Hamza al-Masri or face fines
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- Mountain_Skies 9y ago
naturalgradient 9y ago
Reporting from Oxbridge: This is a real issue but actually most people have reasonable notions of free speech. It is just that the types that end up being welfare/student/women/minority officers are extremely aggressively attacking perceived attacks/hate speech/dissenters/traitors to the cause. If anyone remembers the Tim Hunt story and the witch-hunt that followed (and let us not forgot the role the Guardian played in peddling that), there was a situation where Tim Hunt was supposed to give a speech at a college. The women's officer was outraged and riled up freshers who where thoroughly convinced that a man accused of making a sexist joke merely speaking in a room inside their college was a violation of their own safety, a phrase I recall is 'The college is our home and our safe space'. Most faculty/graduate students/undergrads are actually very reasonable and want to hear dissenting opinions. The problem is just that most well-adjusted people quickly tire of outrage-driven student politics, so it's left to the ultra-aggressive types.
- Baltoli 9y ago
  I was closely involved in this controversy at the time and I can attest to the "loudest voice" problem where a small number of people magnified the situation far beyond what it needed to be. Definitely surprised to see a comment referring to it on HN more than 2 years on though!
  - naturalgradient 9y ago
    It stuck out with me because it made me realise that many students were not at all emotionally well equipped to handle certain situations of adult life. A problem here especially is how quickly anything done by the university is framed as an attack on the mental health and safety of students. For example, in a recent survey, students were asked about their mental health issues. Examples of the university not being supportive enough were things such as 'I was not given an extension on an essay'. These incidents make me realise that a non-trivial fraction of this generation of students really feels intense emotional distress to a point of needing counselling over things my generation would book under normal aspects of adult life. In these cases, there is also little self-reflection on one's own responsibility to handle such situations - everything is framed as an attack.
DanBC 9y ago
The National Union of Students has a reasonable list of banned organisations. Al Muhajiroun; British National Party (BNP); English Defence League (EDL); Hizb ut Tahir; Muslim Public Affairs Committee; National Action Some of these are proscribed organisations in the UK, eg https://www.gov.uk/government/news/national-action-becomes-first-extreme-right-wing-group-to-be-banned-in-uk https://www.gov.uk/government/news/national-action-becomes-f... The problem is that local branches go much further, and ban many more people.
- saint_fiasco 9y ago
  Is the British National Party an actual political party? If so, it does not seem reasonable to me that they are banned, unless they ban all political parties. Favoring some political parties over others should not be allowed.
  - anon1385 9y ago
    The BNP is not a proscribed organisation.
  - zhte415 9y ago
    They occassionally win local election seats and have been invited to take part in televised debates including on the BBC.
  - djhworld 9y ago
    The BNP formed from the National Front, an extreme far right organisation. They have one elected politician, in local government, I think it's fair to say they're an extreme minority voice in British Politics these days. The leaders of the party have criminal convictions and their rallies are known for violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_Party#Association_with_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_Party#Associa...
  - DanBC 9y ago
    I think the very small list is reassuring. They're not banning all extreme right wing parties. UKIP isn't on the list, for example.
boyce 9y ago
When I was a student I was no fan of "no platform" and it was an important factor in the No to NUS campaign I led back then. BUT... Universities and student unions foremost reponsibility is to the safety of the students and yes that can mean stopping the odd event. Also unions are generally mandated to uphold an atmosphere of inclusion and tolerance and that certainly means going further than the legal minimum in rejecting hate.
- felsish 9y ago
  It's not so much "no platforming" as "my platforming" now, purely territorial aggression from self-proclaimed moral guardians that will cut out anyone who disagrees, marginally offends or even ignores them. It's the very definition of a "toxic" person: every community they touch is divided and destroyed from the inside.
  - boyce 9y ago
    Student unions aren't dictatorships They're a great environment in which young folks can have these debates with minimal consequences
- simplesleeper 9y ago
  The foremost responsibility of Universities is actually the education of the students.
  - frou_dh 9y ago
    GP's statement and your reply reminds me strongly of this: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-everyones-getting-wrong-about-the-presidents-no-1-job https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-everyones-getting...
- scotty79 9y ago
  Students unions are form of a societal playpen gor them to train relations in society. If the children toss their toys outside they should be taken away from playpen.
maxehmookau 9y ago
Whatever your views on this, it has to be seen through the lens of the Conservative government in the UK hiking tuition fees and overseeing the biggest rise in university executive pay in a generation. It's nothing more than misdirection to take attention away from the things that real students _actually_ care about. The majority of undergraduate students in the UK probably don't even care one way or the other.
emn13 9y ago
This title is misleading - can it be corrected to the actual title of the article? Because at issue isn't any ban on free speech, it's whether it's OK to ban invited speakers expected e.g. to incite harassment, bigotry, or violence. And obviously there's a grey area there, but it's certainly no restrain on the message at all - merely the platform (not that that's irrelevant, but the distinction isn't irrelevant either), and I kind of doubt you'd want to provide a platform to everything regardless of what kind of hate speech they're spouting. There's a fine line between a constructive diversity of opinions, including ones you don't agree with, and giving a microphone to those saying nothing new, where the primary draw isn't the message itself, but the drama and tribalism surrounding it.
- DanBC 9y ago
  I used to strongly agree with you. Some people are fucking arseholes who promote and provoke violence, and there's no obligation to give those people a platform. But then you see who gets no-platformed, and it's not always those people. When Peter Tatchil (gay rights) and Germaine Greer (feminist) get considered for no-platforming we know it's gone too far. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/nus-no-platform-safe-space-policy-goes-too-far-threatens-free-speech-warns-peter-tatchell-a6999801.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/nus-no-platform-safe-sp... But we need to be a bit careful, some people are considered for no-platforming but are allowed to speak: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/may/05/boris-tatchell-greer-were-they-actually-no-platformed https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/may/05/boris-tatc...
  - emn13 9y ago
    Yeah, I think the rule is overzealously applied, not sure it's necessary in the first place. But let's have that debate based on reality rather than imply something worse is going on, when it's not. (Personally, I think the idea of a minister getting involved and trying to control the debate is much worse than the student unions making relatively small mistakes, but hey, that's me).
- vixen99 9y ago
  No, it isn't misleading. "Universities could face fines for failing to uphold free speech if their student unions do not give a platform to speakers such as Germaine Greer and Peter Tatchell, the higher education minister has said.". Such behaviour if it occurred would be 'disallowing free speech' and might be dealt with accordingly as described in the article. Your second paragraph epitomises the problem highlighted by the minister. It seems that you seek to judge free speech by considerations aside from its legality. I am not aware that Voltaire added a qualification to "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
matthewmacleod 9y ago
This is a meaningless dog-whistle comment by an incompetent minister. To my knowledge, the OfS will have no real power to regulate student unions, which are the primary organisations where “no-platforming” would be a policy, and fining institutions for the behaviour of students unions is just dumb. I think it’s utterly vital that controversial views are aired, and that ludicrous fascist and racist views are publicly exposed to ridicule. But student unions are private organisations, governed generally democratically, and they must equally be free to decide on what policy they will take towards external speakers. The “no platform” policy of the NUS which is mentioned in the article is very narrow – it applies to six specified organisations, and forbids the use of union premises, speaking at union events, and rules out membership of those organisations for union officers. Personally I don’t think it’s worth the cost, in particular because these policies have muddied the debate with a lot of ill-informed misinformation from every perspective - the various controversial speakers, for example, are not subject to any “no-platform” policy, but have been excluded from discussion based on the decisions of individual students. Frankly the far bigger problem is the attitude of those individual students. It’s been about a decade since I was at university, but even then the entire sphere of student politics was filled with ill-informed reactionaries who had very little tolerance for the idea that people might disagree with them while not being evil. The idea of Peter Tatchell being excluded from a discussion of gay rights is outright ludicrous, and just reflects the bubble that these folk tend to live in. That’s the thing we should be worried about, rather than some bogus hand-waving about safe-space policies that don’t actually exist and are just red meat to the usual shit-stirrers.
- DanBC 9y ago
  > The idea of Peter Tatchell being excluded from a discussion of gay rights is outright ludicrous, and just reflects the bubble that these folk tend to live in. > That’s the thing we should be worried about, rather than some bogus hand-waving about safe-space policies that don’t actually exist and are just red meat to the usual shit-stirrers. I don't understand how you can say "there's not a no-platform policy, and if there is it only applies to six very small extremist organisations", and then mention Peter Tatchell being excluded from a discussion.
guuz 9y ago
I consider myself a free speech proponent, but I do not feel comfortable with fines. Groups that defend/want to hear unpopular opinions should organize themselves to oppose hysterical speech and to guide the debate to a less aggressive rhetoric. Is it an ideal and distant solution? Maybe, but is better than official coercion. There must be a way, most people are not downright hostile to controversy. Edit: I do think that welcoming some ideas is a waste of time, or perhaps dangerous (fascism, for example). But I cannot see why Peter Tatchell is an imminent danger.
- dgudkov 9y ago
  >Groups that defend/want to hear unpopular opinions should organize themselves to oppose hysterical speech That's exactly how Charlottesville happened.
  - guuz 9y ago
    No, it is not. One can easily destroy nazi-fascism without being apocaliptic, and I think that welcoming this ideology in universities is a waste of time, as I said earlier. The Charlottesville guys were not trying to engage in an educated debate or expose their opinions to scrutiny, their creed does not accommodate the very idea of dissent. Few among them [edit: previously " Few fascists"] are brave or patient enough to be civilized. Groups like theirs generally value shock tactics and its meeting was mainly conceived as a demonstration of power. Like-minded people, good or bad, will reunite and some groups will use the US free speech laws to propagate their hate and attract more followers. It is a very different scenario than polemic opinions being treated like a civilizational hazard in England (or elsewhere). Gay rigths, desegragation and many other ideas now taken for granted were once unpopular. History does not moves always forward and everyone that values freedom needs caution when considering politics regulating speech - they can be used for nefarious purposes or create unexpected precedents. [Edit: formatting and grammar]
PrimHelios 9y ago
That's not how free speech works. FS protects your right to say things. A university telling you you aren't welcome for whatever reason isn't in violation of that right.

60 points by vixen99 9y ago

Good. The purpose of going to university other than getting an eduation is to have your views challenged by people you don't agree with.

boyce 9y ago
People have differing objectives when they go to university
- scotty79 9y ago
  Should anybody beside them care?
  - boyce 9y ago
    Not sure what other members only clubs beside SUs the government thinks it can interfere with the running of

insickness 9y ago

This is probably a step in the right direction since, in my estimation, there is a clear bias against conservative speakers at universities. However, this is still government forcing people to allow certain kinds of speech. That's the other side of the coin of the government disallowing certain kinds of speech. In the UK, people are getting jail time for posting speech deemed offensive on social media. Both involve delineations best left out of the hands of government. I wouldn't want to see the government force free speech or punish offensive speech on privately-owned platforms like Facebook, Twitter or Hacker News. But when it comes to publicly-funded universities there may be no way around this.

scotty79 9y ago
> I wouldn't want to see the government force free speech [...] Why? How else can you prevent strongest factions from silencing all minorities? The role of the adult is to keep in check strongest kids so the weaker can play safely.
- dgudkov 9y ago
  Who defines who is the strongest, who is the weakest?
  - scotty79 9y ago
    Strongest is the one with biggest estimated capacity to do harm to others. Adult does the estimating.
    - dgudkov 9y ago
      That's the definition of dangerous. It's not the same thing.
DanBC 9y ago
> In the UK, people are getting jail time for posting speech deemed offensive on social media. Please could you link to some of these cases? Because in almost all of the ones I've seen it's been someone making threats of violence, not just being offensive.
- dogma1138 9y ago
  The most basic google search would show that’s not the case; rude and racist remarks sure but not actionable threats. Section 127 of the communications act is an abomination.
  - DanBC 9y ago
    Please link to any cases. So far when anyone has linked a case it's turned out (with one exception) to be someone making very many direct, credible, threats of harm, or engaging in a campaign of harassment. But those cases got widespread, mostly american, coverage of the attack on free speech. Those sites are wrong.

StudentStuff 9y ago

I'm not keen on safe spaces, the harsh reality is your going to run into a broad range of people with varying views and a variety of degrees of sanity, better to let them have a shitty little backroom at UW and not give them a good story to take to the media that an insane mofo got banned from a college for spreading hate down there. Throwing media attention at those who seek to push us gays back into the closet is counterproductive, akin to fanning a flame. Milo and his ilk love to be no platformed, as it makes for great PR when they can say "Blah college banned us, how dare they!". Suppression of ideas doesn't work, let them die in the brutal, harsh light of public discussion and debate. With free media attention and a stunted discussion, this will only continue to snowball. Building walls never works, unless you prop them up!

anon1385 9y ago
>Throwing media attention at those who seek to push us gays back into the closet is counterproductive, akin to fanning a flame. Milo and his ilk love to be no platformed, as it makes for great PR when they can say "Blah college banned us, how dare they!". Quite a few of the people involved already have a 'platform' writing for major national or international publications[1], or regularly featuring on TV. So yes it does give them something else to moan about in their regular newspaper column, but I'm not sure it makes all that much difference to how much attention they get. The media is already pretty much saturated with people like Germain Greer, and they are all very adept at generating controversy to promote themselves without outside help - that's how they got where they are today. That's the irony of this really - it's a bunch of people with the biggest megaphone imaginable complaining that they have been silenced because people didn't want to come to/host their utterly insignificant student debate. The fact that such an insignificant thing has become a major story is evidence of just how loud their voices are, sadly. [1] there are other people being 'no platformed' as well, but I'm not sure the government/Daily Mail is really suggesting they want to force universities to host Abu Hamza al-Masri or face fines
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
Mountain_Skies 9y ago

naturalgradient 9y ago

Reporting from Oxbridge: This is a real issue but actually most people have reasonable notions of free speech. It is just that the types that end up being welfare/student/women/minority officers are extremely aggressively attacking perceived attacks/hate speech/dissenters/traitors to the cause. If anyone remembers the Tim Hunt story and the witch-hunt that followed (and let us not forgot the role the Guardian played in peddling that), there was a situation where Tim Hunt was supposed to give a speech at a college. The women's officer was outraged and riled up freshers who where thoroughly convinced that a man accused of making a sexist joke merely speaking in a room inside their college was a violation of their own safety, a phrase I recall is 'The college is our home and our safe space'. Most faculty/graduate students/undergrads are actually very reasonable and want to hear dissenting opinions. The problem is just that most well-adjusted people quickly tire of outrage-driven student politics, so it's left to the ultra-aggressive types.

Baltoli 9y ago
I was closely involved in this controversy at the time and I can attest to the "loudest voice" problem where a small number of people magnified the situation far beyond what it needed to be. Definitely surprised to see a comment referring to it on HN more than 2 years on though!
- naturalgradient 9y ago
  It stuck out with me because it made me realise that many students were not at all emotionally well equipped to handle certain situations of adult life. A problem here especially is how quickly anything done by the university is framed as an attack on the mental health and safety of students. For example, in a recent survey, students were asked about their mental health issues. Examples of the university not being supportive enough were things such as 'I was not given an extension on an essay'. These incidents make me realise that a non-trivial fraction of this generation of students really feels intense emotional distress to a point of needing counselling over things my generation would book under normal aspects of adult life. In these cases, there is also little self-reflection on one's own responsibility to handle such situations - everything is framed as an attack.

DanBC 9y ago

The National Union of Students has a reasonable list of banned organisations. Al Muhajiroun; British National Party (BNP); English Defence League (EDL); Hizb ut Tahir; Muslim Public Affairs Committee; National Action Some of these are proscribed organisations in the UK, eg https://www.gov.uk/government/news/national-action-becomes-first-extreme-right-wing-group-to-be-banned-in-uk https://www.gov.uk/government/news/national-action-becomes-f... The problem is that local branches go much further, and ban many more people.

saint_fiasco 9y ago
Is the British National Party an actual political party? If so, it does not seem reasonable to me that they are banned, unless they ban all political parties. Favoring some political parties over others should not be allowed.
- anon1385 9y ago
  The BNP is not a proscribed organisation.
- zhte415 9y ago
  They occassionally win local election seats and have been invited to take part in televised debates including on the BBC.
- djhworld 9y ago
  The BNP formed from the National Front, an extreme far right organisation. They have one elected politician, in local government, I think it's fair to say they're an extreme minority voice in British Politics these days. The leaders of the party have criminal convictions and their rallies are known for violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_Party#Association_with_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_Party#Associa...
- DanBC 9y ago
  I think the very small list is reassuring. They're not banning all extreme right wing parties. UKIP isn't on the list, for example.

boyce 9y ago

When I was a student I was no fan of "no platform" and it was an important factor in the No to NUS campaign I led back then. BUT... Universities and student unions foremost reponsibility is to the safety of the students and yes that can mean stopping the odd event. Also unions are generally mandated to uphold an atmosphere of inclusion and tolerance and that certainly means going further than the legal minimum in rejecting hate.

felsish 9y ago
It's not so much "no platforming" as "my platforming" now, purely territorial aggression from self-proclaimed moral guardians that will cut out anyone who disagrees, marginally offends or even ignores them. It's the very definition of a "toxic" person: every community they touch is divided and destroyed from the inside.
- boyce 9y ago
  Student unions aren't dictatorships They're a great environment in which young folks can have these debates with minimal consequences
simplesleeper 9y ago
The foremost responsibility of Universities is actually the education of the students.
- frou_dh 9y ago
  GP's statement and your reply reminds me strongly of this: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-everyones-getting-wrong-about-the-presidents-no-1-job https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-everyones-getting...
scotty79 9y ago
Students unions are form of a societal playpen gor them to train relations in society. If the children toss their toys outside they should be taken away from playpen.

maxehmookau 9y ago

Whatever your views on this, it has to be seen through the lens of the Conservative government in the UK hiking tuition fees and overseeing the biggest rise in university executive pay in a generation. It's nothing more than misdirection to take attention away from the things that real students _actually_ care about. The majority of undergraduate students in the UK probably don't even care one way or the other.

emn13 9y ago

This title is misleading - can it be corrected to the actual title of the article? Because at issue isn't any ban on free speech, it's whether it's OK to ban invited speakers expected e.g. to incite harassment, bigotry, or violence. And obviously there's a grey area there, but it's certainly no restrain on the message at all - merely the platform (not that that's irrelevant, but the distinction isn't irrelevant either), and I kind of doubt you'd want to provide a platform to everything regardless of what kind of hate speech they're spouting. There's a fine line between a constructive diversity of opinions, including ones you don't agree with, and giving a microphone to those saying nothing new, where the primary draw isn't the message itself, but the drama and tribalism surrounding it.

DanBC 9y ago
I used to strongly agree with you. Some people are fucking arseholes who promote and provoke violence, and there's no obligation to give those people a platform. But then you see who gets no-platformed, and it's not always those people. When Peter Tatchil (gay rights) and Germaine Greer (feminist) get considered for no-platforming we know it's gone too far. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/nus-no-platform-safe-space-policy-goes-too-far-threatens-free-speech-warns-peter-tatchell-a6999801.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/nus-no-platform-safe-sp... But we need to be a bit careful, some people are considered for no-platforming but are allowed to speak: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/may/05/boris-tatchell-greer-were-they-actually-no-platformed https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/may/05/boris-tatc...
- emn13 9y ago
  Yeah, I think the rule is overzealously applied, not sure it's necessary in the first place. But let's have that debate based on reality rather than imply something worse is going on, when it's not. (Personally, I think the idea of a minister getting involved and trying to control the debate is much worse than the student unions making relatively small mistakes, but hey, that's me).
vixen99 9y ago
No, it isn't misleading. "Universities could face fines for failing to uphold free speech if their student unions do not give a platform to speakers such as Germaine Greer and Peter Tatchell, the higher education minister has said.". Such behaviour if it occurred would be 'disallowing free speech' and might be dealt with accordingly as described in the article. Your second paragraph epitomises the problem highlighted by the minister. It seems that you seek to judge free speech by considerations aside from its legality. I am not aware that Voltaire added a qualification to "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

matthewmacleod 9y ago

This is a meaningless dog-whistle comment by an incompetent minister. To my knowledge, the OfS will have no real power to regulate student unions, which are the primary organisations where “no-platforming” would be a policy, and fining institutions for the behaviour of students unions is just dumb. I think it’s utterly vital that controversial views are aired, and that ludicrous fascist and racist views are publicly exposed to ridicule. But student unions are private organisations, governed generally democratically, and they must equally be free to decide on what policy they will take towards external speakers. The “no platform” policy of the NUS which is mentioned in the article is very narrow – it applies to six specified organisations, and forbids the use of union premises, speaking at union events, and rules out membership of those organisations for union officers. Personally I don’t think it’s worth the cost, in particular because these policies have muddied the debate with a lot of ill-informed misinformation from every perspective - the various controversial speakers, for example, are not subject to any “no-platform” policy, but have been excluded from discussion based on the decisions of individual students. Frankly the far bigger problem is the attitude of those individual students. It’s been about a decade since I was at university, but even then the entire sphere of student politics was filled with ill-informed reactionaries who had very little tolerance for the idea that people might disagree with them while not being evil. The idea of Peter Tatchell being excluded from a discussion of gay rights is outright ludicrous, and just reflects the bubble that these folk tend to live in. That’s the thing we should be worried about, rather than some bogus hand-waving about safe-space policies that don’t actually exist and are just red meat to the usual shit-stirrers.

DanBC 9y ago
> The idea of Peter Tatchell being excluded from a discussion of gay rights is outright ludicrous, and just reflects the bubble that these folk tend to live in. > That’s the thing we should be worried about, rather than some bogus hand-waving about safe-space policies that don’t actually exist and are just red meat to the usual shit-stirrers. I don't understand how you can say "there's not a no-platform policy, and if there is it only applies to six very small extremist organisations", and then mention Peter Tatchell being excluded from a discussion.

guuz 9y ago

I consider myself a free speech proponent, but I do not feel comfortable with fines. Groups that defend/want to hear unpopular opinions should organize themselves to oppose hysterical speech and to guide the debate to a less aggressive rhetoric. Is it an ideal and distant solution? Maybe, but is better than official coercion. There must be a way, most people are not downright hostile to controversy. Edit: I do think that welcoming some ideas is a waste of time, or perhaps dangerous (fascism, for example). But I cannot see why Peter Tatchell is an imminent danger.

dgudkov 9y ago
>Groups that defend/want to hear unpopular opinions should organize themselves to oppose hysterical speech That's exactly how Charlottesville happened.
- guuz 9y ago
  No, it is not. One can easily destroy nazi-fascism without being apocaliptic, and I think that welcoming this ideology in universities is a waste of time, as I said earlier. The Charlottesville guys were not trying to engage in an educated debate or expose their opinions to scrutiny, their creed does not accommodate the very idea of dissent. Few among them [edit: previously " Few fascists"] are brave or patient enough to be civilized. Groups like theirs generally value shock tactics and its meeting was mainly conceived as a demonstration of power. Like-minded people, good or bad, will reunite and some groups will use the US free speech laws to propagate their hate and attract more followers. It is a very different scenario than polemic opinions being treated like a civilizational hazard in England (or elsewhere). Gay rigths, desegragation and many other ideas now taken for granted were once unpopular. History does not moves always forward and everyone that values freedom needs caution when considering politics regulating speech - they can be used for nefarious purposes or create unexpected precedents. [Edit: formatting and grammar]

PrimHelios 9y ago

That's not how free speech works. FS protects your right to say things. A university telling you you aren't welcome for whatever reason isn't in violation of that right.