John Armstrong, a Reader in Financial Mathematics at King’s College London, has written an excoriating piece in the Spectator about the capture of Imperial College by the woke cult, with anyone who dissents from its agenda, however potty, being penalised by their peers and/or the university authorities. Even people aware of the the war on free speech in Britain’s elite universities will find this piece eye-opening. It begins:
We have become used to the erosion of academic freedom in the humanities and social sciences. It is no longer surprising to find that a Gender Studies department holds the institutional view that it is racist and colonialist to say that sex is binary, or promotes a student essay which fantasises about holding a knife to the throat of gender-critical women.
But attacks on academic freedom are not restricted to gender studies and anthropology departments anymore. Academics in all fields are now under pressure to conform to fashionable theories on gender and race. Indeed, science-focused institutions can, paradoxically, be especially susceptible to this, because of their lack of expertise when it comes to social issues.
Imperial College London, which specialises in science, engineering, medicine and business, is a case in point. Through their equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) web pages, they urge staff to be LGBTQ+ allies. The word ‘ally’ is carefully chosen for plausible deniability (what kind of monster wouldn’t want to be an ally to a marginalised community?). But in reality what is being promoted is uncritical allyship with Stonewall, who are mentioned 10 times on just one page. This is not subtle: staff are even encouraged to donate to Stonewall.
Even the most senior staff at Imperial seem afraid of expressing opposing views. In 2019, an LGBT allyship network organised a letter criticising professor Simone Buitendijk, then Vice Provost of Education, for the crime of liking and linking to ‘transphobic’ material on Twitter. This included “a good piece on gender self-identification and women’s rights” in the Spectator. After meeting with professor Stephen Curry, Imperial’s Vice Provost (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion) Buitendijk issued an abject apology, stating: “I now realise that social media is not the correct forum for such sensitive debates.”
Buitendijk’s research expertise includes women’s health and diversity in education. The LGBT allyship network opposed her even following academically relevant Twitter accounts they disapproved of. If a Vice Provost can be censored in this way, how will a junior medic ever feel safe questioning practices such as the transitioning of children?
Some of Imperial’s allyship advice is merely comical: “Offer to accompany a trans or non-binary person to the bathroom, so they do not have to face any potential transphobia alone.” However, most of it appears to be carefully designed to promote Stonewall’s political agenda and to suppress any dissent from this view. For example, transphobia is defined as “denying [someone’s] gender identity or refusing to accept it”. Since “the College has a zero-tolerance approach to all forms of transphobia” this arguably discriminates against staff who hold the protected belief that sex is binary. Their allyship advice also includes wearing rainbow lanyards, telling people your pronouns in introductions, and calling out “transphobic” comments. While it is claimed that these measures will create an “environment where more people feel safe and comfortable to be themselves”, they seem better designed to create an environment where nobody dares express gender-critical views.
Imperial provide similar advice on being a white ally. This includes a video explaining that all white people are complicit in racism, and that pointing to black friends and partners as evidence you are not racist simply illustrates “white fragility”. Staff are encouraged to donate to Black Lives Matter in the US and instructed, “If you have friends or family who take a different stance on these issues… have a hard conversation with them and ask them to rethink their views.”
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Amen. And their conclusions are almost certainly valid for all age groups.
They get a kick out of abusing children, this is how evil these ppl are.
So true. They are truly evil and despicable.
The used car salesman knows more about cars than me. ———Do I always buy one? ———–NO
A certain Major in the US army has done review of mask evidence:- https://www.realmaskscience.com/references
Haven’t looked at it all, but seems to be fairly thorough. It is quite interesting to see the chart of evidence, what the CDC does and does not quote. There is one RCT in favour of masking and a dozen against it. However, wasn’t the argument that if not COVID then not valid? Well that means three RCTs against, and 1 in favour of masking, but then a load of poor quality studies and laboritry experiments rushed through in 2020 & 2021 in favour. Well not quite 100% true, but close.
And even the lone RCT in favor of masking (the infamous Bangladesh study) was fatally flawed, and basically falls apart upon reanalysis.
I dread to think how future generations, looking back, will regard our disgusting behaviour towards our children! ‘Draconian’ ‘Medieval’ will probably be the words used!
Just think of what we know now, and how we look back on the ignorance of our forebears! It will be shameful
Trying to talk them into using drugs originally invented for chemical castration of certain kinds of sex offenders to – well – chemically self-castrate probably won’t earn anyone much praise, either. At least hopefully so.
It was a disgrace all over the world and disgracefully omitted from the sham covid inquiry.
At our school the social emotional communication developmental damage in my view was distressing to see, long term and significant.
One boy lost teeth as the closed schools meant he lost our care and mask wearing for long lengths of time Increases bacteria.
I gave my anecdotal evidence to inquiry but those running it are just on a selfish gravy train, paid large salaries to push an earlier lockdown outcome.
This was a door which should never have been opened. A statistic¹ I recenltly came accross details soldiers of the German army 1914 – 1918 hospitalized because of various diseases, including the number of those who died. For influenza, including the so-called Spanish flu in 1918, the numbers are
303,544 hospitalized
999 died
Other sources (Der Weltkrieg von 1914 – 1918²) claim that more 85% of those who fell sick with influenza didn’t need to be hospitalized. This means about 2,023,626 soldiers became sick and 999 of these died, making for a case fatality rate of 0.05%. Even the most avid Covinistas admit that COVID was much less lethal than the Spanish flu. Hence, masking children including toddlers (force-masking anyone, for that matter) to slow infection and transmission was objectively nothing but pure sadism.
¹ https://digi.landesbibliothek.at/viewer/image/AC16062494/184/#topDocAnchor
² https://digi.landesbibliothek.at/viewer/image/AC03617607/545/
In other news, study finds that water is wet and the sun rises in the east. And a bear does its business in the woods.
All of this was extremely predictable from the get-go, and yet our “leaders” and “experts” wilfully ignored it, because reasons.
Will today’s children, and future generations, ever forgive us? Because quite frankly, I don’t think such forgiveness is deserved. What was done was unforgivable, and history will NOT be kind at all!
“But…but…kids are resilient!” That is technically true, to a point, but there is no such thing as infinite resilience for anyone. There are always hard limits at some point, and it appears that we have crossed them. And it was all for naught.
Seriously, NEVER AGAIN. Full stop. With NO asterisk.
Didn’t dare watch the video – BP high enough as it is. I would’ve done violence on any person forcing a toddler into a face mask. Luckily I brought up my own children quite a lot of years ago…