More than 40 academics – including Professor Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, and Professor Nigel Biggar, the theologian – have intervened in support of a planned appearance at the Oxford Union by Professor Kathleen Stock, a leading feminist, in a letter to the Telegraph. It comes after students have tried to cancel Prof. Stock’s talk, claiming that she is transphobic for disputing that ‘transwomen are women’. From the Telegraph:
The row at Oxford first erupted in April when the university’s LGBTQ+ society said it was “dismayed and appalled” that the debating society had “decided to platform the transphobic and trans exclusionary speaker Kathleen Stock”.
It accused the Union of “disregarding the welfare of its LGBTQ+ members under the guise of free speech”.
The Junior Common Rooms of Christ Church, St. Edmund Hall, St Anne’s and St. Hilda’s have backed the LGBTQ+ society and passed motions calling for her invite “to be rescinded in support of the trans community”.
The row escalated last week when Oxford’s Student Union (SU) voted to sever ties with the 200-year-old debating society, accusing it of having a “toxic culture of bullying and harassment”.
The move would prevent the Union from having a stall at the freshers’ fair, which is an important source of membership sign-ups that fund the debating society.
In a statement, the SU said “the motion was unrelated to Dr. Stock’s intended talk” and said that the professor was not discussed at the meeting.
It said it was “committed to freedom of expression and freedom of speech, and will defend the right of people to have controversial and unpopular ideas debated as an integral part of university life and the university experience”.
However, dons criticised the SU’s decision to cut ties with the Union.
Education minister Claire Coutinho has backed the dons on behalf of the Government. She said: “Student debaters shouldn’t be punished for encouraging the free exchange of ideas. Our newly passed Freedom of Speech Act will make sure that universities promote free speech and that those who have their free speech rights unlawfully restricted on campus can seek redress.”
The Union has said that the talk with Prof. Stock will go ahead despite planned protests. It will set up “welfare spaces” to help students cope with the gender debate.
Here’s the letter in full.
Sir,
We are academics at the University of Oxford, possessed of a range of different political beliefs, Left and Right. We wholeheartedly condemn the decision of the Oxford University Student Union (Oxford SU) to sever its ties with the Oxford Union (the Union) after the latter’s refusal to rescind an invitation to the philosopher and gender-critical feminist Kathleen Stock.
Professor Stock believes that biological sex in humans is real and socially salient, a view which until recently would have been so commonplace as to hardly merit asserting. Whether or not one agrees with Professor Stock’s views, there is no plausible and attractive ideal of academic freedom, or of free speech more generally, which would condemn their expression as outside the bounds of permissible discourse. Unfortunately, the position of her opponents seems to be that Professor Stock’s views are so illicit that they cannot be safely discussed in front of an audience of consenting and intelligent adults at the main debating society at the University of Oxford. If this were the case, it is doubtful that they could be safely expressed anywhere – a result that, as her opponents are no doubt satisfied to find, would amount to their effective prohibition.
Fortunately, it has become clear that the Union’s capitulation cannot be secured by the usual methods of moralistic browbeating and social censure. However, Oxford SU is now threatening its financial model by seeking to prevent the Union from having a stall at future freshers’ fairs. This is dangerous territory. Universities exist, among other things, to promote free inquiry and the disinterested pursuit of the truth by means of reasoned argument. To resort to coercion and financial threats when unable to secure one’s preferred outcome in debate would represent a profound failure to live up to these ideals.
Universities must remain places where contentious views can be openly discussed. The salient alternative to this, one apparently favoured by many of Professor Stock’s opponents, is simply unacceptable: a state of affairs in which the institutions of a university collude to suppress the expression of controversial, but potentially true, viewpoints in an effort to prevent them from becoming more widely known.
Signed:
- Dr Julius Grower, Faculty of Law and St Hugh’s College
- Dr Michael Biggs, Department of Sociology and St Cross College
- Dr Roger Teichmann, St Hilda’s College
- Professor Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology, Faculty of Theology
- Professor Jeff McMahan, Sekyra and White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy and Corpus Christi College
- Dr Edward Howell, Department of Politics and International Relations and New College
- Dr Marie Kawthar Daouda, Oriel College
- Dr Jonathan Price, Faculty of Law and St Cross College
- Colin Mills, Department of Sociology and Nuffield College
- John Maier, Balliol College
- Dr Alexander Morrison, Faculty of History and New College
- Dr Richard Gipps, Blackfriars Hall
- Professor Carl Heneghan, Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine
- Kathryn Webb, Oxford Institute of Clinical Psychology Training and Research and Harris Manchester College
- Dr Tim Mawson, St Peter’s College
- Edward Hadas, Blackfriars Hall
- Professor Richard Dawkins, New College
- Professor Jonathan Jones, Department of Physics and Brasenose College
- Professor Lawrence Goldman, Emeritus Fellow, St Peter’s College
- Professor James Binney, Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics and Merton College
- James Forder, Balliol College
- Clive Hambler, Lecturer in Biology and Human Sciences, Hertford College
- Daniel Villar, Department of Biology
- Yuan Yi Zhu, Research Fellow, Harris Manchester College, and Nuffield College
- Professor Richard Ekins KC (Hon), Professor of Law and Constitutional Government, St John’s College
- Professor Julian Savulescu, Uehiro Chair of Practical Ethics, Faculty of Philosophy
- David Carpenter, Faculty of History
- Professor Timothy Williamson, Wykeham Professor of Logic, Faculty of Philosophy
- Daniel Kodsi, Trinity College
- Professor Susan Bright, Professor of Land Law, Faculty of Law
- Professor Joel David Hamkins, Professor of Logic, Associate Faculty Member, Faculty of Philosophy
- Dr Ruth Dixon, College Lecturer, the Queen’s College
- Professor John Tasioulas, Professor of Ethics and Legal Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy and Balliol College
- Xenofon Kalogeropoulos, Faculty of Classics and St Anne’s College
- Jane Cooper, All Souls College
- Dr Abhijit Sarkar, Faculty of History
- Professor Edward Harcourt, Professor of Philosophy, Keble College
- Professor Michael Bentley, Senior Research Fellow, St Hugh’s College
- Professor Catharine Abell, Faculty of Philosophy and the Queen’s College
- Professor John Chalker, Department of Physics and St Hugh’s College
- Dr Sophie Allen, Faculty of Philosophy and St Peter’s College
- Professor Volker Halbach, Professor of Philosophy, New College
- Sir Noel Malcolm, All Souls College
- Aftab Mallick, Brasenose College
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Can Reiner Fuellmich be on the enquiry team? Along with Ivor Cummins, Carl Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Michael Yeadon etc.
I wouldn’t necessarily want them to be. I would like an inquiry simply where the members have an unbiased ability to look at evidence, and the technical skills to assess it, as well as a basic grasp of the issues.
I have no doubt that is pie in the f.ing sky, and there will be no holding to account for the biggest scam in post-war history. The judge and jury will be picked by the establishment and dependent on it.
One of the biggest scams of all time, especially when you consider the global nature of it
Not going to argue with that. I was just sticking to the easily verifiable, Julian.
How much would you bet that Lord Sumption won’t be part of it!
I’d bet my face mask on it.
As much as I would like to see an inquiry in to this fiasco, I fear it will be another white wash, it will last for years and add another £20 mil to the bill to find out “they acted correctly”. To be blunt, it will achieve auck fll.
If they do find anything it will be buried like the report into the islamic grooming gangs.
Not sure WHY the Rotherham voters recently CONTINUED to elect a mix of those who enabled the cover up, even if they did dump the original cover up conspiritant party.
Look how long Hillsborough went on for..
Don’t forget that Yeadon and Sunetra Gupta made the wrong call on herd immunity in spring 2020. I’m not sure they should be questioning the judgement of others.
If you were to exclude anyone who’d made a wrong call you might struggle to find anyone to do the questioning
Please explain
Sunetra Gupta was claiming that the UK had reached her immunity in March 2020 while Yeadon was asserting that the “pandemic was over” in summer 2020.
They were obviously wrong.
I seem to remember that winter excess deaths were less far above the expected level for the time of year than in April (and some of those would presumably have been caused by lockdown restrictions etc. Or indeed the vaccines…). And then there is the question of whether it actually was a pandemic in the proper sense.
…. and that’s the spectre at the feast – the lack of reliable data on Covid.
I speak as someone who’s just been fighting off adding to duff data by means of a crap nose invasion test (for which I was presented with zero real information).
That’s the standard fallback excuse. If the data disagrees with your agenda – blame the data.
The data’s not perfect but it’s good enough to pick out trends and correlations. e.g. the timing of peaks in cases, hospitalisation and deaths. The same agreements are evident in data from all across the world.
If there’s a fiddle going on then every country is using exactly the same fiddle.
Does the data match (a) personal experience (b) the experiences of people I trust (c) doctors I know and trust. Generally -Yes.
I’m not sure what this means but there was a big excess in April 2020.
Not in April. Most of the April peak deaths would have been infected before the lockdown.
Oh yes, in April.
Look, what I need to know is whether there is a link between the “vaccinating of over 75’s in France (which appears to have been continuing through April) and the extra reported deaths. And I need to know for certain.
Were they? In actuality, the ‘pandemic’ was only one in terms of half the old definition – conveniently altered by the WHO to exclude the question of severity. Remember – even at worst, Covid never reached epidemic levels in the community.
And nothing much happened until New Year, when an odd spike, correlated to the vaccination of the most vulnerable occurred – followed by a slower seasonal decline than usual. Yeadon’s mistake was in actually using the loaded term ‘pandemic’ in this context, and Gupta’s in not allowing for the possibility of vaccine deaths.
As to inaccuracy – remember the 4000 deaths a day predicted by Valance? That far outstrips any opposing errors.
I heard that the CQC were investigating the disproportionate no of deaths of the disabled, increasing the probability there was no pandemic ( previous definition) instead there was a withdrawal of medical care.
“The Care Quality Commission (CQC) had found that thirty-four-percent of people working in health and social care were pressured into placing ‘do not attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation’ (DNACPR) orders on Covid patients who suffered from disabilities and learning difficulties, without involving the patient or their families in the decision.
Well today we can confirm this scandal led to disabled people accounting for 3 in every 5 Covid deaths according to ONS figures.”
https://dailyexpose.co.uk/2021/04/01/do-not-resuscitate-scandal-led-to-disabled-people-accounting-for-3-in-5-covid-deaths-according-to-ons-figures/
Of course the eugenicists never went away, and this is very worrying. In Iceland, children with cerebral palsy have been almost eliminated, and I’m afraid there are plenty of people who want to do similar things in other countries.
Yes – they were wrong. Many parts of the country had hardly been touched by the virus. There were very few infections in out neck of the woods in Spring but were hit hard in January. The large Birmingham Trust came under a lot of pressure in the New Year and – No – they weren’t vaccine deaths.
Ha – I see – the definition of a pandemic is the problem. Both Yeadon and Gupta were convinced that whatever we had in spring 2020 would not be repeated, This was drivel. The spring outbreak was likely cut short by seasonality. The outbreaks were too patchy to provide herd immunity. They were both badly wrong – AS I SAID AT THE TIME.
But cases were counted employing mass testing of asymptomatic persons, using the notorious PCR test at threshold cycles set too high. And anyone presenting any of the various virus symptoms (which might be caused by other infections) was deemed to have it. I believe they were more right than wrong.
Irrelevant. There was a peak in April and another peak in January. I knew several people who got a nasty bout of covid in January. I know people who work in hospitals who were reporting big increases in hospitalisations and deaths in January.
There people had Covid-19. While I accept that a number of cases and deaths reported in the figures may be invalid, it doesn’t alter the fact that there were 2 (possibly 3) waves and the later one was at least as big as the first.
You need to pay more attention to the doctors who we trust – particularly those in the US who are pushing for Ivermectin and other such treatments. They know Covid-19 is real. They know it’s real in Mexico – in Brazil – in Chile – in the rest of South America ..etc.
Utter nonsense! Weekly deaths were back to normal mid-June and stayed that way all through to October!
Was it a wrong call? Only if you equate it with total immunity.
And, certainly, they’ve not had the appalling record of SAGE – wrong on everything of significance.
Sorry – you’ll need to explain this? Herd Immunity does not mean that everyone in the population is immune. It means that enough people are immune that the virus is incapable of spreading ‘exponentially’, i.e. when an individual transmits the virus to more than one other person.
I seem to remember London was hit much less severely in the winter after suffering badly in April. Obviously this is not the case everywhere. Moray is seemingly one example.
I just want to say, in response to your many downvotes, that I welcome your posts that go against the conventional view around here. Healthy debate is needed.
That being said, in this case, I don’t see it as a problem that these people have made predictions that were wrong. People make mistakes and people on both sides of the argument have been wrong at times.
And Lord Jonathan Sumption.
Headed up by Lord Sumption will be ideal, but the wankers who will choose the inquiry team will ensure only supporters of this hysteria to be involved and that idiot physicist Ferguson will model the outcome
It’s far too soon for it to be anything other than a whitewash/nonsense about locking down sooner/better etc.
Better to wait a few years to stand a chance of some calm perspective returning.
No, very soon, before memories fade and more internet is disappeared. We have nearly all the evidence we need. Just got to get through the next flu season and we will know exactly what we are looking at.
Get all the important internet stuff backed up off-line. I remember the Guardian being ordered to take down their Snowden leaks stuff. Didn’t make any difference though as it was all backed up.
No – Julian’s right. Haste will just lead to repentance – and there is zero chance of a considered outcome if its rushed and involves so much admission of incredible wrongness.
Bound to be, I should think. It is imperative that some sort of credible alternative inquiry is organised. Complete with fact finding trips to Belarus, Sweden, Texas, Zambia….
you wouldn’t want to wait too long in case A) lot of documents get shredded in the interim or B) another one comes along and the same mistakes get repeated all over again until the UK has been annihilated – you know what pandemics are like – there isn’t one for ages and then 2 come along at once.
Fixed. Pointless.
Boris has written the conclusions already.
The victors write history.
well yes and no – don’t discount the dreaded Dom Cummings – he has it in for the PM
It’ll be like Blairs WMD’s inquiry which is actually very similar, WMD aka Covid and lies
I’ll save the expense -this is what it will say.
“Should have locked down earlier, should have mandated masks earlier, should have brought in vaccine passports to
blackmailencourageNot necessarily – but there will be no pinning down of the sheer error and venal stupidity. The worst will be sympathetic ‘tuts’ and ‘perhapses’.
So, quickly set the limited terms of enquiry and time scale to get this over with asap, and well before the real damage (UK economy, social impact of lockdown, experimental vaxx deaths/long term side effects, mental health, collapse of the NHS as a viable service, contract cronyism etc, etc) starts to become more and more apparent.
Then grease a few select palms…
…and hope that witless sap Keir Starmer is still opposition leader.
I must admit, Boris has always been adept at this sort of thing; but something tells me it’s simply not going to wash this time.
Let’s face it, we’ll likely be going over this for years, if not decades like Ballymurphy and Hillsborogh. only this time there are many millions of us, throughout the world. Hopefully they won’t get out of this so easily. We’ll learn the truth alright, the hard part will be getting those responsible held to account and owning up to it.
Witless sap is a perfect description. I will never vote Conservative, but Starner has now made me a lifelong Labour refugee. I’m completely politically deracinated.
becoming all too clear now, the politics that matters now is the people against vested interests.
We need a people’s enquiry. For the people, by the people. What we have faced is so historically audacious that we probably should have a referendum to decide how it is organized and who is on which panel. Impractical, I realize. The powers that be will already be deciding the witnesses, judge(s) and outcome, especially now they realize so many are onto them.
What people? There’s a handful of us, and a horde of zombies.
I love this idea. An independent people’s enquiry. I don’t see why this can’t happen.
FFS – the ‘people’ are largely already signed up to the defense.
wir sind das Volk
I said last time this came up, that any inquiry that happens will simply be used to bolster the fake reality they have created about a fake pandemic. Any inquiry that does not recognise that this was a political crisis; a power grab; an enormous assault on the public, etc, will be a farcical white wash.
We’ve heard them debating their fantasy shit in parliament, we’ve seen the complicit media arguing that the government failed to lockdown earlier and failed to keep us locked down longer. They’ll probably make accusations towards the public for lack of adherence to lockdown ‘rules’ too.
It’ll be a shower of shit, another kick in the gonades. We need prosecutions, not inquiries.
“recognise that this was… an assault on the public”.
Don’ t get your hopes up, the people behind this scam are bent on taking over the world. (probably bent too, come to think of it).
2020 is the year politics corrupted science. Once scumbag politics has been rinsed thoroughly from the science will truth prevail. I fucking hate politics
Or one of the years. The year people started to become more aware of it perhaps. My understanding is that politicians have long chosen scientific adviserfs to tell them what they want to hear. I seem to remember a story about a certain German regime in the 1930’s…
Whats the betting phrases like mistakes were made but lessons have been learnt, in the best public interest, unprecedented territory, nobody to blame etc.
My personal favourite: we are where we are…
Indeed – the most likely result.
How much weight do you think will be given to the fact that the basic fallacies were known by April 2020 by even the intelligent PC + Spreadsheet brigade.
IMO, the current crop of Poliarticians (right and left across the board) are all so bent that if they swallowed six inch nails they would en mass all shit out cork screws. ( just sayin’)
A complete waste of time, and a lot of it, I might be dead by the time its published. Which is a terrible indictement of our democratic and parliamentary processes.
As anyone who remembers ‘Yes Minister’ will know, Sir Humphrew will already have written the report, it just requires endless meeetings and debate before it can see the light of day.
Much as I am loath to admit it, I think that you are right. It will be arse covering on an industrial scale.
It’s only function will be to establish the price of Whitewash if purchased through Government procurement!
The most interesting thing about any enquiry will be the quality of the paint job. Whitewash, emulsion, distemper or gloss? Applied with brush, roller, paint sprayer? Pure white, off white, brilliant white?
Of one thing we can be sure. However blatantly bad and bodged the quality of the work, many corners will be unpainted without criticism, and the painters will follow their client’s wishes to the letter. All costs will naturally be billed to J
Public.
Will it be before or after the enquiries into who paid for his holiday or wallpaper ?
Will this be a similar enquiry as to why we haven’t got Ivermectin yet? You know the stuff that the public are largely unaware of? Or why we’re still using a defunct testing system, the one the public still think tells then they’ve got WuFlu? Or using gunk by the gallon, and putting bits of paper on their faces for no good reason? Or acting like brainless Lemmings, chucking themselves over a cliff just to get the Jabz?
Theres Zero chance of getting any answers because the great British public aren’t even asking any fu****g questions!
When Civil Servants want to hide government cock ups, thry simply declare that they will hold a public enquiry. The scope will be so wide and all encompassing that it will take years to complete.
By the time it is over, those responsible will have left government and those who cared will be either dead or have given up waiting.
Can I just lower the tone by saying that Boris in that pic looks like an inverse Minstrel show?
I’m so jaded and disillusioned by this last year that not even the idea of a public enquiry can cheer me up. If it’s like the one into Grenfell the conclusion will be that we should have known better than to trust the authorities and stay in place, and that the victims of the experimental gene therapy should have known better than to take it, as the information about side effects was all out there to be found if you looked hard enough. That masks were to make us feel better, and at the time we were all misled by some fall guy or other into thinking that HCQ, Ivermectin etc were ineffective.
More likely than not, there’ll be some fresh disaster to divert us all and the the country will behave like supine cowards begging King Boris to protect us in exchange for forgetting all the bad things he did. His resemblance to Henry VIII will increase with every passing day, (apart for the non-resemblance of his father to Henry VII).
The government must not be allowed to set the phrasing of the question.
In the words of Yes, Minister:
“But we don’t want a public inquiry! We want to find out what went wrong!”
Best buy shares in whitewash manufacturers now. There is no way we will have an open minded enquiry. Nobody will require the government to present cost/benefit analyses of mask wearing or lockdown.
It doesnt matter. It will be a whitewash, think Levison. It will be to back up Gov. policy and find they did a great job in saving untold lives and the UK economy. Absolving Boris and his cabal and making them legendary heroes, which the lockdowners will be eternally grateful for.
Wasn’t it Levison where the judge asked intelligent, probing questions and then came up with the result the government wanted? This will be the same
Anyone who trusts any promises from the current Prime Minister needs their head examining!