The Prime Minister has intervened in the row over Kathleen Stock’s speaking engagement at the Oxford Union later today, saying the “vocal few” must not be allowed to stifle debate. The Telegraph has more.
Rishi Sunak has said that Prof Kathleen Stock has a right to be heard as he urged students to engage with the feminist academic’s views even if they disagree with her.
Prof Stock, who believes trans women are not women, is set to take part in an event at the Oxford Union on Tuesday evening, but her invitation sparked a backlash from trans activists.
In a rare intervention into a campus free speech row, the Prime Minister told the Telegraph that the vocal few must not be allowed to shut down debate and that universities must support, not stifle, contentious discussion.
He said: “A free society requires free debate. We should all be encouraged to engage respectfully with the ideas of others.
“University should be an environment where debate is supported, not stifled. We mustn’t allow a small but vocal few to shut down discussion. Kathleen Stock’s invitation to the Oxford Union should stand.
“Agree or disagree with her, Professor Stock is an important figure in this argument. Students should be allowed to hear and debate her views.”
He added: “A tolerant society is one which allows us to understand those we disagree with, and nowhere is that more important than within our great universities.”
The row which has engulfed Oxford University has become emblematic of the wider debate over freedom of speech in society
In the coming days, the Prime Minister is set to unveil Prof Arif Ahmed of Cambridge University as the director of freedom of speech and academic freedom, charged with cracking down on the no-platforming of academics.
It is understood security measures will be in place for Prof Stock’s appearance, as protests have been planned.
The Union is a private members’ club that University of Oxford students and others pay to join. It is independent of the university and the student union. It said its attendees will have an “opportunity to respectfully engage and challenge” Prof Stock’s views at the event, as well as being able to ask questions anonymously.
More than 40 academics, including Prof Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, and Prof Nigel Biggar, the theologian, wrote a letter to the Telegraph earlier this month in which they supported Prof Stock’s appearance.
Oxford University later intervened to protect free speech. The university’s student union had said it would ban the Oxford Union from its freshers’ fair, accusing the historic debating society of having a “toxic culture of bullying and harassment”.
However, the student union reversed its position after the university reminded its trustees of its free speech policy.
Worth reading in full.
I’ll be at the Oxford Union later to show solidarity with Kathleen Stock.
Stop Press: Watch the former philosophy professor rebut the accusation that her belief that sex is binary and immutable makes her an “extremist” because it “upsets people”. Eloquent and persuasive.
Stop Press 2: Brendan O’Neill, writing in the Mail, says the push back against attempts to cancel Kathleen Stock is the beginning of a pro-free speech counter-revolution on Britain’s campuses. Let’s hope so!
Stop Press 3: Kathleen Stock’s talk at the Union went ahead, but it was disrupted by trans rights activists, one of whom glued her hand to the floor in front of Professor Stock and had to be removed by police before the talk could continue. The Mail has more.
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My default position nowadays for any political pronouncements is to assume “they’re lying.” I no longer believe a word any of them are saying. This article more than reinforces my opinion. Labour are lying as usual and seem to be working on the Goebbel’s maxim of telling a big lie, repeat it continuously and eventually the people will believe it.
This Nut Zero travesty will surely provide Labour with their best ever chance to finally succeed at that which they are best at – running the country in to the ground. Significantly this will be the last government they ever form.
Indeed
As I write this, 21.7% of our electricity needs are being supplied by other countries, half of that by France
When the sun goes down, the contribution from solar will obviously disappear. At this moment our capacity from wind is far from being 100% utilised – presumably because the wrong kind of wind is blowing or not enough of it. Installing more bird choppers does not help if the wind is not blowing.
They must know this so the whole plan is malevolent and not a cockup.
Yes, 100%. Anyone who doesn’t have trust issues with anybody in authority, not even just the perma-corrupt politicians, is gullible in the extreme, in my opinion. There’s always an agenda, there’s always an ulterior motive, there’s always something they’re withholding from us. Sounds like paranoia but there it is, it’s how I roll now.
A 4min montage demonstrating the failures of these hated, ugly, destructive wind turbines, including a brief glimpse of the tragic effects on the poor birds;
https://x.com/TheMilkBarTV/status/1795113082907226397
If a cat kills a sparrow then all cats should be destroyed, but if wind turbines virtually wipe out the Red Kite, like what has happened in Germany then we should build even more of them.
Thanks for the link Mogs
Putting Government in charge of energy is like having wolves tending sheep. But actually the most powerful force today regarding energy is not this government or the next one. It is the “Climate Change Commitee”. It is they who run the show. It is they who have decided what your standard of living is to be moving forward, and since energy is the most important commodity for our prosperity and well being and the CCC have decided our energy use is to be strictly rationed then there can only be one outcome. ——Lower Living Standard. The use of coal oil and gas is what has given us the standard of living we currently enjoy. It is the standard of living that the developing world hopes to have and is why China and India continue using coal to bring their populations out of abject misery and poverty. By removing fossil fuels we reverse our standard of living. The countries with the highest energy prices are the UK, Germany and Denmark. —Why? because they have the most wind turbines. Any government that wants to expand the use of wind will only cause prices to increase. The idea we will have cheaper energy bills by using more renewables comes from the mouths of LIARS.
The odious CCC was covered here:
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/disband-the-climate-change-committee
Thans for that. Read it and saved it.
Quite apart from Labours usual fantasy orgasm non-policies I read recently that the average number of days without sun and / or wind is 110. That is 3 months of the year in the UK where anything relying on wind or sun cannot function. To put it bluntly that is 3 months with no light and no heat. Even if you have a gas boiler, how do you light it and drive the pump without electricity?
I didn’t read beyond the second mention of 3023
Only 9 comments. ————I am very surprised. There is no more important issue than energy for prosperity, health, life span and everything else that relates to our well being.
You are right, but I already feel defeated. If those in power decide to shut off the gas mains and stop petrol & diesel reaching the pumps there is nothing I can do to get them back.
And that is exactly what they will do …. but over a period of time, so that they don’t completely crash the economy or cause riots. It’s the classic “boiling frog” process.
The best thing we can all do is slow down the process by refusing to co-operate. Don’t buy an EV; don’t get a heat pump. Resist having a Smart Meter as long as possible. If you can, get an alternative heat source to gas and electricity.
So you vote for those that will stop Net Zero and currently the only party saying they will do that is REFORM. —–Not so easy if they were government to say it though as the entire Liberal Progressive machine of the western world would be down on them like a ton of bricks. No make that 50 tons of bricks.
Socialist Labour modus operandi when it comes to State run disasters, is keep the end-user price low by taxing them to subsidise the lower price.
The people have been falling for that one since 1945. Don’t forget when you use the NHS it is free – you don’t pay anything. State education similarly is free.
In the days of State owned gas, electric, coal, rail none of these made a profit – or surplus if you prefer – out of revenues, but prices were kept down.
In the case of energy, after it was privatised in the 80’s prices were still low and competitive. It was only after the Climate Change Act in 2008 (Miliband) that prices started to rise because wind is an expensive way to produce electricity, and also because the turbines were being paid for out of our bills. It isn’t privatisation that has cause high prices, it is government interfering in the energy market with pretend to save the planet policies.