Seven British Nobel prize winner have joined the backlash from academics over plans to scrap free speech laws tackling cancel culture at universities. The Times has the story.
In one of her first acts as Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson indefinitely suspended legislation that would have forced universities to protect the right of legal free speech on campus or face sanctions.
Her decision has provoked a backlash from lecturers who have warned it will stifle academic freedom in controversial areas such as transgender rights. They have now been backed by seven Nobel laureates including Sir John Gurdon, whose pioneering work in cloning led to the creation of Dolly the sheep.
Phillipson is also facing a legal challenge against the decision amid claims that she exceeded her authority by indefinitely suspending an Act of Parliament. Amid signs of a potential rethink, Phillipson told MPs this week that she wanted to listen to a “range of views” on the issue.
“I take having strong freedom of expression in our universities, and students being exposed to a range of views — some of which they might find difficult or disagree with — extremely seriously,” she said.
She has previously said that she suspended the act because she was worried about the burden it would place on universities to investigate complaints at a time of financial strain. She also warned that it “could expose students to harm and appalling hate speech”.
But more than 600 academics have signed a letter to Phillipson calling on her to reconsider the decision, warning that a failure to act would allow staff and students to be “hounded, censured and silenced” for holding legitimate, legal views.
Alongside Gurdon they include other Nobel prizewinners such as Sir Peter Ratcliffe, professor of clinical medicine at Oxford University and Sir Gregory Winter, the biologist whose work on monoclonal antibodies has led to the development of treatments for diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis.
Backing the campaign, Lord Sumption said:
The distinguished academics who have endorsed the campaign have widely differing views on many current controversies but are united in their defence of the right to speak out without undermining their careers.
The last decade has seen too many cases of academics hounded, marginalised, threatened with disciplinary proceedings, forced into self-censorship and even sacked because of their refusal to accept standard tropes about issues which are matters of legitimate debate, like gender identity, imperialism, slavery, racial discrimination and many others. These wars against those who step out of line mark the narrowing of our intellectual world and a betrayal of the vocation of our universities.
Worth reading in full.
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OFF -T When the WEF 2nd in command Noah Harari proclaimed “We now have the technology to hack humans”…..We must assume through some sort of micro chip unless there is technology that we don’t know about. Some say the general public is ten years behind what the military intelligence already has.
Technology to hack humans has been readily available since the 5th millenium BC. One can only wonder why it took the WEF so long to learn that.
Technology to hack humans has been demonstrated in Rwanda on a lage scale, and the progeny of that great step forward for ma kind are now living in the UK and rolling out the same here.
Lucky us!
Never watched debates, never shall. Theatre and largely uninformative.
Who won the debate?
I read that the ABC ‘moderators’ won the debate and are now running to replace on-her-knees-Harris as the unDemocratic Communist Party boss.
Drumpf is a quackcine, lockdown, abortion salesman. Harris is as stupid as a bag of rocks and has done nothing to earn a nomination to run anything. The US is a failed state as given by the 2020 election fraud, massive criminality and the endless wars and inevitable bankruptcy.
It does not matter who won anything. The CIA-DoD decide.
Trump winning won’t change the long term trajectory of the world by itself, but it could provide enough breathing space to allow other developments, such as in free speech and crypto, have an impact. Things are moving very fast now and a 4 year window is not nothing.
Just a big club
They look like actual sisters to me!
ABC and Disney killed future traditional debates between candidates vs. debates between moderators and one candidate.
I would question just how meaningful this debate was in the first place. It was more like a tick box exercise that had to be completed because this is protocol. I can see it changing nothing, to be honest. I can’t imagine people who would’ve voted Trump being swayed and now voting Harris, or vice versa. Surely if there were any debate that may have swayed people it was the one with Biden, but the thing is people will vote Harris just because they hate Trump, but paradoxically still refer to themselves as ”patriots” despite the never-ending stream of evidence that demonstrates the Dems are the polar opposite of patriotic, democracy being the last thing they’re interested in. It’s not just a case of double-standards, it’s like they’re actually schizophrenic or something.
Anyway, not sure how accurate this is or what difference it’ll even make. After all, how many of those millions of immigrants are going to vote Trump, whether they’ve become ‘legalized aliens’ in time or not? And that’s before we mention the *many* traitorous Leftards who demonstrably hate their country over there.
I thought Trump would have this in the bag but with the level of corruption and general shady shenanigans going on I’m starting to have my doubts. Surely to God that stupid, lying, incompetent, untrustworthy, treacherous biatch can’t possibly win??!
”BREAKING: Trump wins the undecided vote post-debate with 60%, according to the 10 Reuters interviewed.
Trump – 60%
Harris – 30%
Unsure – 10%”
https://x.com/LeadingReport/status/1833924905685094702
Whether it is meaningful or not depends on what happened to the host’s advertising revenue, a cynic might observe.
I think this is good advice from Billboard Chris. Talk less about the economy and more about the kids, specifically the toxic gender ideology. People could genuinely switch parties over this issue;
”Dear Trump advisors,
Please impress upon President Trump the importance of how he should be all over the gender ideology issue.
Not a word was spoken tonight about the abuse of kids or the madness of men in women’s sports.
You destroy Kamala Harris on this issue, and win so many independents and voters from traditional Democrat demographics.”
More agreement from this Texas State rep;
”Agreed! Perhaps people are telling him not to touch it but you’re 100% correct. It is a huge issue where moderate voters 100% will agree with Donald Trump and be shocked to learn her stance.
I know for a fact that most Black American voters have no idea that she supports castration of boys and sterilization of girls which is clearly what the procedures do she had never been asked why she supports giving children estrogen and testosterone and sex change surgeries. If she says she doesn’t, she’ll finished the LGBTQIA transgender vote. If she says she does support it (or tries to pivot) she’s finished with moderate Americans. If she lies and says it’s not happening, he can flat out expose the fact that Democratic lawmakers and the Biden Harris administration are opposing every single bill to raise the age to 18.
Donald Trump should be able to ask directly if she would agree to issue an executive order that transgender drugs and surgeries can’t be administered to children in our country under the age of 18. She will never, ever say it.
I wish I could help with a debate prep on this issue!! It’s time for the Democrats and Kamala to admit the truth and not keep gaslighting about the dangers of transgender ideology on America’s children.”
https://x.com/ShawnieT146/status/1833880188246966397
My memory is vague but didn’t Harris try to block information about someone on death row, that would surely be an open goal.
Rings a bell. It’s all become a blur, if I’m honest. There’s just so much controversy and corruption associated with her.
Maybe not all share this view, but I find Kamala Harris instantly dislikeable in a way that Biden is not, with Obama and Clinton being positively likeable (ignoring their policy stances). Kamala Harris comes across as as a thick, condescending boss girl, which is what she is. This may be enough to cancel out the aspects of Trump’s personality that some dislike and could help flip some of the more working class states like Pennsylvania.
I don’t disagree, but I’m reminded of a friend who finds Trump and Putin instantly dislikeable, and it’s easy to pin it down to the image deliberately formed of them by the media over the years. We find Hitler instantly dislikeable too – forgetting that he was the darling of both Germany and Britain in the 1930s – the dynamic new saviour of a failing nation.
What do we know about Kamala that wasn’t fed to us by a press that labelled her as a buffoon until she replaced Biden as a candidate and became a Wise Stateswoman? And why did we like Clinton or Obama (knowing neither) except through how they were presented by the press back then as young, gifted and (in one case) black?
Could say the same for the pocket tyrant Macron that the BBC were salivating over in 2017.
I think it’s obvious that Clinton and Obama were fairly likeable – although maybe it wasn’t obvious at the time they were first campaigning for the presidency.
Given the way the human mind is programmed, the correct answer is whichever one hears most times.
So for Guardian readers it’s obviously Harris.
I haven’t heard that Trump won practically at all, so I don’t think that’s the right answer.
All that said, Trump isn’t quite himself. His heart doesn’t feel in it in the same way any more.
I reckon he’s been told to ease up or the next assassination attempt won’t fail, or it will be on one of his kids, or he’ll be sentenced to prison (they’ve moved the sentencing of his NY hush money case to just after the election, pretty suss).
It feels like this is a cakewalk from here on out for the half black half Indian puppet doll.
Totally agree – Drumpf has been warned. The July assassination failure was a warning and like you said, his family is now in the frame for target practice. The CIA-DoD have must have given the quackcine salesman an in person and very personal warning. Drumpf is a part of the Establishment, buddies with the Clintons etc etc. as well so he ain’t going to save anyone.
Neither won, it was the moderators wot won it.
Babylon Bee…
Democrats To Replace Kamala On Ballot With ABC Moderators
— Following last night’s debate in which David Muir and Linsey Davis employed an impressive strategy against former President Donald Trump, news broke that Democrats have decided to replace Kamala Harris on the ballot with the ABC moderators.
Discussions began almost immediately after the debate to replace the Harris-Walz ticket with Muir-Davis based entirely on the moderators’ ability to articulate Harris’ positions and attack Trump better than she ever has.
At publishing time, Muir and Davis released a statement that they were looking forward to their next debate against Trump, which they would moderate themselves.
“Who won Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s first debate? Our panel reacts”
That is the only neutral statement but it’s a fair bet who the ‘panel’ will be in favour of. And Harris couldn’t give an answer on abortion regarding at how many months including nine months would be OK for her to neutralise the unborn. That seemed a back of the net as they say.
” “all things exist, all things do not exist, all things both do and do not exist, all things neither do nor do not exist”…..That’s cleared that up!
I read this for amusement and it was amusing. But why the outcome of the debate matter? Both Trump and Harris are running in the US presidental elections and I neither have a right to vote for either of both nor do I live in the USA. Personally, I consider Trump less unsympathetic but he certainly doesn’t care and neither do I, at least not really. Once the election is over, we’ll know who became POTUS and will have to deal with the fallout of that. I think that’s enough.
Trump could have done better I suppose.——-He jumped straight into the migrant issue with tales of Haitians eating cats. Now there is truth in this but sometimes you have to be more subtle in the immigration issue than jumping straight to something like that which makes it sound that this is the most important issue regarding why immigration is too high. —-It isn’t.
—–I think many got the impression that Harris won this debate because she always had this large grin on her face as if she was listening to a lunatic and everything he was saying was beyond parody. —-It isn’t. —-Notice though how when Trump called her a Marxist her head was not waving back and forth indicating she disagreed with that assessment of her. Which means she agreed she is a Marxist, and if Americans want Marxists running the show then go ahead and vote for the laughing smiling cuddling person, but they will regret it, because these people are One World Government People that believe in wealth redistribution all over the globe, and who has the most wealth? —The good old USA. –Watch your wallets guys and watch your energy bills because they are going to skyrocket just as Obama had the decency to admit.
Did Harris ‘win the debate’? Maybe yes, maybe no. But she still has to get from now until November with out some foible or weakness being exposed.
It was 3 v 1 but just as no one can barrage the Farage so nobody can give Trump the hump.. Vote President Trump as if your freedoms depend on it because they do
Pointless article.
Pointless debate.
Pointless outcome with no measure to act as a metric of success or failure.