In my Spectator column this week I’ve written about a new poll carried out by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) in which students were asked to choose between free speech and emotional safety. The results make for depressing reading.
For instance, 61% of undergraduates say that “when in doubt” their university “should ensure all students are protected from discrimination rather than allow unlimited free speech” and 79% believe “students that feel threatened should always have their demands for safety respected”. You may think it was ever thus – haven’t the long-haired opium-eaters always been zealous enforcers of progressive orthodoxy? But the same questions were asked of students six years ago and they’ve become even less tolerant since then.
In 2016, an alarming 16% of respondents thought “students’ unions should ban all speakers that cause offence to some students”, but that figure has now climbed to a whopping 39%. Today, 76% of students think universities should “get rid of” controversial statues and memorials, up from 51% in 2016. Six years ago, 48% of undergrads supported safe-space policies; that number is now 62%. I’m tempted to brand these militant crybabies “Generation Snowflake”, but they’re so hypersensitive that might lead to mental health services on campus being overwhelmed.
Nick Hillman, the director of HEPI, charitably attributes this decline in support for free speech to the tough time students have had in the past six years, leading to a preoccupation with ‘safety’. “Back then undergraduates had been born in the previous century, whereas today’s young undergraduates were born after the turn of the millennium – and they have had to contend with Covid, industrial action and a cost-of-living crisis,” he says.
There may be something in that, but surely the main cause is that organisations such as Stonewall and Advance HE have successfully infected British universities with hard-left identitarian ideology under the guise of promoting ‘diversity and inclusion’. Last week, 25 Conservative MPs and peers signed a letter to the Education Secretary alerting him to the Racial Equality Charter, Advance HE’s latest attempt to tackle “institutional and cultural” discrimination in a sector which must rank as the least racist in the UK. In their desperation to secure a bronze or silver Race Equality Charter award, 20 universities have said they are ‘decolonising’ their courses. The irony is that nearly all these ‘anti-racism’ initiatives have been imported from America – ‘colonisation’ might be a more accurate description of the process Advance HE is overseeing on British campuses.
Worth reading in full – and if you’re worried that a group of intolerant students may come for you, join the Free Speech Union.
Stop Press: If you can’t get past the Spectator‘s pay wall you can read the Mail‘s write-up of the poll here.
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I suppose most of the students in the above picture believe that there are “too many people alive” like we’ve been told for the last 40 years.
It makes me shudder anytime I hear someone repeat the “too many people alive” thing as if it is the wisest thing anyone could ever say.
Maybe we need a fair way of “thinning out the population” in a civilised way. I’d suggest a mandatory vaccination campaign where a percentage of the shots will kill you after say 4 years.
Or is it “other people” who are the “too many”?
Fools, snowflakes and hypocrites. If you feel that strongly about it, then there are many ways to “help” the problem. Now go and have your fifth booster…
Whenever someone tells me the world is overpopulated I tell them that they are welcome to check out any time they like.
Some will suggest that they don’t mean getting rid of the people here but reducing future births, to which I suggest they steriise their children.
The conversation never seems to go any further.
If they are mRNA gene therapy enthusiasts then it is possible they have actually practiced what they preach on this occasion.
There is a strong whiff of Eugenics in all this New World Order nonsense.
“strong whiff?”
The stench is appalling!
We are fighting a sinister agenda.These people have been brainwashed for years.
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Well, I’m offended by the idea that speakers should be banned just for causing offence.
So by that standard they should be banned from saying that.
Where does that leave us?
A very simple follow up question to ask would be, “What do you think should happen when it is your speech that causes offence?”
As feminists are now finding out, it’s ok when you are the one censoring but the worm can turn.
Most people when asked will swear they believe in freedom of speech but IMO many of those would say “ban it” if they were shown something that was generally considered hateful, especially anything racist or sexist or homophobic. Very few people really understand what it means and where you end up if you allow any kind of censorship, and in this I include lots of “intelligent” and “educated” people.
Any student who doesn’t want free speech, by definition, should not be there.
39% of students have no right to be in tertiary education.
This was always Blair’s plan. Send 50% of young people to University to be brainwashed with far left ideology at taxpayers expense.
Stand for freedom & make friends with our
Yellow Boards By The Road
Tuesday 28th June 11am to 12pm
Yellow Boards
A329 London Rd,
Near Running Horse/Lily Hill Park
Bracknell RG12 2UJ
Stand in the Park Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am – make friends & keep sane
Wokingham
Howard Palmer Gardens Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Bracknell
South Hill Park, Rear Lawn, RG12 7PA
Henley
Mills Meadows (bandstand) RG9 1DS
Telegram http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
When the brainwashed children grow up and earn their own living and raise their own families, I will be happy to hear their views.
OK, I know I am being a ‘bit fick’ here but what the hell is a ‘safe space’ – a special room where you are able to go and calm down?
Pulling down statues of people who have donated/set up a place of HE?
Talk about molly-coddled snowflakes – I find them bloody pathetic. I am now retired but if I had one of these individuals working alongside me I would tell them to get a life and live in the real world.
I know they have had to put up with two years of the ‘rona’ crap but this age group should have been the ones on the street protesting.
I find it very offensive that 39% of students want to silence me from debating any issue. Debate is the only way to reach honest balanced truths. Otherwise it is falsehoods developed in group think.