Undergraduates at Britain’s top universities are increasingly facing a culture of censorship – but some students are fighting back. The Telegraph has more.
When Charlotte Tredgett won a place at King’s College London to study philosophy, the bright, enthusiastic teenager envisaged thoughtful exchanges, intense discussions – even heated debates – about the most pressing moral and ethical questions of the day.
Indeed, the university prospectus promises just that. The course will, it says, “equip students with the skills to develop, analyse and communicate arguments” and “hone their critical thinking” in a “focused environment with plenty of feedback and discussion”.
But the reality was very different.
“When classes started, it became abundantly clear that fellow students did not welcome views questioning the prevailing ideologies around gender, religion, capitalism or colonialism,” says the student, from Colchester.
An hour-long seminar on gender in philosophy provided the ultimate illustration of how “wokeness” is stifling debate on campus.
“It was the most silent seminar I’ve ever attended,” says Tredgett, 20. “We had read an academic paper and were supposed to talk about it, but barely a word was said.”
The teaching assistant running the class worked valiantly through a list of questions, waiting 30 awkward seconds for a response, before giving up and answering each himself.
“For an hour, it was the sound of his voice as he ploughed on,” says the undergraduate. “In that whole time, there were about two comments from the group of about 10 students, and those were very carefully worded – almost rehearsed.”
Self-censoring undergraduates were simply terrified to speak in a climate where saying the “wrong thing” can make you a social pariah.
“It wasn’t that everyone in the room was a ‘sex realist’ or gender critical and afraid to ‘out’ themselves,” says the philosophy student. “There will have been people who were gender positive and people who didn’t know either way, but everyone was scared of wording things wrongly, and the reaction of their peers if they did.”
Tredgett, who attended an independent school on a scholarship and gained four A*s in her A-levels, had already been on the receiving end of students’ moralising “wokeness”, after revealing to her flatmates that she was a Eurosceptic and would have voted for Brexit.
As she explained her views on the EU and British sovereignty, they accused her of not caring about human rights and began to laugh, filming her on their mobiles and sending the footage to their friends.
“There were groups of people whom I had never met who knew me as ‘the racist girl’,” said Tredgett. “If you disagree with prevailing ideological views, you are not just wrong, you are morally wrong and evil, and that justifies almost bullying tactics.”
Ostracising those who are perceived to be out of line has become the punishment of choice across campuses.
In an ongoing case, Leeds University student Connie Shaw was sacked by her student union from presenting on student radio because of her gender critical views. She was told she will only be reinstated if she makes a written apology and takes “mandatory training”. She has also been told by pals that they were warned off making friends with her by fellow students.
This cancel culture can have deadly consequences. Alexander Rogers was in his third year at Oxford University when he took his own life after being ostracised when a student expressed discomfort about a sexual encounter with him. At last month’s inquest into the suicide, the corner warned that “self-policing” was occurring without proper investigation or evidence, and posed a significant risk to student mental health and wellbeing.
Its “chilling effect” on free speech has prompted some American colleges, including faculties at Harvard and the newly opened University of Austin, to introduce “Chatham House Rule” – where comments made in class are non-attributable. It is hoped that lecturers and students will speak more freely in a culture where their words will not be dissected on campus or on social media.
In Britain, university bosses are beginning to admit the severity of the problem. Robert Van de Noort, the vice-chancellor of the University of Reading, warned MPs recently that “rigid ideas and self-censorship” were creating echo chambers on campus.
Research backs this up. A study by the Higher Education Policy Institute, which questioned students on free speech issues in 2016 and again in 2022, revealed they had become “significantly less supportive of free expression”. Some 38% believed “universities are becoming less tolerant of a wide range of viewpoints” – rising to 51% for male students – up from less than a quarter in 2016.
Meanwhile, a global poll of academics found that 80% in the U.K. agreed that free speech was more limited than 10 years ago, with staff self-censoring out of fear of upsetting or being complained about by students or colleagues. One British psychology academic explained that “any diversion from the accepted line” on issues such as gender, colonialism, the Israel-Palestine conflict and neurodiversity was seen as “meaning you are a bad person rather than just someone who disagrees”.
Against this backdrop, the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, passed under the last government to offer protections on campus, has been paused by the Labour Government to allow it to “consider options”.
Worth reading in full.
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Double D typo in the title… freudian slip?!
The Labour government is afraid of Free Speech. People might say hurty words that would expose the government’s shallowness and partiality. And that would never do.
This did not start the day after the last General Election.
No it damn well didn’t as my post prior to this points out.
How big was the tutorial group? To have all the following in such a group it must have been very large – too large to be a realistic tutorial.
“It wasn’t that everyone in the room was a ‘sex realist’ or gender critical and afraid to ‘out’ themselves,” says the philosophy student. “There will have been people who were gender positive and people who didn’t know either way, but everyone was scared of wording things wrongly, and the reaction of their peers if they did.”
They say it was a seminar which is a bit vague, I hazily recall from my university days (London) that this could mean anything from a few students to 100 plus, especially in first year when we all had to do the same courses so everyone was lumped in together.
10 students. It’s in the text.
The woke ideology is poisoning our kids all throughout the education system. I guess the hope is that once kids are young adults and reach higher education ‘TPTB’, who unleashed this mind virus on society and are running the entire show from behind the scenes, just need to apply the finishing touches to complete their project, et voila. It’s our job as parents to provide the antidote for this insidious, toxic spread.
This is a handy resource, ‘Woke Religion: A Taxonomy’, to have a look at. You can download the chart and view it larger if you wish;
”Michael Shellenberger and I wrote “Woke Religion: A Taxonomy” to help people understand the woke religion.
I want to be crystal clear about something: bigotry and racial discrimination are real and they have no place in society. Yes, there is ongoing racism. Yes, there is ongoing homophobia. Yes, there is ongoing hatred of trans people. These are morally abhorrent and we all need to work together to bring about their end. The woke religion, however, is not the way to stop these moral horrors. It is making our shared problems more difficult to solve.
This is the spirit in which we offer this taxonomy.”
https://boghossian.substack.com/p/woke-religion-a-taxonomy
Very useful. Thanks for posting it.
Unfortunately Mogs Michael Schellenberg’s caveat that “bigotry and racial discrimination are real” actually exacerbates the problem. Like too many allegedly on our side he gets his apologies in first. Wouldn’t it be refreshing to see a comment such as…
‘Racism and bigotry have been eliminated, now we need to concentrate on destroying the woke virus.’
Take the fight to the oppressors. I no longer accept any argument that rabbits on about racism which as far as I am concerned is mostly gone.
Yes indeed. Nowadays, which only the willfully blind would argue against, racism=anti-white. The irony being that many anti-white racists are actually white. Go figure! I’m not a psychologist so don’t know how to begin to explain that. Sadomasochism? Hard-Left Mega-Woketard? Who the fluff knows? I just know these people are abnormal. Oh, nearly forgot another obvious example: Women who are anti-women’s rights. Even on here they lurk. Submissive, traitorous handmaidens who side with the misogynists and attack their own sex because it makes them feel more powerful. That’s fifty shades of ‘screwed-up’ right there. I can’t even begin to decipher the thinking of some of society’s biggest back-stabbers. Still recovering from the revelation in human social experimentation that was the Scamdemic….
There is a fundamental problem with what you have written in your last paragraph. By acknowledging reality and saying “isn’t it mean, we need to do something about it” you’re just pandering to the woke ideology. No, let people express themselves, with all their prejudices and hang-ups; stop talking about racism, homophobia (whatever that is) and let humans be human. They are not ‘morally abhorrent’; they are normal people. It’s like we all have to tip-toe around, always frantic that we will offend someone; oh the Horror!
Well, I say : “Eff ’em”
I’m making an observation based on my own experience. How is that “we need to do something about it”? Isnt that the job of the moderators to decide when a line’s been crossed and step in?
People can express themselves until the cows come home, just be prepared for somebody else ‘expressing themselves’ in response. Isn’t that the entire ethos of ‘free speech’?
Still having log on problems. Can’t log in from my PCs only via mobile. Keep getting ‘The password you entered for the username soundofreason is incorrect.’… but the same password works on mobile.
Exactly the same for me. Hope it gets sorted soon.
Me too. Any suggestions as to how to sort this out?
I’ve just sent an email to support@dailysceptic.org
Dunno if it’ll reach anyone.
When I try and log in at the very top of the page it says it’s incorrect, but when I click the log in above the comment section it accepts my password. Very strange.
Many thanks for this Mogwai. I was able to use the password reset link from ‘login’ button on the comment box. It worked fine and allowed me to ‘reset’ my password back to what it was before. All working again.
Yep. Very strange.
When I started with the Daily Sceptic I used a new password which worked fine up until a couple of months ago. The reason was that any letter l’s I typed did not look like that l as they all had a curve to the right at the bottom, in the password box, but any l’s in my email address were normal. This is why I have not posted for a couple of months. I changed my password last week, no l’s as I wanted to comment on the Full English breakfast article. I do not do New Year resolutions, but from this week I will buying all the ingredients and cooking a few of these breakfasts every week. They will be fresh and plentiful and will not cost the £12.00 I paid last week for a small breakfast. My address is therefore obviously withheld. Haha.
I’m just glad I work in engineering.
At least physical properties are objectively measurable. Unlike the notions of these ideological drivel subjects.
At least we design and build things that work and perform some useful function.
I hope you’re not using white privilege maths?
We need a diverse approach to engineering. – especially bridge building.
Oops, indeed. I have just realized that the engineering I do is based on maths and physics fueled by white privilege.
I’m shocked and outraged to realize that all the ideas came dead white males such as Pythagoras, Newton, Gauss, Maxwell and Einstein.
Clearly this can only be a result of racist and sexist oppression of women and minorities. (OK, Einstein was Jewish but that doesn’t count. He was an oppressor even though the Nazis wanted him dead.)
It’s time the achievements of these sidelines minority groups were recognized.
I call for an establishment of a committee to redress the imbalance and discover – or, where necessary invent – BME and female role models for the new generation.
You’re remiss in failing to mention the fact, which is common knowledge, that boys and girls didn’t receive an equal education in centuries gone by. In fact, girls weren’t allowed to study at university level and certainly were discouraged from studying subjects such as maths and the sciences. So is it any wonder history isn’t littered with familiar female names when it comes to academia?
Maybe.
Or maybe, just maybe, in general men are more interested in maths, physics and science.
This is my observation, working in a male-dominated engineering environment. Oh, and I have a son and a daughter too.
The Davos Deviants have worked wonders on our youth and must be extremely pleased with the outcomes. I have a few nieces and nephews all by today’s standards intelligent but if ever I touch on what is happening in this world the shutters come down. A generation of intelligent stupid. They know stuff but any smidgen of critical thinking is beyond them. Even my brother and sisters despair. The students in this article have my greatest respect because they are true warriors and loners at that.
This all links in with what’s going on with the National Curriculum in our schools. We need to our schools and universities to do the following:
I consider myself to have been truly blessed by a grammar school education that did all those things. No wonder I feel increasingly out of place in today’s society!
“I consider myself to have been truly blessed by a grammar school education that did all those things. No wonder I feel increasingly out of place in today’s society!”
And that very neatly sums me up also.
Thoroughly depressing. And to realise that the future will be managed by these intellectual pigmies.
I just finished a Masters as a mature student and it was really liberating. I could speak my mind as I really did not care about marks or even passing. I was not reliant on passing for my career. I was there to learn.
The younger cohort is in a different position and need to keep their tutors on their side. And not all tutors are woke. Some really enjoy debating the issues and are open to different ideas.
The further education freedom of speech bill is essential for the future of debate and learning.
Please go to Youtube and search for The History Man [ old BBC 2 production of Malcolm Bradbury’s brilliant satire on trendy abusive university ideology and predatory sociology lecturers ]
It is absolutely brilliant, and age has not withered it at all, it fits exactly with the Woke imperium now in its madrassars called universities. DO watch it. Anthony Sher is the leading actor. Ms Tredgett really needs this antidote for the new year – spread it far and wide electronically. Hilariously brilliant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__PD7Fa_EKs is the link