Lecturers have a pivotal role in building trust. These proposals, if implemented, would make that all but impossible.Hmm. It sounds like old Witch Hunt is a real libertarian defender of free speech. The kind of principled advocate for her position that one can really respect, even when that position is patently absurd.
Universities must remain safe spaces for lecturers and students to discuss and debate all sorts of ideas, including those that some people may consider challenging, offensive and even extreme.
But wait. Astonishingly, she isn't. Here's what she had to say when Nick Griffin was banned from speaking at Bath University:
It was the correct decision. Allowing the BNP to speak would have compromised the safety of students and staff and sent out a very worrying message about Bath University's commitment to diversity.Okay. So on the one hand universities should allow free discussion of all views no matter how "challenging, offensive and even extreme" they might be. But on the other, the BNP should be prevented from speaking at universities because their views are seen as being, essentially, "challenging, offensive and even extreme" by Miss Hunt. It would appear that our great champion of free speech is in fact a bit of a hypocrite. Ultimately, as I wrote yesterday, the stance of the UCU simply suggests that, while they really, really hate the BNP, they have more than a sneaking sympathy for Islamic terrorists.
6 comments:
Homegrown Islamic Terror : 54 deaths, hundreds injured
BNP : Probably Zero
What about the students do they just go along with this?
Seems like they're a "yes sir", "no sir" bunch.
There was a time when students would stand up for their rights.
From personal experience, it appears that far too many students these days will accept anything an academic says as being indisputable fact. This applies not only in respect of scientific or historical fact, where one would hope to be able to trust one's lecturers, but also in subjects like philosophy, where it is possible for there to be rational disagreement. Plenty of leftist academics are willing to take advantage of this by massaging reading lists so that the course content is overwhelmingly reflective of their views only. Thus those students with some capacity for critical thinking get into the kind of ridiculous situation I found myself in more than once, of arguing with people whose sole line of argument consists of "it's in the book we were told to read, so it must be right".
Why so many students are so lacking in critical thinking skills is, of course, a question too great to be answered here. Again, academics are at least partly to blame, because they do often represent themselves as being infallible, and, with a long list of credentials after their names, this often works. Another factor may be that schools nowadays don't so much teach people to think critically as to memorise information and regurgitate it at exam time.
Either way, I doubt we will see any objections from the NUS to this. They tend to cravenly follow wherever the UCU leads.
What happened to the Cambridge university student who reproduced the mohammed cartoons...anybody know?
He published a grovelling apology (I imagine under compulsion) and was allowed to remain at the university. As I've heard nothing about this, I assume that the CPS has decided not to prosecute him or anyone else involved. The Muslims, victorious, magnanimously agreed to forget the whole thing, and not behead anyone.
And the UCU were conspicuous by their silence throughout the whole incident, as they have been on a host of other occasions when the victim of a genuine witch hunt was not a member of a favoured victim group.
I was a mature student at a university here recently, on an MA course.
I found the students in general to be quite unaware of the world and its history. They lapped up everything the leftie professors said, without question.
I was asked a number of times how I managed to be "brave" about speaking up against the lecturers - particularly in the Mid East lectures. I think my age had something to do with it, but it was frightening to witness so many youngsters just parroting the official line ie: Palestine good/Israel bad or Islam - the religion of peace!
So many of them were literally stunned to hear I was a supporter of Israel, and actually told their friends they knew someone who supported Israel. I felt like a pariah and was half expecting to be lynched at any moment.
I doubt we're going to see a crop of intelligent and freee-thinking students again for a long time.
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