Turning students into weapons

UNIVERSITY AUTHORITIES sometimes disinvite visiting speakers, and more frequently control what their own staff and students say, not (or not only) so as not to disturb the rest of us with new facts but also, or instead, to protect our feelings. For instance, in 2015, Warwick University Students’ Union took a decision to bar the well-known anti-Sharia activist Maryam Namazie because of the risk that she would say something “inflammatory” (though this was later reversed).

The Students’ Union later said, “The decision was made in deference to the right of Muslim students not to feel intimidated or discriminated against on their university campus rather than in the interests of suppressing free speech.”

The Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, defending its decision to rescind Jordan Peterson’s Visiting Fellowship there, wrote that “Robust debate can scarcely occur … when some members of the community are made to feel personally attacked, not for their ideas but for their very identity”.

Sheffield University announced it would employ 20 of its own students to