Saving us from our racism
The rise of Critical Race Theory and the fall of free speech on campus are two sides of the same coin.
According to reports this week, the excellent Arif Ahmed, professor of philosophy at Cambridge, will soon be appointed to a new role being created by the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, as director for freedom of speech and academic freedom.
It’s difficult to imagine a better candidate. Prof Ahmed has a track record of putting his mouth where his brain takes him – of speaking out against various forms of campus censorship and constraints on academic freedom – and in doing so risking the wrath of the army of modern-day Maoists who demand the ritual removal and silencing of anyone who dares voice a contrary view.
In 2021 Cambridge University introduced a speech and behaviour policy known as ‘Mutual Respect’. As Prof Ahmed put it at the time, it managed “a catastrophic hat-trick by (a) defining racism to exclude antisemitism; (b) proscribing legal speech (e.g. mockery of religion) as ‘micro-aggressive’; while (c) encouraging anonymous reporting of anyone overheard in these or many other speech-crimes. What could possibly go wrong?”
The professor led the campaign against the policy, which was for the most part removed. But not all of it, leaving a code of behaviour barring ‘bullying’ which was defined as anything unwanted and ‘offensive’. “Scarcely anyone in eighteenth-century Britain would not have found Jeremy Bentham’s defence of gay rights offensive. And feminism seems to cause similar offence today, at least to some religious fundamentalists and some trans activists” wrote Prof Ahmed, in a piece which itself – of course it did – led activists to demand his silencing over his offensive words. The policy also barred “offensive” communications and proposed the almost ubiquitous mandatory ‘Equality and Diversity’ training.
Cambridge is far from alone in this attempt to stop universities and academics from behaving as universities and academics are meant to behave – challenging, debating, researching and thinking.
A report this week from the think tank Civitas hints at the extent of the malaise in British universities. Dr Richard Norrie has compiled a ‘radical progressive league table’ of 140 universities, using measures such as the use of ‘trigger warnings’ and the promotion of concepts such as ‘white privilege’, and the demand that students demonstrate how they are ‘anti-racist’.
Dr Norrie found that 87 out of 140 universities (62 per cent) had references to trigger warnings, or content warnings, or ‘content notes’. (Rather wonderfully, in 2021 Brandeis University in the US barred the use of the phrase ‘trigger warning’ itself for being…triggering, as it was reminiscent of a gun being fired.) 79 out of 140 universities (56 per cent) had mentions of ‘white privilege’ in guidance offered to staff and students or on their websites. 82 out of 140 of universities offered (59 per cent) materials, training or resources on ‘anti-racism’ on their websites.
It’s a basic rule of thumb in public policy that what happens in the US happens here some 5 years or so later. To that extent – and as is indeed seen on campus here – the situation is getting much worse, fast.
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