Cambridge may have won the battle for free speech – but this war is far from over – Telegraph.co.uk

The pandemic was just beginning to rumble when I agreed to be on the advisory board of the Free Speech Union, run by Toby Young. It had become increasingly clear to anyone with half a brain that freedom of speech including perfectly reasonable as well as horrible exercises of it was badly imperilled.

There was a launch party, with lots of lusty speeches, including one by the Humberside docker visited by the police for his rude tweets about trans people (Were here to check your thinking).

Pandemic aside, this year has turned out to be frenetically preoccupied with freedom of speech, what constitutes it, and who its enemies are. Even our most elite institutions have entered the fray, at the very highest level of engagement.

And finally, some progress seems to have been made. Last week, woke-deranged Cambridge pulled up its socks: a policy requiring staff and students to be respectful of all other views was rejected by the universitys governing body.

Academics rightly saw that criticism and disagreement could be attacked and shut down as disrespect so long as that respect clause stayed in. Arif Ahmed, a reader in philosophy, spearheaded the revolt, comparing the atmosphere at Cambridge to that of the Salem witch hunts of the 17th century.

Respect was duly changed to tolerate. There will be less room for no-platforming, and a good thing, too. This is, after all, the Cambridge where students at Clare College recently bayed for the suspension of a porter who resigned from the city council over a motion pertaining to trans rights, and where countless attempts to bully, censor and sack in the name of social justice have come to define its culture.

The Cambridge policy tweak has come at the end of a year of unprecedented curtailment of free speech. Following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in May, Black Lives Matter burst on the scene with revolutionary ambitions for dismantling our culture in its entirety. Accusations of racism soon veered wildly off piste, becoming another means of control and suppression used to sack dissenters and terrify institutions.

Mission accomplished.

High-profile, chilling sackings (or forced resignations) included that of James Bennet, the New York Times opinion page editor whose crime was to run a comment piece by Republican senator Tom Cotton that argued the US military should be deployed if police couldnt get the riots under control. Stockwell Day, a former Canadian cabinet minister, lost three jobs in June after saying on a televised debate that Canada is not a [systemically] racist country while also saying our system needs to be improved.

Meanwhile, the world watched as JK Rowling was flayed on Twitter her crime being her stated belief that sex is biological. Last month, the prize-winning feminist columnist Suzanne Moore left the Guardian after a letter signed by 338 staff suggested views such as hers (she wrote in favour of biological women-only spaces) made the paper transphobic.

The Cambridge vote was certainly positive. But it is important, as we fight for this core value of freedom of speech, that we remain vigilant against slipperiness and hastiness. In this regard, Im not so sure about the Cambridge success. Is it really? Tolerate is a murky word. Doesnt freedom include the right to storm out of a lecture?

Nor am I sure I liked vice-chancellor Stephen Toopes slightly snaky statement that all those with lawful views are included in this toleration clause. Didnt he mean lawful speech? Views are private unless expressed. Toope seems to be implying that you can have illegal opinions. This may have been a slip, but it was a telling one.

Such slipperiness is perhaps to be expected at the top in woke Cambridge. But while free-speech warriors are less prone to slipperiness, we must be careful to avoid sloppiness. The row at Eton is an example, where an English master was sacked after recording a virtual lesson that included a misogynistic, antifeminist video (the two do not necessarily go together, but in this case they do).

The video in question was not appropriate for schoolboys under the guise of education, and teachers cant simply say whatever they want. In this case, its author was disciplined for refusing to recant, and thats fair enough. Yes, it iswrong and unfair that when equally pernicious stuff is fed to schoolchildren under the guise of diversity and inclusion, nobody is punished. But we must be careful not to confuse the curtailment of the inappropriate with the curtailment of the free.

Our battle is far from won and we cant afford to cry wolf when the issue is actually a poodle.

You can read Zoe Strimpels column every Sunday at telegraph.co.uk. Click here to read last week's column

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Cambridge may have won the battle for free speech - but this war is far from over - Telegraph.co.uk