Censorship on campus ‘will end up like China’
STUDENTS who want to ban objectionable ideas on campuses should go to university in China, Lord Patten said yesterday.
The Chancellor of Oxford University said so-called ‘noplatforming’ policies, which seek to ban certain objectionable speakers, are in danger of stifling freedom of speech in the same manner as authoritarian regimes.
The former Tory Cabinet minister told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘Can you imagine a university where there is noplatforming? A bland diet of bran to feed people is an absolutely terrible idea.
‘If you want universities like that, you go to China where they’re not allowed to talk about “Western values”, which I regard as global values. No, that is not the way a university should operate.’
Lord Patten, a former governor of Hong Kong, spoke amid a growing row over a culture of censorship at universities.
Oxford’s Oriel College is consulting on the removal of a statue of benefactor Cecil Rhodes after students claimed it is racist because the 19th century politician was a colonialist.
Arguing against the removal of the statue, He added that Rhodes’ views on the expansion of the British Empire were ‘common to his time’.
How many years have passed since I last found myself in total agreement with the arch-Europhile and Tory ‘ wet’ Lord Patten? Let’s just say it’s a long time.
But I cheered the old bruiser when he came on the radio yesterday morning to argue against those students who want to tear down a statue of the imperialist Cecil Rhodes in oxford. He thinks it would be a very wrong thing to do.
The previous day Lord Patten, who is Chancellor of oxford University, had championed ‘freedom of argument and debate’ in a notable speech. ‘ one thing we should never tolerate is intolerance’, he said.
His remarks were echoed on Tuesday by the new Vice Chancellor of the university, Louise Richardson, who stressed the importance of students appreciating ‘the value of engaging with ideas they find objectionable’.
You might think that if the Chancellor and Vice Chancellor of oxford University are so robustly in favour of freedom of debate, and not destroying the statue of Rhodes just because some of his ideas and actions may seem objectionable, that all is well. You would be wrong.
In practice neither of them will have much, if any, say. I don’t think their words are likely to influence the iconoclastic students who want to rewrite history to suit their own philosophy, or the querulous dons of oriel College, who have already agreed to remove a plaque to Cecil Rhodes.
They have initiated a six-month consultation about the statue, which adorns the façade of a wing of oriel paid for by Rhodes. whom will they consult, I wonder? Cecil Rhodes, having died in 1902, will presumably be unable to defend his corner.
These days most oxford dons veer to the Left. (I write as an inhabitant of that city.) Moira wallace, a former senior civil servant who is now Provost of oriel, is thought to be very in tune with progressive causes, while her deputy, Annette Volfing, reportedly inclines even further to the Left.
So it is eminently possible that the statue of Rhodes will be removed, though as Lord Patten pointed out yesterday they can hardly dismantle the very substantial (and rather handsome) building which he endowed. His fortune has also paid for the education of some 8,000 Rhodes scholars over more than a century.
This may seem from afar to be one of those daft oxford squabbles which need not concern grown- up people. Don’t be deceived. If Rhodes is sent packing, that would have a calamitous effect on debate and free speech and tolerance in all our universities.
A lethal virus has spread to our shores from America, where for some years what can and cannot be said on university campuses has been vigorously policed by the politically correct brigade.
In recent months there have been several ominous instances of this virus taking root in Britain. Students tried to stop the feminist Germaine Greer from speaking at Cardiff University because they did not agree with her views on transgender people.
The historian David Starkey, who admittedly has built a media career out of offending people, was removed from a promotional Cambridge University video because his views were deemed (I think incorrectly) racist.
Tellingly, prohibitions against speaking at universities do not extend to hard-line Islamists, who are afforded free rein. A recent investigation by this newspaper revealed how representatives from a group called CAGE have toured Islamic societies at universities, making a series of inflammatory speeches.
what is going on at oxford over Rhodes constitutes the latest confrontation in the new culture wars. on the one hand are the traditions of liberal education — tolerance, open debate, reason. on the other hand are ranged the new bigots — intolerant, opposed to free debate, and unreasonable.
WE GOT a whiff of this yesterday morning. Before Lord Patten was interviewed by John Humphrys, someone called Yousef Robinson, who rides with the anti-Rhodes posse, made a statement in which Rhodes was described as a ‘murderer and architect of apartheid’. It was apparently a pre-recorded clip.
I don’t know of any evidence that he was a murderer in the sense the term is normally understood. The evil that was apartheid had its roots in the practices of Afrikaners (descendants of the original Dutch settlers) which long predated Rhodes. It was formally introduced into South African law by a party led by Afrikaner nationalists in 1948.
why the BBC played a clip of this nonsense, without requiring Yousef Robinson or one of his comrades to engage in an open discussion with Lord Patten or submit to questions from John Humphrys, God alone knows.
The same disinclination to engage is evident in students’ demand for what they call a ‘safe space’ where they will not be challenged. This is the intellectual equivalent of sucking your thumb and pulling down the blinds. There are no ‘safe spaces’ in thought.
A group calling itself Rhodes Must Fall has claimed that forcing students to walk past the statue of Rhodes amounts to an act of ‘violence’. In other words, something which offends the likes of Ntokozo Qwabe, the South African Rhodes scholar who has spearheaded the campaign, must be removed.
There is a degree of arrogance and narcissism here that takes the breath away. It borders on the crazy. He seems to be saying: ‘Take away what offends me, even though I am a visitor to your country, and the fortunate beneficiary of a scholarship funded by none other than Cecil Rhodes.’
what can one say to people who, while sticking their heads under a pillow, want to re-order the world as it pleases them? I simply plead to them not to judge the past by the values of the present. The imperialism espoused by Cecil Rhodes was an article of faith to millions of his fellow countrymen including, as Lord Patten suggested yesterday, the young winston Churchill.
And I’d ask then to consider whether the imperialism they so abhor was in fact an utterly bad thing, as most people under the age of 30 now seem to think, having presumably been taught as much at school. of course, many bad things were done by imperialists, but so were some good things.
In this category I would include the benefits of modern medicine, the spread of Christianity, the operation of the rule of law in many parts of the British Empire, and the introduction of books into parts of Africa where the written word was unknown.
THE activists of Rhodes Must Fall are of course free to believe whatever they like — that’s my point — but I don’t think they are free to interfere with history, and change things about our country which they happen not to like.
Lord Patten pluckily suggested yesterday that such people might ‘think about being educated elsewhere’ than Britain if they don’t like it here. But even if they did scarper, returning to their usually much less liberal countries where their belly-aching would not be indulged, we would be left with our home-grown pocket fascists.
No, there is a fight ahead, and the outcome will partly shape the future of higher education in this country. The front line of this war runs through oxford. I only wish I had greater faith in the dons of oriel College to defend our values.