Culture of contempt

LAST week a bland letter from an obscure Tory MP asking for details of courses about the EU sent puffed-up denizens of Britain’s ivory towers into a collective meltdown.

‘McCarthyite’ said one. ‘The first step to the thought police’, said another. ‘Offensive and idiotic Leninism,’ claimed Oxford University panjandrum Lord Patten.

But the real threat to free speech isn’t government pressure on universities to conform, but students being force-fed academia’s overwhelmingly anti-Brexit (and Left-liberal) bias.

Now, some brave undergraduates whose ideas go against the grain have spoken out about the ‘ culture of contempt’ for Eurosceptic views on campuses in which free debate on Brexit has been ‘shut down’.

So intolerant was the atmosphere that some students felt pressured into writing essays which conform to the pro-EU views of their tutors, for fear of losing marks.

So much for impartial academic inquiry!