Stop being a bunch of right-on snowf lakes, minister tells students
STUDENTS should stop spending all their time on ‘identity politics’ and instead focus on the world’s big challenges, the universities minister has said.
Sam Gyimah warned that many youngsters are too obsessed with talking about a ‘ narrow set’ of issues such as race, gender and class.
Too much energy has been spent on deciding whether or not certain views are ‘offensive’ and how to ‘tack and trim’ around them, he said.
His comments come at a time when the concept of ‘offence’ is dominating student politics, with ‘snowflake’ youngsters hotly debating whether it is right to police speeches in case the speaker upsets women, transgender people or ethnic minorities.
It has baffled many older people, who in their student days were more likely to have been campaigning on world issues such as the environment or war.
Speaking at King’s College London on Thursday, Mr Gyimah said: ‘A university’s job is to promote free speech.
‘What universities should be promoting is wider debate, and what seems to be happening is a narrow debate around a narrow set of issues where there are entrenched positions, and that is not the way. There are lot of issues and debates around identity politics now.
‘It has its place, and there are issues to be thrashed out. But for the next generation in our universities who are going to be the next set of MPs, the next ministers, the next people running the country and running the businesses and organisations, we want a much richer set of debates.’ Mr Gyimah, an Oxford graduate who was born to Ghanaian parents, said that while course content may be diverse, the ‘atmosphere’ on campuses was not.
He said he would like to see lecturers encouraging students to look beyond the university bubble and to engage in topics that might be less familiar to them. Big issues for the ‘ next generation’ include improving living standards, helping the ‘left behind’, making Britain ‘pay its way’ in the global economy and developing influence ‘post-Brexit’.
‘There are big issues going on in the world,’ Mr Gyimah said. ‘I want our universities to spend more of their time having more events, bigger events, [about] issues that you’ll probably never read about yourself, because that is what makes a university experience richer, not how you can trim and tack around something that you find offensive.’
He said student unions and societies had dedicated much energy to deciding whether to ban – or ‘no-platform’ – speakers such as feminists, MPs and even gay rights campaigners. ‘When you talk about free speech, it should be a wide debate, rather than all the energy being expended on how we police debates around identity politics,’ he said.
Mr Gyimah’s appearance at King’s College London was part of his tour of campuses to meet students and discuss the issues they face.
He is overseeing new official guidance on how universities should protect free speech, which will be published in the autumn and enforced by the Office for Students regulator.
At the university, he also highlighted the problem of some students being victimised for having unfashionable political views.
He said he knew of one student who had ‘ Tory bitch’ written on her bedroom door simply for having Right-leaning views, while another had his car egged.
Mr Gyimah warned: ‘ We have a danger of developing a monoculture.’
‘Promote free speech’