Brexit row hysteria
HAS someone been slipping hallucinogenic substances into the Chancellor of Oxford’s high-table port? The Mail asks because of Lord Patten’s hysterical reaction to a request from an obscure Tory MP for information about how EU-related matters are taught in universities. The MP’s letter, said his Lordship, was ‘an extraordinary example of outrageous and foolish behaviour – offensive and idiotic Leninism!’
Let this paper set the great placeman’s mind at rest. The little-known Chris HeatonHarris, Brexit-backing Tory MP for Daventry, is not planning to deport him and his likeminded academics to a Siberian gulag.
Nor is he telling dons what they should teach. No, for research purposes, he was merely asking vice-chancellors for the names of any professors teaching about Brexit, together with the syllabuses of such courses. Weren’t these reasonable requests on public matters of legitimate concern to taxpayers who fund universities?
Yet Lord Patten was far from alone in going into meltdown. Said the vice-chancellor of Worcester University: ‘Here is the first step to the thought police, the political censor and newspeak.’ It’s ‘McCarthyite’ said the head of the European Institute at the LSE.
Doesn’t this absurd overreaction suggest Mr Heaton-Harris has touched a raw nerve among academics – who have something to hide about their anti-Brexit teaching?
The facts suggest so. For not only do polls show more than 80 per cent of university staff voted Remain, the truth is the overwhelming majority of academic jobs go to Guardian-reading subscribers to the Left-liberal consensus. Then there’s the awkward truth the EU hands UK universities £1.2billion a year. With countless reports of lecturers force-feeding pro-Brussels propaganda to students, is this a case of ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’?
The Mail has no objection to acquainting students with Left-wing or pro-EU ideas. But if these are the only ones they ever hear, doesn’t this subvert the whole purpose of a university? Instead of trying to silence an inquisitive MP, Lord Patten should do some serious thinking about enlightened education – which means presenting BOTH sides of an argument.