Stand up to students if you value free speech, university chiefs urged

Former Oxford principal says lecturers are afraid to confront the widespread censorship of ‘safe spaces’

VICE-CHANCELLORS must intervene to halt the decline of free speech at universities, Baroness Deech has said, as she warns that lecturers are “bowing to student whims” by allowing “safe spaces” to reign on campus.

The cross-bench peer, a former senior proctor at Oxford University and principal of St Anne’s College, said the stranglehold on unfettered, open debate is damaging the reputation of British institutions.

“Yet the university authorities are complicit in allowing the free exchange of ideas to be closed down, and students are ever more censorious,” she wrote in a letter to The Times.

“They claim a right not to be offended, but we cannot secure freedom of expression if we all also maintain a right not to be offended.”

Lady Deech warned that lecturers and authorities are pandering to the demands of students by allowing them to be given a “trigger warning” if there is something in a lecture “that might upset them”.

Law undergraduates at Oxford University were last year advised at the start of lectures on certain cases that they can leave if they fear the content will be too “distressing”.

Lecturers were asked by the director of undergraduate law studies to “bear in mind” using trigger warnings when they give lectures containing potentially upsetting material.

Lady Deech said that controversial topics are often blocked by student unions or by protests.

“Safe space” and “no platform” movements have swept across campuses, including a campaign to ban Germaine Greer from giving a speech over her “transphobic” views. Theresa May has also hit out at universities for implementing “safe space” policies, adding that it was “quite extraordinary” for universities to ban the discussion of certain topics that could cause offence.

She warned that stifling free speech could have a negative impact on Britain’s economic and social success.

Lady Deech said that while “feminist issues” have been banned on campus, extremist speakers go unchallenged “because the students themselves are silencing the challengers”.

She said that Oxford University failed to take public action over allegations of anti-semitism at the student Labour Club, adding that other universities have rejected the international definition of anti-semitism.

A spokesman for Oxford University said: “The University does not tolerate any harassment on grounds of religious belief.

“When allegations of such harassment are made, they are always investigated thoroughly and equitably.”