Learning comes first

Universities are supposed to teach and conduct research. There is nothing wrong with a bit of politics, so long as it is conducted in an open atmosphere that gives full voice to all sides. Recently, however, the raison d’etre of university has become clouded by a very one-sided political debate. The demand for offering a safe space from offensive opinion, for instance, often seems to translate into policing conservative thought. King’s College London’s student union advertised for safe space marshals to ensure student meetings were free of offensive content. One of those speakers monitored was the invariably polite Jacob Rees-mogg.

Institutions are too quick to defer to students and won’t stand up for academic liberty or tradition. The notion that primacy should be given to the established classics of Western literature and philosophy is questioned; statues that illustrate a complicated past are targets for petitions. And the charge that Oxford and Cambridge, with admissions policies based on talent, are failing in their duty to make Britain a more equal society needs to be challenged. That is not their purpose.

Over time universities will grow and change, and both the student body and the syllabus will evolve with them. It’s also true that complaining about Left-wing agitation on campus is like complaining about fish in the sea, as anyone with memories of the radical Sixties will confirm. But not every young person wants to be Che Guevara; the vast majority of students just want to get a degree. And places of higher learning should remember that they are there primarily to educate, which sometimes means exposing their charges to ideas that they might not like.