Campus censorship

SIR – King’s College London has prevented one of its own lecturers from speaking to students because his talk was deemed “high risk” (report, March 17).

This appears to be yet another university allowing itself to be intimidated by the threat of Left-wing violence. Should not the Government consider withdrawing research grants from all such publicly funded bodies that restrict free speech? Michael Staples

Seaford, East Sussex

SIR – KCL’S eagerness to suppress freedom of discussion at the behest of disruptive young thugs provides an unpleasant echo of late-thirties Germany.

As Richard Grunberger noted in his Social History of the Third Reich: “Anti-intellectualism and social demagoguery remained constant factors in the Nazis’ manipulation of public opinion, and academics were castigated for having only been concerned with Wissensbereicherung (the selfish acquisition of knowledge)”.

Sadly, anti-intellectualism is becoming the vogue, even in much better universities than KCL. Nikolai Tolstoy

Southmoor, Berkshire