Celia Walden
‘Woke-ists’ have won – it’s over for universities
Opinions. They’re tricky things. “Problematic”, to use the PC buzzword of the day. People have different ones, for a start, which is not ideal. But still more problematic are the side effects. Opinions make you think, question, evaluate and re-evaluate.
They open up your mind and expand your horizons – in a climate when minds should be sealed shut and horizons close enough to touch.
No wonder British academics are giving up on them.
Over the past decade, campuses have increasingly put pressure on professors and lecturers to censor themselves and their teaching material, but a Yougov report released yesterday suggests that Right-wing academics are feeling this pressure most strongly.
While both Right and Left-leaning university faculty members admitted to believing that the airing of political opinions might adversely impact their career prospects (cancel culture doesn’t discriminate), a poll of 820 academics found that nearly a third – 32 per cent – of those with Right-wing views had completely stopped airing opinions in either their teaching or research, compared with 13 per cent of those in the centre and on the Left. (OK, so it discriminates a bit – but for the greater good).
I was amazed only 32 per cent of these academics were keeping it zipped, until I realised that 336 of those who responded to the poll were retired, and that the real figure was likely to be twice that. After all, every day some public (or private) figure foolish enough to air their views on politics, gender or any other trigger topic has their scalp held up in trophy-hunting-style warning to anyone thinking of doing the same.
These transgressors don’t just lose their jobs either, as the former New York Times journalist Bari Weiss pointed out at the weekend (having herself been “cancelled” for her opinions) but are rendered “radioactive” in an act she called “social murder”.
So what’s in the opinion-airing game for academics? On a good day: nothing. On a bad one, you’d get passed over for a promotion or sacked, have your publisher pull out of every forthcoming book deal, and be forced to walk up and down the country for eternity with the scarlet letter “T” (for toxic) emblazoned on your back. It’s enough to make anyone think twice about making that casual Brexit quip.
Only here’s the rub: academics don’t share opinions for their own benefit. They share them in order to prompt robust disagreement and debate among their students; in order to open minds and expand horizons. Take that away and you don’t just have universities staffed by “intellectually identical robots”, as Trevor Phillips said yesterday, but the end of “higher education” as a concept.
The only difference between school and university is that intellectual challenge. Take it away and you’re back to sitting in a classroom, being told How Things Are: no arguments
allowed. I can still clearly remember the night and dinner party when I, as a 13-year-old, first felt able to counter a grown-up’s opinion with my own. I remember it because that’s the precise moment we all go from child to adult.
University is supposed to be where we hone those sparring skills for use in later life and meet people from different backgrounds with different thoughts to our own. Yet today, they’re in danger of becoming playgrounds for the kind of perma-kids who plug their fingers in their ears and shout “Lalalala! Not listening!” whenever anything they disagree with is mentioned.
They disagree with a lot, from historical fact, such as the British Empire (too bloody, too controversial to discuss) to books like John Cleland’s Fanny Hill (too “upsetting” for a delicate generation that watches more hardcore than any in history). And they don’t just muzzle their professors, as Yougov’s poll confirms, but each other.
Because when I asked an undergraduate friend whether he’d ever felt too scared to voice an opinion in a lecture or tutorial, he admitted to feeling “uncomfortable and judged, not just for expressing a belief, but putting forward a perspective on something – especially if it’s even vaguely Right-wing”.
If that’s not a regression to primary school, I don’t know what is.
Passing an academic freedom bill in Parliament that would enable university staff “to question and test received wisdom within the law”, as the report suggests, is one faintly tragic way out of this mess.
Tragic, because it’s a bit like telling a baker he’s free to bake bread without fear of reprisals. But here’s another. Upon applying to university, every student should be forced to take a “de-sensitivity test” and sign an affidavit on which the following statement would need to be handwritten on lined paper 10 times: “I understand that a tolerance and enjoyment of differing opinions are the basis of every civilised society.”
Failure to do this would result in the immediate “cancellation” of their university prospects.