Patten: University safe spaces put free speech at risk
Former governor of Hong Kong compares censorship there with British students’ self-imposed restrictions
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SAFE SPACES and no-platforming policies at universities are “fundamentally offensive”, Oxford University’s chancellor has said.
Lord Patten of Barnes, a cross-bench peer and former chairman of the Conservative Party, said he felt “more strongly about this issue than almost any other at the moment”.
He urged students to take a stand to protect free speech, adding that those who do so should not be subjected to “fascistic behaviour” by their peers.
His comments came after a number of recent events at universities across the country where free speech appeared to be under attack.
At Sussex University, a group of politics undergraduates set up a new stu- dent society called “Liberate the Debate”, aimed at promoting free speech and discussing controversial or “conventionally taboo” topics.
However, the students’ union insisted on a “prohibitive” list of restrictions, including that their inaugural guest, Bill Etheridge, the Ukip MEP, would have to submit his speech in advance for vetting by a panel. The society said this meant he had been effectively “no-platformed”.
It also emerged that King’s College London has hired “safe space marshals”
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to police controversial speaker events on campus. Three marshals patrolled while Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Tory MP, addressed students at the invitation of the university’s Conservative Society.
While on duty at an event, the marshals are expected to put up posters reminding students “This is a Safe Space” and to be ready to take “immediate action” if anyone expresses opinions that breach the safe space policy.
Lord Patten, who from 1992 to 1997 was the last governor of Hong Kong, spoke of his frustration and compared the limitations on free speech in the former colony with the restrictions that British students put in place in the name of political correctness.
Addressing students at the Oxford Union, he said: “I was in Hong Kong three or four weeks ago, talking to young men and women who face going to prison because they argue for free speech, and I come back to Britain and I find that people want universities to be full of safe spaces where you can’t speak your mind. There is a huge difference between having an argument with someone and having a quarrel with them. It’s one of the reasons that I find safe spaces at universities or no-platforming so fundamentally offensive.
“It’s nothing to do with my view of what university should be like. University should be regarded as liberal, with liberal values of free speech.”
He added that if a university started to censor free speech, it was guilty of “denying one of the most important roles of a university in a free society”.