Unsafe spaces

Such is the shameless absurdity of the safe space movement that when Sussex University’s free speech society announced their inaugural guest, the students’ union said that they would have to submit his speech in advance for vetting. The guest was a Ukip MEP; the university is famous for being Left-wing. These facts are probably no coincidence: so much of today’s student activism isn’t a crusade against controversial opinion in general but conservatism in particular. It is an attempt not just to protect young people but to mould them.

Thank goodness Chris Patten, the Chancellor of Oxford University, has decided to take a stand, calling no-platforming and safe space policies “fundamentally offensive”. He has spoken of meeting young people in Hong Kong who risk imprisonment for speaking their mind, only to return to the UK to find students actually choosing to impose silence on themselves. Too many Left-wing Britons seem to have lost confidence in the West’s democratic tradition, in the progress that is obtained from the free exchange of ideas. At a moment when the world stands between two anniversaries – the Reformation and the Russian Revolution – some seem hell-bent on choosing the wrong lessons from history, taking the side of political authoritarianism.

There is a temptation to dismiss what goes on at universities as the antics of the young, something they will grow out of. But what if they don’t? A generation that is denied access to one set of ideas may well grow up enslaved to another, terrified of being accused of heresy. Universities must break the Left’s spell and let alternative voices be heard on campus.