Campus groupthink

SIR – Douglas Murray (Comment, August 16) likens our universities to “indoctrination camps”.

He may well have a point. In some ways universities seem hell-bent on imitating the medieval church in implementing rigid, prescriptive attitudes and thinking – when they should be upholders of free speech.

Students should not be clones: they should be encouraged to debate, amicably, and submit contentious essays. They should also resist the puerile temptation to put their hands over their ears in “safe spaces” or – even worse – attempt to have banned those books which they find intimidating.

Duncan McAra

Bishopbriggs, Dunbartonshire

SIR – Mr Murray rails against university students being “factory-farm[ed] to have the same boring and malevolent views” regarding politics and ideology.

I graduated almost exactly one year ago, and I must say that I do not recognise this argument, as compelling as it no doubt sounds. I cannot speak for universities in cathedral cities, nor can I profess knowledge of degrees in the subjects Mr Murray bemoans, but my experience as a student of English literature couldn’t have been more different from the picture he paints.

In my classes, students were always encouraged to think for themselves, and to come to their own conclusions, whether about politics, philosophy or economics. I never knew of anyone being castigated for expressing an unpopular opinion.

Perhaps I was lucky, but my friends at other universities say likewise, so I’d simply caution against an assumption that all universities, all courses, all lecturers and all students are somehow all the same.

Sebastian Monblat

Sutton, Surrey