Defund woke universities to defeat the new totalitarians

Last week the Quality Assurance Agency, an outfit posturing as a standards-setter for university degree courses but which has no official standing, announced that curriculums in 25 subjects should be “decolonised”. Among its gems of idiocy were that “racism, classism, ableism, homophobia and patriarchy” should feature in teaching geography. Were that not enough, young people should, the QAA said, be taught how scientists have “benefited from and perpetuated misogyny, racism, homophobia, ableism and other prejudices”. Apparently, those who split the atom and discovered DNA and penicillin were fundamentally evil because of their whiteness, maleness, Britishness and perceived heterosexuality.

The QAA, which panders to the fetishes of the most blithering student activists, has no direct relationship with government. It does have one with the Office for Students, an official body, though that ends next March; it is easy to see why. Sadly, some dons live in inexplicable fear of their more extreme students’ opinions, and therefore many universities are afraid to ignore QAA “guidelines”, even though there is no requirement to follow them.

Why students should be accorded such respect by their elders is not only bizarre, but dangerous. Some dons are deeply politically motivated, and wish to smash the existing structures of the society in which they live, and seize opportunities to endorse their students’ most illiberal views. Others crave popularity; others fear a Twitter mob persecuting them, and being “cancelled” or losing their jobs. Thus whatever toxic cause students adopt they can usually find teachers ready to appease them.

This illiberalism, which the QAA seeks to emulate, has also included the shameful driving out of Kathleen Stock, professor of philosophy at Sussex University, for refusing to comply with the new trans orthodoxy that would eliminate the idea of a woman from traditional ideas of gender. Another example of the determination to impose philosophies on others, eliminating freedom of choice, thought, action and speech, came last week when Stirling University student union announced it would be vegan by 2025.

Universities should encourage individualism. But when they submit to deluded prejudices it becomes routine to exclude freedom and standardise behaviour, while using the curriculum to reinforce a world view currently held only by a tiny but vocal and bullying minority. It closes off large sections of thought, culture and learning to students who will, consequently, leave their universities indoctrinated, but not educated. Such institutions produce people so afraid to think for themselves that they cannot think for themselves. Potential students may start to question whether the huge cost of university is worth it if they receive no education.

A backlash is, thank God, under way. A new film, Tár, starring Cate Blanchett as a conductor, includes a scene in which she minces a brainwashed youth who rejects Bach because he is white. It accurately exposes the breathtaking, ignorant illiberalism of the self-righteous young and, by extension, the shamefulness of teachers and peers afraid to challenge this destructive mindset.

Robert Halfon, the universities minister, denounced the QAA’s attempt to hijack universities and, effectively, to end freedom of thought. Most of our universities are state funded: it is a scandal that this anti-educational movement should flourish under a nominally Conservative government. Mr Halfon could stop this intellectual degeneracy in its tracks, by defunding universities that choose to conform with the toxic ideas of the QAA. That would present them with the option of going under, or of guaranteeing genuine academic rigour in their courses and fulfilling their purpose.

One suspects the desire for ideological martyrdom is less than that for surviving and, as such, something as bold as defunding delinquent establishments might yet succeed in restoring academic order.

Something must be done to protect rigour and freedom in higher education