The BBC is wrong: university censorship is definitely not a myth
blogs.spectator.co.uk
blogs.spectator.co.uk
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/8/3/17644180/po...
Freedom of speech is a right that's frightingly easy for people to give up, and articles like these do nothing but hurt the situation.
> could even make teaching a biology class tricky
It's slippery-slope, might-happen, fear-mongering like this that seems to "force" members of the alt-right to test the boundaries. Aka, be twattish until somebody calls you out, tells you to go away and then claim unfairness. Same works the other way too. It's not discrimination that an established church won't marry you and your gender-fluid beagle.
We need to stop testing social policy by extremes. The vast majority, the moderates aren't represented at all.
I remember back when Kissinger came to campus. There were a group of students that protest all week before and during his 4 hour stay. It almost got cancelled.
I think it is healthy to hear their arguments of the people you don't agree with and come up with counter-arguments proving them wrong instead of shunning them away.
(English is not my first language - sorry for the grammar mistakes.)
There may be a small problem with that. It is easy for people to keep making the same arguments over and over and over again. You will get tired of coming up with counter-arguments. Eventually you will quit, and they will be the only people talking.
It is especially difficult if the other person chooses their argument so that it is easy to say, but difficult to explain why it is wrong. An example might be: Eating eggs is unhealthy because there is a lot of fat. It's an easy argument to make and defend, but it is too simple to be true. Eating eggs can be very healthy in many circumstances, but to explain why requires a lot of technical explanation.
Usually people will prepare ways to defend their argument. For example, they will collect a list of papers that show that eating fat is unhealthy. It's easy to find hundreds of them. If you say, "We need to eat some fat", then they can list a hundred papers and say, "You have to argue against all of these papers". Of course it is impossible.
Because of this, it is often best to avoid discussing things with people who have no intention of listening to you.
I would ban people on a private system if they are causing a problem with the service. If I were running the service then the criteria I would use is whether or not it's impacting how I run the service. Probably to your horror, I would think very hard about banning people who I don't personally want to attract and who are chasing away the people who I do want to attract. As much as possible I would avoid it, but a big part of running a good establishment is choosing your clientele. It is analogous to refusing to serve someone who is loud and beligerent in a find dining establishment, while encouraging that person in a raucous bar.
I feel that people should be able to say whatever they want in their own homes. They should be able to say whatever they want in their own establishments. They should be able to publish what they want and sell/give it away to people who want it.
However, I think there are limits to what should be accepted in public spaces. I think that people should not be forced to publish things they disagree with, unless they have a monopoly or near-monopoly for publishing in a medium. Controversially, I think that people should be allowed to refuse service for any reason, unless they have a monopoly or near-monopoly on the service (and I happen to live in a country where this is the case).
So, that's my opinion. Believe it or not, I'm not actually interested in debating it, but because you asked me what my opinion was, I gave it to you. I suspect it differs substantially in some ways from your opinion and I have absolutely no problem with that.
you are right, ignore them. but banning the event is not a solution.
Think what bothers me most these days is people cheering for censorship just because it's currently being used against people they don't like without thinking ahead that one day the power structure could shift and the same powers could be used against them.
Secondly, and more broadly though - it should be down to the people at university to decide what they discuss, what should be beyond discussion at their university and how those ideas should be discussed. No student is restrained from going outside of their campus to discuss ideas either. It's also not the same thing stopping someone speaking and stopping someone using university resources to speak. What this debate actually seems to be about is older, right wing people attempting to force their right wing view points into universities that simply aren't receptive to them. It's not good enough for Tom Slater that students simply don't want to hear his fact-free anecdata about censorship. The arguments simply don't stand up to basic scrutiny- if the problem is that Tommy Robinson is having his free speech curtailed, then quick! Take down those videos of him standing on stage outside the high court, take down that interview at the Oxford Union, censor those pictures of him having lunch in the House of Lords. But if one of the most famous right wing campaigners is being censored then I need a bit more evidence for it than just the convicted fraudsters word for it.