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JD Vance: Europe is
engaging in civilisational suicide
US vice-president
‘annoyed’ by continent’s ‘inability and unwillingness’ to stem flow of
migration
Vice-president JD Vance has accused
Europe of engaging in “civilisational suicide” by refusing to control its
borders.
Taking
particular issue with Germany, which he has criticised before, he said some European nations were
both “unable” and “unwilling” to stem the flow of migration.
Mr
Vance’s comments are the latest in which the vice-president has framed European
values and policies as being at odds with those held by the Trump
administration, while also touching on issues that have driven support for
European hard-Right parties.
“The
Europeans annoy me sometimes. Yes, I disagree with them on certain issues,” he
said in an interview with Fox News.
The
40-year-old said the idea of Western civilisation has its roots in Europe and
led to the founding of the US, but added: “Europe is at risk of engaging in
civilisational suicide.”
“If you have a country like Germany,
where you have another few million immigrants come in from countries that are
totally culturally incompatible with Germany, then it doesn’t matter what I
think about Europe,” he continued.
“Germany
will have killed itself, and I hope they don’t do that, because I love Germany
and I want Germany to thrive.”
The
interview with Mr Vance came as President Donald Trump
completed a five-day trip to Scotland, where he met with Sir
Keir Starmer.
The
US president told the Prime Minister he would have a better chance of holding
back the threat posed by
Nigel Farage and his Reform UK party if
he made it a priority to lower taxes and tackle immigration.
“Keep
people safe and with money in their pockets and you win elections,” said Mr
Trump
Mr
Trump was re-elected with a vow to place a crackdown on illegal immigration at
the centre of his second term’s work.
Since
his election victory, he has effectively shut the US’s southern border with
Mexico and ordered the round-up and deportation of undocumented migrants.
In cities such as Los Angeles, he sent in the
National Guard and US Marines to support immigration agents carrying out the
round-ups.
At the same time community leaders and activists
say the vast majority of those being detained are not hardened criminals as Mr
Trump has claimed but day labourers and farmers
In Britain, figures
such as Mr Farage have repeatedly accused Sir Keir of failing to follow a similar course.
Following an unprecedented success for Mr Farage’s
party in local elections in May, Sir Keir promised a major crackdown over the
next four years, saying Britain risked becoming “an island of strangers”.
“Make no mistake, this plan means migration will
fall. That is a promise,” Sir Keir said. “If we do need to take further
steps... then mark my words, we will.”
‘Free speech across Europe is in
retreat’
The comments of Mr Vance echo what he said in
February in a speech at the Munich Security Conference.
He accused some countries of limiting free speech,
citing Adam Smith-Connor, a British pro-life campaigner who was convicted for
breaching a buffer zone outside an abortion clinic.
“Free speech in Britain and across Europe was in
retreat,” he said at the time, before going on to back Germany’s Alternative
für Deutschland party that has been classified as an extremist group by the
German government.
The Munich address was viewed by many European
countries as the moment America signalled it was willing to put an end to
long-standing trade and security arrangements, agreed at the end of the Second
World War.
Olaf Scholz, the then German chancellor, criticised
Mr Vance and accused him of trying to interfere in his country’s election.
“That is not done, certainly not among friends and allies,” he said.
When Sir Keir met with Mr Trump and
the vice-president in the Oval Office earlier this year, he pushed back at the
criticism, saying: “We’ve had free speech for a very long time, it will last a
long time, and we are very proud of that.”
Mr
Vance has been widely tipped to be among those likely to seek the Republican
presidential nomination in 2028. Other hopefuls include Marco
Rubio, the current secretary of state, who ran against Mr Trump in 2016 and
lost badly.
Asked
about who he viewed as a potential successor, Mr Trump told NBC News in May
that there were several contenders.
“I
think [Vance is] a fantastic, brilliant guy,” he said. “Marco [Rubio] is great.
There’s a lot of them that are great. I also see tremendous unity. But
certainly you would say that somebody’s the VP, if that person is outstanding,
I guess that person would have an advantage.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/c4657ac512fa6c46
Tuesday, July 29, 2025
Monday, July 28, 2025
Sunday, July 27, 2025
‘Racist, far-Right’
protesters: a Sikh, a Chinese man and a veteran with mixed-race kids
The financial district was once a byword for Britain’s glittering future. Now it merely reflects our national misery
Of the thousands of bankers in Canary Wharf, only one crossed the footbridge to the newly designated migrant hotel opposite the district’s glass towers, curious to witness the commotion.
Metal fencing
surrounded the entrance of the Britannia Hotel, guarded by a wall of police and a private
security guard in a surgical mask. Territorial support vans crawled past. It
was hard to escape the feeling that a great crime had been committed.
Across the road, a smattering of protesters milled about – some live-streaming the police, who filmed them in return – while others cheered as cars honked in support. The lone banker, smartly dressed in a suit, watched from the edge. His colleagues weren’t overly bothered by the disturbance. “They live in Battersea and Fulham.”
The demonstration outside the Britannia was in its second day, having originally been sparked by a false rumour that asylum seekers from the Bell Hotel in Epping had been moved here. The Home Office have nonetheless confirmed the hotel will be used to house another group of asylum seekers, after reports of tourists having room bookings suddenly cancelled without proper explanation were shared online.
Few residents welcomed the prospect of people fresh off dinghies arriving in the sanitised core of London’s financial district. “This is the only place in London you’d walk around in a Rolex,” the banker said. “A lot of Chinese, Japanese and Hong-kongers live here. It’s not like Tower Hamlets.”
Hotels have been used to house migrants for decades,
usually in peripheral Northern towns few in Westminster knew or cared much
about. In 2017, it was found that 57 per cent of asylum seekers were housed in
the poorest third of Britain; the wealthiest hosted only 10 per cent.
That quiet dispersal worked for a while. The benefits of porous borders were privatised
– cheap labour for the gig economy, rising rents for landlords – while the
costs were offloaded onto the public via tax-funded migrant support, suppressed
wages, overstretched services, and housing shortages.
The scheme spared ministers the grubby work of signing off on border control, creating conditions that allowed a small class of opportunists to enrich themselves from the crisis. Slum landlords could become Home Office millionaires, while the ageing magnates of hotel empires – among them, Britannia’s owner Alex Langsam – were spared from market forces by taxpayer-funded subsidy.
Over 170,000 people have now arrived in Britain by crossing the Channel. There are simply no “suitable” locations left for accommodation. The use of hotels, itself a concession to the need to quickly house the excessive number of arrivals, has seen asylum seekers placed both in leafy market towns like Epping and Diss and London cultural centres like Shoreditch and the Barbican. Even Canary Wharf, a place once intended to advertise modern Britain to the world, is expected to share in the burden.
Perhaps the strangeness of the decision to house asylum seekers – here of all
places – was reflected in the surprising diversity of those hanging around the
demonstration. A brawny Sikh man in a Louis Vuitton-branded turban held a sign
reading, “Stop calling us far-Right. Protect our women and children.” Nearby, a
smartly dressed Chinese man waved a similar placard, standing alongside
residents from Malaysia and Australia.
They mingled among more provocative signs,
including a St George’s flag emblazoned with, “The English began to hate”, a
line from Kipling’s wartime ballad The Beginning. A visibly agitated Frenchman
implored passing journalists to cover the protest fairly.
The Reform chairman for Newham and Tower Hamlets
Lee Nallalingham, speaking in a personal capacity, claimed the coalition
extended to his own family. “Look, when my Sri Lankan father, my Ukrainian
step-mother and my Japanese wife are all sharing the same views, there’s
clearly something there,” he said. “We like to pretend it’s some stereotypical
demographic issue. If it was, I wouldn’t be here.”
Concerns about safety and fairness predominated.
The deal arranged by the Home Office would house up to 400 asylum seekers in
the hotel for £81 per night. At full capacity, the cost is just shy of £12
million per year, in an area where the average one-bed rent is £3,000 and
around 20,000 people are stuck on housing wait lists. Perhaps Tower Hamlets
Council feels it can afford the expense: it recently advertised a £40,000 post
to expedite asylum housing and tackle “racism and inequality”.
“I don’t agree with it,” said Terry Humm, 56, his
beret marking him as a former member of the 2nd Battalion Royal Green Jackets.
“There are thousands of ex-servicemen on the streets in England – what about
housing people who fought for Queen and Country?” He was quick to head off any
charge of prejudice. “I’m not racist at all, my children are mixed race,” he
said. “I just find it disgusting.”
Mr Humm, who joined the army in 1989 and served in
Northern Ireland, warned of renewed sectarian tension on this side of the Irish
Sea. “The ingredients are in the mixing bowl – someone’s bound to make the
cake”. A Met officer who’d served in the Welsh Guards passed by and paid his
respects.
Humm heard about
the demonstration on TikTok. Others mentioned WhatsApp groups that had grown
from 100 to over 3,000 members in the space of weeks. There was talk of “civil war” and Britain being a “ticking bomb”,
echoing government fears of unrest spreading across the country.
“There’s going to be riots within the next six weeks, mark my words,” said one man, a builder in his 40s from Stepney. “They’ve brought them here because they think Canary Wharf is secure. But what they don’t realise is Tower Hamlets will not have this. It will escalate into a war,” he said, his voice rising. “Epping set an example,” he added. “It showed that as a community if you stand together you can make your voice be heard.
The rhetoric of protesters seems to match up with
the reality of increasingly inflamed tensions this summer. Earlier this month,
migrants in Gravelines lobbed Molotov cocktails at French police, reportedly
using fuel siphoned from the very dinghies they intended to board for Britain.
A spate of sexual assaults and other violent crimes by illegal migrants stoked
public frustration at an asylum system that appears impervious to reasonable
adaptation.
The protest
remained fairly civil until the arrival of counter-demonstrators from Stand Up
To Racism, an organisation open about its collaboration with the Socialist Workers Party.
Divided by the road, the two groups screamed abuse at each other: “paedophile
protectors!” met with a reply of “racists!”
One female activist reminded me of someone I had met while reporting on the Bibby Stockholm barge, who furnished migrants aboard with toiletries, pens and maps. Earlier this month, one of its occupants was convicted of assaulting a teenage girl on a beach, telling her he’d “never been this close to a white woman”.
As I spoke to another far-Left activist, an egg
splattered on the pavement between us, lobbed from the balcony of a luxury
apartment building next to the hotel. The first 15 or so floors are reserved
for affordable housing. South Asian residents in Islamic attire gathered on balconies
to watch the scene. Inside their separate entrance, the only visible signs were
an “Eid haircut price list” and a notice warning residents not to hang clothes,
toss cigarettes, or display flags or banners from their windows.
Apartments there can cost millions. According to
one resident, their Saudi neighbour is “furious” at the decision to place the
migrants next door, and the occupant of the penthouse flat is rumoured to have
decided to sell up.
Canary Wharf was once lauded as a turning point in
Britain’s post-war decline – “a citadel of finance,” as Reuters put it, “atop
once-derelict docks.” It stands as a crowning accomplishment of the Thatcher
years. But London is no longer the unquestioned centre of international
finance. Canary Wharf appears now to be sliding back to its pre-regeneration
state, blighted by empty commercial lots and chintzy stores that never seem to
have customers. Residents of luxury residential buildings will live side by
side with asylum seekers, just as the rest of the country is expected to.
Amidst the pomp of Canary Wharf’s creation,
Margaret Thatcher warned that “where there is no vision, the people perish.”
She no doubt had the glittering financial district just across the river in
mind. Today we need only look at the Britannia Hotel.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/4eebd35c48af6c0b
Two-tier policing is the
nail in the coffin for Britain’s social contract
The law-abiding majority now feel they are being punished to help shield the state from its own failures
Has a British Government ever
appeared so terrified of its own people? More to the point, can you think of
one that deserved it more?
The
social contract has been shredded. You go to work and pay your taxes for a
state that seems to be crumbling into disrepair. In exchange, the Government
takes your money, and uses it to fund an alleged secret scheme to fly in Taliban fighters to
live on your street. But don’t worry – we’ve got a new “elite police
squad” to prevent trouble.
That
police unit won’t be patrolling your neighbourhood to keep you safe from harm.
Rather, it will be tasked with scouring social media for protest pre-crime,
monitoring your opinions for anti-migrant sentiment. The police might not have
enough resources to deal with shoplifting. They might not have solved a single theft or
burglary, or recover a stolen bike, across a third of England. But
we are to believe they have resources for what really counts: scrutinising your
views for wrongthink.
The current state of affairs is so
absurd that simply writing it down feels almost subversive. But each element is
true: we do appear to have flown unvetted Taliban members into Britain. The
Government really will be watching your posts for signs of dissent. This isn’t
some accident, some Civil Service blunder. It’s by design. It truly appears
that Labour’s strategy is to impose ever more restrictions on the freedoms of
the law-abiding, in the hope that eventually people will acquiesce with a
resigned shrug.
The
problem is that it isn’t working. The population is fed up with being punished
for doing the right thing. The hectoring about slavery, imperialism, war and
all the other iniquities of history used to justify sacrificing our comforts
and liberties on the altar of mass migration is no longer having the desired
effect. British citizens living today did not build the empire. They didn’t
enslave anyone. Why should they foot the bill for housing illegal migrants up
in four star hotels in central London? Why should they put up with them working
in the shadow economy?
Unfortunately for the Government,
the previously silent majority is beginning to vocally express its frustration.
MPs and ministers are fearful that the country is becoming a “tinderbox”. But
even this isn’t enough to convince them that we must change course.
Why? Perhaps
because doing so would be an admission of past failures. For decades we were
told that mass migration was an unalloyed good while critics were denounced as
bigots. To concede, after all this time, that it has not come without costs –
at times intolerable costs – would be catastrophically damaging to the
political class. The pro-migration fanatics, who promised to control numbers
while throwing open our borders, who overrode objections to impose their
policies despite what they were repeatedly being told at the ballot box, would be
discredited.
So instead,
the state appears to be passing through the stages of grief. At first there was
denial that people were worried about migration at all; Brexit had allowed us
to be liberals. Then there was anger after Southport, with Starmer’s denunciation
of the “thugs” taking to the streets. Now we seem to have reached bargaining:
if we can stop people talking about it, perhaps they’ll stop caring?
It was a
strategy that might have worked prior to the social media era, and in
particular prior to Elon Musk’s buyout of Twitter. Now, even the censorship of
protest videos, arrest of people for incendiary content, and threat of mass
scanning of output isn’t sufficient to quell dissent.
And though
many of the protests now cropping up across Britain are peaceful, shows of
police force are not enough to deter outside agitators from hijacking them.
Tiff Lynch, the head of the Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file
officers, last week warned that
officers were being “pulled in every direction” and commanders were “forced to
choose between keeping the peace at home or plugging national gaps”.
Where do we
go from here? As the costs of legal migration become apparent, with talk of
labour market infusions and attracting the “best and brightest” seeming
increasingly hollow, overall numbers must be reduced. As the impact of illegal
migration becomes clearer, the establishment must stop trying to guilt us into
acceptance, and finally stop the influx.
It’s highly
doubtful Yvette Cooper has the will or the way. The Home Secretary would prefer
to silence opponents, by censoring and arresting those who speak out.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/503e714a21a6fc18
Saturday, July 26, 2025
My chilling decade on the
front line of university culture wars
Free speech and academic debate have been stifled, says the master of Selwyn College, Cambridge
The first point at which it became crystal clear that the times were changing was when we marked the 40th anniversary of the admission of women to Selwyn College, Cambridge in 2016.
I
was three years into my 12-year stint as master of the college, which ends this
autumn. My vice-master, Janet O’Sullivan, told students that we were inviting
the women of the college to a group photograph at 2pm and then, because we were
celebrating co-education, men were welcome to join us for refreshments
afterwards. She received an immediate reprimand from a young man: what about
people who were non-binary or those who identified as a different gender? At
this point, I was not even sure what non-binary meant – and it had never been a
topic at any college meeting.
Only three years later, though, a
revolution had taken place. A new gender orthodoxy, based on
self-identification rather than biological sex, was firmly established in universities
and swathes of the public sector. It was common for students across the
University of Cambridge to attend lectures with slogans adorning their laptop
computers, proclaiming “trans women are real women.”
A
female professor recalls: “I remember thinking when I saw a man brandishing
that statement – imagine if I’d displayed a sticker saying the opposite. Would
I lose my job? I felt uncomfortable about a man telling me what a woman is,
even though as a mother I assumed I might know.”
A distinguished female scientist told me that the
worst revelation for her was the need for self-censorship: “The scientific
evidence is that biological sex is immutable, and that is scientific orthodoxy,
but there was a time when I just didn’t feel that I could say that.”
Required beliefs
These examples represent a phenomenon across all
universities – and across sections of society in Britain and around the world –
that spread into multiple issues of identity politics and reached its peak in
the early 2020s.
Cambridge’s
experience was less dramatic than at some other universities, such as Sussex,
where Prof Kathleen Stock faced threats of violence for her
views and felt forced to leave her job. Michelle Donelan, the
universities minister at the time, condemned what she called “the toxic
environment at the University of Sussex”, while an academic at Oxford had to
attend lectures with security protection to ensure her physical safety. An
industrial tribunal found that an Open University academic had been
discriminated against and harassed by colleagues and management, and
constructively dismissed, because of her gender-critical opinions.
America went through an even more vivid and painful
experience on multiple aspects of gender and racial politics, with a further
and more recent escalation over the Middle East. Trans rights were only one
element of what seemed to become a list of required beliefs for academics.
In 2022, I took
part in a webinar on these issues with Arif Ahmed, the Cambridge-based free speech campaigner who
is now leading on these matters for the Office for Students. During the
discussion, he highlighted some areas where he believed public debate in
universities had become difficult, if not impossible. These included
questioning the political aims of Black Lives Matter or the so-called
decolonisation of the syllabus, criticism of either Israeli settlements or the
use of force against Palestinians, and admitting support for Brexit.
This week I asked
a number of academics in Cambridge and
beyond how they felt during that period. The words some of them used include
“afraid”, “frightened” and “isolated”, while one spoke of a “chilling”
atmosphere. A student I know felt hostility from an influential senior figure
at the university because he had spoken publicly in favour of Brexit. This
mattered because the leader was someone who would have determined his academic
future and its funding.
Jane Clarke, a
recent president of Wolfson College, recalls finding herself “in a poisonous
space”, caught between gender-critical feminists and trans activists who fought their wars locally on social
media and then in the national press. The challenge to freedom
of speech at the university became apparent when students began claiming that
“words are violence”, as if disagreement were the equivalent of a physical
attack.
Succumbing to pressure
This was compounded by universities seeking to
overhaul their complaints procedures in response to pressure from activists who
felt they were too weak. Under a previous management team, Cambridge even
suggested that the correct response to a microaggression – a generally
unintended verbal infelicity – was to dial 999 and ask for the police. The
advice was rapidly rescinded, but I came across multiple academics who felt
vulnerable to a career-threatening disciplinary process if they got a few words
out of place. They were also worried about ostracism if they expressed the
“wrong” views. There was an attempt by the central administration, which was
defeated, to allow students – and indeed any member of the public – to make
anonymous complaints online about named academics, without any ability to check
the validity of the allegations.
Critical race theory spread across universities –
even though, as a colleague from a more traditional Left-wing background said
to me, “it is a theory and not a law.”
No university committee was complete without
someone advocating that we should bear in mind “intersectionality” – a spin-off
from critical race theory – even though its meaning would have been mysterious
to most of the outside world. A senior figure in another college says:
“Academics are afraid to offend students, but they are more afraid to offend
each other.”
Some of the great figures in the university got
caught up in the crossfire of the global culture wars.
Prof Mary Beard
told me at a public event earlier this year about her social media experiences: “I did take some
nasty hits. Interestingly, a lot of those came from the political left rather
than the right. And that was especially hurtful because I felt, ‘Hang on, I’m
on your side!’ Sometimes, all it took was saying something mildly off-message,
and suddenly I was being treated like a traitor […] But the idea that we all
have to sign up to one monolithic cultural viewpoint is stifling.”
And yet, there was always a sense that the bulk of
university opinion remained in a rational place, albeit one that required the
wearing of a metal helmet. I certainly found that at Selwyn. My views on
freedom of speech were well known, and they were never challenged by colleagues
on the governing body, and I could not have asked for stronger support from the
key college officers. Most students remained phlegmatic too, and we continued
to develop talented and engaging young people.
The university still produced astonishing,
groundbreaking research. But many of us were wary in university meetings about
what we said and to whom. Somehow, we allowed the views of activists on a
variety of topics to get a grip across the university, and that was probably in
part because of their vehemence. Both sides in the culture wars were
responsible for this. There was a zest among some on the right for hurtful
attacks on trans people and other minority groups; and one head of a college
observes that “both sides of the trans debate (and Israel-Palestine) are far
too easily riled up by social media forces.”
But the response – insisting on ideological
conformity – had a polarising effect.
This was because
many felt shoehorned into a position of either being pro-minority or pro-free
speech. It seemed impossible to be both because any questioning of trans rights
in particular was automatically seen as transphobic, and it was a policy –
endorsed by the lobby group Stonewall –
not to be willing to debate those rights.
Silent majority
One of my failures was that I never managed to host
an event in which these issues could be discussed rationally, because no trans
activist would appear on a platform with anyone they deemed to be a
gender-critical feminist.
Instead, what the university witnessed was stormy
meetings where – on the rare occasions they were invited – feminists faced
demands that their appearances be cancelled or protesters tried to drown out
their voices with cacophonous dissent.
But it’s not just a supposition that the protesters
were in a minority. A Cambridge vote on free speech among academics and senior
staff in 2020 resulted in a thumping majority – 86.9 per cent in favour – for
advocates of the position that we should “tolerate” views we disagreed with
rather than, as the university preferred, “respect” them.
But Prof Ahmed, who led the campaign for freedom of
speech, noted that this was in a secret ballot. He had much more difficulty
getting colleagues to put their heads above the parapet to get the referendum
launched in the first place.
And it was understandable that the silent majority
kept their heads down. A recent alumnus told me: “I’ve come to realise that the
university monoculture was really much worse than I appreciated at the time, as
most views that would draw opprobrium would be considered quite middle of the
road when venturing outside the academic bubble. This results in a narrow band
of acceptable views that are extremely out of kilter with the wider country.
This narrow band is fast-changing, which serves as another way of enforcing
conformity, with new language and terminology to learn, and unspoken rules to
memorise.”
Another former student of mine, Christopher
Wadibia, is an American who describes himself as “a compassionate
conservative”. But when he moved into an early career academic post in Oxford,
he felt he had to keep his views to himself for a while.
“When I started at Oxford I made a decision not to
express ideas that I knew would be interpreted as conservative because I
thought there was a risk that I would be excluded from some teaching, research
and public speaking opportunities.”
Soon, however, he settled in and felt better able
to say what he thought – and, as proof of his increased confidence, he took to
a public platform with me in Cambridge last November to explain why he had
voted for Donald Trump in the presidential election. It’s a fair bet that
almost nobody in the room would have followed suit.
Recent improvement
All the same, this
points to a cheering truth. Times are changing again, and the picture is
becoming healthier, as illustrated by last week’s election of Chris Smith as chancellor of Cambridge,
after he stood on a platform of promoting and safeguarding free speech.
Some of this, again, is about society. Our
undergraduates gave their pronouns when they introduced themselves at student
leaders’ dinners in the early 2020s, but for the past couple of years they
haven’t.
At Wolfson College, Cambridge, Jane Clarke was
pleased that her students, ground down by the internal strife, set up a
“Discourse Society” to learn how to share their views peaceably – with lasting
consequences. She reports: “We became a college able to hold a series of
discussion events which other colleges would not or could not host.”
Recently, I found that it was uncontentious to say
two things to incoming students. First, that we were in favour of equality and
diversity – which is both the law, the university policy and (as it happens) my
own belief too.
But we are also in favour of diverse opinions and
free speech, and we would not be doing our job properly if they were not
exposed to challenging and even at times upsetting views. Saying we stand
firmly for free speech is also a line that brings applause from alumni at
reunions.
In the past year of our public events for students
at Selwyn, we have, without incident, featured a robust exposition against
anti-Semitism; an exchange about allegations of genocide in Palestine; a
personal account of a pilgrimage to Mecca; and a wide-ranging analysis of
geopolitical hotspots around the globe.
More academics have spoken out – one of them being
Prof Stephen O’Rahilly: “For me it was the need to be able to discuss the issue
of biological sex and its importance for how we structure medicine, law and
society that made me feel I could no longer be simply an observer.
“I am pleased to say that I received no pushback
from the university about any public statements I made.”
At a national level, protecting the right to free speech
in universities was the subject of legislation by the Conservative
administration – and, after some hesitation, it has been substantially endorsed
by the Labour government and will come into effect on Friday Aug 1. Every
university and college in the land will be required to publish a code of
practice as part of a duty to promote freedom of speech in higher education.
And, crucially, many universities had already got
the message. New vice-chancellors at Oxford and Cambridge decided that it
wasn’t enough to speak the rhetoric of free speech – they needed to show it in
their actions.
The Cambridge vice-chancellor, Deborah Prentice,
who regards free speech as “the first principle of any academic institution”,
launched a series of vice-chancellor’s dialogues on some of the knottier issues
of the day, with the express aim of exposing students to a wide range of
opinions and learning how to disagree well; and similar initiatives have taken
place across the sector.
We had a meeting at Selwyn with academics from Yale
to share experiences and coordinate the fightback. Prentice, who was born in
California and was previously provost at Princeton University, says:
“Practising free speech is a challenge, and not just here in the UK. Having
come from the United States, I am concerned that on both sides of the Atlantic
free speech is being dampened by spirals of silence – a hesitancy to voice an
opinion if we think it might cause offence. Free speech needs constant
nurturing and reinforcement. It is a principle that we must uphold.”
A long way to go
There has been an easing of some of the tensions.
The pro-Palestinian encampments on campuses, which provoked bitter conflicts
especially in the United States, have been better managed in Britain, including
in Cambridge, through a tolerance of peaceful protest tempered by the use of
injunctions when they became unreasonably disruptive. The truth is that some
students are passionately engaged with the conflict in the Middle East, but
many aren’t.
“Students are obsessed with the personal politics,
not the big issues facing the world,” claims one senior figure.
This disengagement by many, perhaps out of a
feeling of impotence, is a sharp contrast to my own student days in the 1970s.
It may be the reason why today’s activists are losing their grip.
But a colleague has a wider
criticism about the culture across British academia: “The exciting ideas in our
country are not in universities. Universities are dominated by liberals, and it
has been the Right in wider political discourse which has come up with the new
ideas. The problem is that those ideas are not very good, and they lack
intellectual coherence. But the clever people in the universities are not in
the debate.”
O’Rahilly
agrees that “we still have a way to go” to restore health to the dialogue in
universities.
He
and I were at a dinner a few weeks ago which showed the opportunity but also
the remaining challenge. For a couple of hours, Cambridge academics and
administrators discussed the recent Supreme Court ruling on biological sex. The
people around the table were from a wide range of backgrounds and views, and it
was – as Stephen says – a “polite but vigorous” debate. Exactly what you’d hope
for in a university.
But
at the end of the dinner, one of the participants said, wistfully, that it was
a discussion that couldn’t be held in their college.
Why
not?
“Because
it would tear the place apart.”
But
experience shows that not having the discussion is by far the worst option.
Views get better if they are tested; and communities, especially universities,
are stronger if they are open and free in their thinking. Rights, as we saw
with gay marriage, are more powerful if there is public consent.
As
I prepare to step down from my role in September, the biggest lesson from more
than a decade in Cambridge is about the peril of trying to impose conformity on
a university whose driving force should be academic freedom. Britain needs
universities to guarantee our future, and they cannot do that if they shackle
themselves to the campaigns of the moment.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/9448fcf81d76f9e2