Over the past few years, much has been reported in the press about so-called cancel culture and deplatforming where activists deny speakers with controversial opinions access to University venues.
In 2019 Cambridge University rescinded its offer of a visiting fellowship to Jordan Peterson, who has attracted controversy for his views on transgender rights, gender, and race, after a backlash from faculty and students.
Such censorship undermines freedom of speech, and so it is good to see some universities fighting back.
The University of Chicago, for example, following a Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression in 2014, adopted a set of guiding principles designed to demonstrate a commitment to freedom of speech and freedom of expression. These have since become known as the Chicago Principles, and have been adopted on many college campuses in the United States
More recently, Cambridge University‘s governing body, the Regent House, published an update to a statement on freedom of speech originally adopted in 2016. Here is an extract from the new statement.
The University of Cambridge, as a world-leading education and research institution, is fully committed to the principle, and to the promotion, of freedom of speech and expression.
The University’s core values are ‘freedom of thought and expression’ and ‘freedom from discrimination’.
The University fosters an environment in which all of its staff and students can participate fully in University life, and feel able to question and test received wisdom, and to express new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions within the law, without fear of intolerance or discrimination.
In exercising their right to freedom of expression, the University expects its staff, students and visitors to be tolerant of the differing opinions of others, in line with the University’s core value of freedom of expression.
The University also expects its staff, students and visitors to be tolerant of the diverse identities of others, in line with the University’s core value of freedom from discrimination.
While debate and discussion may be robust and challenging, all speakers have a right to be heard when exercising their right to free speech within the law.
The originally proposed update to the 20216 statement required opinions to be “respectful”, but after strong objections, the wording was amended to support a commitment to “tolerance” rather than “respect”.
Respect: admiration felt or shown for someone or something that you believe has good ideas or qualities. Credit: Cambridge Dictionary
The concerns were about having to be respectful of ideas, regardless of their merit. It was felt that “respect” would undermine the “freedom to question”, and people would be afraid to explore controversial views in case they were reported for being disrespectful to others’ opinions.
Tolerate: to accept behaviour and beliefs that are different from your own, although you might not agree with or approve of them. Credit: Cambridge Dictionary
The idea of tolerating people and their ideas rather than respecting them resonates strongly with what I have written in my blook about showing respect. We need to tolerate ideas that we don’t like and show respect to the people who hold them. This is at the core of ensuring freedom of speech.
It’s our duty to tolerate colleagues even when they say things that we consider foolish, when we find their views offensive we should point that out politely.
We should not be running to the vice-chancellor asking him to censor them.
Credit: Professor Ross Anderson
Interestingly, given this change of policy by the Univesity there is now a call to re-invite Jordan Peterson to take up a fellowship.
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