Ideas can be exchanged without speakers being accused of spreading hate
by Gavin Ashenden:
New Zealand catches me between two arms, as it were; one in the past and the other in the present.
The past is a memory. It’s the memory is of a man who was an awkward bearded Kiwi law don.He used to invite a number of us who were law students to his rooms in the late evening to argue over ideas. We drank and argued.He helped me to learn to think; more importantly, he taught me never to be afraid of ideas I found alien or alarming.
Later, during the quarter century I taught at university, with a nod to him over my shoulder, I ran an open seminar called ‘Sceptics Anonymous.’ It followed the same principle; anything was up for discussion. We turned ideas upside down and inside out. Sometimes we changed our minds. Just ten years ago, most people thought that was in part what university was for. But in the last few years, things have changed with breath–taking speed.
This last week the Canadian psychology professor Jordan Peterson had the offer of a Fellowship that Cambridge University had made him withdrawn. He found out from twitter. A spokeswoman said “Cambridge is an inclusive environment. There is no place for anyone who cannot uphold our inclusive principles.”
‘Inclusive’ is of course a coded word that has now come to be indelibly associated with the Cultural-Marxist project. It is a word designed to include some values and some people, and emphatically exclude others. Even the word does not tell the truth about itself. And it’s obvious, when you know a little history that Marxism, cultural or economic, doesn’t allow people to voice other ideas. It’s not just Cambridge. Oxford University are trying to harass and shame Nigel Biggar, who teaches that there are two sides to everything, including the legacy of colonialism (education, health, roads, democracy, rule of law etc.)
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