No-platforming at record levels across English university campuses
from The Free Speech Union via LinkedIn:
The Office for Students warned this week that “freedom of speech is at risk of being stifled on campuses” (Times Higher). A survey carried out by the universities watchdog found that a record number of speakers and events were rejected last year. Out of 19,407 external speaker requests or events on English campuses in academic year 2020-21, 193 were rejected, compared with 94 in 2019-20, 141 in 2018-19 and 53 in 2017-18. (Evening Standard, Mail, Times).
As FSU General Secretary Toby Young pointed out to the Telegraph, these figures are “just the tip of the iceberg”. It’s a nice analogy. The media always seems to focus on the number of no-platforming episodes per year, as if that figure were the totality of the issue faced.
It isn’t, of course, not by a long stretch – but that type of data all too easily plays into the hands of those who want to suggest that cancel culture is indeed little more than a myth. The Independent demonstrated exactly how to pursue that particular line of argument this week. Ignoring the increase in the overall number of cancellations reported by the OfS, it focused instead on the fact that “fewer than 1% of speaker requests or events were rejected last academic year”. Here was proof positive, claimed the paper’s expert source, General Secretary of the UCU, Jo Grady, that “the Tory narrative of a free speech crisis caused by oversensitive students is totally at odds with the evidence”, and that the Government are “whipping up a phony culture war”.
Certainly, it’s true that if all you ever chose to look at were the data on no-platforming, the free speech crisis in Britain’s universities might well come to seem a little ‘aerated’. Previous research by the OfS, for instance, found that of 62,000 requests by students for external speaker approval in England in 2017–18, only 53 were rejected. Similarly, research from WonkHE found that of almost 10,000 events involving an external speaker at an English university in 2019-20, just six were cancelled. Crisis, what crisis?
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
