Pay attention at the back: a lesson on free speech

Can members of the University and College Union do joined-up thinking?

This morning they voted against Government plans to instruct lecturers to report students with extremist views to the police. Their reasoning was this:

Universities must remain safe spaces for lecturers and students to discuss and debate all sort of ideas, including those that some people may consider challenging, offensive and even extreme

Quite right, freedom of speech must prevail.

But then they unanimously agreed to this motion this afternoon:

All negative characterisations by teachers of lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender people, identity and lifestyle should be outlawed and classified as an act of discrimination and an incitement to hatred based on sexual orientation

So challenging, offensive and even extreme views deserve to be aired, so long as they don't happen to be the sort of challenging, offensive and even extreme views that the union disapproves of. I'm not quite sure that these lecturers have quite got the hang of this free speech thing.

Robbie Millen

Comments

[Andy O]

Presumably the people responsible for this astonishing idiocy all have degrees?