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UK government to “instruct universities” to defend free speech as “legal duty”

Mar 22, 2017 8:37 am By Christine Douglass-Williams

In a move that could have wide-reaching implications on U.K. campuses, British universities will be instructed to uphold freedom of speech as a “legal duty.”

That this instruction had to be issued at all is revealing. University censorship in the UK is at an alarming high as the thought police punish freedom of expression in institutions that were intended to encourage free thought and intelligent discourse. The Independent recently reported that 90 percent of UK universities restrict the freedom of speech, while the Guardian reported “a growing sense of crisis around debate in British universities.”

News that the British government will “instruct universities to defend freedom of speech” is astonishing, but forcing universities to give “an explicit statement expressing their commitment to free speech principles” doesn’t quite cut it.

For instance, who will pay the high cost of security if a conservative speaker is threatened by a swarm of leftist hooligans on campus? Another important question for the UK government: is it now willing to lead by example by ending its own ridiculous and unjust ban of Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller from the country?

It is an attention-grabbing declaration from the UK government to “instruct universities” to defend free speech, but its announcement sounds little more than hot air, given its reputation of political correctness — from its own failure to protect free speech to its even worse failure to protect its own innocent children from Muslim rape gangs; not to mention its acceptance of human rights-violating sharia courts.

“British Government Will Instruct Universities To Defend Freedom of Speech”, by Tom Ciccotta, Breitbart, March 21, 2017:

In a move that could have wide-reaching implications on U.K. campuses, British universities will be instructed to uphold freedom of speech as a “legal duty.”

Jo Johnson, British Minister of State for Universities and Science has written to universities informing them that they will be expected to uphold free speech for their students, faculty, and visiting guests. The move is being described as a response to the rise of “safe spaces” and other forms of censorship in higher education.

According to Johnson, this means that the use of universities facilities cannot be “denied to any individual or body on any grounds connected with their beliefs or views, policy or objective.”

“As part of this, the government proposes to raise the issue of freedom of speech, with a view to ensuring that a principle underscoring the importance of free speech in higher education is given due consideration,” Johnson wrote.

He added that speech protections extend to premises occupied by student unions, even if those premises aren’t university-owned: “It is important to note that the duty extends to both the premises of the university and premises occupied by the students’ unions, even when they are not part of the university premises.”

Johnson claimed that all institutions will be expected to have an explicit statement expressing their commitment to free speech principles…..

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Filed Under: academia, Featured, free speech, United Kingdom Tagged With: Jo Johnson, Minister of State for Universities and Science


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Comments

  1. concerned canadian says

    Mar 22, 2017 at 8:43 am

    funny how UK gives Radical Islamists free reign yet freak out out
    Britain First or the like

    Its getting hard to justify a trip to UK.
    Its changed so much.

    Not sure if I would even like it now.

  2. Joy Wolfe says

    Mar 22, 2017 at 8:58 am

    Corrected version of reply just sent

    I fear this is a two edged sword. It is fairly well known that attacks on pro Israel students and banning of events and pro Israel speakers gave rise to this statement, but does it now mean than speakers like Richard Falk, Gilad Atzmon , Ilan Pappe and .George Galloway will be protected and have the right to peddle their misinformation, incitement and hate

    Reply

  3. thomas says

    Mar 22, 2017 at 9:00 am

    This merely places in writing the policy of allowing true islamic beliefs being taught at schools.

  4. Crusades Were Right! says

    Mar 22, 2017 at 9:01 am

    I have a funny feeling that the chief beneficiaries of this measure will be jihadi apologists –

    i.e. those who speak for the “oppressed Muslims” will get free rein…

    …while those who oppose Islamic terror will still be persecuted as “racists” and “Islamophobes”.

  5. Cretius says

    Mar 22, 2017 at 9:10 am

    Thoughts have no rights. Only people have rights and free speech is a cornerstone of democracy.

    ANY belief system or philosophy must be open to scrutiny and open debate. Fascism exists where free speech is suppressed. Any belief system that suppresses free speech is Fascist.

  6. Mac-101 says

    Mar 22, 2017 at 9:18 am

    More BS I would assume. Orwellian Double Speak which will result in the elimination of ALL but authorized speech!

  7. RichardL says

    Mar 22, 2017 at 9:19 am

    it is too late. Even at universities with a sizable responsible student body, those with unPC views simply don’t speak up any more.

    I was awed by my alma mater’s debates where speakers won supporting such outrageous motions such as The Government shall kill the poor”. Wit, rhetoric abilities and humour still played a role in academic debate.

    All gone.

  8. eur says

    Mar 22, 2017 at 11:11 am

    Latest news: shooting near the British parliament.

  9. Spike1033 says

    Mar 22, 2017 at 11:42 am

    Orwells’s 1984 has arrived. In the 60s, when I read the book, it was just fiction. Nobody actually thought it would arrive in the democratic west. Now, even our language is under attack. Truth is now lies; freedom is limited; free speech is limited; soon free thought will be a thing of the past. Anything humorous is heavily sanitized; any ‘joke’ involving one’s colour, religion or beliefs are against the law. Does anyone remember those golden British comedy shows: TW3, Monty Python or Till death do us part? They would never be shown now. The modern PC crowd wouldn’t understand them. They were about freedom. Has anyone ever heard a joke about a muslim, or a mosque. Of course not. Recently with a group of friends the subject of ‘freedom’ came up and we immediately lowered our voices and looked round to ensure no-one could hear us. We felt like anarchists in 1900 or resistance fighters in 1942 France. No, we were just a group of old friends in 2017.

    • Mac-101 says

      Mar 22, 2017 at 12:41 pm

      Don’t give up the fight. It truly is a battle between good and evil and ur salvation and ALL of ours is in the balance.

  10. Angemon says

    Mar 22, 2017 at 1:45 pm

    However good that the government is doing his may seem, it’s not enough to overcome the bad that this was needed – and until I see actual results, I’ll think of it as no more than a face-saving propaganda manoeuvre.

  11. Matthieu Baudin says

    Mar 22, 2017 at 10:12 pm

    “… Another important question for the UK government: is it now willing to lead by example by ending its own ridiculous and unjust ban of Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller from the country?..”

    Absolutely right Christine, Teresa May was instrumental in curtailing freedom of speech by imposing the bans on Pamela and Robert and others whose ‘failing’ in essence was to buck the PC line. Now, in her new role as Prime Minister Ms May has kept the old censureship baggage in place. Meanwhile a large segment of ISIS fighters of British Origin are allowed back into the country, well blooded in Syria and Iraq, while university campuses run amok with virulent hate campaigns against those who chose to uphold civilised values and speak plainly about the most pressing issues of the day.
    Britain and the rest of Europe need the contribution of ideas from the likes of Robert, Pamela and others in order to intelligently reformulate approaches to containing the International Jihad Terror War being waged against Civilians and their Democratic Institutions.

  12. mark almond says

    Mar 23, 2017 at 9:08 am

    The1st casualty of war is truth,she battles on,to survive!

  13. UNCLE VLADDI says

    Mar 23, 2017 at 3:47 pm

    “WHY ARE OUR UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGE CAMPUSES SO SCREWED UP!?” (one might ask?)

    Here’s how the so-called “soft” sciences aka “humanities” (anthropology, psychology, sociology, and even criminology) really work: They all started off by examining the various symptoms and EFFECTS of human behavior, thinking, group-thinking behavior, and of criminal free-will CHOICES, respectively, but then self-invalidated by looking for hidden mysterious predestined and predetermined inevitable force “CAUSES” of it all, which degraded them all into only one criminal, excuse-making alibi topic: “victimology!”

    So we get these two, permanently opposed philosophical poles:

    Law-abiding Conservatives: “Criminal behavior is an effect of free-will choice!”
    Criminal libertines: “But what CAUSED that choice? There’s always a cause!”

    Their implication is that there are no crimes nor criminals because we’re all “victims.”

    In this way, they proudly enslave themselves to the crime-excusing ‘inevitable force’ alibi!

    EXACTLY AS THE MUSLIMS DO WITH THEIR IDOL CALLED “ALLAH!”

    Further, there is no cause-and-effect morality: Since predation CAN happen, “Therefore” it WILL always happen; “So” we MUST form ever-larger gangs to pre-emptively, defensively extort & deter enemies in order to safely accuse and punish them for their potential crimes BEFORE they can commit them!

    Finally, as all criminals inevitably do, they assert that, while they feel perfectly free to claim that we are all ruled by the iron hand of pretedermined, predestined, inevitable forces, these forces are also all hidden, mysterious, and beyond not only our control but also our comprehension! We are all (they claim) equally dangerous fallible beings if not outright mistakes which must be controlled in advance for both our own good and for the safety of all others.

    So the only real crime is to accuse another victim of being a “criminal” simply because they seemed to choose to commit their “crimes” against other helpless victims!

    (Ignoring that, by accusing criminals with the evidence of their crimes, by their own rules we just couldn’t help ourselves, either LOL)!

    *THE ONLY “CAUSE” OF HUMAN-INITIATED EVENTS THEY PRE-EMPTIVELY DEEM INVALID, IS FREE-WILL CHOICE ITSELF!*

    Their “pre-emptively defensive” slanderously victim-blaming victimology habits (with which they, by claiming to be perpetual victims, slander all others as permanent oppressors, by implication) let them insist that we must always all “GO ALONG” (with criminal lies) “TO GET ALONG” (with lying criminals)! – that submissive suicidal masochism is the highest holy virtue, while offending others (criminals) and hurting their feelings with the often-painful truth, is the worst offense anyone can commit – ignoring of course that offense can rarely be given, it can only be taken by the one choosing to take offense!

    They claim that, since life is too complex for anyone to ever really understand cause-and-effect, all so-called facts are really only opinions anyway, such that the libertine criminals’ entirely fact-free subjective opinions are to be held IN LAW as the diversely opposite equals to those silly law-abiding conservatives’ objective facts!

    That’s what’s behind their immoral relativism! “Remember, kids, there’s no wrong answers! Everyone gets a prize for losing! Whee!”

    Like all criminals, libertine “liberals” always want ever-more rights (like, to own our stuff) with ever-less responsibilities (as in, having to work for or to otherwise earn it)! And the best way for criminals to convince their victims not to counter-attack them, is to pretend that they were always really ever only victims anyway, and also that their criminal attackers are and always were really ever only equally innocent victims, too!

    This, they call “Progress!”

    Such defeatists don’t believe in winning, so they will only work to make sure everyone else is as much if not more of a loser than they themselves are; (adopting a static stance of hostile aggression, asserting that they are permanently “Better than you!” in stead of “I can and will still improve my self!”) – as proudly pessimistic fatalistic and cynical masochists, (which cowardice they call ‘shrewd’ and ‘realistic’) they always seek to control their own fears, BY causing those very same, worst-case scenario problems which cause the pains they fear the most (like, in sadistically antagonizing innocent others by slandering them as equally criminal) which gives them their favorite backwards victim-blaming alibi to excuse their own crimes:

    “It’s not a crime since we (i.e: you) all do it, too!”

    But as Dracula proved, the real cause of criminal choices was the calculation that they could get away with it!

    His 15th Century Wallachia was the only place on earth ever to enjoy a ZERO crime-rate!

    Which proves criminals, no matter how libertine, can resist their criminal urges and aren’t forced into it!

    There’s nothing beyond their own free-will choices CAUSING them to commit their crimes (or not)!

    😉

    Finally, victimology is slanderous extortion, (because perpetual victimhood implies perpetual oppressors) and perpetual extortion is called SLAVERY.

    And naturally, such anti-social, slanderously paranoid personalities will “succeed” and even consistently “fail upwards” in such environments, because after all their motto is: “There’s No Money In Solutions, so Please Give Generously – AGAIN!”

    …….

    BOTTOM LINE? To reiterate:

    ALL of the so-called “soft” sciences are VICTIMOLOGIES – sociology, psychology, and even criminology – because they all begin by looking at symptoms of human behaviour, but quickly “progress” to the false premise that they must look for CAUSES of those behaviours – and said causes must always be inevitable, predetermined predestined mysterious magical forces beyond anyone’s control! (The implication being that we are all really ever only helpless victims – of “society” / mere products of our environments, or as Marx put it, of “Historical Predeterminism” and as Muhammad put it, as proudly Submissive “slaves of allah”)!

    Simple human free-will choice is never an answer they accept!

    …….

    Remember: “Those who can’t do, teach” (others victim-blaming excuses for failure, too)!
    Then by blaming others for their failings, they gain lucrative careers as extortionists!

    Therefore colleges and Universities have been indoctrinating helpless students to be feckless criminals.

    “Social” justice really only means group or gang rights trumping all real live citizen individuals’ equal human rights.

    It’s also known as group-might-makes-right gangster “extortion,” “communism” and, ultimately, “slavery.”

    Fitting perfectly in with their “SINCE you could discriminate, SO you WILL discriminate, so WE HAVE TO discriminate against YOU, first!” “pre-emptively defensively,” slanderously paranoid attitudes, SJW criminals pretend to justify always attacking first. Perpetual victimhood implies a permanent oppressor, against whom ends always justify means!

    They pretend to prevent racial and emotional stereotyping by writing bills which emotionally and racially stereotype.

    They go for the largest local group class(ifications) aka “privileged white males,” whose only real natural privilege is being inherently smarter than others – a condition no legislation can alter, except by forcing them through guilt to breed down to the lower common denominators, which, ironically, are already on exact par (blacks) or in the absolute majority (Dravidians, Asians) worldwide. So they are, in fact, working on behalf of the global majorities to suppress and oppress a global minority, all in the name of preventing oppressive discrimination by promoting racial minorities.

    And when called out on their claims’ lack of logic and factual evidence, they pretend that “Life is too complex for anyone to ever really be able to understand cause-and-effect,” (thus also implicitly proudly claiming to be non-compus-mentis) “so, since all ‘facts’ are really only opinions anyway, my entirely fact-free, subjective opinion (i.e: that your stuff is really my stuff) is the diversely opposite equal to your silly objective “facts!” Whee!”

    That’s always the backwards, slanderously victim-blaming ‘justification’ their for perpetual extortion attempts (aka: slavery) – “Since you were going to enslave me first, I had to try to enslave you! And it’s not an evil crime because we (i.e: you) all do it, too!” (Attack first, and, when caught, double-down and attack again, by blaming your victims by slanderously claiming they made you do it! That defines “Sin”)!

    Leftopathy is a self-inflicted habit. They don’t want to be cured, because extortion (accusing others) is easier than working!

    …….

    Further, leftopathy has been established as “Human Rights Commissiona!” HRCs are SJW snake-pits, all about dividing us into ‘diverse’ group-might-made-rights gangs, totally opposed to equal HUMAN rights!

  14. UNCLE VLADDI says

    Mar 23, 2017 at 4:14 pm

    “Social Justice” and it’s feral millennial brown-shirt “warriors” is based on these Marxist SLANDERS:

    Marx’s “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”
    pretty-much DEFINES slavery, where makers work for free for lazy takers.

    Re: “Socialism is where the workers own the means of production” – no, it isn’t.

    That’s simply multiple ownership of shared property (whether it be a formal partnership or an employment contract, because, as liberals hate to admit, your time spent on labor is also your own property, as the money your employer trades for your labor time is his property) – and it can depend on contractual inequalities where some of them can get more out of it when they put more into it – and that includes capital investments:

    If I buy a warehouse and a store and the equipment to run them (desks, chairs, cash-registers, etc) and then hire people who haven’t put anything into it, but promise to work for a certain rate, then I’m the owner and they are my employees.

    “Socialism” is extortion which pretends that this contractual relationship is really only in fact slavery, and I’m evil oppressor because I bought the store and hired people, giving them the means to support them selves & their families.

    “Socialism” then gathers a gang of unemployed non-tax-paying and non-property-owning lazy dead-beats to vote in a “government” gang to “redistribute” (steal) my wealth, and give it to them.

    That’s called slanderous extortion, theft, and slavery, and as such, is a crime – albeit a currently “legal” one.

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