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Post by mouse on Feb 4, 2018 7:18:29 GMT -5
We are now witnessing our own version of Newspeak, in which a form of cultural fascism masquerades as caring concern. Last month, for example, Netflix started to show the 1990s sitcom Friends. You might think it is a harmless piece of nostalgic escapism. But according to some people, it is in fact a disgusting litany of racism, sexism, homophobia and, yes, transphobia. Ross didn’t like the idea of his son playing with dolls – sexist. Monica was ‘fat shamed’ – sexist. Chandler called his drag-queen father by his male birth name – transphobic. And the main characters were all white – racist. Often the offence taken isn’t even theirs. They are, as it were, offended vicariously. In 2015, students at the University of East Anglia banned a Mexican restaurant from handing out sombreros at the Freshers’ Fair because it was a form of ‘cultural appropriation’ that caused offence to Mexicans. Not, of course, that any Mexicans had actually been offended. The snowflake students were offended on their behalf. This is of a piece with the insistence in recent years that university campuses be ‘safe spaces’, where students should be protected from the traumatic risk of encountering anything with which they might disagree or take offence. And this isn’t just about student politics. It is affecting academia itself. Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-5348993/Snowflakes-Theyre-todays-fascists.html#ixzz568oGzRe5 Follow us: @mailonline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
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Post by mouse on Feb 4, 2018 7:34:09 GMT -5
Sephen Pollard is a noted writer lest any one should think him a daily mail employee[although many times the mail get to the nux ten times faster than many other of the media like many others he is becoming increasingly disturbed and makes this very valid point """"Without offence and without upset, there is tyranny"""
why are we allowing these people to determin what can and cannot be said.. worn.. watched or seen....why are we letting them be the arbiters of what is and what is not acceptable ...afterall they appear to be nothing more than a mob of pretentious oiks with very little experiences of the real world ...I mean realisticly safe spaces ? theology students might find the details of the crucifixon upsetting and that's without cultural apropriations... mmmm my culture is appropriated every day by but why would I wish to be hysterical about it .. oh yes and then theres some idiot notion of privilege.....put out not by the under privileged or every shade of skin tone but by those oozing in privilege but with no understanding of real life
""""We should remember how in his novel 1984, George Orwell coined the word ‘Newspeak’ to describe the language used by a totalitarian state that removed the capacity for individual thought and turned words’ meanings on their head.
In Orwell’s dystopian world, The Party used slogans such as War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength.
Satire – yes. But a warning, also.
Demands that only one form of thought is permitted, and that anything which deviates from it is offensive and should be banned, are profoundly dangerous. They pretend to be about care and concern, but are in reality a form of intellectual totalitarianism.
Without offence and without upset, there is tyranny.""""
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Post by men an tol on Feb 4, 2018 15:15:35 GMT -5
We are now witnessing our own version of Newspeak, in which a form of cultural fascism masquerades as caring concern. Last month, for example, Netflix started to show the 1990s sitcom Friends. You might think it is a harmless piece of nostalgic escapism. But according to some people, it is in fact a disgusting litany of racism, sexism, homophobia and, yes, transphobia. Ross didn’t like the idea of his son playing with dolls – sexist. Monica was ‘fat shamed’ – sexist. Chandler called his drag-queen father by his male birth name – transphobic. And the main characters were all white – racist. Often the offence taken isn’t even theirs. They are, as it were, offended vicariously. In 2015, students at the University of East Anglia banned a Mexican restaurant from handing out sombreros at the Freshers’ Fair because it was a form of ‘cultural appropriation’ that caused offence to Mexicans. Not, of course, that any Mexicans had actually been offended. The snowflake students were offended on their behalf. This is of a piece with the insistence in recent years that university campuses be ‘safe spaces’, where students should be protected from the traumatic risk of encountering anything with which they might disagree or take offence. And this isn’t just about student politics. It is affecting academia itself. Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-5348993/Snowflakes-Theyre-todays-fascists.html#ixzz568oGzRe5 Follow us: @mailonline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook Mouse, the comments about snowflakes augmented by the references by George Orwell are profoundly disturbing, not because the thoughts are new, but rather because they have existed as a warning for many years, and now it seems that they have really arrived. Word meanings seem to have been turned upside down. To me higher education venues have always represented openness to new concepts, investigation of new ideas, freedom to experiment. Now it seems as if a segment of young people are closing in and shutting out ‘other’ ideas, that they are becoming the ‘word police.’ If that is the goal, then I do not understand why they bother to go to any higher education. Strangely, they seem to be becoming more restrictive than the fundamentalist Christians.
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Post by beth on Feb 4, 2018 16:53:01 GMT -5
We are now witnessing our own version of Newspeak, in which a form of cultural fascism masquerades as caring concern. Last month, for example, Netflix started to show the 1990s sitcom Friends. You might think it is a harmless piece of nostalgic escapism. But according to some people, it is in fact a disgusting litany of racism, sexism, homophobia and, yes, transphobia. Ross didn’t like the idea of his son playing with dolls – sexist. Monica was ‘fat shamed’ – sexist. Chandler called his drag-queen father by his male birth name – transphobic. And the main characters were all white – racist. Often the offence taken isn’t even theirs. They are, as it were, offended vicariously. In 2015, students at the University of East Anglia banned a Mexican restaurant from handing out sombreros at the Freshers’ Fair because it was a form of ‘cultural appropriation’ that caused offence to Mexicans. Not, of course, that any Mexicans had actually been offended. The snowflake students were offended on their behalf. This is of a piece with the insistence in recent years that university campuses be ‘safe spaces’, where students should be protected from the traumatic risk of encountering anything with which they might disagree or take offence. And this isn’t just about student politics. It is affecting academia itself. Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-5348993/Snowflakes-Theyre-todays-fascists.html#ixzz568oGzRe5 Follow us: @mailonline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook Mouse, the comments about snowflakes augmented by the references by George Orwell are profoundly disturbing, not because the thoughts are new, but rather because they have existed as a warning for many years, and now it seems that they have really arrived. Word meanings seem to have been turned upside down. To me higher education venues have always represented openness to new concepts, investigation of new ideas, freedom to experiment. Now it seems as if a segment of young people are closing in and shutting out ‘other’ ideas, that they are becoming the ‘word police.’ If that is the goal, then I do not understand why they bother to go to any higher education. Strangely, they seem to be becoming more restrictive than the fundamentalist Christians. Nobody is more restrictive than the Fundies. Chef Mate, meet Mike Pence ...
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Post by men an tol on Feb 4, 2018 18:24:43 GMT -5
Mouse, the comments about snowflakes augmented by the references by George Orwell are profoundly disturbing, not because the thoughts are new, but rather because they have existed as a warning for many years, and now it seems that they have really arrived. Word meanings seem to have been turned upside down. To me higher education venues have always represented openness to new concepts, investigation of new ideas, freedom to experiment. Now it seems as if a segment of young people are closing in and shutting out ‘other’ ideas, that they are becoming the ‘word police.’ If that is the goal, then I do not understand why they bother to go to any higher education. Strangely, they seem to be becoming more restrictive than the fundamentalist Christians. Nobody is more restrictive than the Fundies. Chef Mate, meet Mike Pence ... In that assessment Beth I strongly disagree. Fundamentalist Christians are surely true to what they believe, but by and large they ask to be left alone and only press their beliefs when backed into a corner. Snowflakes are out to get anyone who doesn't follow their point of view and they reject reality rather than accept it. And in fact, they demand not to have to face reality.
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Post by annaj26 on Feb 4, 2018 19:57:51 GMT -5
In that assessment Beth I strongly disagree. Fundamentalist Christians are surely true to what they believe, but by and large they ask to be left alone and only press their beliefs when backed into a corner. Snowflakes are out to get anyone who doesn't follow their point of view and they reject reality rather than accept it. And in fact, they demand not to have to face reality. No they don't men an tol. They think it is their duty to prosthelytise. As an atheist, it surprises me you believe they face reality. Are you sure you aren't thinking about Evangelical Christians?
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Post by men an tol on Feb 4, 2018 20:25:00 GMT -5
In that assessment Beth I strongly disagree. Fundamentalist Christians are surely true to what they believe, but by and large they ask to be left alone and only press their beliefs when backed into a corner. Snowflakes are out to get anyone who doesn't follow their point of view and they reject reality rather than accept it. And in fact, they demand not to have to face reality. No they don't men an tol. They think it is their duty to prosthelytise. As an atheist, it surprises me you believe they face reality. Are you sure you aren't thinking about Evangelical Christians? No, I'm thinking of friends and relatives I've know all my life and they are as I described.
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Post by annaj26 on Feb 4, 2018 20:46:46 GMT -5
No they don't men an tol. They think it is their duty to prosthelytise. As an atheist, it surprises me you believe they face reality. Are you sure you aren't thinking about Evangelical Christians? No, I'm thinking of friends and relatives I've know all my life and they are as I described. Then they are probably Evangelicals, not fundamentalists, Men an tol. Believe me, I know both kinds. The ones who do not believe in doctors are fundies, too.
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Post by men an tol on Feb 4, 2018 23:05:26 GMT -5
No, I'm thinking of friends and relatives I've know all my life and they are as I described. Then they are probably Evangelicals, not fundamentalists, Men an tol. Believe me, I know both kinds. The ones who do not believe in doctors are fundies, too. I too know and have known all of my life those who think of themselves as Christian Fundamentalists as well as those who are Evangelicals. While scholars may (and do) debate the differences and similarities between them, it is fair to say that both groups live within the basic values of their religious interpretation. Do they proselytize? Of course they do, and so do most others in one form or another. Look at nearly any position offered on the internet and you will find those who proselytize their beliefs even when they have nothing to do with religion. However, that is neither here nor there in the point I was making, both groups (fundamentalists & Evangelicals) face reality more realistically than any snowflake. The major point is that the lack of realism in the beliefs of the snowflakes destroy societal structure by trying to remake it to their fanciful wishes. They live in a world of make believe that is only possible due to the work of others. Fundamentalists and Evangelicals keep their version of a fanciful world contained within their religions.
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Post by mouse on Feb 5, 2018 4:10:00 GMT -5
with religios findementalists even Islamic ones theres at least a glimmer of their thinking .. a touch of reasoning why this or that is even if its centuries old /bad/good/necessary ...even though one may not agree
with snowflakes every thing is under attack rationale.. commonsense...alternative thought/action/logic ..scholarship .. in fact any thing and everthing is up for destruction and the rewriting of history
don't know if any one read the post about the art gallery which took down a painting of the Nymphs and Hylas...and removed all the cards of the paintings as well.. to cut a long story short the painting is back due to public pressure.. whether the female who took it down in the first place is sacked I don't know]but the outcry was very heartening.. and it came from right across the planet toop not just England /UK and those objecting did not mince their words about their objections.. and its so good to have confirmation that those people are still out there.. and will not go quiet into that goodnight of totalitarian darkness
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Post by fretslider on Feb 5, 2018 5:18:39 GMT -5
The New Blasphemies On CampusIn 1811, Percy Bysshe Shelley was banished from Oxford University for publishing a pamphlet called ‘The Necessity of Atheism’. His act of heresy was punished by close-minded dons who could brook no dissent. More than two centuries later, there are still blasphemies on campus that students commit at their peril. Today spiked launches the Free Speech University Rankings 2018, our fourth annual analysis of campus censorship in the UK academy, and it makes for grim reading: 55 per cent of the 115 universities and students’ unions we survey are this year ranked Red under our traffic-light rankings system, meaning they actively censor speech and ideas. This marks a dip in Reds from last year. But policies dictating what can and can’t be said on campus are still becoming more severe in many areas. A startling 46 per cent of institutions restrict discussion of transgenderism: Leeds Beckett, Newcastle, Imperial and more appear to ban ‘transphobic propaganda’ outright, while St Andrews, Sussex, Cardiff and others commit themselves to ridding the curriculum of ‘transphobic material’. This is remarkable stuff. In some of our most esteemed universities, supposed citadels of free thinking and scientific endeavour, administrations are demanding that debate about transgenderism be shut down and courses be cleansed of un-PC material. How any course about, say, biology, can coexist with this is unfathomable. And it’s not just in relation to trans issues, that most testy and inflamed subject in politics today. We also found that 48 per cent of institutions have policies which warn against insulting faith groups or offending religious sensibilities. One students’ union insists that ‘the religious sensibilities of the union’s members must be respected’. Shelley must be turning in his grave. What’s more, when it comes to who is being censored on campus, it isn’t even just provocateurs, coming to campus to stir up controversy – it’s students themselves. Over the past three years, students and/or student groups at 17 campuses have been punished for everything from criticising gay marriage on Facebook to organising a Thatcher vs the Miners themed party. Starker still, both of those bans were the work of university administrations, rather than students’ unions. Campus censorship, you see, isn’t just the work of Safe Space belligerents, blue hair flying in the wind. In fact, while SUs tend to be more extreme in their censorship, in that more of them are ranked Red, the proportion of Red universities has been rising over the past few years, while the proportion of Red students’ unions has begun to level off and fall. There’s a good deal of hypocrisy here, too. While, for instance, the University of Cardiff won plaudits in 2015 for pressing ahead with a talk by Germaine Greer, despite protests from students over Greer’s ‘transphobic’ comments about gender, at that very same time it had a policy on its books committing itself to cleansing all curricula of ‘transphobic material’. So, many universities don’t practice what they preach. The fracas at the University of the West of England in Bristol on Friday night, in which anti-fascist protesters tried to disrupt a speech by Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, shouting ‘no platform for fascists’ and scuffling with his supporters, reminds us that student activism remains thoroughly intolerant. And, for the fourth year running, students’ unions are far more likely to be ranked Red than universities in our survey. But we can’t let universities off the hook. So, what’s to be done about it? Suffice it to say, the plans being drawn up by the newly established Office for Students to fine or otherwise punish universities that censor would only make the problem worse. It’s fighting one form of illiberalism with another; as SUs are independent organisations, they wouldn’t be touched by such measures; and, even if you somehow prohibited campus authorities from censoring, illiberal activists would merely take matters into their own hands. The problem here isn’t technical – it’s cultural. Universities have become so bureaucratised, so estranged from their core mission, that they blithely undermine free speech for the sake of avoiding bad press or keeping a lid on campus protest. Meanwhile, students’ unions are run by unrepresentative identitarians who genuinely think words are like bullets. If we want to change that, we need to change minds. We need to build a culture of free debate and argument so that censorship is no longer enacted so casually. And we need to defeat the patronising argument that censorship must be done for our own good. Students, academics and university leaders need to assert, as Shelley might have put it, the necessity of freedom: the most dangerous idea of all. www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-new-blasphemies-on-campus/21086#.Wnguaqhl_4YStudent activism remains thoroughly intolerant and I can't see that changing any time soon.
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Post by mouse on Feb 5, 2018 5:50:59 GMT -5
a good article Fret...both my grandsons went along to suss out the student union and debating societies.. and both walked away from having any thing to do with either.. I am not sure that its all down to bureaucratised unis and colleges.. as behind the students are those who pull the strings ..we have a generation who think they are entitled.. sadly no one is telling them no you are not entitled to make the rules for the rest of society and those in the employ of unis and colleges who are encouraging/promoting and allowing this idiocy
talking of shouting facist.. the anti facist brigade/Union have shown them selves to be more facist than those they were acussing of facism
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Post by men an tol on Feb 5, 2018 12:21:13 GMT -5
The New Blasphemies On CampusIn 1811, Percy Bysshe Shelley was banished from Oxford University for publishing a pamphlet called ‘The Necessity of Atheism’. His act of heresy was punished by close-minded dons who could brook no dissent. More than two centuries later, there are still blasphemies on campus that students commit at their peril. Today spiked launches the Free Speech University Rankings 2018, our fourth annual analysis of campus censorship in the UK academy, and it makes for grim reading: 55 per cent of the 115 universities and students’ unions we survey are this year ranked Red under our traffic-light rankings system, meaning they actively censor speech and ideas. This marks a dip in Reds from last year. But policies dictating what can and can’t be said on campus are still becoming more severe in many areas. A startling 46 per cent of institutions restrict discussion of transgenderism: Leeds Beckett, Newcastle, Imperial and more appear to ban ‘transphobic propaganda’ outright, while St Andrews, Sussex, Cardiff and others commit themselves to ridding the curriculum of ‘transphobic material’. This is remarkable stuff. In some of our most esteemed universities, supposed citadels of free thinking and scientific endeavour, administrations are demanding that debate about transgenderism be shut down and courses be cleansed of un-PC material. How any course about, say, biology, can coexist with this is unfathomable. And it’s not just in relation to trans issues, that most testy and inflamed subject in politics today. We also found that 48 per cent of institutions have policies which warn against insulting faith groups or offending religious sensibilities. One students’ union insists that ‘the religious sensibilities of the union’s members must be respected’. Shelley must be turning in his grave. What’s more, when it comes to who is being censored on campus, it isn’t even just provocateurs, coming to campus to stir up controversy – it’s students themselves. Over the past three years, students and/or student groups at 17 campuses have been punished for everything from criticising gay marriage on Facebook to organising a Thatcher vs the Miners themed party. Starker still, both of those bans were the work of university administrations, rather than students’ unions. Campus censorship, you see, isn’t just the work of Safe Space belligerents, blue hair flying in the wind. In fact, while SUs tend to be more extreme in their censorship, in that more of them are ranked Red, the proportion of Red universities has been rising over the past few years, while the proportion of Red students’ unions has begun to level off and fall. There’s a good deal of hypocrisy here, too. While, for instance, the University of Cardiff won plaudits in 2015 for pressing ahead with a talk by Germaine Greer, despite protests from students over Greer’s ‘transphobic’ comments about gender, at that very same time it had a policy on its books committing itself to cleansing all curricula of ‘transphobic material’. So, many universities don’t practice what they preach. The fracas at the University of the West of England in Bristol on Friday night, in which anti-fascist protesters tried to disrupt a speech by Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, shouting ‘no platform for fascists’ and scuffling with his supporters, reminds us that student activism remains thoroughly intolerant. And, for the fourth year running, students’ unions are far more likely to be ranked Red than universities in our survey. But we can’t let universities off the hook. So, what’s to be done about it? Suffice it to say, the plans being drawn up by the newly established Office for Students to fine or otherwise punish universities that censor would only make the problem worse. It’s fighting one form of illiberalism with another; as SUs are independent organisations, they wouldn’t be touched by such measures; and, even if you somehow prohibited campus authorities from censoring, illiberal activists would merely take matters into their own hands. The problem here isn’t technical – it’s cultural. Universities have become so bureaucratised, so estranged from their core mission, that they blithely undermine free speech for the sake of avoiding bad press or keeping a lid on campus protest. Meanwhile, students’ unions are run by unrepresentative identitarians who genuinely think words are like bullets. If we want to change that, we need to change minds. We need to build a culture of free debate and argument so that censorship is no longer enacted so casually. And we need to defeat the patronising argument that censorship must be done for our own good. Students, academics and university leaders need to assert, as Shelley might have put it, the necessity of freedom: the most dangerous idea of all. www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-new-blasphemies-on-campus/21086#.Wnguaqhl_4YStudent activism remains thoroughly intolerant and I can't see that changing any time soon. Fret this is worth a reading.
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Post by Dex on Feb 5, 2018 13:33:11 GMT -5
The New Blasphemies On CampusIn 1811, Percy Bysshe Shelley was banished from Oxford University for publishing a pamphlet called ‘The Necessity of Atheism’. His act of heresy was punished by close-minded dons who could brook no dissent. More than two centuries later, there are still blasphemies on campus that students commit at their peril. Today spiked launches the Free Speech University Rankings 2018, our fourth annual analysis of campus censorship in the UK academy, and it makes for grim reading: 55 per cent of the 115 universities and students’ unions we survey are this year ranked Red under our traffic-light rankings system, meaning they actively censor speech and ideas. This marks a dip in Reds from last year. But policies dictating what can and can’t be said on campus are still becoming more severe in many areas. A startling 46 per cent of institutions restrict discussion of transgenderism: Leeds Beckett, Newcastle, Imperial and more appear to ban ‘transphobic propaganda’ outright, while St Andrews, Sussex, Cardiff and others commit themselves to ridding the curriculum of ‘transphobic material’. This is remarkable stuff. In some of our most esteemed universities, supposed citadels of free thinking and scientific endeavour, administrations are demanding that debate about transgenderism be shut down and courses be cleansed of un-PC material. How any course about, say, biology, can coexist with this is unfathomable. And it’s not just in relation to trans issues, that most testy and inflamed subject in politics today. We also found that 48 per cent of institutions have policies which warn against insulting faith groups or offending religious sensibilities. One students’ union insists that ‘the religious sensibilities of the union’s members must be respected’. Shelley must be turning in his grave. What’s more, when it comes to who is being censored on campus, it isn’t even just provocateurs, coming to campus to stir up controversy – it’s students themselves. Over the past three years, students and/or student groups at 17 campuses have been punished for everything from criticising gay marriage on Facebook to organising a Thatcher vs the Miners themed party. Starker still, both of those bans were the work of university administrations, rather than students’ unions. Campus censorship, you see, isn’t just the work of Safe Space belligerents, blue hair flying in the wind. In fact, while SUs tend to be more extreme in their censorship, in that more of them are ranked Red, the proportion of Red universities has been rising over the past few years, while the proportion of Red students’ unions has begun to level off and fall. There’s a good deal of hypocrisy here, too. While, for instance, the University of Cardiff won plaudits in 2015 for pressing ahead with a talk by Germaine Greer, despite protests from students over Greer’s ‘transphobic’ comments about gender, at that very same time it had a policy on its books committing itself to cleansing all curricula of ‘transphobic material’. So, many universities don’t practice what they preach. The fracas at the University of the West of England in Bristol on Friday night, in which anti-fascist protesters tried to disrupt a speech by Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, shouting ‘no platform for fascists’ and scuffling with his supporters, reminds us that student activism remains thoroughly intolerant. And, for the fourth year running, students’ unions are far more likely to be ranked Red than universities in our survey. But we can’t let universities off the hook. So, what’s to be done about it? Suffice it to say, the plans being drawn up by the newly established Office for Students to fine or otherwise punish universities that censor would only make the problem worse. It’s fighting one form of illiberalism with another; as SUs are independent organisations, they wouldn’t be touched by such measures; and, even if you somehow prohibited campus authorities from censoring, illiberal activists would merely take matters into their own hands. The problem here isn’t technical – it’s cultural. Universities have become so bureaucratised, so estranged from their core mission, that they blithely undermine free speech for the sake of avoiding bad press or keeping a lid on campus protest. Meanwhile, students’ unions are run by unrepresentative identitarians who genuinely think words are like bullets. If we want to change that, we need to change minds. We need to build a culture of free debate and argument so that censorship is no longer enacted so casually. And we need to defeat the patronising argument that censorship must be done for our own good. Students, academics and university leaders need to assert, as Shelley might have put it, the necessity of freedom: the most dangerous idea of all. www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-new-blasphemies-on-campus/21086#.Wnguaqhl_4YStudent activism remains thoroughly intolerant and I can't see that changing any time soon. If you don't like it, don't get involved in it. I guess I don't understand the big deal in getting the feathers all ruffled about what other people think. Let the whiners whine and go the way that's right for you.
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Post by men an tol on Feb 5, 2018 14:50:19 GMT -5
The New Blasphemies On CampusIn 1811, Percy Bysshe Shelley was banished from Oxford University for publishing a pamphlet called ‘The Necessity of Atheism’. His act of heresy was punished by close-minded dons who could brook no dissent. More than two centuries later, there are still blasphemies on campus that students commit at their peril. Today spiked launches the Free Speech University Rankings 2018, our fourth annual analysis of campus censorship in the UK academy, and it makes for grim reading: 55 per cent of the 115 universities and students’ unions we survey are this year ranked Red under our traffic-light rankings system, meaning they actively censor speech and ideas. This marks a dip in Reds from last year. But policies dictating what can and can’t be said on campus are still becoming more severe in many areas. A startling 46 per cent of institutions restrict discussion of transgenderism: Leeds Beckett, Newcastle, Imperial and more appear to ban ‘transphobic propaganda’ outright, while St Andrews, Sussex, Cardiff and others commit themselves to ridding the curriculum of ‘transphobic material’. This is remarkable stuff. In some of our most esteemed universities, supposed citadels of free thinking and scientific endeavour, administrations are demanding that debate about transgenderism be shut down and courses be cleansed of un-PC material. How any course about, say, biology, can coexist with this is unfathomable. And it’s not just in relation to trans issues, that most testy and inflamed subject in politics today. We also found that 48 per cent of institutions have policies which warn against insulting faith groups or offending religious sensibilities. One students’ union insists that ‘the religious sensibilities of the union’s members must be respected’. Shelley must be turning in his grave. What’s more, when it comes to who is being censored on campus, it isn’t even just provocateurs, coming to campus to stir up controversy – it’s students themselves. Over the past three years, students and/or student groups at 17 campuses have been punished for everything from criticising gay marriage on Facebook to organising a Thatcher vs the Miners themed party. Starker still, both of those bans were the work of university administrations, rather than students’ unions. Campus censorship, you see, isn’t just the work of Safe Space belligerents, blue hair flying in the wind. In fact, while SUs tend to be more extreme in their censorship, in that more of them are ranked Red, the proportion of Red universities has been rising over the past few years, while the proportion of Red students’ unions has begun to level off and fall. There’s a good deal of hypocrisy here, too. While, for instance, the University of Cardiff won plaudits in 2015 for pressing ahead with a talk by Germaine Greer, despite protests from students over Greer’s ‘transphobic’ comments about gender, at that very same time it had a policy on its books committing itself to cleansing all curricula of ‘transphobic material’. So, many universities don’t practice what they preach. The fracas at the University of the West of England in Bristol on Friday night, in which anti-fascist protesters tried to disrupt a speech by Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, shouting ‘no platform for fascists’ and scuffling with his supporters, reminds us that student activism remains thoroughly intolerant. And, for the fourth year running, students’ unions are far more likely to be ranked Red than universities in our survey. But we can’t let universities off the hook. So, what’s to be done about it? Suffice it to say, the plans being drawn up by the newly established Office for Students to fine or otherwise punish universities that censor would only make the problem worse. It’s fighting one form of illiberalism with another; as SUs are independent organisations, they wouldn’t be touched by such measures; and, even if you somehow prohibited campus authorities from censoring, illiberal activists would merely take matters into their own hands. The problem here isn’t technical – it’s cultural. Universities have become so bureaucratised, so estranged from their core mission, that they blithely undermine free speech for the sake of avoiding bad press or keeping a lid on campus protest. Meanwhile, students’ unions are run by unrepresentative identitarians who genuinely think words are like bullets. If we want to change that, we need to change minds. We need to build a culture of free debate and argument so that censorship is no longer enacted so casually. And we need to defeat the patronising argument that censorship must be done for our own good. Students, academics and university leaders need to assert, as Shelley might have put it, the necessity of freedom: the most dangerous idea of all. www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-new-blasphemies-on-campus/21086#.Wnguaqhl_4YStudent activism remains thoroughly intolerant and I can't see that changing any time soon. If you don't like it, don't get involved in it. I guess I don't understand the big deal in getting the feathers all ruffled about what other people think. Let the whiners whine and go the way that's right for you. Dex, there is a lot of truth to what you posted, if you do not allow stupid people to bother you, it is certainly no big deal. I guess the question is, do they bother me, or people who do not accept what they say. For example, I do not know about England but here there are many colleges to choose for higher education, Hills Dale College in Michigan or Wartburg College in Iowa and there it is highly unlikely that such stupid student demonstrators will be acting. Then again not everyone can attend such colleges. There is also the factor that those who attend a State supported College have their education lessened by these who’s main purpose in life seems to be to destroy education for all. In my State since my taxes pay for higher education, that is my business. And they seem to willfully contribute to altering society around them so that it does not reflect reality. When they stop the free exchange of ideas, they have (as I see it) broken a contract with the school that they are attending to learn. In doing so they have wasted the time of others and negatively impacted the learning process. No one is saying that they do not have the right to their ideas or the expression of them, but they do not have the right to stop others from having the same opportunity. That is the business of all of us.
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