Last year marked the 60th anniversary of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, the point of origin for the type of campus activism Americans have since come to take for granted and which saw a dramatic resurgence amid the Gaza war. …
The Right is coming for free speech
Last week, the Trump administration sent a letter to Columbia University demanding, among other things, that its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department be placed under federal receivership for five years. It’s unclear what exactly this means, but …
Europe wants to ‘pre-bunk’ you
The legacy of the culture war might be best summed up by the German term “legitimationsprobleme”. Coined as the title of a 1973 book by the philosopher Jürgen Habermas, the phrase is usually translated as “legitimation crisis” and describes a …
‘Islamophobia’ has always been a weapon
What do Tommy Robinson, LBC Radio, the Conservative Party and Sadiq Khan have in common?
The answer is that they have all been shortlisted for Islamophobe of the Year awards by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), a British campaign …
Corporate America’s dirty trick
The venture capitalist Marc Andreessen is one of the most forthright individuals in Silicon Valley. Yet even this billionaire maintains that his fellow elites have been muzzled. Interviewed by Joe Rogan last November, Marc Andreessen said that many of his …
Salwan Momika had a right to blaspheme
I do not much like the destruction of books. As a form of protest, it conjures sinister images from the past, most notably the Pathé news reels of brownshirts and students gathered around a pyre in Berlin’s Opernplatz under the …
Why Europe fears free speech
We all know the old joke: when a European referendum delivers the “wrong” outcome, the country votes again until they get it “right”. The EU thought this would be the case after Brexit. But so far, no one’s laughing.
If …
Australia has shown the way on free speech
In what might be a world first, the Australian parliament has just dealt a death blow to counter-disinformation legislation that threatened to fundamentally reshape the country’s free speech landscape. The bill, which would have created a two-tier system of speech …
How universities teach students to shame
Oxford colleges are suffocating places, stuffed to the gunnels with competitive and perfectionistic types, precocious in some ways and very immature in others. Everybody knows everybody else, adolescent hysteria and gossip can travel fast, and an atmosphere dominated by a …
The Democrat plan to censor America
The earthquake that struck Pompeii in 62AD was devastating. Houses were toppled, streets torn apart, and over 2000 people killed. The locals assumed that this was the whim of some intemperate god, rebuilt the city, and got on with their …
The anti-Israel cartoonist dividing Britain’s art crowd
Promising “kick-ass superheroes, future worlds, fantastical creatures and zombies”, the Lakes International Comic Art Festival (LICAF), should begin next weekend in Cumbria. Yet a row about a Palestinian artist accused of antisemitism threatens to derail the prestigious graphic art event.…
We need to talk about violent speech
As the British justice system continues to lock up overzealous keyboard warriors linked to the riots, and as free speech “warriors” respond with dystopian grumblings about an Orwellian police state, we find ourselves in a strange situation. Put to one …
Musk’s two-tier vision of free speech
According to the feverish visions of some in the US at the moment, England has undergone a radical transformation. Gone are all those entrancingly acerbic dowager duchesses, curtseying maids, wizards and crumpets. Right now, asylum-seeking grooming gangs are roaming the …
Labour’s war on free speech
An unspoken maxim looms over the free speech crisis in our universities: it is only ever denied by those whose views fall in line with the current orthodoxy. For all its faults, and there were many, Britain’s previous government recognised …
Inside the EU’s war on free speech
The latest salvo in the ongoing battle between between Elon Musk and the EU came courtesy of the X owner. He revealed that in the run-up to the European elections, X was offered “an illegal secret deal”: if the platform …