From our wonk correspondent
Originally published in the Wonkhe Daily
Jim Dickinson went to an Intelligence Squared debate entitled “the battle for free speech”
Last night I went to a debate on no platforming, trigger warnings and safe spaces that didn’t really talk about no platforming, trigger warnings or safe spaces. Just like every debate on no platforming, trigger warnings and safe spaces.
Intelligence squared had billed the event as an exploration of emerging campus culture, but, as ever, it was nothing of the sort. Jonathan Haidt — on a week-long UK book tour — kicked things off by reading chapter summaries off the dust cover on safety culture and mental health. In Haidt’s world, campaigning to outlaw groping in nightclubs or being opposed to the glorification of Steve Bannon is “safetyism”. He and his ilk lived in fear of complaints — and to cope with the real world, the kids (that have been bullied on social media since they were eight) needed to toughen up.
Jonathan Sacks broadly agreed. In full “thought for the day bot” mode, he reeled off quotes and anecdotes that imagined that every university experience should be just like his. After all, he’d managed to fit in (for free) at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Why couldn’t they?
Sensing the MO of the audience and putting in a decent audition for Question Time, Newsnight’s Emily Maitliss had warmed up the event by acknowledging the audience’s biases towards a pro free speech position, imploring them to take their “tolerance for a walk”. But the audience’s reaction to Kehinde Andrews and Eleanor Penny suggested that she’d not been entirely successful. Andrews and Penny had tried — as politely as possible — to point out the problems and prejudices that minority voices face on campus, citing the event’s title as tactics that would enable free speech for those that have never had it. But once Maitliss has made the fatal error of setting up them up as the speech restrictors, the debate was over before it had begun. Bloody BBC balance.
The hour passed without real incident, but when a question from the audience turned into a statement about the targeting of white men as the enemy, the low guttural roar of the audience revealed the ugly truth about the sea of baby boomer faces that had paid £30 a ticket. A deep sense of impertinence permeated the air at the idea that the progressive world they thought had secured in their youth wasn’t as progressive as they thought it was. Everyone of course agreed that a line had to be drawn somewhere, and that hate speech was off limits. But for the room, it was just that the silly girl and the aggressive black man were going too far. Maybe even further than they had.
