John Cleese and Andrew Graham Dixon

Would you for example insist that someone who supported euthanasia for over 80s should be permitted to speak to the staff and occupants of a care home?

Insist? No. I don't insist my views on any demographic; hence my entering this debate about freedom of speech. Would I permit them to speak? Absolutely I would. There may be members of that audience who want to explore the subject of euthanasia and would be interested to know more about it. There may be others would find that topic offensive and that's their right to be so and they can stay away. But so long as they're not being carried, bound and gagged, into the auditorium and forced to listen, I can't see your argument for disallowing it. And I'm still stunned that you cannot see any connection to no platforming Martin Luther King and his views on racial equality and no platforming Greer & JK Rowling for their own views on women's rights. Both/all have/had a right to an opinion and both/all have a right to express them. But someone, somewhere will be offended. Should everyone be silenced, on every subject, until we have a 100% consensus that everyone thinks the same and there are no snowflakes being offended?

But you are insisting that stopping someone speaking in one place is restricting freedom of speech aren't you?
I'm stunned that you can't see the difference between an organisation or body choosing not to permit someone to speak and an outside organisation trying to influence their decision.
The first happens all the time.

The fact that you disagree with no platforming someone because you think their views are acceptable should have absolutely nothing to do with it. Regardless of how I feel about AGD (and I think he was being a prat) if people were offended and asked that he not be permitted to speak there again, that is a freedom they should have. It isn't restricting freedom of speech, he can go elsewhere and say what he wishes. It is in fact how public speaking has always worked and always will. Because no Jewish organisation would ask a holocaust denier to speak, no Muslim organisation would ask an islamaphobe to speak, no socialist organisation would ask a fascist to speak, because should they do so the likelihood is that here would be protests and demonstrations. The concept that everyone has the right to speak anywhere regardless of the sensibilities of their audience is simply a falsehood. The other falsehood is that these restrictions in any way limit free speech.

I'm still wondering who has the right to decide what others should be able to hear, and why they have that right. I'm also interested to learn how views that some may find offensive will ever be challenged if their holders are not allowed to express them.

The idea that some students should have the right to no-platform someone 'in their own university' and thus deny other students in the same university the opportunity to listen to them, and to challenge any views with which they disagree strikes me as anti-democratic in the extreme.

How will students ever learn critical appraisal skills and debating techniques without apparently contentious topics to discuss/review? Vital part of student learning.

The current trend for calling schoolchildren 'students' (I heard nursery children referred to as students the other day!) infantilises university students, IMO, and detracts from the fact that they are young adults, not children who need to be protected from difficult thinking.

How will students ever learn critical appraisal skills and debating techniques without apparently contentious topics to discuss/review?

Good luck with that one Aveline, I've raised the same question several times now and had no response.

I really don't know where to go with this with you now tbh; as volver and pretty much everyone else has pointed out to you and vs, the whole point of AG Dixon's lecture was to illustrate how wrong, ridiculous and pathetic Hitler and his "artwork" really were. An immediate moral outrage blinded you to what was actually said and the default knee-jerk reaction is to say BAN HIM! DON'T ALLOW HIM TO SPEAK AGAIN! AG Dixon has been no platformed, cancelled and vilified because a number of people, who are either intellectually, or wilfully, incapable of critical thinking and disseminating the difference to what they think they heard, against what was actually said, has deprived other students from hearing what he had to say. Their right to hear a speaker and their right to make a decision or opinions for themselves, has been denied them.

You claim that none of this impacts freedom of speech? Parliament disagrees with you as do I

November 2021
Freedom of expression is a key part of the higher education experience. 4 Sharing ideas freely is crucial for learning, and allows students to think critically, challenge and engage with different perspectives. Therefore, HEPs should encourage discussion and exchange of views on difficult and controversial issues.

Universities to comply with free speech duties or face sanctions November 2021

It is a basic human right to be able to express ourselves freely and take part in rigorous debate. Our legal system allows us to articulate views which others may disagree with as long as they don’t meet the threshold of hate speech or inciting violence. This must be defended, nowhere more so than within our world-renowned universities.

Holding universities to account on the importance of freedom of speech in higher education is a milestone moment in fulfilling our manifesto commitment, protecting the rights of students and academics, and countering the chilling effect of censorship on campus once and for all.

I do question someone who is happy for governments to legislate in one area of speech but regards another government department's interference as unacceptable. Surely if one accepts interference by external bodies one has to accept it, not judge if it fits one's personal agenda?

No amount of legislation can make it possible for someone to speak if the body of people concerned choose to prevent them. No platforming is I imagine as much a result of health and safety regulations as anything else. If someone is booked to speak but the student body demonstrates against them, they will be effectively no platformed, but there is a risk of injury or damage. It's just a safer way to regulate things.
No platforming has a long history much of it linked to demonstrations and acts of violence. It is not new. It is not dangerous and its effect on free speech has been greatly exaggerated newsocialist.org.uk/45-years-history-and-continuing-importance-no-platform/

I do question someone who is happy for governments to legislate in one area of speech but regards another government department's interference as unacceptable. Surely if one accepts interference by external bodies one has to accept it, not judge if it fits one's personal agenda?

Sorry if I'm being dim, but I don't understand this. Can you explain, please?

I do think there are dim posters on this thread but you are not one of them Doodledog!

Thank you Aveline .

I understand the post in its own right, but not in the context of the thread. I don't see anyone being partial in their stance.

Doodledog

*I do question someone who is happy for governments to legislate in one area of speech but regards another government department's interference as unacceptable. Surely if one accepts interference by external bodies one has to accept it, not judge if it fits one's personal agenda?*

Sorry if I'm being dim, but I don't understand this. Can you explain, please?

Chewbacca used the FBI's trying to prevent Martin Luther King speaking at a university as an example of unacceptable interference but is happy to quote parliament saying what Universities should do.
Now I don't think either of those bodies should be interfering in the right of students to decide who speaks in the University Union (which is what the Cambridge Union is). It seems odd to me to oppose one interference but accept the other, simply because you agree with the policy behind the interference. I would no more want to see a government agency interfering than I would a government.
And please note this is not the University but the University Union which is and always has been an organisation run by, and for, students. It exists to carry out the wishes of its members. If you are saying you think a student union should have to allow certain speakers you are effectively denying those students the right to democratically decide who they invite. Which is about as different from freedom of speech as you can get.

Aveline

I do think there are dim posters on this thread but you are not one of them Doodledog!

Really?? What a profound statement Aveline and great contribution to the discussion. Would you like to name names? Or is that a little too much for you?

Surely there’s a difference between an organisation like the fbi attempting to stop a civil rights leader speaking and a democratically elected government supporting effective anti hate speech legislation

but Chewbacca is happy to quote parliament saying what Universities should do.

<<Sigh>> Can you not see, or understand, that parliament has recognised that universities, and their student unions, have increasingly banned/frozen out/no platformed so many speakers, that it's been recognised that students are slowly but surely being denied the opportunity to hear opinions/views/outlooks that may differ from their own and that this is detrimental to their ability to critique or discuss a subject? The very fact that government legislation is required to ensure that all students not just The Deciders are offered challenges to their own perspectives, offered the opportunity to hear someone else's experiences and agree/disagee/be outraged and rail against it if they wish, is indicative that universities are beginning to offer only an echo chamber of previously sanctioned speakers. Silencing other opinions and experiences simply because they might be offended isn't a democratic society - in or out of the university campus. I'm offended by some of your opinions by I'd fight to the death for your right to express them. You want them silenced. No platform. No voice. They don't fit with what you consider "suitable discussion material". A Decider.

But students do not think as one amorphous mass. Which students do you think should get to decide what the rest of them should be able to hear? That question has been asked several times, but never answered.

Also, the FBI example was of someone being silenced, which is something to which Chewbacca was objecting. The government saying that universities should allow free speech is not in opposition to this - it would support the right of MLK to speak.

Sorry - late again .

No one is suggesting that Muslim groups should invite an islamaphobe to speak - as Glorianny suggested. AGD was invited to speak at the Cambridge Union. The audience chose to be there. If they were so opposed to some of the content of his discussion they could have removed themselves or else argued cogently against him. It would see that they chose to do neither, but to be outraged,

Glorianny has not mentioned the freedom of the students who wanted to hear what AGD has to say.

If I don't want to watch a film that I am not enjoying I have the freedom to remove myself. I don't have the freedom to get up in the cinema and shout at the audience to prevent them from watching.

I'm seeing shades of Mary Whitehouse here.

perhaps I should have used implied instead of suggested above

Doodledog

But students do not think as one amorphous mass. Which students do you think should get to decide what the rest of them should be able to hear? That question has been asked several times, but never answered.

Also, the FBI example was of someone being silenced, which is something to which Chewbacca was objecting. The government saying that universities should allow free speech is not in opposition to this - it would support the right of MLK to speak.

That's what is wrong here a misunderstanding of what a Students Union is. It is a body of people elected by the students to represent their views and interests and to protect and care for them. If that elected body does something the majority of students disapprove of, they can be removed at the next election. So it isn't an "amorphous mass"it's a democratically elected body.
The point about the FBI and government not interfering is that both bodies change as do the ideas and concepts behind them. Accepting any interference is denying the right of those students to make their own democratic decisions. Of course they are always subject to the law, but if what they are doing is perfectly legal no government or agency should be permitted to interfere. The fact that you agree or disagree with the decision is irrelevant. That's simply the real basis of free speech. I may not agree with you but I recognise your right to behave as you do as long as you cause no harm.
Saying well this body is right to interfere because I agree with them but this one isn't because I don't, is dangerous and the antithesis of free speech.

I fully understand the role of the student union. My understanding, however, is that it was not a democratically agreed decision to ban AG-D, but a decision made by the head of the union, which he then rescinded (possibly after someone 'had a word' about his knee-jerk reaction).

The government is not interfering in the right of student unions to choose who is invited to speak. They are, however, acting to ensure that a range of views can be heard, so long as they are within the law.

Thank you Doodledog.

They are, however, acting to ensure that a range of views can be heard, so long as they are within the law. As opposed to the FBI who used their power and influence to prevent students of a college hearing what MLK had to say. Who knows.... maybe if those 1964 students had heard him speak, history would have taken a different turn. But we'll never know. Because he was No Platformed by The Deciders.

Doodledog

I fully understand the role of the student union. My understanding, however, is that it was not a democratically agreed decision to ban AG-D, but a decision made by the head of the union, which he then rescinded (possibly after someone 'had a word' about his knee-jerk reaction).

The government is not interfering in the right of student unions to choose who is invited to speak. They are, however, acting to ensure that a range of views can be heard, so long as they are within the law.

It is actually a action which never happened so the whole thread is misapprehension.
However I still maintain that government have no role to play in the speakers at a private organisation, that it is up to the members, that all organisations do this and only invite speakers they wish to hear. Why students should be chosen as the object of this advice I have no idea. The university may have a duty to give them a broad based education, the students union has no such obligation.

Students are at university to learn; they are not mature, experienced adults equipped to make decisions on behalf of others. They have the right to disagree, to vote with their feet, (nothing more demoralising than attempting to lecture or debate with a virtually empty hall) , to express their view openly and convincingly.
But to forbid certain people to speak because some unrepresentative groups disapprove, to threaten violence if that person is invited on campus, to protest so vociferously that speakers are drowned out, that is not freedom of speech.

No amount of legislation can make it possible for someone to speak if the body of people concerned choose to prevent them
So capitulate to the mob?
No platforming is I imagine as much a result of health and safety regulations as anything else. If someone is booked to speak but the student body demonstrates against them, they will be effectively no platformed, but there is a risk of injury or damage. It's just a safer way to regulate things
So mob violence is an acceptable way to regulate freedom of speech?