Education

BBC Daily Politics: Shining A Spotlight On Student Illiberalism

Samuel Hooper8 Comments

 

Few politicians will dare to criticise today’s breed of authoritarian student activists – because odious and illiberal as their worldview undoubtedly is, both main political parties have something to gain from regulating our behaviour and speech

Yesterday, I went on the BBC Daily Politics to talk about the creeping tide of campus illiberalism and the tyranny of modern student activists who seek to turn their universities into fuzzy, unthreatening places where intellectual debate and reason are secondary to making people feel accepted and validated at all times.

The debate was framed around the question of whether Britain should consider raising the voting age, given the fact that so many student activists recoil from free speech and the boisterous exchange of ideas, preferring to cloister themselves in ideologically homogeneous “safe spaces” while viciously lashing out at anybody who dares to hold different ideas.

I had written a blog post back in November, following up on Glenn Reynolds’ (of Instapundit) column suggesting in the wake of the Yale and Mizzou controversies that if students could not tolerate hearing contradictory ideas, they had no business voting and participating in democracy. I think a lot of the points that Reynolds made were very strong, though I also agree with what he said when he walked back his statement the next week.

I was surprised to get the call from the BBC, but I thought it was worth accepting the invitation to push the broader message – not that we should go around banning groups of people from voting just because they wind us up, but that this insidious culture of identity, grievance and therapy, incubated in our universities and ignored for too long by the media, is going to have profound consequences for our society and our democracy as these people grow up and join the electorate.

The Daily Politics’ Soapbox feature is good for what it is, but when it comes to laying out a new and complex argument full of nuance and detail, there are obvious shortcomings. You get a two-minute video (which I filmed in Oxford, with particular thanks to the Oxford Union and its president) to make a brief pitch, but that pitch can only be around 200 words, the rest of the time being given to music and establishing shots. And then there is the live segment, broadcast after Prime Minister’s Questions, where you get to debate with Jo Coburn, Andrew Neil and the panel.

The video is shown at the top of this piece, and you can judge the results for yourself. I’m reasonably pleased with how it went, but also frustrated that we could only skim the surface of what is an important and fascinating issue – one with potentially profound consequences for education, free speech and democracy.

Notably, the two MPs on the panel that day – Ed Vaizey and Kate Green – didn’t want to delve into the real issue at all, choosing to get hung up on the specifics of the voting age element. Green in particular was in denial about there being any kind of problem, saying that she didn’t think it was a “new thing” and that “there have always been controversies in our universities”.

But Green then goes on to say “I think it is part of exploring boundaries and debating ideas and issues”.

No. This is precisely the problem. By high-handedly declaring that they speak for all students and elevating their personal feelings over any question of objectivity, truth or legitimate debate, these student activists – the New Age Censors – are specifically crushing the debate of ideas and issues, not just for themselves but for everyone so unfortunate as to be studying with them.

Kate Green tries to make the new academic dystopia of safe space rooms, trigger warnings on texts and campus speech codes something that is natural and commendable, part of exploring boundaries. But it is no such thing. At the time of the Yale controversy, the student (Jerelyn Luther) who had a full-on toddler’s meltdown over a harmless email about Halloween costumes raged:

“It is NOT about creating an intellectual space, it is not! Do you understand that? It’s about creating a home here! You are NOT doing that! You are going against that!”

So universities are not to be places of learning and intellectual debate any longer. Or if they are, this mission is very much secondary to the far more important task of making students feel comfortable and validated in whatever “identity” they happen to have assumed on that particular day.

This is what we are dealing with, and this is what neither Ed Vaizey or Kate Green wanted to grapple with. Of course, both have their reasons.

I was essentially describing a group of wobbly-lipped, permanently “vulnerable” perpetual victims who are in constant need of a strong authority presence to smite their enemies and protect them from emotional harm – in other words, I just described the current Labour Party’s ideal (if not yet typical) voter. No wonder Kate Green couldn’t bring herself to engage with the substance of my argument – to do so would be to alienate the very people whom Labour has been reaching out to since the Gordon Brown era.

And what could Ed Vaizey say in support of free speech and against its rapid erosion on university campuses across the country? His leader, David Cameron, flew to Paris after the Charlie Hebdo attacks and walked arm-in-arm with some of the world’s most brutal and repressive leaders in defence of “free speech”, while people continue to languish in British prisons, locked up simply for saying, singing or tweeting something that another person found “offensive”. The present Coke Zero Conservative government doesn’t look on these petty authoritarian students as a problem – it admires their attempts to ban speech and regulate freedom of expression.

I should be clear that not all students – not even most students – are like the petty little tyrants in the headlines today. Spiked’s Tom Slater makes this point forcefully:

If there’s one thing that really gets on my nerves, it’s the idea that students today are uniquely intolerant. The explosion of campus censorship in recent years has made bashing campus politicos a kind of commentariat pastime, with fortysomething columnists wheeling the little blue-haired pillocks out each week to give them a good kicking. But while the students’ union censors deserve everything they get, all too often campus censorship has been painted as a generational phenomenon – as if undergraduates appeared from the womb with a Safe Space policy in hand.

I quite agree. And my one regret is that there was no time in my fleeting moment on the Daily Politics to explore the context in which these little campus tyrants are growing up, and what has made them the way they are. As Tom Slater, Brendan O’Neill, myself and a few others have pointed out, many of those “fortysomething” columnists and academics now criticising the student activists are themselves guilty of supporting the hate speech laws and therapy culture which have taught the New Age Censors that “sticks and stones may break their bones, but words will kill them stone dead”.

That being said, I think it was still a useful opportunity to raise an important issue and maybe raise awareness among a wider group of people, many of whom haven’t set foot on a university campus in years and would be horrified to discover the kind of illiberal dystopia that they have become in the name of “tolerance” and “inclusivity”.

But as Spiked is now doing, we all should give particular praise and encouragement to those few students – like George Lawlor from the University of Warwick – who have been brave enough to stand against against these illiberal trends on campus.

This fight will not be won in the television studios of Westminster or the columns of national newspapers. It is the brave students withstanding huge social pressures and even physical intimidation to take a stand for liberty and free speech on their own university campuses who must do the real fighting, as well as those professors and administrators with sufficient backbone to stand up to the shrill demands of the Safe Space Lobby.

But the rest of us should provide what air cover we can, as this blog has consistently done – and will continue to do going forward.

Safe Space Nook

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BBC Daily Politics: If Students Need Safe Spaces, They Have No Business Voting

Samuel Hooper5 Comments

BBC Daily Politics - Sam Hooper - Samuel Hooper - Semi Partisan Politics - semipartisansam

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Today I will be a guest on the BBC’s flagship Daily Politics show, discussing the worrying and accelerating infantilisation of today’s university students and asking whether young people who need the protection of trigger warnings and safe spaces can possibly be trusted to responsibly exercise their democratic right to vote.

Last year, in response to a brilliantly provocative column by American law professor and political blogger Glenn Reynolds – in which he argued that today’s generation of coddled, micro-aggression fearing students have utterly failed to earn the right to vote – I went along for the ride, agreeing:

It is ironic that at the same time there is a push to lower the voting age in the UK – the Lords recently voted to allow sixteen and seventeen-year-olds to vote in the coming Brexit referendum – people only slightly older and now at university, who already have the vote, are busy regressing back into emotional childhood.

[..]  Given the increasing number of campus incidents of precious snowflake students demanding that the authorities curtail their liberties for their own “safety” – and the fact that increasing age is the last, best hope of gaining wisdom – the idea of raising the voting age does start to feel awfully tempting.

Response written, I then didn’t think much more of it. That is, until the other week when I was contacted by the BBC and asked whether I wanted to state the same case on their flagship political programme, the Daily Politics.

The context of the issue is known well enough, and I have blogged extensively about the worrying and absurd rise of calls to outlaw clapping and booing, tearful temper tantrums about dress codes, stifling ideas by labelling them ‘problematic’, the tedious insistence on “safe spaces” and mandatory sexual consent workshops, all of which are flourishing on British and American university campuses.

Now, do I really want to stomp around like a little authoritarian, summarily revoking the franchise from every group of people who happen to rile me up? Well, as readers of this blog already know, I would generally rather leave the screeching, sanctimonious authoritarianism to those who do it best – the student activists busy cocooning their young minds in an ideologically homogeneous bubble, and purging any dissenting viewpoints which threaten their “mental safety”.

But I couldn’t resist the opportunity to make the urgent case that if things continue on their current course – with children being raised to believe that “sticks and stones may break their bones, but words will kill them stone dead”, and growing up to become intolerant students intent on purging anybody who fails to fawn deferentially over their delicate sensibilities – then before long, none of us will possess the intellectual and social robustness required of an engaged citizenry. And none of us will make good voters.

I want to stop the rot before it gets that far. But doing so will require confronting some difficult truths. And among these truths are the fact that the world of academia (particularly in the US – but where America goes, Britain already follows) has become infected with a virus which produces legions of what can only be described as adult babies – people who are physically mature, but with the emotional and psychological resiliency of a toddler.

The extent of the rot was laid bare in Spiked’s 2016 university free speech rankings, which forensically detail the extent to which free speech is curtailed at every university campus and students union in the country.

To give just a few examples, at present there are 30 students union which have banned newspapers (no prizes for guessing which publications), 25 which have banned mainstream hit songs for being “offensive” and 20 which have banned clubs or societies. But they only take their cue from the universities themselves, nearly half of which enforce “No Platform” policies against controversial speakers and a fifth of which have already moved to import American-style “safe space” policy onto their campuses.

I’m due to debate with Conservative MP and Culture Minister Ed Vaizey, as well as Labour MP Kate Green. It will be very interesting to see whether I am able even to extract any acknowledgement that there is a problem which needs to be tackled. However, with the Conservative government leaning hard on universities to protect the fragile minds of their students by banning extremist speakers and Labour poised to benefit disproportionately from the authoritarian student vote, I’m not expecting a tremendously sympathetic hearing.

Watch this space!

Watch me debate on Wednesday’s edition of the Daily Politics, broadcast on BBC Two at 11:30 for the start of the programme (and PMQs), and at 12:20 onwards for my segment.

Alternatively, watch live or catch-up on BBC iPlayer.

Safe Space Cartoon - 1

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Bottom image: Honey Badger Brigade

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Postcard From America: Adult Education Is Key To Future Prosperity

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

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I’m currently back in the United States to celebrate Christmas in Texas. These short “Postcards from America” will document a few of my thoughts as I escape the political whirlwind of Westminster and look back at Britain from the vantage point of our closest ally

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In America, not everyone waits passively for government to improve their life circumstances. Aided by a thriving community college sector, people take their futures into their own hands

While sitting in the cinema waiting for Star Wars: The Force Awakens to begin, I was struck by the number of local advertisements for regional schools, community colleges and universities which were shown.

By my reckoning, at least 40% of the commercials screened over a fifteen minute period were promoting some kind of educational service. Contrast this with the United Kingdom, where local commercials of any kind are a rarity, and most national commercials these days tend to be for banks, fast-moving consumer goods, the EE mobile phone network (featuring Kevin Bacon) or one of the limited number of other companies able to afford a national cinema campaign.

An example of the type of commercial screened at the south Texas cinema I attended is shown above. Typically, they feature personal testimonials from ordinary people who explain simply and positively how going back into education has helped them in their careers, how the various modes of study fitted in around their existing home and work commitments, and how easy/affordable it turned out to be.

These degrees and diplomas provide a springboard into skilled, middle class jobs, many of which are well paid and non-outsourceable. Dental nurses, IT engineers, electricians, car mechanics and many other such career opportunities. Recognising that not everybody can be – or wants to be – an elite lawyer or doctor, these institutions equip people with tangible skills which actively help them in the labour market, ensuring that their career options are far greater than the prospect of 40 years working at the 7-eleven, or some other minimum wage drudgery.

This emphasis on adult education is one sign of a more active and engaged citizenry, of a people who understand that their self advancement and personal destiny is in their own hands, not those of the government.

To be fair, some British politicians are also coming to realise the importance of adult education to keep our own workforce skilled, adaptable and capable of commanding high wages rather than minimum wages. During the Labour leadership campaign, Jeremy Corbyn floated his plan for a National Education Service to do for lifelong learning what the NHS did for healthcare.

From the Conservatives, however, there has been nothing. Not a squeak from Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, who supposedly has future leadership ambitions of her own and therefore might be expected to have a substantive policy or two up her sleeve. What are the Conservative government’s bright ideas for a more market-oriented, privately delivered solution to the adult education gap?

Banging on about apprenticeships is all very well, but what of adults over 25 who cannot take an apprenticeship under the current schemes, or who want to work in a field where none exist? What of the 55-year-old steelworker made redundant with few other transferable skills?

A conservative government worth its salt would look at Jeremy Corbyn’s proposal for a National Education Service, balk at the more nakedly socialist aspects, but then consider how a smaller and leaner government might be able to promote the education of the adult workforce in pursuance of the national interest. But of course our current Coke Zero Conservative government is not worth its salt.

If Britain is to prosper in this globalised age – and if our poorest, most disadvantaged fellow citizens are to be spared from a harsh life of minimum wage drudgery – we need a learning revolution in the United Kingdom, a British Apollo Program for education.

What party, what future leader will rise to the occasion and propose a solution equal to the task at hand?

Community College

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Yoga Banned: Cultural Appropriation Zealots Are Creating A New Apartheid

Samuel Hooper13 Comments

Cultural Appropriation - Can I Wear A Bindi

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Today’s virtue-signalling, totalitarian student activists will stop at nothing to let everyone know just how enlightened and considerate they think they are, and how backward and oppressive they consider the rest of us to be

If you haven’t heard the term “cultural appropriation” before, you can expect to hear it a lot over the next few years. And if you have the misfortune of living anywhere near a university campus, you may even hear it shouted in your face by a raucous student protester, high on their own self-importance.

In fact, even if you’re not committing the modern day sin of cultural appropriation right now, you are almost certainly guilty of doing it at some point over the past twenty-four hours. Go and do your penance now. I’ll wait.

Cultural appropriation is the latest verbal weapon used by virtue-signalling lefty student activists – snivelling Millennial egotists who arrived at university only to find the worst oppression and discrimination already vanquished by previous generations, and who are now desperately casting around for a new cause to justify their Chinese-manufactured Che Guevara t-shirts.

Let’s put it like this: are you a white person who likes rap music, or who (heaven forfend) listens to music by white rappers from Eminem to Iggy Azelea? Then you’re a white supremacist cultural appropriator. By appreciating or assimilating something from outside of your own ethnic community, you have plundered the culture of your downtrodden minority friends and neighbours, making light of their most sacred and noble traditions for your own carefree amusement. Didn’t realise that’s what you were doing? Doesn’t matter, you’re still guilty.

Or maybe you really fell in love with Thai cuisine when you were on that round-the-world trip, and now you love to cook Thai-inspired meals at home, with your non-Thai hands, in your non-Thai kitchen, for your non-Thai friends. That’s cultural appropriation too. Shame on you. If you are a white American you should subsist entirely on cheeseburgers, barbecue and other culturally appropriate fare. God help you if you’re a Cockney but not mad for jellied eels.

Stay away from that lasagne if you’re from Idaho or Utah – can’t you see how eating pasta belittles and marginalises Italian Americans? And as for ordering Kung Pao chicken from your favourite Chinese takeout, why don’t you just start reading aloud from Mein Kampf in the town square, you nasty little fascist? Clearly you have no feeling for the mental safety of Asian Americans, who might feel mocked and excluded by your thoughtless foodcrime.

You get the idea. Before doing anything, first get out your Hierarchy of Privilege and remind yourself exactly where you fit on the Spectrum of Oppression. White and male? Tough luck, you can sample only from those other white, male cultural pursuits. Black, disabled and of undefined gender and sexuality? Then the world is your oyster – at least in the surreal world of academia.

Cultural Appropriation - Fourth Wave Feminism.jpg

 

And now the Stepford Students are coming to take away your Yoga classes, because chances are you aren’t from India – and therefore you are guilty of the cultural appropriation of Indian culture.

From Brendan O’Neill’s weary report in The Spectator:

Just when you thought uptight, fun-dodging, thought-policing millennials couldn’t get any worse, they go and brand yoga as racist. Apparently, when white people bend themselves bonkers while humming or thinking happy-clappy thoughts, they’re not only being self-punishing saps: they are also ‘culturally appropriating’ a practice that has ‘roots in Indian culture’.

That’s according to student leaders at the University of Ottawa, who put pressure on a yoga teacher at the uni’s Centre for Students with Disabilities to call off her yoga classes. She was told ‘there are cultural issues of implication involved in the practice’. In these people’s minds, in which the Offence-Seeking Antenna is forever turned to High, a white person doing yoga is not that different to a white person donning blackface and singing ‘Mammy’.

O’Neill goes on to point out:

The PC rage against cultural appropriation is ultimately a demand for cultural segregation, for black people, white people, Latinos, gay people, women and every other racial, gender or sexual group to stick with their own culture and people and not allow themselves to be diluted by outsiders.

Gay men have been condemned by the National Union of Students for ‘appropriating black female culture’. Barmy NUS officials think it’s the height of racism for a gay guy to talk about having an ‘inner black woman’. The irony being that it’s hard to think of anything more racist, or at least racially divisive, than the ideology of cultural appropriation: its obsession with cultural purity echoes some of the darkest political movements of the twentieth century.

It’s easy to dismiss these incidents as merely a case of a few activists getting a bit too carried away, or going a bit too far. But incidents such as these are happening more  and more often, on both sides of the Atlantic.

Whether it is British students shutting down a debate about abortion and trying to get Germaine Greer banned from campus, or pampered Yale students insisting that the point of university is not to learn but rather to feel warm and snuggly, these stories are becoming more extreme, more frequent and ever more ludicrous to the uninitiated.

This is in large part because the authorities – university chancellors, society presidents and anyone else called upon to be an auxiliary parent to these toddlers-with-diplomas – too often reward this hysterical behaviour by apologising for offending the Stepford Students and giving in to every one of their tyrannical demands. Which then encourages the next crop of baby-faced tyrants to make even more outrageous demands in the name of creating a “safe space”.

With their accusations of “cultural appropriation” and unquestioning embrace of the politics of identity, these student activists are starting to create a New Apartheid – on their university campuses and in their hermetically sealed social circles of likeminded social justice warriors. Their overriding concern with protecting the “purity” of various minority cultures resembles nothing so much as the anti-miscegenation laws of the last century. And all of this they do without a hint of irony.

These students are nothing so much as High Priests of the Politics of Identity. Like other clergy before them, they derive their power from claiming the exclusive ability to speak on behalf of their secular god and telling the rest of us what we must believe and say. But in place of stoning or crucifixion being the penalty for blasphemy we now have new, modern shamings carried out on social media.

In a famous scene from Aaron Sorkin’s show The Newsroom, the lead character described the American Tea Party – with their intolerance of dissent and insistence on ideological purity – as being like an American Taliban. But I wonder if the real progressive Taliban can’t actually be found on our university campuses, in our student union bars and in the front row of your nearest anti-austerity rally, shouting “Tory Scum!” at terrified old ladies.

If we let these fragile young tyrants win, we will eventually all be ghettoised, forced to keep strictly to our own “communities” (community being defined strictly by racial or religious criteria) and only allowed to engage with other people in the controlled environment of “safe spaces“, where our speech and behaviour is micromanaged to ensure that we do not “trigger” anybody else with the problematic “microaggression” of our mere presence.

Yes, there is a dangerous radicalisation process taking place on our university campuses today. But deluded young radicals are not only rallying to the black flag of ISIS – we should also mark those who drink so deep from the well of Social Justice that they would make us all slaves to their cause.

 

Yoga - Cultural Appropriation

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Middle Image: 4th Wave Feminism

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