Freedom of Speech: Myth or Fact?
What would Galileo say about today's Universities?
Freedom of speech is now a mythic ruin in our universities.
In 2022, within a month of living in university halls, it had been declared by my peers that I "didn't care about human rights" because I described myself as a Eurosceptic, and that I was “racist” for seeing Morrissey Official in concert (lol - absurd).
When classes started, it became abundantly clear that views questioning the status quo - be it religious, gender-critical or capitalist - were unwelcome. Some people were stammering over their words in seminars to figure out how to phrase their ideas in the most 'inoffensive' way possible; others just remained silent, terrified of being ostracized. To this day, I have never sat through a quieter class than my first year gender in philosophy seminar. Everyone knew what they wanted to say, but everyone was so, so afraid to say it.
Here's the thing: academia is redundant if ideas are not allowed to be challenged.
I am a philosophy student, and philosophy is fundamentally a framework through which we learn how to handle, approach and define truth. This is done through debate. If nobody ever questioned the status quo throughout history, we wouldn't have made progress. We wouldn't understand heliocentrism, if it weren't for the 'heretical' Galileo. Haven't we learnt anything from the past?
The groupthink problem of this country extends far beyond my generation, and is perpetuated by our academic institutions. Through my involvement in Academics For Academic Freedom, it has become overwhelmingly clear to me that the number of academics losing their jobs for challenging groupthink and upholding minority opinions is far too high, and is creating a shockingly militant echo-chamber within the communities of people that are supposed to be pursuing truth.
This is not hysteria, and it is not a small number of cases. This is real, and is happening all over the country. My friend Connie Shaw has been suspended from LSR for what her and the Free Speech Union deem to be her gender-critical views. Countless universities are now also refusing to put gender-critical material on the reading lists for conversations around gender. More recently, engineering students at my own university felt as though they had to pick between their religious beliefs and their degree when 70% of a module grade rested on designing a product for LGBTQ+ people.
Many more cases are listed here: https://www.afaf.org.uk/the-banned-list/
I am not here to talk about the philosophy of freedom, hate or speech acts, or to even express a stance on the silenced issues at hand. I am here to formally express my concerns and to promote organisations that are genuinely making a difference.
The Free Speech Union - freespeechunion.org, Academics For Academic Freedom and Student Academics for Academic Freedom (@StudentAFAF on X) are working hard to combat the discrimination that people who hold minority opinions are facing within academic institutions, with the goal of recentring academic pursuits on fact and truth, untainted by feelings.
As a student, I understand how important it is that students do not self-censor and feel comfortable to properly and thoroughly engage with academic material. I am planning on beginning postgraduate research next year, where I hope to specialise in metaphysics related to freedom, and therefore defend the right to freedom of speech at its root. In the meantime, I contribute to public discourse concerning these issues on my X account (@ctredgett_) and am hoping to open a Substack soon.
I don't frequently post on Facebook, but I felt that it was important to put an update on here, and if anyone would like to follow any of the organisations listed or my own personal journey, the links to those pages are (I think?) tagged in this post, and my X account is linked in my bio.
Academics and alumni, if you'd like to sign the AFAF statement of academic freedom, you can do so here:
https://www.afaf.org.uk/statement-signatories-2/
Have a great day!
Author: Charlotte Tredgett
SAFAF Member and Representative, Kings College London
Originally Posted on Facebook, 27th November
Painting: Galileo before the Holy Office, a 19th-century painting by Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury