Free speech

Let me start by declaring my ignorance. I never heard of Joe Rogan until a few weeks ago. When Neil Young recently announced that he was pulling all his music off Spotify, I took an interest. And the more I read and listened, the more I admired what Young had done. Watching Rogan engage in friendly banter with the likes of Canada’s Jordan Peterson or Britain’s Douglas Murray, you can instantly spot the appeal. Rogan is a smarter, friendlier version of Trump. People who listen to him a lot will challenge that, of course, but I wasted several valuable minutes of my life watching Rogan’s video...

Academic freedom is a specific principle relating to the sphere of academia and the university setting. It is the right to research and teach without political or commercial interference and institutional censorship. Despite Jack McDonough ( Solidarity 615 ), I’d say Kathleen Stock’s academic freedom has not been compromised. Since Kathleen Stock’s resignation, she has positioned herself as a victim of a university-rife “cancel culture” and she has tarnished student protesters as medieval witch-hunters. It is the voices of the student protesters that have been silenced, not Stock’s. What were...

I had some difficulty following the arguments in Camila Bassi’s article “Academic freedom: we must fight for it” in Solidarity 614 . I can only assure Camila that I am not being facetious when I say I simply do not understand what she means by “Academic freedom is contingent upon the epistemologies and politics of the time.” What was clear to me, however, is that Camila is entirely unsympathetic to Kathleen Stock, referring to her complaints of bullying and intimidation by some colleagues, students and campaigners as a “lament that she was a victim” and claiming that her resignation has...

Academic freedom is contingent on the epistemologies and politics of the time. A case in point are the past debates in the University and College Union (UCU) for an academic boycott of Israel, which premises that Israel’s curbs on academic freedom for Palestinians should consequently negate academic freedom for Israel. A paper co-authored by the left-wing Israeli academic Oren Yiftachel and the Palestinian academic Asad Ghanem was submitted to the journal Political Geography in the spring of 2002. The paper, which identified the state of Israel as “dedicated to the expansion and control of one...

Kathleen Stock, a professor of philosophy widely criticised for her role as a trustee of the LGB Alliance (which plays a pernicious role in undermining inclusive LGBT+ campaigns) and for her support for so-called “sex-based rights” for women that exclude trans women, has quit her job at Sussex University. Despite public backing from University management, and from Universities Minister Michelle Donelan, she claimed that she had been forced out. Donelan has called explicitly for another university to give Stock a job. Stock is clearly positioning herself as a “free speech martyr”, despite the...

I found the article by Chris Reynolds in Solidarity 608 on David Miller and Bristol University very strange. I think choosing the case of Helmut Hasse as analogy is pretty strange, considering as this guy was a wannabe Nazi and certainly fellow-traveller of fascists. Our line is typically that we do support the removal and blockading of fascists for their politics. The implicit defence of Miller that his antisemitism is unrelated to his academic project, or is of the calibre of unthinking near-antisemitism seen on the left, is off the mark, too. PowerPoints from his lectures have been leaked...

In discussing the case of David Miller and Bristol University, I chose the example of Helmut Hasse, a celebrated mathematician sacked by the British occupation authorities in Germany in 1945 because of his right-wing nationalist views, as a comparison test case. Partly because I knew about it, but partly because no reader is likely to find Hasse's views other than vile. Hasse, to my mind, provides a test case for how Miller's sacking could be considered wrong even while denouncing his political views. And likewise we can criticise Sussex University professor Kathleen Stock's noxious trans...

Alex Callinicos’s defence in Socialist Worker of David Miller, the academic recently sacked from his job at the University of Bristol, poses the matter as one of “academic freedom”, in which not only academic freedom, but Miller himself, must be “defended”. Callinicos is right that there are questions of academic freedom involved. There have long been demands that Miller should be sacked for his views on Israel and Zionism — and, from some, that he should be sacked for his views on Syria, as he is a prominent apologist for Assad regime and has promoted denialist conspiracy theories about that...

David Miller was sacked on 1 October from his academic job at Bristol University. The tight-lipped university statement explicitly refused to give details, but said that in light of the University’s “duty of care to all students”, “Professor Miller did not meet the standards of behaviour we expect from our staff”. Miller is appealing, but has given no details either, claiming only that “Israel’s assets in the UK have been emboldened by the university collaborating with them to shut down teaching about Islamophobia. The University of Bristol is no longer safe for Muslim, Arab or Palestinian...

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill passed its third reading by a majority of 100, in the House of Commons on 5 July, with Labour voting against. Outside Parliament as the Bill was being discussed was a modest but lively and militant protest. The protest, organised by activists under the umbrella of "Kill the Bill", was nowhere near as strong as it needs to be. Apart from a banner from the RMT there was no union presence. Though it is clear that the Bill is specifically targeting XR and BLM in its limiting of protests and demonstrations, unions will be affected by this legislation...