There are few things more pathetic than a university that restricts free speech for the BNP, but that supports the principle of freedom of speech.
I went to Kent University and studied law and saw for myself just how pathetic the far left and liberals are on the issue of free speech.
Whilst every che guevara worshipping chinless wonder is allowed to spread their nonsense on campus, the one point of view that is surpressed is nationalism.
Paedophiles are more popular on most campus's in the country than nationalists, and this is simply due to the fact that the kids that go to university are brainwashed by the left as soon as they enter the places.
The NUS, the academics and the staff all push on the kids leftism in all its forms, from liberalism to communism.
Whilst I was working in the Law Clinic at Kent University the National Front held a demonstration at Margate at which about 25 of their members attended. The university rent a mob lefty idiots organised a counter demo and with their self aggrandising nonsense depicted themselves as the socialists heroes and heirs of Stalingrad for standing in the street for an hour shouting 'Nazi scum off our streets'.
The fact that most of the idiots on the demo were a bunch of henriettas and jeremys from posh middle class areas of the country and did not even live in Margate and also all of them supported the NUS policy on No Platform for the BNP or NF, made their claim for ownership of Margate and their defence of liberty a total joke.
The problem with the liberals and left though is that they lack any sense of self irony, they are hypocrites who are too stupid to stand back and realise just how stupid they are. Therefore they keep on being stupid.
I wrote in the student magazine that as a defender of free speech, it was worse to censor the NF than allow them to speak. That censorhip is the true tyranny, not the presence of 25 people on the streets of margate for an hour.
You can imagine the howls of protest by the idiots.
Suddenly I was as popular as Chris Rock at a Ku Klux Klan meeting.
I was booed when I went into my lectures and the already icy shoulder (middle class snobs dont like working class people) suddenly became a shoulder drenched in liquid nitrogen.
The article below seeks to bring down the No Platform policy and replace it with a One Debate Policy, that of equating the BNP with only one issue that being race. We are to be allowed to debate, but only if we debate race as the left reckon they might be able to win that debate.
Yeah right.
Apparently the vision of free speech that even these academics want to see is a free speech engineered to produce a result they like, in other words we must be allowed to debate race as the LIBERALS AND LEFT reckon they can defeat us on that issue.
Yet again it just reveals how crass these people are.
Free speech is cool, but only if they can win the argument.
Well lets at least see if they have the balls to put their debating rooms where their mouths are.
I was once invited to speak at a conference on Marixsm at Kent University by my old proffessor John Fitzpatrick (NOW AN OBE !)
But of course it was withdrawn as the lefties attending the conference said either I was withdrawn or they would withdraw.
The middle class marxist insipids could not debate with me in case the whole democratic system collapsed.
Or was it simply that like all bullies they like to talk a good fight, but when it comes to it just do not have the brains or balls for a fair fight.
The NUS is an absurd organisation, a sad and pitiful joke, run by idiots for idiots.
You dont get educated in universities these days, you just get to become as stupid as the people who teach you.
Against The Grain: 'I'd invite the BNP to a debate'
Interview by Chris Green
Thursday, 19 June 2008
Dennis Hayes is a visiting professor at the Westminster Institute of Education at Oxford Brookes University. He argues that academics should have the freedom to put forward controversial and unpopular opinions with impunity, no matter how offensive they might be.
Every week there seems to be a new attack on academic freedom, and yet academics aren't defending it, because they don't see what's happening. Many institutions' statements on academic freedom have so many caveats that they cease to be about freedom at all, and the University and College Union has an entirely contradictory view of it: it supports the academic freedom of the left-wing academics it agrees with, while condemning the right-wing ones it disagrees with. But university should be a place where you can challenge every bit of perceived wisdom.
Freedom of speech is under attack throughout society, and the academy should be ensuring that every viewpoint can be heard and challenged, but it's not doing that. Everybody in academia should be able to say what they like, otherwise we're not universities any more, we're just training institutions to school people in the "right" views.
I'm not arguing that academics should go around being gratuitously abusive or insulting people's grandmothers, but freedom of speech is shut down when people are afraid to say anything that might be seen as offensive. Last year, Staffordshire University decided that there would be no political debate during freshers' week, arguing that the new students should be being welcomed rather than being forced to engage in a heated debate. When I went to university, we took it as normal that every lesson you went to would turn your views upside down: now, nobody's views are ever challenged.
Academics should stop self-censoring and be brave enough to accept the right to hold extreme views. It's their responsibility to say whatever they think is true, but they shirk this by blaming anybody but themselves for restricting the freedom to speak: the education system, the government, even the law. And if they're not prepared to challenge their students' views, then the students are getting a raw deal out of university, and so are they: people will start thinking of university as a place to be intellectually safe.
People ask me if I would let the BNP in on a debate, and I say, "Of course I would." It's not because I'm a racist or I like the BNP, it's because you have to respect people's ability to make up their own minds about an issue.
Racist ideas are not stunningly intellectual, and the majority of 18-year-olds would be able to challenge them successfully without any trouble whatsoever. But if you are to defeat these arguments, you at least have to hear them.
Dennis Hayes is the founder of Academics for Academic Freedom, which university lecturers and researchers can sign up to at www.afaf.org.uk.
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When I was at uni (English literature) I wrote a piece for the university rag against censorship - they censored it completely; it didn't get published. I asked them why - they said they disargreed with my argument. Nice.
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