Ireland recently voted to remove the crime of blasphemy from its constitution. Only fifty years ago this country resembled a Catholic theocracy, it has now begun to remove the last vestiges of religious privilege from […]
Brave Spaces’: the Solution to Free Speech?
Universities should provide special ‘brave spaces’ on Campus, where students and outside speakers are free to voice unpopular or controversial views. John Palfrey, a former professor and vice-dean at Harvard Law School, made the proposal […]
Free Speech Rules to Hold Universities to Account
The Government has announced that Universities across England must uphold free speech and that action will be taken against universities who use “no platforming” and “safe spaces” to turn away controversial speakers. Jo Johnson, the […]
Campus Watch: Censorship irony as Lincoln Union bans society for highlighting poor free speech ranking
Lincoln’s student union has imposed a social media ban upon the University’s Conservative Society after the latter posted an image to Twitter highlighting the institution’s free speech ranking. The Union claimed that the image, which […]
In light of POLIS Soc taking a stand on the U.S election, is it right for any university body to silence or take a position against extremist viewpoints?
Yes -Emma Healey University is a place where we should be challenged. We should have to think critically about our views, opinions, and actions, and sometimes this challenge will come from reading or listening to […]
Universities: A safe space?
What are universities? Many of us, including the dictionary, might define them as‘high-level educational institutions in which students study for degrees.’ However, this is not the case for several students from Yale. In late 2015 […]
“Freedom of speech is not a right, but a privilege”
A joke was recently made by Stephen Fry, in his capacity as host of the BAFTA awards. The response on social media illustrates how people, millennials in particular, are increasingly seeing free speech as a […]
What is PREVENT really preventing?
This September, the government passed ‘the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act’: a strategy designed to ensure that teachers, professors, and academics now have a statutory duty to notice and report signs of so-called ‘non-violent extremism’. But […]