Academics - WTF is going on?

The debate was organised by the Oxford society for life, which is absolutely an anti-abortion group so I think the intended audience were starting from the premise that abortion us a bad thing.

And I do think the Oxford society for life should be able to have its very badly formulated debate.

I doubt Brendan O'Neill would have been the voice of reason

Indeed he wasn't - his perspective is here (I actually agree with several of his points but think the way he's expressed them is melodramatic and stupid).

As I said, I think as institutions universities technically should retain the right to ban whoever they like from speaking. And while it probably wouldn't have occurred to me to protest this debate because the participants are male, I can certainly see why the 'abortion culture' title is problematic. But I still don't think this is the right way to go about changing things. Interesting to see that other people here agree, as those in favour of no-platforming and trigger warnings on everything are overwhelmingly in the majority an my university's FemSoc (and in most others, as far as I can see), and I assumed the trend was common to feminism as a whole.

It does seem an extraordinarily silly motion. Indeed asking what is "abortion culture" is a valid and sensible response.

And it's disingenuous of him to say it has no bearing on, and wasn't about , abortion rights. He is starting from the viewpoint that a legal act is inherently harmful to society at large. Compare the Scottish government's concern over binge drinking culture , a legal activity which harms and affects us all , and which concern has led to happy hours being banned.

Was he proposing that having established it was harmful that should be end of the matter? He would not turn it into an anti abortion debate?

I doubt Brendan O'Neill would have been the voice of reason so the whole debate looks as if it was contrariness just for the sake of contrariness.

The objectors however should not have been allowed to stop it. They could have attended and contributed although given the tenor of the quotes he selected I suspect they would have come out of it badly.

No, I don't agree with the event being cancelled.

It has similarities to the Goldsmiths' case that some very weak excuse is being given around the impossibility of hosting controversial events... not having enough time, resources etc to deal with it. Perhaps universities need to make sure they have the resources and expertise in place to deal with both free speech and the right to protest at the same time.

I'm really late to this thread I know, so feel free to ignore, but I was wondering whether anyone had heard about this story and what you thought of it? I'm quite torn - on the one hand I don't think the debate should have been cancelled, as I don't think the people who wanted to attend should have been prevented from doing so, and if people wanted to complain about the two participants being men it would have been better to go there and raise the point rather than preventing them from speaking at all. On the other, I don't know if it's a 'free speech' issue as such, given that institutions have the right to decide who to host at their own events (it's not like they were trying to force a change in legislation or anything).

My own university's feminist society agreed with the ban, incidentally.

Well yes.

And, of course, myths and fairy takes are often quite dark. Those unicorns definitely need multiple trigger warnings.

CalamiouslyWrong You are ignoring the image of a single horn there. Clearly a sign of the Patriarchy. As for anyone who's been kicked by a horse at some point...

What kind of trigger warnings is one supposed to put on, for example, a social work degree? Or the safeguarding module in any degree? Warning: by definition this whole area may be upsetting because dealing with stuff that's not all flowers and unicorns is the whole thing about safeguarding?

i dread to think what warnings could have been added to my art and war module

cherub having trigger warnings on lectures has been informally discussed at GS.

I think there is a distinction between carrying out an activity, having offensive images, making offensive remarks about someone etc and discussing whether something is right or wrong.

That is surely rather like the national system of having laws of behaviour but allowing people to legally discuss those laws.

Student unions (by which I mean Goldsmiths as that is the one whose minutes etc have been linked to) seem to be banning discussion of issues as breaking safe space policy.

www.spiked-online.com/free-speech-university-rankings/results

Goldsmiths gets a red rank. It appears you have some rather troubling student union cultures in many of your universities. Reading up on things like No Platform banning nietzsche reading clubs I suspect some unions have become detached from the students they purport to support.

But how do you learn to think, if you avoid all the potentially upsetting and controversial subjects? Isn't that why people go to university?

I don't see how safe space policies can work anyway when surely one person's safe space is another person's unsafe space. In a world where we are meant to respect religion but some religions consider homosexuality a sin, for instance, how can we avoid either gay people or religious people feeling unsafe? Except by avoiding all mention of either, but then you wouldn't feel exactly safe if you were constantly having to watch your speech to avoid mentioning important parts of your identify on pain of being censured.

Fifth wave initiative cherubimandseraphim.

Thanks for posting that article, Calamitously - I have been completely puzzled by the fact that this semester our departmental lecture listings have suddenly got "trigger warnings" on lectures that apparently deal with "potentially upsetting" issues. I'm on leave and have been nonplussed as to why this is needed. We're a particularly squeamish and generally craven, orthodox and unexciting lit/philosophy department, it's not like there are lectures filled with provocative photos or triggering discussions (would that there were, it might mean someone exciting had actually been appointed for once). I honestly can't think why students need trigger warnings on lectures on the history of seventeenth century rhetoric and similar. What do they need protecting from that they can't just decide not to attend in the first place? I had no idea all this was going on.

Flora there was a very long (1 hour) discussion at the time. It was felt the original motion was too limited, and it all got a bit involved. I'm glad it's sorted tho'.

The pimp lobby shit was why I swerved the debate in November. I'd have been as welcome as a fart in a lift.

I think you'll find that this is a common definition for the specific term "safe space".

Here a university 'safe space' is a physical location in a university, not an ideology covering the entire grounds of the university. It is accepted that if you have opinions contrary to the guidelines of that safe space you either do not go there or you keep your opinions to yourself while in it. Outside those safe spaces while on university grounds you are not bound to keep your mouth shut about, say, how you feel about TERF. That is why I thought what you were talking about was a physical safety issue.

How you frame such a far reaching 'safe space' kind of gives me the chills, I am not sure how it could possibly exist without causing all manner of problems in limiting discourse and debate on university grounds.