Michael Foran has had to cancel the remaining lectures on Sex, GI and the law.....

This is just so abhorrent

https://x.com/i/status/2063625635608543732

Time for this again:

I think it is one thing to protest outside exercising freedom of speech (that is none intimidating)

Quite another to invade a lecture room and grandstand.

the university must suspend these morons.

and i lay a bet none of them are law students

The first two lectures are available online.

I got there by going to Substack and then ‘Knowing Ius’
I can’t link that route, but I imagine there are other ways to get there.

Shame on Oxford Uni to allow bullying. Michael is a member of staff so how can they let this stand? The students should be sanctioned.

The reputation world wide will suffer. I no longer have Uni aged children but I would be discouraging them to apply to Oxford.

As pp said, it's an interesting contrast with the recent Cambridge debate.
Awkward for Oxford.

Very disappointing. He’s hardly a marginalised, hardcore outsider.

Surely these students should at a minimum face disciplinary actions? They should not be able to continue with their degrees if they are behaving in this way towards Faculty members and other students.

The behaviour in the video on Julie Bindel's X account is just utterly juvenile. They're behaving like tantrumming toddlers, except bigger and more intimidating. Because they have no coherent argument.

So Michael Foran can't do his job properly. How depressing.

University students are babied by universities now (literally - they're treated as children towards whom the university owes a duty of care similar to a guardian towards a school aged child). The knock on effect for society is shit.

Doing them online is a great idea in the circumstances if the University doesn't stop this obvious harassment - much more accessible to more people and people scared of being attacked if they turn up in person can attend online without this risk.

The University does online interviews now I believe, so it should be possible.

However it would be nice for a University to condemn such harassment and intimidation and allow people to have freedom of speech and freedom of academic discussion in person.

Maybe that's what employers want. People who are credulous and easily controlled.

This sort of forcible censorship isn't entirely new. Back in the very early seventies, Hans Eysenck was due to give a lecture at a British university and was violently prevented from doing so by a small but very vocal minority of the students there. But he was a visiting lecturer, not a member of the university's staff.

The students organising the protests were openly inciting protesters to target any students attending, as well.

That seems to me to be terrorism.

Of course, but how the loons justify this in their own heads is something i would like to hear.

They try to shut our mouths and our ears.

The whole thing is sheer bloody madness, though, right? As long as the bullies can convince themselves and everyone they associate with that they are on the RSOH, nothing else matters. Not the law, not other people's rights, and especially not the fact that they might learn something. Heaven forbid!

This is sheer madness. He is not even expressing a personal opinion. He is setting out what the law is, which are just facts. Where he identifies an unsettled area of law he will look at it from all angles. So it is not even about free speech.

When Wiiam Hague became Oxford's Chancellor he made a big thing out of freedom of speech. Let's see if his words meant anything

That’s a great idea - can anyone on X suggest it? I’d love to see them!

It is almost time to stop going to university if thought is not allowed but suppressed instead.

Employers must be finding a lot of empty headed students are coming through.

This is it in a nutshell.

Condone? Surely you mean condemn?

Thats a good idea-to try running them online. But ultimately the University should step in and condone the bullying...

I'd be interested to know if the university is doing anything about this.

They will probably argue that the students have a right to protest, but if they are bullying and harassing attendees and suppressing other people's free speech, then this crosses a line and the university should take action. The problem is that students engage in this type of behaviour with impunity because they don't expect consequences (and then they carry this attitude into the workplace when they graduate).

I wonder if Michael can do the lectures online? He shouldn't have to of course, but people who want to hear him talk shouldn't be deprived of the opportunity. And perhaps more will attend online where they don't have to run the gauntlet of deranged activists.