How many parents talk to their student off-spring about free speech before university?

[ChristinaXYZ]

I read this excellent thread on twitter about holding young people accountable for their attitudes on free speech

https://twitter.com/satiricole/status/1656585912124420100

I do wonder how much of this on us as parents. Many of us will have had the benefit of a university education before this happened. But how much have we taken it for granted? How much have we failed to pass on? I am definitely going to have a word with mine before next term. If you don't like it debate it, don't ban it, shout it down or wave a pointless placard at it.

Apart from anything else if a clamp down comes some of them could be going along with stuff they only half believe in and then find themselves facing consequences triggered by the most extreme members of their groups. It is protecting our kids as well as defending free speech.

In case you cannot read the twitter thread it reads:

"People can be too forgiving of young people who participate in cancellations. For previous generations, "not knowing any better" probably involved getting drunk and doing something stupid – quite different to calculated attempts to ruin careers. Don't let them off the hook!

"Their actions are justified by their worldview. It's not a passing phase of immaturity – they will graduate & move on to do doing the same thing professionally. You can't rely on captured institutions to correct the behaviour. The adults in the room need to enforce the standards.

"You can't "age out of" negative behaviours that no one around you is willing to condemn or discipline. You just end up with professional networks composed entirely of narcissistic sociopaths and their eggshell-walking enablers."

In the light of what is happening at both Oxford over Kathleen Stock's visit and Edinburgh over the showing of the film and Bristol (repeatedly), I think this is incredibly important.

I see this civil war streaming into two directions, in massive tension with each other.

On one hand, the pure legalities will be a win for the GC side, court case after court case, IOC ruling, Cass Report, EHRC situation etc, clarifying the law, legal rights.

On the other, a cultural firestorm where every trick will be found to obfuscate free speech, cancel culture will institutionalise, Gen Z peer pressure will go on unabated.

The law will be clearer, the culture will be murkier. For a decade more at least.

I think you're absolutely right - it is like what is highlighted on the threads on activist teachers where they are indicating that they'll ignore government guidance unless there are real, legal consequences.

Unless and until students and staff get disciplined or loses their places or their jobs, or institutions get heavily fined it does not matter what the law says the 'no debate' activists will get there own way. As you very rightly say: "The law will be clearer, the culture will be murkier". Could not agree more.

I don't want people to lose their jobs but if their jobs are free-speech based and they are not upholding free speech then they're breaking their moral if not literal contract.

I still think we parents have a duty to start priming our kids to expect free speech and tolerate ideas they don't agree with if we're sending them off to uni.

I've really noticed that my kids did not get the same kind of information around this in education that I did.

Talking about the importance of political dissent, freedom of thought and expression, were big topics. Political prisoners and Amnesty International, for example - we had a letter writing group at school. We learned about civil liberties groups defending white supremacists - many members of the CL orgs being Jewish, sometimes even the lawyers that defended the white nationalist types in court.

The importance of the building blocks of liberal democracy, including the rights of the accused, the right to a jury trial, equality of all before the law, presumption of innocence, and so on.

My kids learned none of this at school, and at a certain point I realized that all of that would be on me. Worse, what they learned in school directly undermined all of that.

I have a friend who's worked in academia and currently has a wife in an extremely exalted position at a major Russell Group uni. She was head hunted as a specialist in her most specialist of fields. Funny thing is, she has no time for woke, and constantly rubs up against her administration, but because she's a special case who ticks many intersectional boxes, her resistance is tolerated and not even criticised.

Her colleagues, especially the pale stale male ones, now it's the polar opposite. They are under continuous pressure to facilitate pronouns use, express pro trans rights and BLM views, push along decolonisation initiatives, all the while grumbling under their breath.

She encourages them to rebel and dissent, they are too busy looking to their pension and their social status, and the ire of their students, to even give lip service to anything as quaint as free speech or varied viewpoints.

I didn't go to university, I always assumed that educators would be discussing the importance of and encouraging free speech and debate.
I was disconcerted when the RE teacher at their senior school told them in class that he was an atheist as I thought they weren't supposed to 'push' a particular viewpoint. Prefacing a debate with 'some people believe' is very different to 'as an atheist I don't but some people 'believe', to a teenager, a cool, young teacher stating they'd chosen atheism does make it more attractive. (I should mention I don't have a problem with atheism, it's just one example I came across, another being Marxism).
So I feel it's in part the teachers inability to seperate their own ego and opinions from class debates that may exacerbate the problem, along with social media echo chambers and parents unwillingness to be seen to disagree with their children.
I do discuss free speech with my DC 22 and 24, that you can disagree with a belief i.e. TWAW without any animosity/phobia toward the people that belief refers to, it is often bumpy but I will actively listen to what they say and expect the same in return, we have a good relationship and I tread lightly but firmly. I feel it's my responsibility as their parent to churn out human beings that appreciate nuance in debate.