UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will appoint the UK’s first ever free speech tsar to tackle cancel culture on University campuses.
The appointee will have the power to ensure that academics and visiting speakers are not cancelled for holding controversial views.
According to The Times:
The new director for freedom of speech and academic freedom will have powers to investigate claims of no- platforming on campuses including a new complaints scheme for students, staff and visiting speakers.
It is understood that the leading contender for the role is Arif Ahmed, a Cambridge philosophy professor who has spoken out against the “cancel culture” on campuses.
Last year he warned that freedom of speech was under threat and said students needed to be taught that university “should be an environment where you can say pretty much anything you like and other people can say whatever they like as well”.
He added that such training is necessary because “it is a very natural impulse to try and suppress the views of people you don’t agree with.”
The new role is being established under the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, which is passing through parliament.
The legislation creates a new duty on universities and colleges to “actively promote” freedom of speech, which extends to student unions.
A new complaints scheme will be set up, operated by the Office for Students (OfS), to consider free speech complaints about universities and colleges or their students’ unions, from students, staff or visiting speakers, with the potential to levy fines.
The successful candidate will work within the OfS and be appointed to the organisation’s board.
During last summer’s leadership contest, the prime minister promised to tackle the “woke nonsense” he claimed was permeating public life.
This is hypocritical in the extreme. Rishi Sunak’s party has just cancelled the MP Andrew Bridgen for holding controversial views.
Bridgen tweeted that a cardiologist told him that the Covid vaccine rollout is the biggest crime against humanity since the Holocaust.
The Conservative Party immediately removed the whip from him.
Isn’t that the very definition of cancelling?
