What limits - if any - would you put on free speech?

Universities that tolerate curbs on free speech will face intervention, the head of the new student watchdog has warned. Chairman Sir Michael Barber said the Office for Students (OfS) will force institutions to allow diverse opinions to be heard amid concerns that some views are being shut down.

The regulator was created this year in an effort to ensure universities are providing good value for money for students and the taxpayer.

Sir Michael said universities must allow every point of view to be heard – even if some are considered offensive to students . . . ‘Ideally, we will never have to intervene,’ he said. ‘But if we do, it will be to widen freedom of speech rather than restrict it.’

A GRAMMAR school is providing pupils with an ‘antidote to political correctness’ by running classes where Hitler’s Mein Kampf and other controversial issues are confronted head-on.

Simon Langton in Canterbury, Kent, is creating a forum named ‘The Unsafe Space’ to counter growing challenges to free speech. Sixth-form pupils will be asked to look at ‘the most beautifully disturbed and disturbing ideas, all of them presented without trigger warnings’. Scheduled lectures include the subjects ‘women versus feminism’ and ‘not all cultures are created equal’ . . .

Some parents criticised the idea but Head of School Ken Moffatt insisted yesterday that the forum will uphold the British value of tolerance.

‘We are not so gullible as to believe that “freedom of speech” means the right to say anything at all,’ he said. ‘It does not mean we will indulge homophobic, xenophobic, racist or sexist beliefs.’

Magyar Lány wrote:He didn't say it's forbidden to discuss homophobic, xenophobic, racist or sexist beliefs, but there will be a limit. I think they are afraid that student's every second sentence will be like these:

e.g.  "Every woman is a bitch." etc.

Neon Knight wrote:Suppose there were people native to an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean with naturally yellow eyes, some of whom had emigrated to other countries. Consider which of the following statements you would allow under the ideal of free speech:

1. Yellow-eyed people should not be allowed into this country.

2. Blue-eyed and yellow-eyed people should not have children together.

3. Yellow-eyed people should go back to the country of their ancestors.

4. Yellow-eyed people should be sterilised.

5. Yellow-eyed people should be shot.

Magyar Lány wrote:

Neon Knight wrote:Suppose there were people native to an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean with naturally yellow eyes, some of whom had emigrated to other countries. Consider which of the following statements you would allow under the ideal of free speech:

1. Yellow-eyed people should not be allowed into this country.

2. Blue-eyed and yellow-eyed people should not have children together.

3. Yellow-eyed people should go back to the country of their ancestors.

4. Yellow-eyed people should be sterilised.

5. Yellow-eyed people should be shot.

I would allow the first to the third, but the last two remind me of the Third Reich.

Neon Knight wrote:

Magyar Lány wrote:

Neon Knight wrote:Suppose there were people native to an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean with naturally yellow eyes, some of whom had emigrated to other countries. Consider which of the following statements you would allow under the ideal of free speech:

1. Yellow-eyed people should not be allowed into this country.

2. Blue-eyed and yellow-eyed people should not have children together.

3. Yellow-eyed people should go back to the country of their ancestors.

4. Yellow-eyed people should be sterilised.

5. Yellow-eyed people should be shot.

I would allow the first to the third, but the last two remind me of the Third Reich.

Number 5 is at the extreme, almost ridiculous, so I agree that statement (in a serious  context) should be off-limits. But, with regard to number 4, suppose a politician wrote on his party website: "If we are elected we will give all yellow-eyed women who have one or more children a choice between sterilisation or payment of a heavy fine". Should that be allowed? He is not inciting violence, just saying what he thinks the law should be.