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Are students turning their backs on cancel culture? A Harvard University professor thinks so.
A Social Science professor at the coveted university Arthur Brooks has said that the number of students and teachers persecuted for their political and ideological viewpoints on campus has “crested” in the past couple of months.
In fact, disagreements between staff and students in British Universities have gotten so intense lately that teachers are forced to leave their jobs.
Professor Brooks told Telegraph, “There’s been a lot more tolerance inside British and American universities to shut down opposing viewpoints.”
“I think it’s a temporary wave – it’s part of a version of a cultural revolution. When government becomes authoritarian, you can’t say what you think, and when universities do it, we’ve got a big problem on our hands,” he added.
UK’s free speech bill
Brooks’s comments have come amid the UK government’s decision to pass the free speech bill.
In what appears to be a U-turn from the government’s original stance, the bill will protect controversial speakers on campuses from getting cancelled by universities.
The free speech bill which is in its final stages of becoming law at the House of Commons will give the government powers to appoint a “free speech tsar” who will investigate and fine universities that censor their academics.
“People are increasingly realising that across the right and left, only those on the fringes profit from it,” Professor Brookes said.
He added, “The problem is that there are bullies and bullies create terror and loathing. We have to stand up to them and you can only do that by standing up to the bullies on your own side.”
Teachers quit jobs over ‘woke comments’
According to Telegraph, an expert from the University of Sussex named Kathleen Stock quit her job because she received death threats over her stance on transgender rights in the country.
After quitting she said that the people at Sussex have a “light in their eyes, who want social justice according to a very narrow conception that does not involve employing me”.
The university’s watchdog the Office for Students found last year that nearly 200 requests for events and speakers were rejected by universities in England.
“The culture has become more hard-edged, a zombie religion of identity politics and also a misunderstanding of what a good life is about. That wave has crested and there’s much more interest in the good life, the whole life,” said Brooks.
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