¡°No platforming¡±, hate speech, bigotry and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel have all come under searching scrutiny at a conference organised by Spiked online magazine.

Opening the first session at the event, held in central London¡¯s Conway Hall on 17 February, deputy editor Tom Slater pointed to ¡°an explosion of censorship on campus¡±, with ¡°the bar [for offence] getting lower and lower¡±, so that ¡°even donning a sombrero can get you into trouble. Now, being intellectually and emotionally comfortable is paramount [for students].¡±

The controversy about protesters trying to prevent Germaine Greer speaking at Cardiff University, claimed freelance writer Abi Wilkinson, was ¡°an enormous storm in a teacup¡±. In reality, attempts to ¡°no-platform¡± controversial speakers tended to ¡°start up debate rather than shutting it down ¨C because of the backlash, media reaction and comments on Twitter. Students¡¯ union officers can¡¯t stop students hearing certain views.¡±

For Spiked staff writer Ella Whelan, ¡°safe spaces stifle debate by their very nature¡­Campuses are not private members¡¯ clubs and shouldn¡¯t be ¨C they are part of public life.¡± There was little danger that allowing offensive views on campus would ¡°turn the entire student body to the BNP [British National Party]¡±.

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¡°If you feel safe on campus,¡± Ms Whelan suggested to students, ¡°you¡¯re doing something wrong.¡± The only thing that safe spaces deserved was ¡°a two-finger salute¡±.

Barnaby Raine, a student at the University of Oxford who serves on the executive council of the National Union of Students, spoke in favour of BDS and referred to Israel¡¯s ¡°deliberate perpetuation of injustice along ethnic lines¡±, which inevitably had an impact on the academic freedom of Palestinians.

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Sai Englert, lecturer in development studies at Soas, University of London, also said that BDS was justified on the grounds that he cared more about influencing ¡°structures and political processes¡± than the free circulation of ideas, and that Palestinian civil society had called for a boycott.

Yet Joanna Williams, education editor at Spiked (who also teaches at the University of Kent), described the BDS movement as a ¡°censorious¡­campaign to promote freedom by calling for censorship¡± that made ¡°judgements, based on nationality or viewpoint, on who can speak¡±.

It was ¡°bigoted¡± in its focus on the sins of a single country and also ¡°trivialise[d] research in the humanities, which were seen as taken over by political campaigning¡±. Academics were setting a terrible example to their students in wanting to ¡°shut down and censor rather than engage¡±.

matthew.reisz@tesglobal.com