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Should Freedom of Speech Be Absolute? No, but It Does Need Protection
Nobody thinks freedom of speech should be absolute, but on a university campus our speech needs special protection
If you believe the newspapers and broadcast media, freedom of speech is under threat on our university campuses as never before. On the right, this has taken the form of questioning the bias of teachers and university lecturers, and, on the left, free speech has been challenged by students advocating trigger warnings and safe spaces to protect people from harmful speech.
During my time at university, just over a decade ago, this was all very new. The NUS and many university students’ unions had put in place ‘no platform’ policies designed to ensure that he far-right didn’t have a voice on campus, justified because of the violence directed against minorities when the far-right are given the opportunity to air their views. At the time, this was something I fought against, believing it to be a policy designed to prevent the far-right from being openly challenged in a robust debate in a public forum, where they would be unquestionably exposed as the racist demagogues that they are.
My view then was informed by my reading of John Stuart Mill’s classic defence of freedom of speech in On Liberty…
