God loves those who argue.

I've become increasingly concerned about the assault on free speech,

taking place throughout the West, particularly in university campuses.

It's being done in the name of safe space, that is,

space in which you're protected against hearing views which might cause you distress. And then there are trigger warnings and microaggressions, that is, any remark that someone might find offensive even if no offense is meant.

So far as this gone, that at the beginning of 2017 academic year, students at an Oxford College ban the presence of a representative of the Christian Union

on the grounds that some might find their presence alienating and offensive.

Increasingly, speakers with controversial views are being disinvited.

The number of such incidents on American college campuses rose from six in the year 2000 to 44 in 2016.

Undoubtedly, this entire movement was undertaken for the highest of motives to protect the feelings of the vulnerable.

That is a legitimate ethical concern. Jewish law goes to extremes in

condemning Lashon-Hara, hurtful or derogatory speech, and the sages were careful to use what they

call Lashon Sagi Nahor, what we call in English euphemism, to avoid language that people might find hurtful or offensive. But a safe

space is not one in which you silence dissenting views. To the contrary, it's a real safe

space is one in which you give a respectful hearing to views opposed to your own, knowing that

your views too will be listened to

respectfully. That is academic freedom and it's essential to a free society. As George Orwell said,

if liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they don't want to hear.

John Stuart Mill likewise wrote that one of the worst offences against freedom is to stigmatize

those who hold contrary opinion as bad and immoral men.

That is happening today in institutions that are supposed to be the guardians of academic freedom.

We are coming perilously close to what Julian Bender called in 1927,

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