Academic Freedom
Moral Maze
BBC
4.5 • 609 Ratings
🗓️ 10 October 2019
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It seems to some that universities, which used to boast that their courses would explore controversial ideas, are nowadays keener to reassure students that they will not be disturbed by anything too worrying. But safe spaces for students make dangerous spaces for dons. Doctors and professors have been subjected to harassment and no-platforming because of their unfashionable opinions on a range of topics including colonialism, transgender rights and abortion. Earlier this year Noah Carl lost his research fellowship at Cambridge (where he was looking into the links between genetics and intelligence) after hundreds of fellow academics signed an open letter accusing him of “racist pseudoscience”. Now a group of academics is ready to launch ‘The Journal of Controversial Ideas’: peer-reviewed research by authors who can choose to remain anonymous because they fear a backlash that could endanger their careers or even their lives. Opponents of the journal say it will provide a safe space for dangerous and offensive ideas published under the cloak of anonymity. Should there be any constraints on the freedom of academics to make discoveries and interpret them as they choose? How should academic research be treated if it is deemed to support theories that are viewed as unacceptable? Do universities have a moral duty to protect and platform views with which the majority disagrees? Or are universities morally entitled to censure or dismiss academics who flout the norms of decency and respect? Is academic freedom genuinely under threat? Featuring Dr Myriam François, Dr Francesca Minerva, Dr Arianne Shahvisi and Dr Joanna Williams.
Producer Dan Tierney.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a programme from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:04.1 | Good evening. Rosa Friedman is not just Professor of Conflict at Reading University. |
| 0:09.4 | She's right at the centre of one. |
| 0:11.2 | Her speciality is human rights law. |
| 0:13.0 | Her concern, the proposals to allow people born male legally to identify themselves as female, |
| 0:19.4 | might undermine women's rights. |
| 0:21.6 | Saying so has turned her into a campus pariah, she says. |
| 0:25.4 | There's a campaign to have her blacklisted and no platformed. |
| 0:28.8 | Abusers have called Professor Friedman, who's Jewish, a Nazi who should be raped. |
| 0:33.6 | She's had urine thrown at her door. |
| 0:36.2 | Across campuses on both sides of the Atlantic, |
| 0:38.5 | professors and lecturers who are perceived to have unfashionable views |
| 0:41.7 | or to be doing research that some students and their teachers don't like |
| 0:45.7 | are being driven from their posts, prevented from speaking and even sent death threats. |
| 0:51.2 | On one side, the argument is that academic freedom should not be a license for provocation |
| 0:55.6 | and the promoting of unacceptable views. On the other, that genuine research and debate is being |
| 1:00.9 | stifled if it doesn't fit a narrow, politically correct, mostly leftist view of the world. |
| 1:06.7 | Either way, the atmosphere in some colleges is so toxic. A group of academics are setting up their own journal |
| 1:12.6 | that would publish papers anonymously |
| 1:14.7 | to protect their careers and even, they say, their lives. |
| 1:19.0 | No freedom can be absolute, |
| 1:21.1 | but how far can academic freedom be allowed to depart |
... |
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