This is The Guardian.

The Guardian Archive Long Read.

Hello, my name is William Davis, and I'm the author of The Free Speech Panic,

How the Wright Concocted a Crisis, which was published as a Guardian-Long-Read in 2018.

I was first drawn to writing this piece because it became clear around the time that the piece appeared that

there was growing opposition particularly to what was perceived to be a culture of censorship

on campuses. And every time anybody tried to come up with examples of this censorship in place,

it quickly fell apart on the grounds of evidence and the

facts of the issue concerned. So often it appeared to be that what was really going on was a

kind of cultural war from the right against younger generations, against the influence of

higher education in British politics, and that there was a lot of

ideas being imported from US American Cultural Wars to try to point the finger at academics and

students. Quite a lot has transpired in the years since. There's been political interventions to

try to impose free speech obligations on universities. There's been

rising political attention on the right to this, not just in the era of social media and the media,

but the Office for Students that was set up as a higher education regulator now has a so-called

free speech czar. This is something that was put in place since my article appeared.

Various things have happened in addition to that. But I think one of the things that has really

been most shocking, particularly obviously under the second Trump administration of 2025 onwards,

is that it's quite clear that the right, certainly in the United States, and I think

it's not, it's perfectly possible to imagine this being replicated in the United Kingdom,

were a ferrage to get anywhere near the government, is that the right is intent on a far

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